The kind of skill it takes to prepare for a disaster needs a highly educated planner with well polished analytical mind and the endurance for meticulous attention to minute detail. Forward thinkers with the focus of an accountant. Logistics and planning just doesn’t fit into the the vast majority of government management mindset.

code7 on October 6, 2006 at 9:07 pm

Here’s a conspiracy theory from a wing-nut, deb. Look around, Peope are getting stripped at airports. Computers and phone calls of Americans are being tapped. Yet the borders aren’t being protected, the Bush administration hired only 1,500 new border agents, nuclear power plants aren’t being protected, LAX is lax on its security, the ports are being protected by Dubai’s Portsworld, and so on. Do you really thik the Bush administration really gives a shit about us? Yes, clinton too, as well as Reagan, Bush senior, all the way back since after WW2. We are victims of? The same organizations that control the Democrats and Republicans as well as the rest of the political parties. If it aint true, why then do we have terrorists supporters working for the TSA?

KOAJaps on October 6, 2006 at 9:45 pm

I was an “MSF” in 2002, one of the traveling band who trained screeners at airports around the country.
All of these problems can be traced to one major blunder going back to when the TSA was formed. As a completely new entity, the TSA had no experienced senior personnel to fill the thousands of non-uniformed, management positions.
These should have been temporary, caretaker positions and the people in them should have been replaced with experienced people coming up through the uniformed ranks; people who actually know what they’re doing.
Instead, the veteran bureaucrats who filled them have been busily consolidating power: fighting for funding and personnel. Naturally, the largest airports have the most juice. That means that regional airports get the least funding, the fewest personnel, and most outdated equipment – even though a terrorist can enter the air system at any airport in the country.
The uniformed people being promoted are mostly ones that the bureeaucrats judge to be not a threat to their own positions, i.e., dull-witted, yet willing to rollover on their co-workers.
This is a quiet crisis that will come to a head soon. A huge percentage of the original screeners, who came to their new jobs with enthusiasm (many, many ex-military people) are burning out. They can only endure so many years of ham-fisted management.
They’re being replaced with part-timers, not a good thing at all.
CAN YOU PLEASE E-MAIL ME?
DEBBIE SCHLUSSEL

The Dread Pundit Bluto on October 7, 2006 at 10:37 am

The impression I have gotten from my few experiences with TSA is that some communities have seen TSA as a place to move welfare recipients off of their welfare rolls and onto a government paycheck.
I even ran into one in Seattle who barely spoke English and was directing us through the system.

Lew Waters on October 7, 2006 at 5:25 pm