1-2-25 - 8am - TSA

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yay, Michael and Dragon Welcome back, Happy twenty twenty five.
I hope, and I'm sitting here questioning my life decisions
this morning. But this isn't one of them tuning in
to see if you guys are back.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Happy New Year.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Let's get her done bye.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
When people tell me they're questioning their life's.

Speaker 4 (00:23):
Decisions, especially when it's listening to us, Yes, hmm, I
mean she doesn't regret that decision. And I really questioned
her decisioning on why she doesn't regret that decision really.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
And the fact that she's at the same time she's
questioning life's decisions, her life decisions, she's listening to you
and me?

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Right, yeah?

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Yeah? That really like should we call the nine one one?

Speaker 4 (00:53):
I mean, who chooses to listen to us? I figure
that the only ratings that we get are because the
radio is actually broken.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
Right they or they're just too stupid know how to
use the iHeart the free to you iHeart Radio app.

Speaker 4 (01:08):
And you've improved free to you iHeart Radio app by
the way, and improved the new.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
And improved by the way. Do you get those mailers
that are they're called value pack or something? Yeah, did
you notice the last one that came in the mail
last week.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
I always rip them up and throw them away.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
Well I do too, But as I'm pulling the mail
out of the box, all I see is iHeart radio
and what I Heeart had a big ad on the
front of the envelope for the new app on the
value pack. I get them they spent that rather than
spending it on your raise the Christmas bonus. Yeah, what'd

(01:48):
you spend yours on? Uh?

Speaker 2 (01:51):
As soon as I get it, I'll let you know.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
Here's my tribal report. The weather in Phoenix and Scottsdale
was beautiful, the food was wonderful. The granddaughter is precocious
and gorgeous and smart and witty and fun to be around.
And the daughters is wonderful of mothers you ever could imagine.
The son in law is very successful, doing very well,

(02:23):
and flying still sucks. When when Congress created Homeland Security,
and they created Homeland Security seems because they knew they
had to be seen doing something. And here we are

(02:44):
twenty two years later because it officially went into business
on March third of two thousand and three. So here
we are almost well, getting is twenty twenty five, so years,
just under twenty two years later. What has TSA done now.

(03:08):
I thought about that, of course, because I need to
wear a blood pressure monitor sometime when I'm going to
the airport, because I know I immediately start tensing up,
and I start tensing up because I know one what
a farce it is. Two you never know what to expect.

(03:29):
Three I don't like the intrusive nature of it. Even
though I'm going to tell you something in a minute
about my situation that is probably different than many of
you because you haven't been in You haven't you don't
have the clearances that I have, so you don't have

(03:49):
to give up your your DNA and everything else. But
the whole idea was that somehow the nine to eleven
hijackers did what they did because the airlines who were

(04:09):
in charge of security were incompetent. It had nothing to
do with incompetence. It had to do with we were
completely This is why history is so important. We were
completely oblivious, even though we had intelligence. We had intelligence

(04:30):
at the time that said the hijacking of planes, even
going to the next step, hijacking of planes and then
flying them into buildings is one of the things that
al Qaeda and other organizations are working on and we
had developed that intelligence based on the nineteen ninety three

(04:51):
bombing of the World Trade Center, which everybody seems to
forget about. Now, nobody pays any attention to nineteen ninety
three nine three the Blind Shake, and al Qaeda tried
to bring down I forget whether it was Tower one
or Tower two. They tried to bring down one of
the towers by planning car bombs in the underground parking
garages at the World Trade Center. And then we start

(05:17):
building the intelligence on that to understand that they couldn't
bring them down that way, So they're now going to
try to hijack planes and try to fly them into buildings.
We knew this, and we didn't do anything about it.
And that's not just George W. Bush, that's Bill Clinton too,
that's going back to the Clinton years. So it was

(05:39):
a failure of intelligence, it was a failure of action.
And so now you've got to find somebody to blame.
So we're going to blame the security personnel that was
hired by the airlines to protect their investment. Do you
think airlines went their planes to be hijacked and flown
into towers. No, they do not, so they have a

