I originally wrote the following article back in 2018 (under an earlier rendition of this blog), entitled “17 Years & $127 Billion Later, The TSA Has Not Made Air Travel Safer Than Pre-9/11.” But since congress is now moving to abolish the TSA and let the airlines utilize private security, I thought I’d repost it, if for nothing else than to reinforce the move. But I don’t have the time right now to research/update the article, so just keep in mind that all of the below folly was SEVEN YEARS AGO, so the budgetary cost is now much higher, and there are likely many more examples of the agents’ ineptitude and criminal behavior, I just don’t have the time to research/update it:
Back when I worked at Borders Bookstore in McCarran Airport (which, even more unfortunately, was recently renamed Harry Reid Airport) here in Vegas, I talked to a military guy who told me he carries this duffel bag onboard with him while traveling (he showed it to me), and for two years his big military-issue combat knife was stashed in the end pouch, unbeknownst to him.
He thought he’d lost it. But the night before he spoke to me, he was packing his duffel bag in his hotel room and found the knife, and about crapped his pants, realizing he’d traveled by air, multiple times over a two-year period, with that big-ass knife in his carry-on…but luckily, it was never detected by TSA.
And then there’s the guy that carried a gun onboard from Atlanta to Japan, and it went totally undetected:
“TSA confirmed the incident with ABC News, saying the man and his firearm made it through the checkpoint at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport on Jan. 2 and he boarded Delta Flight DL295 to Tokyo Narita International Airport.
An airline source told ABC News that the owner of the gun informed airline workers of what happened “upon arrival” in Japan.
Delta confirmed to ABC News that upon the customer’s disclosure, airline officials alerted TSA.
In a statement from TSA, the agency said:
“TSA has determined standard procedures were not followed and a passenger did in fact pass through a standard screening TSA checkpoint with a firearm at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on January 2. TSA will hold those responsible appropriately accountable.”
My point is, when people ask me how I’d propose making air travel safe without the TSA…well, the fact of the matter is that it isn’t much safer now than it was BEFORE the TSA.
(And remember, the alleged 9/11 hijackers supposedly used little box knifes, not guns or big military-issue combat knives).
The TSA budget runs roughly $7.5 billion annually (that’s over seven thousand million dollars, extracted from the US economy, each and every year) [UPDATE: $11.8 billion in 2025], so to date [2018] the American taxpayers have shelled out over $127 billion since the TSA’s inception, supposedly to make air travel safe—and yet, people are still able to carry a variety of weapons onboard airliners, totally undetected.
The bright side: as of 2012, upwards of 400 TSA agents have been terminated for theft of traveler’s cash or property (at least that’s how many have been caught, anyway…)—and that was nearly 7 years ago [2018]! How high is it now? [UPDATE: I was unable to find current stats (data suppressed?), but imagine what the total number is now, some 13 years later!]
And if all that isn’t enough, it’s also been reported that a group of TSA workers was busted running a $100 million cocaine smuggling operation!
And terrorists caught, over the last 17 years? Still zero. [UPDATE: Again, I was unable to find any current stats, so I think it’s safe to assume it’s still zero.]
And if all the aforementioned isn’t bad enough, I also learned that contrary to my assumption, TSA agents don’t just make minimum wage to $10/hr that is typical of other unskilled labor jobs; instead, they START at $25k to $38k, and can make upwards of $44k with promotions…and higher-paying jobs within the TSA can pay as much as $155k! (And that, of course, doesn’t include what they also make under the table via passenger theft…)
And I can only imagine, being a government job, that along with their bloated salaries they probably get full benefits too! So it’s no wonder they don’t give a rat’s ass about the rights or dignity of air travelers—take one look at their paychecks, and you’ll see why!
So obviously, abolishing the TSA and moving airport security to the private sector is not only a good move, but a necessary one—and can’t happen soon enough…
…because—as I also conveyed in my article Finally, Abolishing The Dept of Education: Better Late Than Never—whenever the government takes over an industry, that industry becomes corrupt. Why? Because humans are corruptible, meaning corruption is inherent in human nature; and the most effective check against corruptible human nature is free market forces—i.e. competition, accountability, liability, transparency, consumer choice, etc.—and government is largely insulated from free market forces: there is no competition, little to no accountability, liability, or transparency, and certainly no “consumer” choice (we can’t get fed up and start doing business with the one of the “other” governments). And this is why every government, regardless of how it’s structured, becomes corrupt and eventually fails, then must be forcibly removed, instead of simply going out of business (not to mention that government itself is immoral). But I digress…
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