Salon: Senate Appropriations Committee approves TSA budget

And it's not pretty. According to the article,

Time to contact our senators, folks! Although if anyone can think of a better way to break this "I didn't vote to cut TSA funding" Gordian knot, please share.

 

I was about to send this to my clueless mailing list, but then canceled the message. It's pointless.

My journey to Capitol Hill yesterday now seems even more pointless.

 

But DO raise the user fees. The more people know that they are paying to be abused, the more they will resent it.

 

Said it before, will say it again - vote incumbents out. I'm not seeing a yea/nay voting record on this yet, but at the very least, if one can be found, vote against anyone who supported this abomination.

 

Senate committee votes to help TSA spend more money​

by LISA SIMEONE on MAY 23, 2012​

 

Yes. Yes, they do. The people doing the bullying, harassing, robbing, stripping, and groping aren't the ones making a lot of money on this.

 

I would like to see Congress demand an accounting of current expenditures for all agencies before any budget increases are approved. In TSA's case explanations for buying and warehousing equipment never needed, buying technology without doing even basic validations trials and so forth. I have no doubt that every agency has a significant amount of budget waste.

 

Some more than others. In the case of the TSA, 100% waste.

 

Personally, I doubt this will make it through the House. In the absence of a budget deal (which seems pretty unlikely in an election year), sequestration will impose the $1.5 trillion cuts and all the of the agencies get cut around 15%.

Maybe Greece going down will make these morons realize that economic collapse is a real possibility and they can't just keep throwing money at imaginary terrorist threats.

 

Sweat dreams ... Zero-based budgeting is a rarity in the federal government.

I'd go a step further and add sunset provisions to everyhing.

 

The Senate bill doubles the security fee but only for non-stop/direct flyers. Connecting travelers will still pay only $5 each way.

WTOP: Senate panel approves airline security fee hike

Every little bit helps. The more people have to pay for their own abuse, the less they will appreciate it.
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It's just too bad that the per-passenger fee hikes are not matched by dropping the amount those of us who never fly pay in taxes that get used to fund the liars, thieves, and thugs of the TSA.

 

Nightline did a story last night about the rising airline fees: http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/

 

They did get some details wrong, but a fee increase is still a fee increase.

KIVI TV: TSA searches for twice the price

 

Just found this running Google News on "TSA" ...

The base post left out the best part of the Salon article, namely it's title:

Senate Democrats heroically fund TSA​

Democrats score the dumbest political victory of 2012​

 

From an independent candidate for Congress in California's 10th District ...

Chad Condit: TSA Tax Hike Proposal Avoids Important Debate

 

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Apparently, $8 billion a year isn’t enough for the TSA. They’ve run into a budget shortfall.
Hey, have some sympathy: the skills required to bully, harass, rob, strip, and grope people — and then lie about it — don’t come cheap.
Our noble Congress, whose members, as we were told on Capitol Hill yesterday, are hearing relentlessly from their constituents about TSA abuse, rather than rein in this agency, are expanding it. They just voted to cover the TSA’s budget shortfall — with higher fees. Your tax dollars — and then some — at work.

Instead of having a debate over what effective airport security might actually look like and how much should reasonably be spent on the honestly rare threat of commercial air travel-based terrorism, there was a debate over how best to come up with the money for all the radioactive naked picture machines and bomb-sniffing dogs. The Democrats suggested passing the cost of ineffective, cumbersome, and intrusive security theater on to citizens, via higher fees on airfares. The Republicans, even more predictably, suggested cutting spending that directly helps poor people, so that there is enough to spend on stopping imaginary future 9/11s.​

The newspaper account of the debate, in The Hill, just reinforced the Republican spin, highlighting the Democrats’ decision to make people spend more money on the hated TSA and downplaying the actual existing Republican alternative to the proposal, which was not “spend less on the hated TSA” but rather “raise money for the hated TSA by slashing needed aid to states.” The Democrats won, or “won,” and now they will earn the fruits of that victory: deserved scorn from everyone. And Ben Nelson (D-Troll Town) voted with the Republicans. (Though surely having users pay the fees for supposedly necessary security measures is perfectly conservative, isn’t it? Am I missing something here? I mean besides the fact that the two sides in this debate weren’t actually “liberal” and “conservative” but rather “people who want to come up with a way of paying for the oppressive and useless national security state” versus “people who want there to be an oppressive national security state but hate government spending on feeding and sheltering impoverished people.”)​

Let’s get this straight: this isn’t a partisan issue. Both Democrats and Republicans are culpable. Both have voted and are voting for an expansion of the National Security State, an integral part of which is the TSA.
If you haven’t gotten in touch with your reps yet and raised holy (expletive deleted), I don’t know what you’re waiting for.
(Photo: Flickr Creative Commons/David Beyer “yomanimus”)