photo credit: dailymail.co.uk
Everyone has seen the
awful headlines, photographs, and videos of thousands of passengers stuck in endless
lines at airports in Chicago, Atlanta, and elsewhere. Many are blaming the
GOP curmudgeons in Congress for failing to adequately fund the TSA. Michelle Malkin has an alternative take:
When it comes
to public employee unions, there’s no such thing as a coincidence.
All you
travelers stuck in mile-long TSA security lines are pawns. Convenient political
pawns. Big Labor bosses want more power and more money. Stranded travelers are
just the latest victims in this age-old game of D.C. extortion.
Union leaders
want you to think the fault lies with a stingy Congress unwilling to fork over
enough money to fill screener shortages. White House spokesman Josh Earnest
poured more partisan fuel on the fire last week by blaming the nationwide
slowdowns on “the inability of Republicans in Congress to govern the country.”
What a load of
flying horse hockey.
The
15-year-old Transportation Security Administration now has a massive annual
budget of nearly $7.6 billion and a workforce of nearly 60,000. They had enough
tax dollars to waste on an idiotic $1.4 million iPad app that randomly points
left or right; $3 million on more than 200 useless explosive detection “puffer”
machines that didn’t detect explosives reliably; and unknown gobs in awards and
automatic bonuses to senior TSA managers at a time when the agency was
repeatedly failing internal tests of its ability to stop weapons, bombs and
terror threats.
Yet, last
week, with airlines, airports and customers all raising holy hell, Congress
scraped together $34 million more to pay TSA screeners overtime and fund nearly
800 more screeners to address the summer travel crush.
It’s still not
enough of course. It’s never enough.
. . .
TSA union leaders
hungry for new members and fattened coffers don’t care about your security.
This is all about control and money. Multiply 55,000 by $50/month in mandatory
union dues and — voila! — they’ll have $33 million a year to shower on
politicians who’ll do their bidding.
Read
the rest here.
# # #
