Slothful Bureaucracy Fails to Protect the Public

Gene Healy was right to criticize the bloated bureaucracy that is the Department of Homeland Security. Its worst feature is the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which fails to detect explosive ingredients and fake bombs.

A study found that the TSA is more than twice as likely to fail to detect a bomb as the private security firms it replaced. And TSA’s failure rate is three or four times as high as the few remaining private firms still allowed to handle airline security.

In tests, TSA failed to detect fake bombs 60 percent of the time at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, and 75 percent of the time in Los Angeles. Yet the Obama administration plans to make TSA even more bureaucratic by introducing collective bargaining, which will make it even harder to get rid of lazy employees.