The article is exactly right about what needs to be done, and who needs to do it: the airports themselves. No chance any elected official is going to scale back the TSA's screening creep at this point.
The political risks of looking "soft on terrorism" are just too high. Imagine being a politician responsible for a TSA rollback, and then, by dumb luck, a terrorist attack succeeds a short while later. There may be zero correlation, but do you think the media will care? Do you think the public will care? Do you think your political opposition will care? Ha. Your career would be over in a heartbeat. And if your opponents really felt like twisting the knife, they might drum up hearings and lawsuits against you. So call me cynical, but I just don't see any lawmaker or policy wonk sticking his or her neck out anytime soon.
This is why it's in the hands of airports to push for any particular change. They're not running for office.
Good things can't happen without government sanction, and bad things can only happen when there is not enough government oversight (or through nefarious conspiracies). This is the narrative structure we call news today.
>This is why it's in the hands of airports to push for any particular change. They're not running for office.
They rely on federal funding for new infrastructure, which brings more air traffic, which brings more gate fees, which results in more money for those running the airport.
Totally fair, but any threat of fund withholding there is far less direct.
It also seems unlikely. If the feds withhold infrastructural funding out of spite for X, Y, or Z airports, they will cause a lot of collateral economic damage. Commercial airline passengers are just one of the many types of traffic that airports service every day. There's also stuff like FedEx, UPS, DHL, and all of the companies who rely on them for shipping, fulfillment, and logistics. That rabbit hole runs deep.
The political risks of looking "soft on terrorism" are just too high. Imagine being a politician responsible for a TSA rollback, and then, by dumb luck, a terrorist attack succeeds a short while later. There may be zero correlation, but do you think the media will care? Do you think the public will care? Do you think your political opposition will care? Ha. Your career would be over in a heartbeat. And if your opponents really felt like twisting the knife, they might drum up hearings and lawsuits against you. So call me cynical, but I just don't see any lawmaker or policy wonk sticking his or her neck out anytime soon.
This is why it's in the hands of airports to push for any particular change. They're not running for office.