Texas warehouse: another TSA abortion on toast

The TSA continues to be the proverbial FEDERAL "abortion on toast."

If you like the convenience and responsiveness of, say, Social Security or TriCare or MediCare or Medicaid you'll absolutely love and enjoy the efficiency of our TSA.

Or not.

Underline the NOT portion of the above line.

From USNews&WorldReport.com:

TSA Puts Millions of Dollars of Equipment in Storage

House Oversight Committee says TSA wasted millions of taxpayer dollars on unproven equipment

By Lauren Fox

May 9, 2012 RSS Feed Print

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform says the Transportation Security Administration is wasting taxpayers' money again, this time by holding more than 5,000 pieces of security equipment, valued at upwards of $180 million in a Texas warehouse.

And then, when having been "found out," were discovered to be "mid-mission" of moving said equipment OUT of said warehouse?

Continuing the truth:

"Little has changed in the past three years and the systemic flaws continue to plague the TSA," committee chairman California Republican Darrell Issa said in a statement. "These flaws are exacerbated by a management structure that seems content to throw millions of dollars at untested solutions that are bought in excess and poorly deployed and managed. That is not a security operation, but rather a recipe for disaster."

The TSA argues that it isn't wasting resources, but is merely adapting to security threats.

"We continue to evolve our security approach, by examining our procedures the technologies we use and how screening is conducted," says David R. Nicholson, the Chief Financial Officer for the TSA.

The committee's report shows that 85 percent of the equipment in the TSA warehouse as of February had been stored for more than six months and 35 percent of it had been there longer than a year. The same report shows TSA has nearly 1,500 Explosive Track Detectors, bag screening devices, in its storage facility in Texas. In order to get a discount on the machines, TSA admits they bought more machines then they needed with the expectation that eventually its supply would meet demand.

But storing the equipment in the warehouse isn't cheap.

The Transportation Logistics Center where the equipment is held costs $3.5 million a year to maintain.

Imagine that.

Literally MILLIONS of your FEDERAL TAXPAYER DOLLARS were squandered and then shuttled aside into a warehouse and NOT applied to fighting the "war on terrorism."

• The TSA needs to be ELIMINATED!
• Homeland Security needs to be ELIMINATED!

Some COMMON SENSE needs to be injected into the federal security paradigm!

In final response:

Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz offered a simpler solution to the TSA's seeming obsession with unproven technology: bomb-sniffing dogs. [See a slide show of 6 vulnerable terrorist targets.]

"It's what the Israelis do, it's what the Pentagon does, it's what the White House does, it's what we do in the United States Congress," Chaffetz says. "Only the TSA decides that whole body imaging machines are better, and then we stick hundreds of millions of dollars in the warehouse. People are going to die if we continue to make these asinine decisions."

"Asinine" is being kind.

I haven't flown since 2006, when I had to attend SLI in San Diego. In that year, I flew roughly twice a month for nine months.

Since then: NO. The airlines and the federal agencies regulating them can go straight to hell. I'll simply DRIVE where I need to go. I couldn't care LESS what this does to local or other economies.

I won't have my nuts, such as they are, squeezed. I won't be ranged-up like a cattle car. I won't take off my shoes or my socks or spit into a cup or cough whilst some federal probe literally and physically investigates my asshole.

Because THAT, as you should well know, is COMING.

BZ