With Its Long Security Lines And Pleas For More Money, The TSA Is Using Travelers As Pawns
America’s summer travel season has begun, as of the Memorial Day Holiday weekend we just completed, and we’re all being played for chumps.
And Congress is just being played.
The Transportation Security Administration’s top guy testified last week before the House’s Homeland Security Committee – and dozens of microphones, cameras and notepads – that the Earth is flat; that the four elements are Earth, Wind, Fire and Water; and that Monkees were the most influential rock band ever.
Well, not exactly.
But that’s pretty much the equivalent of the nonsense spouted by TSA Director Peter Neffenger. His testimony was a combination of sophisticated posterior protection and periphrastic prestidigitation. Put more bluntly, Neffenger perpetrated a snow job of epic proportions. It was designed to deflect from his agency – and from his own seemingly clueless leadership of it – some of the negative attention surrounding the ridiculously long airport security lines that have plagued travelers at many airports around the nation all spring. Additionally – shock! – it was aimed at getting Congress to give him and his leadership group at TSA more money with which to play.
With a straight face Neffenger, a retired Coast Guard admiral, told Committee Members that the TSA is being overwhelmed by a 15 percent increase in demand since 2013 while TSA staffing numbers have fallen by more than 10 percent.
His first claim is not just false, it’s a whopper. And his second claim, while mathematically correct, is meaningless without the self-incriminating context that Neffenger conveniently omitted from his testimony. Thus, his testimony was a grand exercise in cynicism by the head of a government agency whose reason for continued existence rapidly is eroding.
How cynical was Neffenger’s testimony? Only two possible answers to that question are possible:
To continue reading please click on the following link to got to the FORBES.com site. https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielreed/2016/05/31/with-its-long-security-lines-and-pleas-for-more-money-the-tsa-is-using-travelers-as-pawns/#75452f877b5b
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8 年I just read that they need to hire 3,000 officers to handle 24,000 more people per day. Am I to understand that each officer can only screen 8 people per day or 1 per hour?
Operations Specialists
8 年I agree, maybe if the TSA would allocate their officers to work more lanes rather than roam the airports in packs, they may be able to process more passengers in a timely fashion. TSA agents who work airports have no consideration for the traveling public in a environment that time management is essential they are slow and lack basic customer service skills.
Chief Operations Officer/SVP 5th Dimension Logistix Inc.
8 年Needs more money but any given 10 lanes are closed and limited to one active with 15 TSA agents standing around. In that I remember an article where EWR agents failed to pass 22 of 23 mock smuggle efforts. #privatization.
Product Manager at Morgan Stanley|Product Management|Product Owner
8 年I understand about the safety-that's no question about that... It's just this Line at the checkpoint is a little too long - hope they better find a more efficient way to deal with it.