Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : I AM A MINDLESS ZOMBIE -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (72)	8/16/2002 6:55:49 PM
From: 10K a day	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 258

Send me some of that stuff...

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (72)	8/16/2002 9:54:07 PM
From: AC Flyer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 258

Mq: This might amuse you - our (US) tax dollars at work - in the hands of mindless zombie Congressmen who have watched waaay too many Clint Eastwood movies. >>New Air Marshals a Dangerous Joke: USA Today Fri, Aug 16 2002 Good Reporting Also Explains December Incident A USA Today story by the astute Blake Morrison Thursday didn't sound too flattering to our new crop of Air Marshals. In the hiring frenzy after September, it seems that some "suboptimal" people have been hired; and that training, once the benchmark for law-enforcement handgun training, has become less than a bad joke. USA Today delved into the changes between the "old" Air Marshal program (that had, maybe 30 full-time Air Marshals, none of whom was on duty on any flight on September 11, by the way) and the new gang of maybe six thousand, some of whom, Morrison says, were given badges and guns, and assigned to aircraft, even before their background checks were complete. Morrison also says the program itself practices some dumb, uh, practices. For instance, he says, the dress code helps identify Air Marshals, as they are on duty. Some other practices are merely illegal, like the allegations of local managers' falsifying the time sheets of marshals who work more than 50 hours per week. Still others show mismanagement that only the TSA could come up with: "forgetting about" entire offices full of Air Marshals, who sat around the office for days at a time, waiting for flight assignments, watching Bruce Lee movies. (When they complained, they said they were told they were "getting paid" anyway. Yup -- a thousand bucks a week.) Cleared up a mystery. Remember last December, when a passenger found a pistol in a lavatory on a United flight, and turned it in to the Flight Attendant? ANN went ballistic on that one, asking why, after the gun had been found, the crew considered it such a threat that they turned the plane around. We also asked how a gun could have gotten on board, in the first place. The USA Today story explained: "...sources say one marshal was suspended after he left his gun in a lavatory aboard a United Airlines flight from Washington to Las Vegas in December." Uphill battle, on slick ground. It doesn't look like any progress is being made. In fact, the program, as portrayed by the numerous observations detailed in the paper, is definitely headed in the wrong direction. It seems that ANN's long-held position was right: that the bluster from the TSA is designed to make people think they're safer, while spending hundreds of millions of dollars and providing essentially nothing of value. You're safe, though... By the way, the TSA announced it's no longer taking applications for Air Marshal positions. They have their 6000 or so, and a long waiting list. So you're safe -- except the new Marshals don't have to pass the old standard (rigorous) shooting test and are given training, "like a security guard at the mall." Don't worry, though: most of the Marshals have at least some ammunition to practice with; most of the new Marshals have even passed background checks; only one has so far publicly been caught drunk on the job; and only a couple that the paper knows of, have shot holes in their hotel walls, as they played with their weapons... FMI: www.tsa.dot.gov, www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-08-14-1acover_x.htm<< aero-news.net