Posted on 11/06/2001 7:46:27 AM PST by Starmaker
First the news reports said they were fired. The sing-a-long news on CNN or FOX last night said they were SUSPENDED.
And only one slap at a republican; not even a back-hand swat at the POTUS! The Head DemocRat cannot be impressed at this feeble attempt. I don't see any gold stars or brownie points for the LAT out of this pablum!
Please, Tom Ridge, get our military folks into these airport security positions before this thing becomes even more of a political football. The solution is not a higher-priced version of what we already have.
The best hope that comes out of this mess is that we wind up with these private security firms being subsidized by the Gov't to provide higher pay and benifits. This would be the worst outcome, as the same people would still be employed, just getting paid more!
I've been through customs many times, and if the security were set up as it is, it would be much better than it is currently. Bush should have never buckled to DeLay's stupid arguments. Instead, he could have argued for having a tough set of standards for firing employees.
Anyway, I think this will wind up coming back to haunt DeLay. No way will the Dems compromise, why should they? THey've got a 100-0 Senate vote to campaign on against moderate House Republicans that voted against this!
Bill Of Rights, Amendment IV:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
WW1999
I personally witnessed one federal manager who spent nearly a year documenting excessive abuses of the agency's phone system by a person on his staff. The manager prepared an air tight case against the employee, but the net result of the effort was that the person was simply reassigned to another position--where the abuses continued. The employee has since been promoted. Another obstacle facing federal managers is that there are unions for government employees that are quick to defend their members. The grievance process can be very painful for managers, and that is another reason why they tend to avoid disputes with employees.
I'm definitely not a Democrat. However, federal slots, much like private slots, are usually eliminated by downsizing or attrition. The 'legal hassles', while less in private business, are still great should a terminated employee CLAIM 'wrongful termination'.
Usually a federal employee, liked a tenured professor, must be terminated for CAUSE. Because of multiple levels of supervision and regulation, most government employees can find some directive or regulation that supports whatever action they took that management dismissed them for. (i.e., if a supervisor instructs a worker that an inspection task must take no more than 45 seconds, who is 'at fault' when at 45 seconds the inspector stops inspecting, and 'weapons' get by undetected?
It doesn't matter who the inspectors are, IMHO, if inspection guidelines, like immigration guidelines, are not followed because of expediency and time pressure. Value judgments are made every day in our lives, some with disastrous consequences.
Saying employees CANNOT be fired is incorrect; but, any person fired is usually seen as a 'victim' in today's PC environment. Most supervisors and their legal advisors and insurance providers SAY SETTLE, it will cost more to fight. Therefore, with each passing day, more and more wrong is accepted as right--while service, security, education, and freedom decline.
That's a myth. Civil Service employees can and do get fired.
Every policeman and fireman in this country is a civil service employee.
Would you feel safer if the regular city police force were doing airport screening or a private contractor were doing the screening.
I will go with the gov't employee every time.
The federalization of airport security will allow for more careful background checks in the long run and for better retention because of better pay. But that is where the advantages end. Terrorists will still find ways to hijack airplanes, and when they do, the article is correct in stating that the federal workers responsible will suffer very little punishment. Also the federal government tends to circle the wagons to any attendant lawsuits.
To go down the road of federalizing airport security will result in curtailed travel and collapse of travel related industries. It would also facilitate national IDs and soon impose a real sense of police state.
It is very hard to smuggle guns and other weapons onto an airplane. The terrorists involved in the 9-11 hijackings had obviously studied and planned how to take over those airplanes. They used seeming innocuous instruments such as box cutters. They used distractive techniques such as killing crewmembers at the rear of a plane to lure pilots into the cabin and allow their accomplices to then enter the cockpit.
They could have been stopped by pilots who had been trained in the use of deadly force with special ammunition such as frangible bullets. Cockpit doors such as the ones Alaska Airlines is now installing and cabin cameras could go along way in alerting pilots to dangerous passengers. These measures have been discussed previously. They could go further requiring cabin flight attendants to be trained in martial arts.
The point is that the airline industry has actually done an admirable job and the events of 9-11 will make them tighten up even more.
It is the Federal workforce that has failed miserably on so many fronts. Just for starters consider the border. For Gephardt and others to malign the American private sector for lax standards is laughable. Gephardt's cherished constituency, the government unions, are more culpable of real damage done and yet to be made manifest. There's no doubt that terrorists have crossed the borders illegally, and that they potentially transported materials, now hidden, that can inflict more damage that those jetliners that were conmmandeered on 9-11.
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