(06:01):
vested interest. But we didn't share that intel with the
airlines Hell's mails. We didn't share. We didn't share that
intel among law enforcement agencies, either either domestic like the
FBI or with the c i A. We we had
a we had a firewall between the two and nobody shared.
Nobody shared the intel. So we just went along merrily

(06:24):
along our way. Now there there's all sorts of stories
about box cutters. Forget the box cutters, because the box
cutters or not integral to the to the hijacking of
those planes. Well, what was integral to the hijacking of

(06:46):
the planes was the surprise if if you didn't have
box cutters, you had mont Blanc eat pins, fountain pins,
you had, you had silverware in first class, you had
number two lead pencils, you had your bare hands, but

(07:09):
most important, you had the element of surprise. Nobody was
expecting it, nobody was thinking about it. So you you
go what were again? Go back? What were we looking
for on September tenth, two thousand and one when you
went through security at Stapleton, or you went through security

(07:29):
at La Guardia or Boston Logan or anywhere else, lax.
What what was security looking for? They were looking for
bombs and guns. Always found the looking for bombs funny
because unless you were carrying some sort of mini propane
tank through, you probably weren't going to recognize C four.
And you're still not going to recognize C four. Got

(07:51):
sticking your taking your stuff through the X ray machines.
You you you might detect something, but whether you think
it's going to be a bomb or not, if you're
not trained to think, oh, look look at that high
density package, maybe I'll to pull that aside and look
at it. So we just weren't prepared. It's not the

(08:15):
fault of the security personnel. It's the fault of the government,
and it's not the fault of the airlines. If the
airlines had been told look for you know, knives, look
for sharp objects, look for anything that you know might
set off a melo detector if you're doing if you're
just looking in the bags on the X ray uh line,

(08:40):
then look for something like a box cutter, Look for
a you know, a a you know, the little not
the exactual knives. Look look look for those things. But
we weren't. So now fast forward to today. Now there
is the whole idea of your ID when you walk

(09:02):
up to the TSA person. I refuse to call them officers.
They are not law enforcement officers. Well now, because if
you choose or like me, because they already have it,
you don't have to show an ID. Instead, they will
do facial recognition. Well, I have both Global Entry and Clear. Now.

(09:28):
I got Global Entry because I tend to fly to
foreign countries a lot. And I got Clear because Clear
is offered at no expense to me through one of
my credit cards, American Express or Chase one of them.
Numerous credit cards will reimbursion for the expense of Clear.

(09:50):
I've only used Clear once until this trip to Phoenix.
I tried to use it at Denver International to get this,
so many people had signed up. Now we're traveling on
the Tuesday. Is that right? When When was Christmas Eve?

Speaker 2 (10:08):
When Christmas Eve was two Tuesday.

Speaker 3 (10:10):
So we traveled on Monday. So we traveled on Monday
and DA was pretty busy. So I told Tama, I said,
you just go through pre check. I'm going to go
over here and try Clear. I walked over to Clear.
It was so busy that the Clear person said, hey,
it's quite honestly, it's going to be quicker to go
through tsa pre check. So I did that. So I

(10:35):
empty my pockets, I empty everything. I walk up. I
already have my My facial recognition is already in every
database you can imagine. So I don't care. So I
show them my ID, they scan my face. I go through.
I don't have anything in my pockets, but my belt,

(10:57):
which does not set up off the magnetometer at any
other airport, is set off in Denver. So I have
to get to take my belt off. He gotta go
back through. Meanwhile, people that come to this country illegally
are issued papers that say this is Jose Cuovero, this

(11:22):
is Jose, and here is his Department of Homeland Security
paper that says he can travel. He doesn't show the ID,
he doesn't go through facial recognition, he doesn't do anything.
He just shows them the paper. Now, he does go
through the magnetometer, and he does go through whatever bags
he has does go through, but there's no ID, which

(11:43):
proves my point that it doesn't make any difference who's
on the plane. I don't care. I mean this sincerely.
I don't give a rat's ass if collect shake. Muhammed
is sitting next to me, I might want to try
to strangle him. I might jab him with my mont
Blunk pen and killing Fleay bleeds out while we're on

