Friday, October 22, 2004

They Simply Don't Care

I really couldn't have a much lower opinion of this administration, honestly. And yet some of the things they do - or don't do - still manage to amaze me. This, for instance:

With a deadline looming, the government has yet to come up with guidelines for commercial airports that want to replace federal baggage and passenger screeners with privately employed workers.

The 9/11 attacks are the centerpiece of the Bush administration. Virtually everything they say and do, they try to justify by invoking 9/11. And yet they can't even do something so simple as write guidelines for airport baggage screeners, despite having two years to do so. And really, the situation's even worse than that: on the one hand, the reason many airports want to hire private workers is because they think the TSA - which was created by Congress after 9/11 - is useless or worse. On the other hand, hordes of TSA workers are in danger of losing their jobs on November 19, despite the miserable job market and the lack of any guidelines on how to replace them.

To be fair, though, the TSA hasn't been entirely idle:
TSA spokeswoman Amy von Walter said the agency has set up an e-mail address so airports can submit specific questions.

Sometimes, only a cliche can describe things properly: It's like a bad dream.

2 comments:

Sue123 said...

O.K. the Mason's thing was alittle over the top. Sorry. You didn't have to say that when I was Atrios that I wasn't political. Political? How about teaching in a failing urban school with no funds/personnel to cope with the major emotional wipe-outs we experience daily? Knowing that the emotional/family/genericly labeled autisic/intellectually learning disabled student with parents unable to define/understand/cope with the system
will not fight for their child's best The best I can do is to do hands on - to build a butterfly garden at my school and try, try, try to get everybody involved. You have to start from the bottom up, but you need everyone to help from the top down. The funds we have received from Bush are not correctly appropriated because they are put into programs which go nowhere, and the higher-ups go on trips, and the knowledge stops at the administrative level. The Catholics have a term for counteracting this; "subsidiary" where the smallest get the most support, and become the most powerful. Now that's politics. That's Democratic.

Phila said...

Not sure who you are or what you're talking about, but if something I said bothered you, sorry!