The Transportation Security Administration, better known as the TSA or "Thousands Standing Around", the blue-shirted burger-flipper flunk-outs from the streets and byways of America have decided that they are just too damn important to you know, do their job.
A Transportation Security Administration plan to shift a long-held security responsibility away from the federal government and to airports themselves could cost the facilities more than $200 million a year.
Since its inception more than a decade ago, TSA has maintained personnel at some airport exit lanes -- the zones or hallways that arriving passengers pass through as they exit a terminal. The goal is to ensure that no unauthorized people use those exit lanes to enter the terminal without passing through proper screening.
But TSA recently started notifying airports that, starting in January, it will become their responsibility to guard those exit lanes -- and pay for the work. The move will affect about 350 exit lanes at 145 airports, including heavily-trafficked facilities in Chicago, Atlanta and Memphis, says Joel Bacon, vice president of legislative affairs at the American Association of Airport Executives.
Now, will that reduce the "security fee" you pay on your ticket? No, it will likely increase it so watch those ticket prices increase incrementally as you now have to pay for the airport to either put an airport cop or rent-a-cop on the exit lane.
Given that there have been security breaches at airports by folks unfamiliar with the airports layout it seems that anything that allows a person to enter the "sterile" area of the airport should be the responsibility of the TSA. After all, I've never been to an airport where there were not at least a dozen or more TSA folks sitting/standing around doing absolutely nothing (and I am at airports about 19 days a month) and getting paid for it.
TSA:
Idiotic rules that vary airport to airport...check
A work force that doesn't seem to do much...check
An agency of minor government functionaries with outsized egos...check
An agency that has almost unlimited funding and doesn't want to do their job...check
Just wow. Thousands Standing Around, indeed. Now more than ever, apparently.