Bull- there is no 'victory for the people' by adopting a federalized force of incompetant people like we already see in Federal service- since firing incompetant people is virtually impossible in the Federal government. If it was going to be federal, it should be through the military, where the people would be subject to military discipline and NOT unionized. It is better to avoid the federal employee crap entirely because that sort of thing was tried in Europe and there were enough hijackings to make it an obvious disaster.
Now, instead of immediately having an improved federal force checking luggage, we have to wait for a committee to reconcile the two bills, then a further vote, etc. etc.
There would be no IMMEDIATE improvement, much less a long-term improvement, if it were wholly federalized. It takes 3 months to hire a gov employee, and longer to train them. And in the meanwhile, no security would be improved but we would waste a lot of money.
The patriotic thing to do would have been to swallow a loss for the country and vote for the Senate bill in its entirety, politics and political ideology be damned.
What is patriotic about approving an inferior product?
At least we could fly safely immediately.
Bull. There would be a 3 month delay and once in place, the people serving would be essentially nothing more than political appointees, like most government employees already are- patronage jobs and nothing more. We'd have people like Chandra Levy and Monica Lewinski hired for the jobs- hired on the basis of how well they perform in BED or how well they scratch congressional backs during the campaign.
Once again, the Republicans prove that they are no better than the Democrats: only in it for themselves, the people be damned.
As one of the people, I am extremely pleased.
I've got NEWS for you- there is no such thing as 'safety.' It is an illusion. People who think they are safe are in fact in their greatest peril, because they get lazy and apathetic. People who feel safe will let their defenses down- as we have seen by the relentless emasculation of the American military and intelligence services over the past decade. People who feel safe will do everything they can to perpetuate the illusion of security and will trade their liberty away to live like cattle inside little fences. The slaughterhouse is always there, but it feels safe and the food is good, so they stay.
While we are fretting over people carrying scissors into airport terminals, we ignore the single greatest means we have of protecting our aircraft- the common everyday American citizen. By taking down a terrorist on board, American citizens accomplished several things over Pennsylvania: they foiled the terrorist's attempt to target a populated city; they did it without taking anyone's freedom away; and they did it without making the country live like kenneled animals. They did it because they were willing to sacrifice themselves for a greater purpose. If Americans had always reacted that way to hijackers, rather than trusting the government to negotiate with hijackers and get them off the aircraft safely, hijacking would not even be an option for terrorists. The WTC attack would not have occured because US citizens would have rendered the threat of boxcutters useless. In all probability, the WTC attacks would not even have been tried using hijacked aircraft, because the hijackers would have had to plan for an entire uprising of people on those flights and the plot would not have been feasible. They would have been forced to find a different way, like a truck bombing, to accomplish it, and the damage would not have been so great.
Our weakness in this country is PSYCHOLOGICAL. If we don't change our 'safety-first' self-centered thinking, we will regulate ourselves to death and destroy our economic capacity and industries as well. This country is not safe because a free society can NEVER be 'safe.' If made safe, it ceases to be free.