181–190 of 512 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm having trouble picturing this. Could you upload a photo to imgur?
This[1] isn't the toy, but this is splash art of the character with good view of her weapon. It's based off of the chakram. The toy would have looked something like that. [1]: http://static1.eclypsia.com/images/lol/champions/Sivir_Splas...
Here's an awesome TSA story for you: Late last year while trying to fly out of LAX a TSA employee thought I was carrying a throwing star. They called the police, who correctly identified as a toy in seconds. I thought the whole ordeal was over until I got a "notice of violation" in the mail from TSA 45 days later. Now I'm banned from pre-check for three years, even though I have global entry and even though the fine…
Everything about security and law enforcement has some level of perverse incentives. People learn to game the system and their supervisors don't care as long as there's a benefit to them. I'm certain this guy knew it was a toy, but he wanted that gold star and his supervisor wanted a report showing all the gold stars that month were from his guys.
This is a classic problem in management. The real question is who can fix this? In government, perverse incentives eventually become the norm, not the exception, as everyone eventually gets in the game and there's no reason for anyone to upset the cart. Especially when the higher ups are riding the pension/public sector union bus and anything that could risk that or cause a political issue is just ignored. They're not going to be the fall guy here. The shitheads outnumber them vasty. More than likely these managers are just ex-shitheads who played the game better than the other shitheads in the past and got promoted.
If airport security was run by a private company, the government could fire these guys and go with a different vendor if there was enough political pressure (or threaten to to get needed reforms), but because the TSA is the government, we're stuck with them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not contesting that; I'm just pointing out a separate reason it wouldn't work.
Sorry, I don't understand. I'm contesting your claim that airports would have to hold more people than they currently are if people showed up earlier to account for the longer lines.
Now you change that, asking people to show up 24 hours before their flights. At 9:00 on Monday, the airport holds all people with flights departing between 9:01 Monday and 9:00 Tuesday -- 24 hours' worth of people, eight times as much.
Airports can't hold 8x as many people without being in violation of the fire code.
^^ Made the title more accurate ^^
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a non-issue. First class flyers pay for a ticket that allows them shorter lines, not expedited screening. They're still subject to being randomly flagged, and they will go through the same screening process as everyone else. That's why first/business class tickets cost so damn much - to blind the traveler into believing that they're actually paying for something worthwhile. As it turns out, for many of them,…
My point was more that everyone pays the same fee to be screened by the TSA but by purchasing a more expensive ticket from the airlines you can avoid the long wait to be screened and therefore increase the wait time for most people. To be clear, purchasing a higher fare ticket does not mean you are paying the TSA for better service.
Wait, what? I am always frustrated at seeing the folks in those shorter lines (though I settle down at roughly the point of view others have expressed in this thread, that paying for shorter lines is a fact of all parts of life and doesn't seem to abrogate any fundamental right of mine), but it has never occurred to me to think that someone in one of them is lengthening my wait time. If anything, then he or she is shortening it by not being in my line.
Maybe your point is that the screeners for those short lines could be re-deployed to relieve some of the pressure on the longer ones, if the shorter lines didn't exist at all; but, given that they do exist, no-one's use of them seems to me to have any effect on my wait time.
This, in combination with American airports being completely ignorant to the transit concept must cost American airline companies dozens, if not hundreds of millions a year in lost revenues. Case in point: if I want to to fly from Zurich to Lima I have essentially two choices: I can connect either in Amsterdam, or in Madrid. Madrids legal connection time is 55 minutes max (on Iberia). In AMS on KLM it's a maximum of…
What is this "legal connection time"? Never heard of it before - despite being in Europe.
Here's an awesome TSA story for you: Late last year while trying to fly out of LAX a TSA employee thought I was carrying a throwing star. They called the police, who correctly identified as a toy in seconds. I thought the whole ordeal was over until I got a "notice of violation" in the mail from TSA 45 days later. Now I'm banned from pre-check for three years, even though I have global entry and even though the fine…
Please fund them fully or eliminate them entirely. The inbetween states just suck for everybody.
Here's an awesome TSA story for you: Late last year while trying to fly out of LAX a TSA employee thought I was carrying a throwing star. They called the police, who correctly identified as a toy in seconds. I thought the whole ordeal was over until I got a "notice of violation" in the mail from TSA 45 days later. Now I'm banned from pre-check for three years, even though I have global entry and even though the fine…
They're just as bad at identifying actual "weapons": I flew to South America with a layover in Miami a few years back. Got past TSA without any trouble on the domestic leg, then I had to go through again for the international leg. The second time through security, they said they saw a blade on the x-ray.. turns out they were right. I forgot I had left a multi-tool in my bag. Thankfully, they just trashed it and let m…
I think Trump would abolish the TSA. Cruz has said he would, too. I'd like to see either one get in, though I wonder if the President should be able to just decide on his own to shut down an agency that Congress has approved. Why has Congress not shut it down? I don't think anybody really likes the TSA, so I can't imagine there'd be too much opposition to a bill abolishing them. It affects so many people you could pr…
Ok, the TSA sucks big time and should be abolished. I get that. But what about the alternatives? In this day and age it's just not thinkable to let people enter a plane without a security check. So you need some entity performing it. I think one factor on providing successful and to the passenger acceptable (they will never be pleasant) security checks is adequate funding and employing adequately compensated professi…
Few would suggest that. But the security measure that were in place in the US prior to 9-11 took far less time and cost much less, and in my opinion provided a similar level of security.
> And it's not that checks are less thorough around [any European airport ].
Really? Do they require you to remove shoes and belts, plus all items (even scraps of paper) from your pockets? Do they require you to stand motionless, hands raised for 1-2 mins to be scanned by a millimeter wave or backscatter x-ray machine or submit to a 15 min careful patdown and swabbing?
> It really just seems to be a funding issue.
I disagree -- I think it is largely an issue of what security measures they choose to utilize.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Free and unimpeded travel is not a basic right for any people, in any place. It's supposed to be within the US, though, just like in Schengen. That's due to law, not some magical "right", though. edit: what is a "basic right" supposed to be, anyway? I missed that day in philosophy class.
It's not even due to law; it's due to the founding nature of the Republic. Arguably not even a constitutional amendment could permit restrictions on Americans' interstate travel.
You might think it would be arguable but John Gilmore discovered you can't even argue it -- the law is secret and cannot be discussed in open court, thus he had no standing to sue over it: https://papersplease.org/gilmore/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilmore_v._Gonzales
The wikipedia entry is slightly misleading on one point: the ninth circuit said he could travel without ID (this case came about because I had been flying without ID and discussed it with John) -- his suit was that he had no choice due to a law he was not permitted to read (yet ignorance of that law is no defense!) and he argued that that was a violation of free speech + free assembly. Without being able to discuss the law in open court, the justification for the decision was a fig leaf.