(12:05):
the plane, and then get up and he doesn't get off.
I don't know what happened, and not me. I don't know,
not me. All I care about is they don't have
a bomb. They don't have a gun. That's all I
care about, because we know what the endgame is. So
then let's fast forward and let's go back to the
departure from Phoenix. Back here again. I this time I

(12:30):
used CLEAR. And it's so stupid because everybody's signing up
for TSA pre check or Global Entry or clear that
if you do any regular amount of traveling at all,
you're going to sign up for that. So you don't
take your shoes off, you don't take your computer off,

(12:51):
out of your bag. I didn't take my belt off.
It wasn't it did not set off at sky Harbor.
So I just breathe right through security. They know who
I am, nothing in my bag that they could see,
nothing in my bag, and I just I get on
the plane. It's all a farce, a complete utter farce

(13:16):
because I could have packed see four up my butt.
I could have coordinated with Tamra, and we both could
have had any amount of three ounce of liquids in
our bags, because that's the amount you can carry on
three ounces or less. And it could have all been

(13:36):
explosives of some sort flammable material and nothing would have
detected it. And if we'd been traveling with others, I
could have coordinated with mister and missus Redbeard. And so
now four of us traveling together have each have four
three ounce bottles, so that's twelve it's forty eight ounces,

(13:57):
so more than enough to make some sort of explosively
by simply taking turns going to the restroom and handing
the bottles. You know, everybody just getting their bottles, that
we sit and talk and blah blah blah, and then
one of us going to the restroom to the lavatory
and you know, mixing all together in a water bottle
and boom, we got a bomb. It's just such a joke,

(14:18):
such an utter joke. Well, as I went through, every
time I do, I'm both embarrassed for having been a
part of the creation of that monstrosity, and every time
I go through, I watch for all the vulnerabilities, for
all of the holes in the system, and oh my god,

(14:41):
are they amazing. Well, that sent me down a rabbit hole.
That sent me chasing a squirrel. The first year budget
for TSA was six point eight billion dollars. Today it's

(15:01):
increased by fifty four percent to ten and a half billion.
The projections, according to CBO, eleven point eight billion by
this year. Yet TSA's appetite for your tax dollars is

(15:22):
rivaled only by its inefficiency. Now where does the money
come from? Now? A significant portion of funding for TSA
comes from passenger security fees that you pay on your
airline ticket. It's a hidden tax that has grown three
hundred and thirty percent since it's creation twenty two years ago.

(15:44):
That translates to four and a half billion dollars per
year drained directly from travelers. Not to mention the billions
be come from congressional appropriations. They come from taxpayers. So,
whether you fly or no, this should be important to
you because you're paying. If you pay federal income tax,

(16:04):
you're paying for this monstrosity. So with those numbers in mind,
I thought to myself, are we safer. No, we're not. Now.
The last data that I could find, and your mileages
may vary. I did this about a week ago. In

(16:27):
twenty fifteen, a DHS internal report revealed that undercover agents
successfully smuggled weapons and explosives explosives past TSA checkpoints ninety
five percent of the time, weapons and explosives ninety five

(16:47):
percent of the time. Out of seventy tests, TSA agents
we'll call them agents, failed sixty seven times. That failure
rate ought to embarrass even the most dysfunctional private enterprise.

(17:10):
So the agency that we put together to make the
skies more secure can even secure its own checkpoints. It
is indeed Kabuki security. Bruce Schneier, whom I got to
know quite well. I shouldn't say quite well, I got
something pretty well, is a absolute airline security expert. He's

(17:35):
a homeland security expert for that matter. He came up
with the security theater, the Kabuki security theater terminology. So
we've paid for this endless lines, constitutional indignities, exorbitant fees,
and now they're approaching sixty five thousand employees, a bureaucratic

(18:01):
jobs program with no demonstrable benefit to national security. Elon Musk,
Donald Trump, here's a place you can look. So let's
think about what the alternative is, because there are alternatives,
but government inertia. Unless Musk and Ramaswami and Trump can

(18:26):
overturn the Apple cards, inertia won't change anything, and you
won't be any safer, but you'll be poor.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
Michael, we goobers all know better. You're nothing more than
a malicious compliant scuff law.

