TSA waste of 9 billion dollars, momentual failure

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=46114

Quote :

They’ve been accused of rampant thievery, spending billions of dollars like drunken sailors, groping children and little old ladies, and making everyone take off their shoes.

But the real job of the tens of thousands of screeners at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is to protect Americans from a terrorist attack.

Yet a decade after the TSA was created following the September 11 attacks, the author of the legislation that established the massive agency grades its performance at “D-.”

“The whole program has been hijacked by bureaucrats,” said Rep. John Mica (R. -Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation Committee.

“It mushroomed into an army,” Mica said. “It’s gone from a couple-billion-dollar enterprise to close to $9 billion.”

As for keeping the American public safe, Mica says, “They’ve failed to actually detect any threat in 10 years.”

“Everything they have done has been reactive. They take shoes off because of [shoe-bomber] Richard Reid, passengers are patted down because of the diaper bomber, and you can’t pack liquids because the British uncovered a plot using liquids,” Mica said.

“It’s an agency that is always one step out of step,” Mica said.

It cost $1 billion just to train workers, which now number more than 62,000, and “they actually trained more workers than they have on the job,” Mica said.

“The whole thing is a complete fiasco,” Mica said.

In a wide-ranging interview with HUMAN EVENTS just days before the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Mica said screeners should be privatized and the agency dismantled.

Instead, the agency should number no more than 5,000, and carry out his original intent, which was to monitor terrorist threats and collect intelligence.

The fledgling agency was quickly engulfed in its first scandal in 2002 as it rushed to hire 30,000 screeners, and the $104 million awarded to the company to contract workers quickly escalated to more than $740 million.

Federal investigators tracked those cost overruns to recruiting sessions held at swank hotels and resorts in St. Croix, the Virgin Islands, Florida and the Wyndham Peaks Resort and Golden Door Spa in Telluride, Colo.

Charges in the hundreds of thousands of dollars were made for cash withdrawals, valet parking and beverages, plus a $5.4 million salary for one executive for nine months of work.

Other over-the-top expenditures included nearly $2,000 for 20 gallons of Starbucks Coffee, $8,000 for elevator operators at a Manhattan hotel, and $1,500 to rent more than a dozen extension cords for the Colorado recruiting fair.

The agency inadvertently caused security gaps by failing for years to keep track of lost uniforms and passes that lead to restricted areas of airports.

Screeners have also been accused of committing crimes, from smuggling drugs to stealing valuables from passengers' luggage. In 2004, several screeners were arrested and charged with stealing jewelry, computers and cameras, cash, credit cards and other valuables. One of their more notable victims was actress Shirley McClain, who was robbed of jewelry and crystals.

One of the screeners confessed that he was trying to steal enough to sell the items and buy a big-screen television.

In 2006, screeners at Los Angeles and Chicago O'Hare airports failed to find more than 60% of fake explosives during checkpoint security tests.

The sometimes rudder-less agency has gone through five administrators in the past decade, and it took longer than a year for President Obama to put his one man in place. Mica’s bill also blocked collective bargaining rights for screeners, but the Obama administration managed to reverse that provision.

Asked whether the agency should be privatized, Mica answered with a qualified yes.

“They need to get out of the screening business and back into security. Most of the screening they do should be abandoned,” Mica said. "I just don’t have a lot of faith at this point,” Mica said.

Allowing airports to privatize screening was a key element of Mica’s legislation and a report released by the committee in June determined that privatizing those efforts would result in a 40% savings for taxpayers.

“We have thousands of workers trying to do their job. My concern is the bureaucracy we built,” Mica said.

“We are one of the only countries still using this model of security," Mica said, "other than Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, and I think, Libya."

Oh, sweet, sweet irony.

der...

who DIDN'T expect that??

God bless America...

RoninHo'in wrote:

der...

who DIDN'T expect that??

One of my teachers called it something, was in the criminal justice field. It's where something happens, and they say they knew it all along (and if they did, why didn't they do anything about it?)

Point is, the majority of people didn't know this, until an authoritative figure (Rep. John Mica) said how much of a failure this was, and now people are going to say "hurr, we knew that all along."

pfft, I've been saying Homeland security, TSA, and every other BS they've come up with since 9/11 has been a total waste of money, a complete bureaucratic mess, and also an unnecessary infringement on civil liberties since their inception.

The problem is... nobody ever listens to the paranoid vet... OOOH NO... never that

The thing I find funny is that there is always this perception of government being wasteful with money which I agree is true, yet this line right here "and the $104 million awarded to the company to contract workers quickly escalated to more than $740 million" shows that the private sector is just as bad, obviously the government is allowing the overspending but this is less of a problem with government spending and more to do with whos running shit and who knows who, cut that out of the picture and I can bet you would see less gouging happening

RoninHo'in wrote:

pfft, I've been saying Homeland security, TSA, and every other BS they've come up with since 9/11 has been a total waste of money, a complete bureaucratic mess, and also an unnecessary infringement on civil liberties since their inception.

The problem is... nobody ever listens to the paranoid vet... OOOH NO... never that

Only people listening to you are your neighbours.... just waiting to hear "I will KILL" again


PS why is neighbours showing a spell check error?

Neighbors*

lrn 2 english

spacefox wrote:

Neighbors*

lrn 2 english

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Neighbours

lrn 2 notbearetard..... retard

You fucking pair of clownshoes

http://tinyurl.com/5werheu

DTECH wrote:

spacefox wrote:

Neighbors*

lrn 2 english

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Neighbours

lrn 2 notbearetard..... retard

You fucking pair of clownshoes

Fucking Tory is what you are, join the rest of the US population.

FTW!

actually, outsourced to private sector is often a ripoff.

and usually influenced through campaign funding...

Whereas government agencies are still bureaucratic monstrosities, There's usually less gouging and more often just wasted resources (or also commonly pilfered resources)

Government is just a mess in general actually... unfortunately people are too self centered to live completely without one.

Lol @ America paying people to go around groping other people at airports, they could of rounded up all the perverts and paedophiles from prison and got them to do the same job for free.