TexasCHLforum.com

G26ster wrote:There are 75,000 TSA agents, but only 20,000 Border Patrol agents. Kind of like standing guard at your front door and frisking everyone that comes to your door, while leaving you back door wide open and only checking occasionally.

Dave2 wrote:And less molested.

92f-fan wrote:interesting stats about the cost of "security"

According to a survey by the consulting service Resource Systems Group Inc., in the three years following September 11, the number of people arriving at an airport one hour before departure fell from around 20 percent to less than 10 percent, and the number arriving two to three hours in advance rose from around 20 percent to nearly 40 percent. Thomas Adler, one of the authors of the survey, says that evidence suggests that Americans still spend this much more time when flying. "It seems as though arrival patterns have stabilized at those new levels," he says.

That extra time spent at the airport has a cost. It means less time to spend at work, less time to spend with children, and less time for leisure. Another survey by the Resource Systems Group found that average airline passengers traveling on business would be willing to pay about $70 to reduce one hour of their travel time. For all other fliers, the survey found that the price of an hour is $31. Poole calculates that the annual cost to the country of the extra wait times from post-September 11 security procedures is about $8 billion. But he arrives at this number through a few assumptions that probably understate the real amount. Poole assumes that an hour of time is worth $50 for a business traveler and $15 for everyone else. He also assumes that the new security procedures added only a half-hour to passengers' travel time.

There are also ripple effects from the delays that create new costs. For example, longer delays at the airport encouraged passengers to seek new modes of transportation for their trips, such as driving. Beefing up security generally makes people feel safer. But long security lines following September 11 had a more important effect on travelers' motivations to drive instead of fly. "It's hard for people to evaluate the additional benefit of security measures. But it's easy for people to say, 'I'm going to have to stand in line for an hour; I don't like that,' " says Garrick Blalock, a Cornell University economist, who coauthored a paper looking at the connection between airport security and driving fatalities. Because driving is so much more dangerous than flying, the thousands of more people who took to the roads rather than the skies after September 11 led to more car accidents. Blalock estimated that from September of 2001 to October of 2003, the enhanced airport security led to 2,300 road fatalities that otherwise would not have occurred. If security delays were to lengthen again, a similar driving fatality effect could happen, Blalock says, as more travelers choose to drive to avoid the increased inconveniences of flying.

from here
http://money.usnews.com/money/business- ... -costs-you" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
and another good read here

http://books.google.com/books?id=l_grTC ... &q&f=false" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Its about keeping the economy going, and the medias insatiable appetite for plane crash related news ....