Happy happy joy joy

Yet another reason to stick to driving. From Bryan Preston at PJ Tatler:

TSA Unionizes
As of Thursday, August 2, 2012, the Transportation Security Administration has agreed to unionize. The agency, best known for groping and offending Americans as we attempt to fly from one part of the country to the other, has agreed to allow the American Federation of Government Employees to unionize its workers.

The AGFE union, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, announced the unionization agreement on its Facebook page.

�For 10 long years AFGE has fought hard so that Transportation Security Officers would have collective bargaining rights. We have often looked back and wondered why it was taking so long,� said AFGE National President John Gage. �Today we begin to look forward.�

When TSA was originally created in the aftermath of the 9-11 terrorist attacks, President Bush and the Congress agreed that the new agency should never unionize. That agreement lasted until 2011, when President Obama and the Senate Democrats pushed a unionization approval through.

The AGFE announcement means that the AFL-CIO is now inside America�s national security apparatus. It caps a long period in which the union�s boss, Richard Trumka, has been a frequent visitor and caller to the Obama White House, using his influence to push for an increasingly socialist vision in the United States.

According to the AGFE�s announcement, the TSA�s 45,000-strong workforce will vote on the collective bargaining agreement in the next few months.

I would not mind a Union if it meant better service from its workers. Dream on... The TSA Management is perpetually engaged in a game of catch-up. It has been eleven years since Richard Reid tried to blow up Flight 63 with a "bomb" in his shoe (and I love it that the passengers pounded the crap out of him!) We still have to take our fscking shoes off every time we board an airplane. We still have penetration by morons. The Israelis do the "unthinkable" and profile -- they have had zero penetrations and all they do is ask each passenger a few questions and watch and gage their reactions. With the exception of trips to Hawai'i and the Caribbean trip after my Mom's passing and a dear friend's memorial service in Connecticut I have not set foot on an airplane in over ten years and I plan to keep it that way. I have done a lot of traveling by road, not by airplane. A few days of driving (and the joys of road discovery) more than compensates for the hassle-factor of flying. Cost is about the same...