Speaker 3 (18:40):
Malicious compliant scufflaw' So what he said, malicious compliant scufflaw.
It's contradiction in terms. So we're talking about TSA and
I think you should be privatized. Now, be honest with yourself.

(19:05):
How many of you kind of recoil at that idea?
How many people do you know that if you said, hey,
don't tell them who it is, but hey, you heard
someone talking about how we need to privatize the TSA.
How many people would recoil at that because they think

(19:27):
the government is so good at keeping you safe and
if they do it efficiently, effectively, with a smile on
their face, great customer satisfaction scores all of that. How
many people do you know.

Speaker 4 (19:42):
That think that if there's any one person out there
that does think that I would like to point out
what government industry is done.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
Better than private the defense, the military, so one one.

Speaker 4 (20:03):
And how many similarities does government industries have to do
with private industries?

Speaker 2 (20:08):
And how many are are there?

Speaker 3 (20:11):
Oh? Way too many? Health ndreds, healthcare, you know, social welfare,
safety that I mean, you think about even think about
how we f up roads and highways. Roads and highways,
I believe are a pure government function. Yet who build
roads and highways the private sector? Now? Why do the

(20:36):
roads and highways suck? Because the government is the one
paying for it, and so they aren't They're they're not
about to impact in Colorado. They want you off the
roads and highways. Sometimes I think they want you out
of the airports. They want to nationalize the airline. But

(21:01):
think about privatizing TSA. One of the things that I
was reminded of when I was looking up these numbers
is that we've already tried that, and guess what, it's successful.

(21:22):
The Screening Partnership Program, of course, has to have an
acronym SPP. It allows airports to opt out of TSA
screeners in favor of private contractors. Now, the program's obscure,

(21:44):
not because of a lack of success, but because of
that inertia that I was talking about, and because TSA
resists promoting a solution that undermines its own monopoly. Remember
those tens of thousands of TSA employees are now unionized,

(22:08):
so now the unions have a vested interest. The government,
particularly Democrats who support unions, are now embroiled in inertia.
So nobody within the government save maybe must Trump and Ramaswami,
really want to get rid of it. Do you think
the TSA administrator wants to work himself out of a job.
Of course he doesn't, so the TSA administrator. This is

(22:32):
why you never hear about this program, the Screening Partnership program.
Now two examples, The most prominent ist SFO San Francisco.
But there's also another one which was among the first
to adopt the program, which is Kansas City International. Airports

(22:57):
that want to join this program have to go through
a labyrinth of bureaucratic mumbo jumbo to do it. So,
even though it's and i'll give you the stats in
just a minute, has proven to be more effective, has
a higher customer satisfaction rate. TSA does everything they can

(23:20):
because the program is mandated by Congress. Congress said, listen,
we need to give some airports at least an alternative
to try so that we don't have just this monopoly.
And you know, eventually the whole idea was we might
go back to private contractors. Well, here's an example of
how program itself builds a wall around itself to keep

(23:43):
it from being harmed because they don't want anybody to
know that there's a better alternative out there. So TSA
resists this and any airport that wants to join it.
For example, if Denver wanted to join it, there's horrible
red tape and you're still subject to TSA oversight, which

(24:03):
is a conflict of interest. But the program where it's
been implemented has actually thrived. Twenty two airports have embraced
the program, proving that private security is not only feasible,
but it's often superior. And SFO San Francisco is the

(24:24):
best example. It's the largest airport under the screening Partnership
program and it has been since the inception. So there's
a report. The latest report that I can find is
from from twenty twenty two. That report shows that the
private screeners consistently outperform the TSA inefficiency Passengers experience fifteen

(24:51):
percent shorter wait times on average. Customer satisfaction surveys also
rank SFO's screening process among the highest in the entire country,
so it's clearly superior over TSA managed airports, and reports
consistently show that SFO's private screeners deliver faster, more efficient

