Some in GOP want private airport screeners

[CShine]

WASHINGTON -- The anti-terrorism agency that Congress rushed into existence just weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks to protect America's planes, trains and trucks is shrinking, and could all but fade away. The Transportation Security Administration, which hired some 65,000 employees and has spent more than $10 billion over 3 1/2 years, has been beset by complaints about its performance, leaving it vulnerable to congressional Republicans who want to reduce the size of government.

After the terrorist attacks, "people were panicked to put in place a massive bureaucracy," said House Aviation Subcommittee Chairman John Mica. The Florida Republican says the time has come to rethink TSA and cut it back.

The federal air marshal program which places armed, undercover officers on select planes, already has been transferred elsewhere within the Department of Homeland Security, for instance. Also, TSA has cut its work force of passenger and baggage screeners - who make up the bulk of its employees - from 60,000 to 45,000.

Mica and other Republicans, who were never entirely comfortable with creating a new bureaucracy, want to return all airport security screener jobs to the private sector, where they were before Sept. 11, 2001. If so, the federal screeners would get the first opportunity to apply for the private jobs.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apwashington_story.asp?category=1152&slug=Shrinking%20Security%20Agency

[saigon68]

1. Welcome To HALLIBURTON Security Screeners

Or Bilgewater Industries PRIVATE SECURITY SCREENERS.

[Career Prole]

2. There you go...

First thought I had upon reading that too.
They never mention privatizing anything without first having a meeting to decide who gets what.

[tlcandie]

3. Ya, I'm not for this, but I will say that all that hoopla on security

increase, etc., is all gone. At Tampa Intl. those who were reviewing cars for short term parking are no longer there.

I'm sure other airports are now more lax again.

[JohnnyRingo]

4. For the last 30 years

Every time we heard the word "Deregulation" we knew we were in for a screwing. The watchword seems now to be "Privatization"

[TahitiNut]

5. So, in order to make room for profits ...

... they move all the workers to private companies, eliminate medical insurance, eliminate their retirement benefits, cut their pay, eliminate training, eliminate background checks, lay off senior workers in favor of cheaper inexperienced workers, and raise the price to taxpayers ... all to make rooom for inflated executive salaries, stock options, and serve the "pump and dump" stock market profiteers.

Insane. Totally fucking insane.

[SharonAnn]

17. But this is what we had before. It didn't work! Security on the cheap

doesn't work!

[Philosophy]

6. Sounds like a good contract for CACI

Just think of how secure the airports would be if everyone was had to be stripped naked, hooded, and have electrodes attached to their genitals.

[leesa]

7. Oh yes, as if privatization has not been a disaster every single time

it has occurred.

[DoktorGreg]

8. privatization of garbage collection has not been a total disaster

But other than that, I am hard pressed to come up with examples of successful privatization. Granted the Canadians just north of me have government run garbage collection, and they get garbage collection twice a week.

[baby_bear]

9. And who runs the garbage companies?

Garbage collection, hazardous waste landfills...

Do you watch The Sopranos?

I think outsourcing stuff like lawn-mowing is probably okay, or services that are only occasionally needed.

At my (federal) office, contractors run our library, our supply and copy room, and our information management (computer) services office. I am not sure why or if it is better for the taxpayer for them not to be federal employees.

s_m

[bobthedrummer]

10. Government IT market privatized through The Carlyle Group

(Logicon, Inc.) and others-here are some links documenting the sell-out of democracy imo

from 9-11-2000 Northrop Grumman acquires Federal Data Corp. folds it into Logicon, Inc.
http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2000/0911/news-fdc-09-11-00.asp

Northrop Grumman
http://www.northropgrumman.com/index.html

Logicon, Inc.
http://www.logicon.com/index.html

[Lisa]

11. I guess they have it both ways!

Companies like Halliburton can whine about the evils of "big government", but they still can make money off essential services funded by the taxpayers.

