Rather than use sequestration to trim waste, the Obama administration has viewed the deadline—and the Republican desire to curtail spending—as an assault on big government. If it’s a choice between defending big government and hurting the individual, President Obama appears much more inclined to punish the individual, hoping that a backlash against government-instigated inconvenience will lead Republicans to cave.
Nowhere is this attitude on greater display than with regard to airport security. Transportation Security Administration procedures at airports have been controversial for some time, and their effectiveness up for debate. There’s no need to rehash those news stories here. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Transportation Secretary Raymond LaHood, and other officials have warned darkly of the time needed to clear security checkpoint and customs lines doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling. Jonathan Tobin has covered the fear-mongering well.
Lost in the headlines, however, has been the desire of several airports even prior to sequestration to drop the TSA and instead contract out for their own security. The government may be playing chicken, with ordinary people the victims, but sequestration should also renew the drive to enable the private sector to replace government bureaucracy. Endless airport lines under sequestration are not about security, they are about the inability of a government agency to do its job with its available means. In the real world, if a business fails to provide a promised service, its contract becomes void. Rather than cave once against to those who would embrace big government, perhaps it’s time to call Obama and Napolitano’s bluff, send the TSA pink slips, and let airlines and airports handle the security task themselves.
Why stop there? Privatize everything possible, including K-12 and universities that the grubmint operates. Who, in all honesty and all manner of proof would deny that all but the most necessary functions would benefit by improvement in service, reliability, and lower cost in they were contracted out, made to perform to specifications and standards?? I will be waiting with bated breathe for a reply and reasonable rebuttal. And, oh yes, eliminate all public service unions at the Federal Level and below, just as existed before the most over-rated President in our history, John Fritzpoodle Kennedy. Public service unionization was opposed by non other than FDR and Geoge Meany, a staunch ant-Communist. n nUnionization is not inherently bad or destructive (I am a retire union member of 37 years), but they need to exist with new rules. No mandatory membership, and no government subsidies or taxpayer bolsters and support.
I have no problem with public education. It will only be as good as the parents of the children enrolled make it. It doesn't make much sense to me to condemn the children of poor (monetarily) parents from getting an education that is the best way to lift themselves out of poverty and perpetuating the condition. There are SERIOUS problems, however, with public sector unions in that they are negotiating with the very people they work to elect. It's easy to extract large pay raises and lenient work rules from the very people beholden to you for their elected positions.
Use the "Yellow Pages" criterion: if a product or service is available from the private sector in the Yellow Pages, then government should not be in the business. n nTake an elevator to the top of a tall building and look around you: EVERYTHING that you see has either been build by the private sector–or built with funds extracted from the private sector via taxes. Government builds NOTHING by itself and never has. The "G" variable in the GDP equation has for some time had a value less than 1.0.