Dumb, by Popular Demand

"The TSA Is Bad Because We Demand That It Be Bad" -- an article whose headline, I suspect, holds even more truth than its author realizes -- discusses the annoying, ineffective, and even dangerous indignities we endure as we board airplanes. Regarding a TSA program to allow some of us to bypass this silly ritual, Kelsey Atherton reports:

Or at least they would, if Congress funded the TSA enough to keep pre-check lanes open. Congress doesn't, instead regularly cutting funding. The House of Representatives voted to cut TSA funding in 2011. Sequestration cut TSA funding in 2013.

In 2014, Congress passed a TSA fare increase, and used the overwhelming majority of that not to fund the TSA, but to pay down the national debt. When the TSA fare went up in 2014 (as did the prices of tickets it was attached to), Congressional funding cuts to the TSA meant the TSA cut 3,500 screener positions. And in 2015, the House voted to increase TSA funding, but cut TSA employee pay. The TSA may have been conceived as a vital layer of national security, but nothing about its funding reflects that. [links dropped]

So the TSA, a half-measure designed to help people pretend an actual war is unnecessary, is itself compromised by the pretense that the GOP gives a relative hoot about the national debt -- which is itself a red herring for our national spending problem, caused by the loot-funded entitlement state. All this is much easier to a second-hander than taking some time to think about why we have a government and what its job actually is, or to a coward who has an inkling that this is wrong, but would have to fight conventional "wisdom."

All this reminds me of the saw about the amount of work a lazy man will do to avoid a simple task. But then, the boss is letting his employees get away with murder.

-- CAV