The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Are we finally having a constructive discussion about security?

The Boston Globe thinks it's time to do away with the TSA:

Let’s face it: The Transportation Security Administration, which annually costs taxpayers more than $7 billion, should never have been created. The responsibility for airport security should never have been federalized, let alone entrusted to a bloated, inflexible workforce. Former TSA administrator Kip Hawley calls it “a national embarrassment that our airport security system remains so hopelessly bureaucratic” and warns that “the relationship between the public and the TSA has become too poisonous to be sustained.” More tests and more failures won’t fix that. Scrapping the TSA would.

Fearmongers might howl, but abolishing the agency wouldn’t make air travel less secure. Given the TSA’s 95 percent failure rate, it would likely make it more secure. The airlines themselves should bear the chief responsibility for protecting planes and passengers at airports. After all, they have powerful financial incentives to ensure that flights are free of danger, while at the same time minimizing the indignities to which customers are subjected. Their bottom line would be at stake. The TSA feels no such spur.

I am posting this from an airplane, by the way. I understand that this has the potential for tragic irony.

Leg #2

Cooling my heels (just what does that cliche mean, anyway?) at JFK. I miss New York. I don't want to live here again, but I do like visiting.

I mean, look:

That might look a little better if I could get Lightroom to work on my Surface Pro. Time to reinstall it, again.