Posted on 03/12/2013 8:25:49 AM PDT by IbJensen
Just when you think things can't get any crazier, Washington's politicians go another step higher on the lunacy scale.
With automatic spending cuts collectively known as the sequester cutting only 2 cents per dollar out of the bloated federal budget -- a budget that's grown 71 percent faster than inflation over the past two decades -- the federal scaremongers are rushing around, putting padlocks on the control towers at the nation's airports.
We're supposed to believe that a measly 2 percent cut in spending, something any business or household could handle if its spending was out of control and unsustainable, makes it impossible for the government to launch an aircraft carrier or staff the control towers.
Still, if we're lucky enough to avoid a crash landing without a control tower, what we'll see inside the airports is something new and special: a handsome conglomeration of sharp-dressed government employees, newly outfitted at taxpayers' expense and ready to squeeze the legs of incoming passengers and snap a few naked photos.
Just two days before the automatic federal spending cuts took effect, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced it had awarded a $50 million one-year contract for new uniforms for airport screeners -- clothes that will be manufactured partially in Mexico.
Last November, the nation's newly unionized airport screeners ratified their first collective bargaining agreement. The contract gives screeners the federal perk of having "more say in what they wear on the job," according to The Star-Ledger in Newark.
So, screeners not only have "more say" about what they wear but they also got the nation's increasingly financially-stretched taxpayers to pick up the $50 million tab.
For the 50,000 employees, that's $1,000 each for the new outfits, just in the first year.
The company that was awarded the contract is VF Imagewear, owner of Lee and Wrangler brand jeans. Nice stuff, sort of like a fake Montana cowboy.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the sequester will force furloughs at the TSA and is warning of increased waiting times at airports, plus there might be no one in the control towers, but the non-furloughed screeners who are left will look good.
What taxpayers are buying for the screeners is listed on a TSA fact sheet for employees: "TSA will provide your initial uniform issue consisting of 3 long sleeve shirts, 3 short sleeve shirts, 2 pairs of trousers, 2 ties, and one belt, sweater, socks and jacket."
That's everything but shoes and underwear. To ensure the shoes are style-coordinated with the new outfits and to help prevent agents from falling as they chase jihadists around the airport, the employee-supplied shoes are federally mandated to be "black leather with non-slip soles."
The new uniforms will be "manufactured in the U.S. and Mexico" even though the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 specifically requires the TSA to purchase uniforms made in the United States.
The federal bureaucrats got around that made-in-America manufacturing requirement by saying that Mexico couldn't be excluded as a manufacturing source because of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
"Please don't yell at the customs officers or the TSA officers," said Napolitano, warning of inevitable long lines at the airports. "They aren't responsible for sequester."
Plus, at $1,000 a pop, they're looking real snazzy.
This is not just an Obama debacle this is also a George W. debacle that should be ended! Americans hate this bureaucratic snafu and have to pay for their disaccommodation and we're not any safer than before. We should scrap the TSA and the entire Patriot act and give the American people their freedoms back.
Seriously the defund-dismantle list should include:
TSA
FEMA
Energy Dept
EPA
ATF
What am I forgetting?
The Patriot Act killed a Nation.
Is this part of the overall government move to brown shirts?
Bush....the misguided “Compassionate Conservative” who never actually claimed to be ‘conservative’. He NEVER told us he would be ‘conservative’ and he kept his promise.
His primary concern was our protection in the wake of 9/11/2001, and he kept that promise - to the complete ignoral of our domestic enemies, the DEMOCRATS.
He was honest, hardworking and gullible to the point of being ridiculously ignorant and negligent.
He created a Department of Homeland Security that has become Obama’s Gestapo, and a Transportation Security Agency that is rife with uneducated, criminal America-haters that one could liken to Hitler’s SS.
As a result, we have domestic enemies that have infested the HIGHEST reaches of our government. If they succeed, they will dominate every aspect of your life like Bloomberg is trying in NYC, and they will enslave you. Make no mistakes about this.
Mega dittos on that one.
I have to laugh at that comparison.
Say what you will about Hitler's SS but a comparison to the TSA is beyond ludicrous.
Two pictures are worth only 5 words;
Give me a friggin' break.
DHS. It was intended as a central depository for information on domestic security from the CIA, FBI, Customs, Border Patrol and local law enforcement.
Their work could be done out of one office building, instead billions of dallars are spent on a new mega structure outside DC, vehicles, uniforms, etc. DHS has become our own Gestapo/SS.
How fortunate you managed to grab some white guy up in Middle Idaho or somewhere less ethnic....I know better. I fly, when I fly, through Atlanta....and I KNOW better!
Give ME a friggin’ break....
I think the PUBLIC can put a stop to this BS by refusing to fly.
It won’t take long till ‘cooler heads’ prevail.
People talk of children heading to Disney World being groped?
DRIVE or take the Bus. (BUS??? the bus isn’t comfortable - neither is having some stranger either pat me down or put a kid through a procedure that if they went to school and some kid was describing what GRANDPA was doing in the kitchen to him and GRANDPA would end up in jail).
DO NOT FLY if at all possible... what with computers etal there should be NO such thing as an IMMEDIATE need to get from point A to B.
Boycott the airlines for a couple of weeks and the POLS will have to take some action as even the DUMBEST of the DUMB will get the message they may be NEXT.
Once these fools see that WE, THE PUBLIC, can and WILL, stick together, it is over....
I'd love to see the size breakdown of this contract.
Probably heavily weighted toward the XXXXL end of the spectrum.
Besides, you think the fitness levels of each organization are comparable? Not hardly.
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