(25:14):
service and the same time maintain higher customer satisfaction compared
to the counterparts at the TSA. San Francisco International. You
have international flights from Asia, from Europe, all over the
world flying into SFO. It's a hub for United Airlines,

(25:35):
and here it is using private screeners one of the
country's largest airports, higher customer satisfaction rates, higher efficiency, better
security in terms of just detecting contramand than all the
other airports. Kansas City much smaller, right, but nonetheless a

(25:58):
significant airport, it was among the first to adopt this.
They reduced weight times, they reduced costs, and they demonstrated
improvements and efficiency at the same time that they maintain
higher security standards than even the TSA. So this early

(26:21):
success set a precedent, obviously for other airports to follow. Right,
it proved that private security can deliver tangible benefits where
the TSA is consistently falling short, so you get Bozeman reports,
faster screening times, greater adaptability. Orlando also transitioned to private screeners. Specifically,

(26:48):
Orlando's specifically transitioned to private security to improve passenger experience,
and by all accounts that I can find, totally succeeded.
Those airports demonstrate that privatizing something that many people now
just take for granted, is a government function which up

(27:10):
until after nine to eleven had always been a private function,
but the government took it over, and over a period
of twenty two years, we've just come to assume that, oh, yeah,
that's a government function, the government should be doing it,
and yeah it sucks, and we know what sucks is
not anything we can do about it.

Speaker 2 (27:27):
Bull crap.

Speaker 3 (27:28):
There is something we can do about it and save money.
You know, if you're an airline passenger and a taxpayer,
you're getting a double whammy. And if you think this
doesn't matter to you because you never fly, you're still
paying for it. This is where musk Ramaswamy and Trump
can step in and really do something that would show

(27:51):
I think tangible that the private sector can do something better.
So if those airports, if Bozeman SFO, Kansas City MCI,
if Orlando MCO, if all these airports can succeed with
private security, then what's the justification for keeping TSA a bloated, failed,

(28:16):
costly bureaucracy That nine time when they do their own tests,
it's like it's like you're taking your own test, and
you can't pass your own test. Here guys, listen, UH
management are going to be testing you. They're going to
be coming through with some guns and bombs, be on
the lookout, and you still fail ninety five percent of

(28:38):
the time. If SFO, if San Francisco can secure millions
of passengers a year with private contractors, why can't the
smaller airports? Why can't Why can't every other airport? I'll
tell you why. And this is the political science lesson
of the day. Political opposition in bureaucracy and TSA itself

(29:04):
lobby in Congress. The TSA itself has every inciendive to
resist the expansion of this program because it exposes the
agency's failures. And then you have misconceptions, which is why
I ask you the question when I say, let's privatize it,

(29:26):
What was your reaction? Have you thought about what your
reaction was? If you ask Grandma, who flies maybe twice
a year once, you know, they maybe they fly her
home for Christmas, or they fly her you know, she
takes a trip with a bunch of other grandmothers and

(29:47):
they take a trip to I don't know, they go
to Vegas, they go to Branson, So they fly to
Saint Louisen, take a bus down to Bramson. If you
ask her, hey, do you want these government guys to
inspect you or do you want the private sector, She's
probably going to say, Oh, these government people know what
they're doing, they're really good. But the evidence, the facts

(30:12):
prove otherwise. And then you had the problem of just
trying to join the program because TSA doesn't want you
to join the program. Why because those agents, all those
all the administrative, middle management, everybody, they're all going to
lose their jobs. It's an example of bureaucratic decay. When

(30:36):
you're in a competitive privatized system and you fail, their
consequences if if I fail in performing my job, well
they are consequences. But if this was a government run
program I fail, nobody cares because there is no accountability.

(30:58):
Every time I hear people talking about we want people
held accountable, why do we not look at TSA Because
we have the evidence to show that the private sector
can do a better job than they can. So what's
the solution that's next?

Speaker 2 (31:16):
Hey, Michael, I just happened to realize something. You haven't
gotten a ticket in a while. This was curious.

Speaker 3 (31:24):
Did you sell the Beamer? No? I decided it was
time stop getting tickets.

Speaker 4 (31:38):
That's just took your foot off the gas just a
little bit.

