The TSA’s Keystone Cops Strike Again

My New Year’s Resolution was to stop making fun of the Transportation Security Administration. Not because I changed my mind about the bureaucracy and its level of (in)competence, but rather because I felt as if I was taking candy from a baby. Kicking the TSA is just too easy.

But I can’t resist low-hanging fruit. I recently mocked the TSA for repeatedly failing to catch an undercover agent who carried a gun through the porno-scan machines.

Now it’s time to abuse the bureaucrats for another world-class blunder. A man recently got on a flight with three of the weapons that were used to hijack planes on 9-11. According to the New York Post.

A passenger managed to waltz past JFK’s ramped-up security gantlet with three boxcutters in his carry-on luggage — easily boarding an international flight while carrying the weapon of choice of the 9/11 hijackers, sources told The Post yesterday. The stunning breach grounded the flight for three hours Saturday night and drew fury from Port Authority cops, who accused the Transportation Security Administration of being asleep on the job. “In case anyone has forgotten, the TSA was created because of a couple boxcutter incidents,” said one PAPD source, referring to the weapons used by al Qaeda operatives to commandeer the jets they later slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11.

In an unusual display of honesty, a TSA bureaucrat basically admitted that passengers were not in danger because of other factors. Which raises an obvious question of why we maintain an expensive bureaucracy that has no impact other than to inconvenience the traveling public?

The TSA spokeswoman Davis insisted that the traveling public was not at risk. “There have been a number of additional security layers that have been implemented on aircraft that would prevent someone from causing harm with boxcutters,” she insisted. “They include the possible presence of armed federal air marshals, hardened cockpit doors, flight crews trained in self-defense and a more vigilant traveling public who have demonstrated a willingness to intervene.”

Read Full Post »

How Appropriate: Politicians and Statists Celebrate Charles Ponzi’s Birthday by Demanding No Changes to Social Security

Yesterday was the 129th anniversary of Charles Ponzi’s birthday. Normal people don’t celebrate the birth of con artists, but a tediously left-wing columnist at the Washington Post, Eugene Robinson, must be a big admirer of Charles Ponzi, because he seems very happy that people don’t want to “cut” entitlements.

According to the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, three-quarters of Americans would oppose significant cuts in Medicare or Social Security.

The poll was dishonest, of course, since it was based on the Washington’s dishonest definition of budget cuts. In reality, the reforms that are being proposed would reduce the growth of spending. And I suspect that voters, if asked whether it is reasonable to have Medicare grow 5 percent each year rather than 7 percent each year, would provide more rational answers.

Heck, we already have good polling data showing that people support Social Security reform.

But public opinion is not the key issue. The bigger topic is whether anybody should be celebrating a government program that is actuarially bankrupt, particularly when it hurts minorities, penalizes job creation, and discourages savings.

But that’s just what some politicians are doing.

I’ve already posted a very funny cartoon about Bernie Madoff and Social Security, but hopefully this video has more substantive arguments for reform.

Read Full Post »