Airport Security Can Get Worse

What more do we need to just clog up the whole TSA works?


UNIONS

How to Make Air Travel More Infuriating
If you think TSA is dysfunctional and unpopular now, wait until it unionizes.

. . . if you think TSA is dysfunctional and unpopular now, wait until it unionizes. This month, the Federal Labor Relations Authority ruled that 50,000 TSA personnel will be allowed to vote on whether or not to join a union with full collective bargaining rights.


After 9/11, Congress wisely decided to forbid TSA employees from coming under union work rules out of fear that it could compromise security. Imagine if every change in procedures had to be cleared with union shop stewards. While it is not easy to fire TSA personnel now, just think how difficult it will be to remove bad employees if they are covered by union job protection agreements.


But in 2007, the new Democratic Congress eliminated the ban on collective bargaining, and as soon as Barack Obama became president in 2009 his appointees began pushing unionization for TSA. Last year, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano admitted in Congressional testimony that she backs collective bargaining rights for TSA employees, overriding the considered judgment of all previous TSA administrators that such rights are at cross-purposes with the flexibility TSA needs to meet certain threats.

Why didn't we use private contractors in the first place?


John Mica of Florida, the new GOP chair of the House Transportation Committee, told me last month that we should have followed the advice of Israeli security experts and used private contractors and psychological tests to counteract terrorism in the wake of 9/11. At least one busy airport -- Orlando International -- is preparing to dump TSA in favor of a private security company, which is allowed under an opt-out provision in the federal law governing airport security. "Having TSA going towards unionization is just the wrong way to go," said Mr. Mica.



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AK KABOOM !

Allahu Akbar !

To bad nobody was killed or injured.


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Al Gore Change Stance on Ethanol Fuel

On this site I have been more than harsh about Al Gore.



Now, for this he gets two thumbs up!


On this site I was very critical of ethanol, fuel produce mostly from corn. My main problem was taking food, turning it into fuel jacking up food prices. For me it doesn't matter a lot, but there are poor people, like in Mexico where corn is a staple.

Anyway, besides consumers subsidizing this folly, our government also takes taxpayers dollars.


I kept track of the failure of ethanol as a fuel product a while and bored of it as the concepts failure did not attract popular attention.

Now a new hero on this issue, Al Gore has stepped up to the plate.

Al Gore's Ethanol Epiphany


He concedes the industry he promoted serves no useful purpose.

Go Al !

Anyone who opposes ethanol subsidies, as these columns have for decades, comes to appreciate the wisdom of St. Jude. But now that a modern-day patron saint—St. Al of Green—has come out against the fuel made from corn and your tax dollars, maybe this isn't such a lost cause.


Welcome to the college of converts, Mr. Vice President. "It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol," Al Gore told a gathering of clean energy financiers in Greece this week. The benefits of ethanol are "trivial," he added, but "It's hard once such a program is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going."

No kidding, and Mr. Gore said he knows from experience: "One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for President."

Mr. Gore's mea culpa underscores the degree to which ethanol has become a purely political machine: It serves no purpose other than re-electing incumbents and transferring wealth to farm states and ethanol producers. Nothing proves this better than the coincident trajectories of ethanol and Mr. Gore's career.



FULL STORY