Posted on 11/20/2021 8:28:00 AM PST by george76
Exactly 20 years ago today, President George W. Bush signed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act into law and created the Transportation Security Administration, better known as the TSA. A response to the 9/11 attacks, the TSA was thought to be a necessary tool for confronting the new reality of terror in the skies.
Two decades later, the TSA has more than 54,000 employees, a budget of $8 billion dollars, and a long track record of harassing passengers for no good reason. Far from contributing to actual safety, the TSA is a stunning example of government failure: Its absurd travel restrictions make air travel no safer, deprive passengers of their civil liberties, and make the process of flying much more costly, time-consuming, inconvenient, and unenjoyable. The agency should never have been created, and its 20th birthday is as good a time as any to abolish it.
For starters, the TSA routinely fails at its main purpose: preventing passengers from carrying deadly weapons onto airplanes. TSA agents constantly miss weapons, drugs, and other illicit items when government agents try to smuggle them in as part of testing.
"TSA screeners failed to detect weapons, drugs, and explosives almost 80 percent of the time," noted the Heritage Foundation in 2017. "While the exact failure rate is classified, multiple sources indicate it is greater than 70 percent." During one test, at the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport, the TSA's failure rate was 95 percent.
The 9/11 terror attacks, in which a small number of men were able to use crude, simple weapons to hijack airplanes and crash them into important buildings, were a scarring moment for the nation. The U.S. government vowed to be more vigilant. But the truth of the matter is that preventing hijackings is now trivially easy: Pilots can lock the cockpit doors, which are almost impossible for intruders to breach. Prior to 9/11 most airplane hijackings involved detours to different locations; hijackers did not intend to crash the planes, and thus neither crews nor passengers had much reason to fight back. This calculus is forever changed: Would-be plane hijackers will face insurmountable difficulties, whether or not they've received aggressive pat-downs from the TSA.
Meanwhile, the TSA's security theater has made air travel a much more grueling process. It's not just the ritualistic humiliation of having to remove belts and shoes, empty out backpacks and suitcases, and submit to full-body scanners. TSA agents are also frequently caught stealing from passengers, groping them, and delaying them for no reason. Again, there is no point to any of this. It does not make people safer. If anything, it makes us less safe: It is likely that some people choose to drive to their destination, rather than deal with the hassle. Car travel, though, is far more dangerous than air travel—many more people die in car crashes than in plane crashes each year. And not even COVID-19 could tip the scales in airplanes' favor, according to The Washington Post.
Enough is enough. There is not a single good reason that Americans should have to endure such misery at the hands of this utterly pointless bureaucracy. The best time to abolish the TSA was right after it was created. The second-best time is now.
Another “gift” from the Bush family.
Thank you, Jorge.
911 hijackers did it with box cutters. Boxcutters were allowed on flights. Security did its job. The big state did it’s job expanding government.
It was always an abomination. A blot on civil liberties. Flying is an much fun as a colonoscopy.
If George W. Bush isn’t the worst president in U.S. history, he’s certainly in the bottom five. I’ll probably catch some flak for this, but I’d rate Obama above W. As bad as Obama was, he didn’t start any major and unnecessary wars.
All of this security theater made hijacking rather an unattractive target for the terrorists. So in that aspect, what they’re doing is effective. Even if it’s all for “show”.
Hear, Hear.
We’re not safer. Return security responsibility back to the individual airports and airlines.
I’m done living in W and Obama’s police state.
TSA should be called the Interior Ministry, or at least part of it in a streamlining of the Deep State.
TSA
DHS
Patriot Act
2 nation building wars
and his Presidency gave us Obama...
Security theater didn’t do it.
Reinforced pilot cockpit doors and locks DID.
Flying is freedom for the masses. Deregulating the airlines in ‘78 was great. More people could fly. So now we have these inconveniences, including covid-19, higher fuel prices. It all cuts into our freedoms, a motive of the left. There will be more man-created disasters. A race war already brewing. An unprepared plan for the Chicom takeover of Taiwan. Just wait until all illegals vote.
The arguments that Reason uses leads to the TSA being even more insane.
They complain that TSA isn’t intrusive enough so they miss weapons and drugs.
When did Reason get concerned about drugs? It’s a Libertarian magazine.
In fact, we were told at TSA’s inception that they would specifically not focus on anything but possible terrorists: ordinary crap like people being a bit tipsy was not going to be a concern.
That was all a lie. The agency became a cultural enforcerment operation at the outset, bent on inverting reality by making Americans the object of suspicion while genuflecting to the people who are the real threat. Check out the number of hijab wearing TSA at Dulles for example. Right about the time they fix you with a stone faced stare and rip apart your suitcase.
There is a good case for making sure no real weapons get aboard an aircraft in the hands of enemies. But the real problem with TSA is that they decided that we the Americans were the enemy.
Please add “No Child Left Behind” to your list of George W Bush’s failures. NCLB was poorly structured. And without going into the boring details, NCLB ended up destroying the trades programs in the high schools.
So kids who should be in carpentry and other shop classes are now shoved into advanced math and English classes. It’s all due to W and his stupid NCLB.
19 fanatical muslim jihadis slammed planes into buildings and the government’s response was to escort saudi royalty out of the country, send police to protect mosques, and to pass the “patriot” act. As all nicely-named laws, the “patriot” act removed rights from innocent citizens.
It never works in reverse. We always lose rights.
Understood. I don’t have children, so I never knew its true issues.
A bipartisan effort with Ted Kennedy turned out terrible for America? Shocking!
DHS needs to be abolished as well. Neither agency exists for any reason other than to get the jack boot on all our necks and make us *less* secure.
Since I’m in the mood for rambling, here’s how Bush’s No Child Left Behind worked (in brief).
NCLB tested for math and English, only. Schools with good NCLB scores were rewarded, and their principals got bonuses. Schools with poor NCLB scores were branded as failures, and their principals got fired.
So here’s what most principals did. They cut their trades programs, and shoved those kids into advanced math and english classes. All to try to increase the NCLB scores by a few percentage points.
So you had kids who wanted to be carpenters or electricians instead trying to decipher what some piece of poetry meant.
Unfortunately this country doesn’t need more poets. We need more carpenters and electricians.
I would never describe the TSA in the context of “civil liberties.” Air travel is a private industry, so it would seem to me that THE AIRLINES should be pushing back hardest against the TSA. If Walmart had police outside the door groping customers before they enter the store they’d be out of business in 24 hours.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.