Posted on 07/29/2003 7:36:50 PM PDT by John W
WASHINGTON, July 29 — Despite renewed warnings about possible airline hijackings, the Transportation Security Administration has alerted federal air marshals that as of Friday they will no longer be covering cross-country or international flights, MSNBC.com has learned. The decision to drop coverage on flights that many experts consider to be at the highest risk of attack apparently stems from a policy decision to rework schedules so that air marshals don’t have to incur the expense of staying overnight in hotels.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.com ...
Who the hell in his right mind would willingly subject themselves to the little browshirts at the airports?
I can hear Tom Daschle now. Where were the air marshalls where was the intelligence, where was the FBI ?
It's their only chance.
1) Gov't illegally bans Americans from carrying guns on planes cc 1970s
2) Gov't takes money from the people to pay for bureacrats to ask you about your luggage and put up signs that say "no joking allowed".
3) Crazed islamaturds hijack 4 planes
4) Gov't takes even more of our money to pay for even more bureaucrats with more rules, and promises "zero tolerance" for any Americans who make an honest mistake while at an airport.
5) Gov't takes yet more of your money to put armed feds on some flights. They won't tell us how many flights, because that's an issue of "national security". What we do know is that these superheros have yet to stop a terrorist attack on board. A single French stewardess has literally stopped more terrorists attacks than all of the "air marshalls" combined.
6) Gov't decides to reduce the number of air marshalls on flights, but won't refund our money.
The result of all this gov't meddling is that the airlines are less safe than they were 30 years ago, it's costing the taxpayers more money for "security", and fewer people are flying as a result.
They should simply reassign all the air marshalls, and recognize the Rights of Americans to be armed while traveling via air. Problem solved.
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WASTE, FRAUD, ABUSE AND INEFFICIENCY IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I find it hard to understand how anybody could be in favor of big government when we see, day in and day out, so much waste, fraud, abuse and simple inefficiency in the Federal Government.
I realize that the government keeps growing, despite the horrendous waste, because so many big businesses are making huge profits from Federal contracts, and so many bureaucrats are drawing salaries and benefits on average far higher than in the private sector. So while I have read and heard about so much waste and exorbitant spending by the Federal Government that it is hard to surprise me anymore, even I have been shocked and amazed by the spending of the new Transportation Security Administration.
Apparently I am not the only one shocked by this new agency. Michelle Malkin, a nationally syndicated columnist, wrote in a column carried in yesterday's Washington Times and papers across the country, ``The Transportation Security Administration is a fiscal black hole and fiscal conservatives ought to be enraged.'' She said the TSA ``is sucking down tax dollars like a bagless Dyson Cyclone vacuum gone berserk.''
Ms. Malkin reports that ``already the 1-year-old agency has amassed a $3.3 billion budget deficit, and is demanding upward of $6 billion for the current fiscal year.''
She wrote in this column, ``Never has a single government entity spent so much for so little in such a short time.''
It is almost unbelievable to me, Mr. Speaker, that any Federal agency could lose $3.3 billion in its first year in operation. This has to be one for the record books.
A few weeks ago I read in the Washington Post a report of testimony by Kenneth Mead, inspector general of the Transportation Department. He said the TSA had budgeted $107 million to hire airport screeners, but they ended up paying over $700 million to the contractor.
The only contact I had with this contractor was when they ran an ad saying they would take applications at a mall in my district, and then no one from the company showed up. I received several calls from angry constituents who showed up at 7 a.m. as the ad had directed and had driven long distances to get there, only to find no one from the company there.
If the TSA had budgeted $107 million, they should have told this company that that was what they would get, instead of allowing a $600 million cost overrun. Hiring screeners may have been an administrative headache, but it is not rocket science. Thousands of companies around the country could have done a better job at much less cost to our taxpayers. Most Federal contracts are sweetheart insider deals in one way or the other, but this one is the most ridiculous I have ever heard of. Then they hired far too many people. One aviation official told me that TSA now stands for ``thousands standing around.'' I am sure that almost all of the people who have been hired are good, honest, patriotic people, but the TSA has simply hired many thousands more than they need.
I know it is impossible to ever convince any government agency that they have hired even enough people, much less too many. Yet before 9/11, we had about 28,000 or 29,000 screeners. We were told beforehand, before the legislation passed, that we would need to hire about 33,000.
Right after passage, they said they would need about 40,000. Then, a few months later, they went to the staff of an appropriations subcommittee requesting 72,000 employees. There was such an outcry they quickly backed off to 67,000, and then the Committee on Appropriations put a cap on them of 45,000 that they have arrogantly ignored by hiring thousands of temporary employees. So I am told they now have about 66,000 screeners.
I had a screener come to see me at Constituent Day in my district a few weeks ago, and he will have to remain unnamed because I do not want to get him in trouble; but he told me that they have so many screeners at the Knoxville Airport and so many radios that when I walk in the airport, they radio ahead and say Congressman DUNCAN is in the airport, stand up, look busy. It was on the front page of the Knoxville News Sentinel that they were going from about 70 screeners to about 160. I am told one major airport went from about 170 screeners to over 700.
Then two members of the other body have uncovered the worst abuse of all. Apparently, 20 TSA recruiters spent nearly 2 months at a luxury resort in Colorado, a 7-week junket, that resulted in the hiring of just 50 screeners. Rates at this hotel run from a low in the high $200s to well over $300 a night for just an average room. The company that ripped the taxpayers off on the screeners' contract, NCS Pearson, has been replaced by the TSA after the obscene cost overrun, but according to Ms. Malkin, the firm still holds several lucrative Federal contracts. These contracts total more than $500 million--including a $140 million deal to manage and operate three national customer-service call centers for federal immigration services.''
As Ms. Malkin said: ``Deeper into the homeland security money pit we go. Where the traditional watchdogs for limited government are, nobody knows.''
http://www.house.gov/duncan/2003/fs031903.htm
That is what it will take to get me on a plane.
This would be funny if it weren't so tragic.
Sounds good to me! Until someone breaches the pressure vessel with their hollowpoint or the like after having a relaxing martini without realizing how it may affect them mixed with their medications and has a spaz attack after another occupant screams in horror from the gunshot which causes him to accidentally fire again from the surprise and just happens to be pointing at the cockpit at the time of discharge....
Point being, if that were the recognized rights, how much money do you think the airline industry would loose after the first media coverage of a scenario like this?
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