Speaker 3 (31:45):
I'm much more observant, and I may have certain devices
that detect certain you know, frequencies that helped me avoid.

Speaker 4 (31:57):
Or it could just be post COVID and they don't
give out as many tickets as they used to.

Speaker 3 (32:02):
That could be true too. That could be true too.
So I think that the airports would be safer, traveling
would be more efficient, it would be easier. I mean,
just just look at Clear Clear forget TSA for a moment.

(32:24):
So if the whole point of Clear is to know
that you're a trusted traveler, it's called Clear and Global
Entry and TSA PreCheck. Those are all the trusted traveler programs.
So Clear has already proven that it can do what

(32:47):
it needs to do to make sure that you're the
actual person that's getting on the plane for whatever you know,
since somehow or some reason we think that's important to know.
I don't think it is, but some people do. And
now with the programs, the security programs that SFO and

(33:10):
others have been doing have proven to be more efficient
getting people through the lines, quicker, more effective, better able
to detect contraband. And I don't think this should be
lightly glossed over. People have higher satisfaction. Why shouldn't we

(33:32):
have higher satisfaction rates with government services? Because too many
people have just accepted that government sucks.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
And it does.

Speaker 3 (33:41):
Don't get me wrong, it does suck. But when you
conduce an alternative that makes it more efficient, more effective,
and more pleasant for the traveler, why shouldn't that be
a part of the consideration. I think that TSA is

(34:02):
the perfect candidate for elimination by DOGE, the Department of
Government Efficiency. Musk and Ramaswami need to take it on
because this is a bloated taxpayer funded relic that inconveniency,
inconveniences millions, it burns through billions, It fails at its
core mission. It's not just inefficient. TSA is the poster

(34:27):
child for bureaucratic stagnation, and I think it proves my
point about how government just grows and grows and grows,
and it's unaccountable by delivering nothing of substance, nothing whatsoever.
If in their own tests they fail ninety five percent
of the time, and if customer dissatisfaction is an all

(34:49):
time high, then why not get rid of it. Dismantling
a ten billion dollar farce ought to be long hanging,
low hanging fruit for Trump. And when you think about
the flare that Elon Musk has for innovation, I'm not

(35:11):
saying putting in charge of it, but he could put
together a team that could take the existing alternative program
and make it even more efficient, more effective, with higher
customer satisfaction, and actually make traveling other than the fact
the airlines themselves suck, at least make the airport experience

(35:33):
something that, oh, yeah, I'm getting my money's worth here.
I think that the traveling public. I'm so glad that
I don't travel as much as I used to two
hundred thousand miles a year. Oh, I couldn't do it anymore.
But beyond that, we really do deserve real security, not

(35:54):
kabuki security. And DOGE has the mandate, it has the vision,
and it has the leadership make it happen, and we
have the evidence to show that it can happen. So
is I wanted to do this story because you know
that TSA is a bugaboo of mine, and of course,
having just experienced it again, I wanted to remind everybody

(36:16):
that there is an alternative, and I wanted to give
you some facts and figures about how expensive this is,
how bloated it it is, and how many people, including
maybe maybe you, maybe you were one of the people
that when I said let's privatize it went mmmm, who
do you think would have done better at protecting the

(36:39):
people in New Orleans? Because the FBI failed, the New
Orleans Police Department failed, the mayor failed, the governor failed,
for that matter, the merchants on Bourbon Street in the
French Quarter, they failed. I know they they wanted as

(37:00):
bigger crowd as possible because they wanted to make as
much money in as short a time as possible. But
don't you think they might now regret not having had
closer conversations with the FBI, the NPD and others about Hey,
what security measures do we have in place to keep
our customers, our patrons safe. Government just is failing. And

(37:28):
that leads me to what I'm going to talk about next,
because the thing I came away with, having stepped aside
from this microphone for what ten days or whatever long
it's been, made me realize that this country really is
on the downslide. We're just sliding into a pit, and

(37:50):
we got to turn it around, and we're not going
to survive in one of those areas education. I heard
her report or that just made me go, what that's
not m