I don’t do nearly enough of these. As evidenced by the stack of mock-worthy pages–or rather, pages that pretty much mock themselves–currently sitting here, staring at me, and waiting for me to get around to them. Now, granted that stack got a little bit bigger just this morning, but hey, you’ll have that.
The US Transport Security Administration seems to have several secondary jobs, not remotely related to actually catching terrorists–which they aren’t actually all that good at in the first place. when they’re not walking off with iPads and blaming their wives, or giving the third degree to dying women, they’re spending the majority of their time railroading people who have a less than positive opinion of their railroading tactics. And that’s just the material I remembered to save. Just think of how much lower the national debt would be if your taxes weren’t going towards funding this unholy mess. Or rather, the TSA would prefer you maybe not think about that–lest it keep them from doing, well, pretty much everything they can to make damn sure the money keeps coming in. Yep, including being in charge of determining who from the private sector is actually authorised to compete with the TSA to offer the same services, and bound by the same–er–rules. Nothing says anticompetition like letting the monopolists set the competition standards. So, yeah. The next time someone you know feels a rant about the US going bankrupt coming on, just smile, nod, and say very calmly, “TSA”. Then show them this entry. The counterpoint pretty much makes itself.