Statistics Canada is experiencing a backlash about the decision to outsource our next census to a US weapons-maker (Lockheed-Martin). Some people are saying that they don't want to reveal confidential info on their forms, if there's a chance the military-industrial complex will have access. Aside from that, it erodes our ability to do certain crucial jobs ourselves ... thanks to "dumbsourcing" (eventually end up paying more for fewer services).

I never thought I'd ever see an army that couldn't/wouldn't feed itself, but that seems to be what's going on with the "contractors" in Iraq.

[Mel]

12. Yea, Halliburton

is a 'Corporate Welfare Queen' at least that's what I've started calling them.

[baby_bear]

15. It really is the corporate welfare trough

The way OMB has set up outsourcing under the Bush administration, there is no requirement to demonstrate either savings or the number of federal employees who have lost their jobs due to outsourcing.

But the pigs at the trough, viz., Halliburton and the other companies with connections to the Republicans in the administration or in Congress, can snarf it up and call it leveling the playing field while laughing up their sleeves at the taxpayers and at the voters who continue to vote for these thieves-in-office.

Hi Lisa!! :hi:

s_m

[CHIMO]

18. Well In

This part of the country it is free enterprise and only collected once a week. When there is a holiday it skips a day, so it comes to fifty collections a year.
The security at the airports are private as well. So the contracts are tendered every now and then and the employees have to come on to the winner with no seniority and start at the bottom.
But that is supposed to be free enterprise. They didn't tell us who it is free for?

[RamboLiberal]

13. Yep - let's get back to those pre 9-11 Mickey D Screeners

Who leave after a few weeks to get better pay over at the food court restaurants of the airports.

Maybe if we hadn't had Mickey D screeners on 9-11, just maybe the hijackers wouldn't have gotten on the planes. Airport security was a joke back then. But then it's still somewhat a joke.

[bluestateguy]

14. This is why Kerry has to win

This will go nowhere before the election, but a Kerry veto pen in the White House will cease all talk of this.

Airport security is for grownups, not incompetent, $6 an hour, ex-con nincompoops, many of whom don't speak English. These are the kind of fools that will find their way back to the security gates if the private companies are allowed back into the airports.

[alarimer]

16. I know of one person

Who was an airport screener pre 9-11. This guy had been brain-damaged in an accident (before he was hired as a screener) and was not terriblly high-functioning yet he was still expected to be able to screen carryon baggage for weapons? Now his problems were not his fault but surely there are more appropriate jobs for someone in his condition.

In any case I believe most of the rules after 9-11 were instituted mainly to make people think the government was doing something about security but most of it was only an annpyance that really does no good. I don't mind particularly the fact that only ticketed passengers are allowed at the gates. It is a lot less crowded but I don't really know what good that does, security-wise. It probably makes the lines at the checkpoints shorter though.

[Eye and Monkey]

19. These "45,000 private industry jobs" will show up in Labor Dept estimates.

If Congress doesn't privatize before the election, somewhere, sometime, Junior will claim that Kerry held up the creation of 45,000 private industry jobs that would have increased the security of all Amurrhikans.

[baby_bear]

20. That would be an irony

First the Bushies fire the private security force, then hire federal workers, then fire them and rehire them as private contractors. The Labor Department would make hay out of that and have it look like job creation. Just think about how much taxpayer dollars have been wasted on this whole Homeland Security and TSA measures, although they have accomplished one thing -- federal workers in the Homeland Security Office have no rights of seniority or rights to union representation. Quite an accomplishment, I'd say. That's really what they wanted in the first place.

Where's Norm Mineta in all this, anyway? I never hear his name anymore.


crap

s_m

[Eye and Monkey]

21. Mineta probably has his hands full rewriting policies for the airlines.

And figuring out new sweet deals for the the airplane manufacturing industry.

[struggle4progress]

22. Oooh! That worked so well on 9/11 ...

that the Republicans couldn't support private airport security for the next two years. What's different today?