Recently, the Department of Homeland Security decided to test the effectiveness of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) by conducting a series of undercover tests. The results were quite shocking. Investigators were able to smuggle mock explosive and banned weapons in 67 out of 70 attempts. That's a failure rate of 95 percent!
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| Recently, the Department of Homeland Security decided to test the effectiveness of the Transportation Security Administration by conducting a series of undercover tests, because really, it's only been a mere 14 years since the TSA was created in the wake of 9-11, so maybe it's time to figure out whether it works or not. | |
| Wait, do you smell that? | |
| Oh, I do. | |
| Oh, yes, I smell the need for bureaucrats to increase their funding. | |
| It's usually, yeah, it smells like the repetitive grinding against the taxpayers' wallet. | |
| Because, you see, if they do a great job, then they need funding because they're doing such a great job. | |
| They'll get more funding, more bonuses, and expand. | |
| If they're doing a terrible job, you see, like government schools, it's because they lack funding. | |
| And, well, you get the picture. | |
| So what happened when the Department of Homeland Security decided to test the TSA's iron wall against bombs going off in airplanes? | |
| Well, the undercover investigators were actually able to smuggle mock explosives and banned weapons in 67 out of 70 attempts. | |
| That's a failure rate of 95%. | |
| So in one of the tests, for example, an investigator with a fake bomb attached to his back set off an alarm, but was allowed to pass through after a pat-down. | |
| I mean, what if that wasn't a test? | |
| Now, in response to these findings, of course, the TSA acting administrator resigned from his position. | |
| Sorry, of course he didn't. | |
| No, no, no. | |
| You see, he gets assigned or reassigned to another officer. | |
| Department of Homeland Security agency. | |
| The Secretary of Homeland Security also promised, you see, to conduct training for all TS agents to address the issues revealed by the test. | |
| So, one of the things, you know, I'm not an expert on security, I am not, I don't work in an airport, but one of the things, just from the outside as a layperson, I might suggest you might want to train them that if somebody has a bomb attached to his back, You might not want to let them through. | |
| Maybe they're dealing with cultural sensitivity issues. | |
| Maybe they're dealing with making sure that you don't sexually harass anyone. | |
| Maybe they're dealing with making sure nobody profiles anyone and they just don't have time to cover the fact that people with bombs attached to their backs should not be let through in these scenarios. | |
| Just again, an amateur from the outside with a couple of thoughts to lob over the bitter, broken, bureaucratic wall of government piss, ignorance, and incompetence. | |
| I mean, just imagine. | |
| Imagine this. | |
| An independent investigation of Starbucks coffee shops in New York reveals that 67 out of 70 caramel macchiatos contain traces of urine. | |
| In the fallout of this controversial finding, the head manager of the New York branch is reassigned to Starbucks' Washington office, and his company's employees are offered extensive training to make sure urine doesn't end up in people's drinks. | |
| Would that make any sense to you, whatsoever? | |
| The job of the TSA agents, not a complicated job, certainly doesn't involve refusing to sweat and polyester. | |
| The job of the TSA agents is one thing, and one thing only, to prevent the smuggling of dangerous weapons on board passenger planes. | |
| A randomized test reveals that those agents are completely incapable, utterly and totally incapable of doing their jobs. | |
| And as a result, they get time off from their job! | |
| To get some training on the one thing that they're supposed to do. | |
| If I have a job which involves moving a broom back and forth, and I don't do any of that, do I get training on the job saying, remember, move the broom back and forth? | |
| In the private sector, employees and their managers would be fired on the spot, or the entire joint would go out of business. | |
| Look, TSA's incompetence is by itself not massively surprising. | |
| What is surprising is the way this incompetence is being addressed, or not addressed. | |
| There are always these hidden costs to what the government does. | |
| So the tragedies of 9-11, thousands and thousands of Americans died in a brutal attack on the home soil. | |
| But did you know that the imposition of excessive and completely useless airport security has actually killed over 7,000 Americans since 9-11? | |
| Strange to think, isn't it? | |
| 7,000 additional Americans have died as a result of this airport security because a lot of people decide not to take airplanes. | |
| Because it's so much of a hassle and it's too time consuming. | |
| So what it does is it makes car trips much more appealing relative to airplane trips. | |
| So a lot more people take car trips than would otherwise have taken airplane trips. | |
| Aha! | |
| When you take a car trip, you are much more exposed to danger than if you were in an airplane. | |
| Roads are more dangerous than the skies when it comes to human fatalities. | |
| So more than 7,000 Americans Have been killed on roads who otherwise would have been safe on planes as a result of this airport security. | |
| That's actually more people that died on 9-11. | |
| So in the usual way that the government throws itself into the mix to attempt to prevent more 9-11s, it's actually caused more deaths for Americans than 9-11. | |
| Just to put this in context, 7,000 Americans since 9-11, this is the equivalent of four fully loaded Boeing 737s crashing In annihilating flames every single year, fully loaded, Boeing 737s crashing every single year with everyone on board dying. | |
| That's what's happening with airport security. | |
| Not to mention that a lot of business executives, 7% by one estimate, 7% of business executives complain that they've had their laptops or other electronics taken from them. | |
| And this is another reason why people would rather drive than fly, thus exposing themselves to the death, carnage, Mad Max, roads on fire scenarios of the modern American highway system. | |
| Because we all know, look, when the government monopolizes a service, it eliminates all competition. | |
| And in the absence of voluntarism of any external pressures to improve, the internals of government organizations fester and rot. | |
| So the next time you travel by plane, first of all recognize that the whole exercise is security theaters, no relevance to keeping you safe whatsoever, and in fact it's endangering far more Americans than it will ever hope to save. | |
| Next time you travel by plane, make sure to hold your nose as you go through airport security. |