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Congress Wants Your TSA Stories
McGruber writes "Transportation Security Administration (TSA) program challenges and failures will be the focus of a joint hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, on Monday, March 26, 2012. The Hearing is titled 'TSA Oversight Part III: Effective Security or Security Theater?' Bruce Schneier is scheduled to be a witness at this hearing. Additional information on the hearing is posted on the oversight committee's website. The Congressmen who serve on these committees are soliciting questions from the public to ask TSA officials at the hearing ... provided the public is willing to submit their questions via Facebook."
There's the first complaint, right there...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
The thing that annoys me about the anti-security theater rant, is that in fact there is a non-zero value even to security theater.
Yes you CAN get past screen checkpoints as we have them. But it does not mean we should give them up totally. Even just a veneer of security can be enough to dissuade a lot of people from trying something, or to make them nervous enough they screw up. It's enough of a deterrent that a lot of people simply will not try who might be convinced otherwise, because signing up to die in a glorious explosion is one thing but being set up to rot in jail is quite another and without honor.
That said, the TSA as-is has gone way, way too far. We should have an immediate jump back to pre-9/11 security screenings, meaning we all get to keep shoes, bring water, and walk only through metal detectors, not the stupid body scanners that mean you cannot even keep a kleenex in your pocket but you can strap a gun to the side of your body.
I do not care about the remote chance of a plane being blown up in the air, and there is no way hijacking a plane will succeed any more. Sure they could blow up a plane over a city but that's not going to take out a building as they would like to do. So let us have some dignity and easier passage on to our plane again. Heck, let loved ones meet you at the gate instead of shutting down the airport if one guy gets through the line with an unregistered kleenex by accident.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
TSA agents harassed, beat, and murdered me. I would have to rate my experince as "less than satisfactory."
That's because most people are sheep. They go along with it under the pretense that it makes them feel safe. Everybody knows that after 9/11 that the same kind of crap would never happen on an airline in the US. Why? Look at the dumbshit underwear bomber kid, look at the AA flight attendant who went nuts a couple of weeks ago. The passengers took matters into their own hands to help resolve the issue. People will get up and defend themselves so unless would-be attackers come heavily armed there won't be a repeat. What the TSA has done is create long lines and an illusion of security. I fly every week of the year and I can tell you that I have more of a chance of falling out of the sky from a flock of geese than I do a would-be terrorist on a plane. What I want to know is why the TSA isn't installing anti-aircraft guns around airports to take care of the bird menace!
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
How does the USA like it's foreign tourist trade now that it's dropped off a cliff?
I'd like to fact check that statement. It's a shame that the government doesn't keep track of those numbers. Oh wait... they totally do!
Let's see:
year - millions of visitors - change from previous year
2000 - 44.6 - n/a
2001 - 39.2 - -12%
2002 - 35.9 - -8%
2003 - 34.5 - -4%
Steep drop in the years following 9/11, but wait, what's this?
2004 - 38.2 - +11%
2005 - 41.1 - +8%
2006 - 43.5 - +6%
2007 - 48.4 - +11%
2008 - 50.5 - +4%
2009 - 54.9 - +9%
2010 - 59.7 - +9%
2011 - 62.3 - +4%
Wow, US tourism is absolutely booming! That's an increase of at least 4% (average of 8%) every year for nearly a decade! That greatly exceeds the world's average birth rate, especially when you consider that the birth rate is lower in places where most tourists come from. In light of these numbers, perhaps you'd like to reconsider your position?
That's an interesting question. I did some digging, and came up with two things. The first is a new-found respect for the US government's data organization, which for all its flaws is way more accessible than Britain's or France's. The second is a document out of Germany that mercifully covers tourism across the EU, so I didn't have to dig up any more sources.
You can read it for yourself (there's some interesting stats on who goes where and how much they spend), but the upshot is the global average growth is around 4%, and the EU is a bit below average at 3.4%, whereas the US is quite a bit above average (around 8%), as shown by the numbers from my prior post. Interestingly, the Middle East is seeing the most growth of anywhere in the world, at a whopping 14% pace. You'd think people would be avoiding the region given the instability, but apparently that's not the case.
That's because most people are sheep.
What an original idea! You sir, have proven that you are not a sheep!
Very much against your original intent, you have provided a great illustration of a certain blindness principle.
When someone makes a good point that's true and valid, and you happen to find it painfully uncomfortable because it's a bit too true, why that's easy! Just get political! Take the point they made, put a little twist on it, and turn it around to try to falsely reflect it back on the person pointing it out. This has two effects. First, it takes a generally true statement and makes it into a personal ad-hominem statement. That's a sure distraction technique. Second, it discredits the truth of the statement without ever having to formulate a refutation. It's the lazy, stupid man's way of effecting a dismissal.
And all the while you get to remain in your comfortable little bubble where most people are not blind sheep who place far too much importance on things that can be centrally controlled like mass media. That's why you stoop to what amount to crude PR tactics against this poster: he was threatening to pop your bubble, making him the enemy, making any below-the-belt dismissal immediately appealing to you.
This capacity, this mentality is why people don't rise up en masse and reject the bullshit they're spoonfed on a daily basis. Because attacking the messenger like a spoiled child is so much easier, and so much more convenient than taking on severe systemic problems.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Wow, US tourism is absolutely booming! That's an increase of at least 4% (average of 8%) every year for nearly a decade!
The reason for that is the weak US dollar. We have a govt that is artificially keeping "inflation" low to convince the public we aren't in a recession, but at the same time printing money like crazy and devaluing the dollar. We have lots of foreigners coming here for vacation because it's cheap for them.
http://www.wealthdaily.com/articles/us-dollar-value/2627
That was my first thought (the weak dollar part, not the conspiracy theory part), but it fails to explain why US tourism has continued to rise in the 2008-2011 period, despite the dollar rebounding during those years. Your chart stops at the start of 2008, which was about as low the dollar got. It hit bottom a few months later, in April of 2008, at around 72 points. Since then, it has bounced back and is hovering around 80 points. Here's my source.
Nobody cares about "communicating with the Congressman." If we wanted to do that, we could easily write one any day of the week and send it in, only to get a form letter back (if you're lucky) explaining why you're wrong and how your letter doesn't affect shit, but thanks for wasting everyone's time anyway.
The real complaint some people are making here is that a supposedly "public" discussion is taking place in a closed off, walled off private community. So if the guy wants to air his voice in this "public forum", he effectively can't do so without having to agree to 3rd party terms and conditions. This isn't how a democracy is supposed to work.