This blog has been quiet as I study for the February 2019 California Bar Exam, but I couldn’t help but notice the buzzing around how the government shutdown has affected the TSA.
CNN is now reporting that 10% of TSA screeners are calling out sick, while on a random day that number is in the 3% range. That doesn’t quite give the full picture. At some airports, the call out rate is much higher, and management has been forbidden from releasing statistics for specific airports while begging airports with lower call out rates to ship their employees around the country.
Those that have been showing up clearly have less regard for doing their job. Screeners at New York’s JFK airport have taken to using the PA system to play rap music. Those at Washington State’s SEA are busily protesting outside the airport. And at airports across the country, TSA is literally asking travelers for donations of food, as if they were homeless on a street corner:
I feel for government employees that are going through tough times right now because we have a President who acts like a child. (“Let’s get our way on border security by crippling our government, including those who secure the border!”). The shutdown should be ended and no wall should be funded.
But if there were actually terrorists about to strike our nation but for the TSA, they’d have done so. It’s almost like the whole premise behind the need for the TSA is manufactured to take our rights and our tax dollars with no proportional benefit to our safety.
(No updates on any of my court cases. No idea if they’re even being considered during the shutdown.)
Professional Troublemaker ® 
As people have been saying all along, the TSA is security theater – like most of the Homeland Security apparatus, it was never intended to increase security but to increase fiefdoms and budgets.
I’d rather the airlines handle security. After all, they the one that will get sued if something goes wrong. I doubt anyone can sue and get money from the TSA if they fail, and the writer of these blogs has shown they are not very good at their job. So, let the airlines do it since they are on the hook.
The 5.6 should instead be used to hire Mexican drug dealers as private security border guards. Walls do no stop people, they only slow them down. Employing drug dealers would give them honest employment and thus end drug trafficking as well as their illegal drug deals. If they work out at the border, maybe, they could replace TSA?