Between harassing dissidents and disabled kids, you might suppose the TSA would rest content with its evil. Alas, no: it’s always looking for more serfs to ruin and more industries like aviation to destroy.
It found both in international shipping, with its ports and the truck-drivers who haul goods into and out of them. One of those drivers might work for Al Qaeda! Or know someone who does! Or have read the Koran, or even glanced at a copy once! Or converted to Islam! Or know someone who did! Clearly, though no turrist has yet manifested even the remotest interest in any American port, they could. At any time. Thereby threatening all of Western civilization.
And so the TSA in its mind-boggling stupidity came up with a scheme it called “TWIC” (“Transportation Worker Indentification Credential.” Let’s see: three big, burly nouns modifying a fourth and each other. That should set some kind of record, but native speakers of Jargon assure me it doesn’t). TSA forced drivers to undergo background checks and fingerprinting and Lord-knows-what-all. And get this: “TWIC enrollment centers” were often hundreds of miles from drivers’ homes and depots, forcing these professionals to work thousands of hours of unpaid overtime.
TWIC also costs those hard-working serfs around $130. Remember that many drivers work as independent contractors, in business for themselves, so no company picks up such expenses for them. Estimates of the number of TWIC’s enrollees vary, but there are at least a million. You do the math to see why TSA loves TWIC.
The TSA was supposed to supply ports with “readers” for TWIC’s cards that would open “secured” gates when a holder swiped his card. But – you guessed it – the readers have never worked well or, in some cases, at all. So in essence truckers have paid $130,000,000 for fancy ID.
Now comes a report from the Government Accountability Office that damns the entire program as unnecessary: the “assumption that the lack of a common credential could leave facilities open to a security breach with falsified credentials has not been validated … Eleven years after initiation, [the Department of Homeland Security] has not demonstrated how, if at all, TWIC will improve maritime security.”
Yo, truckers and shippers: join us on the frontlines when the revolution comes, overthrowing these incompetent, rapacious, senseless bullies, busybodies and bureaucrats.
9:44 am on May 10, 2013
