Political funnies

Isn't it time for a new JibJab?



Let's not forget the classic 2004 original:



And it isn't strictly political, but this article by The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg is a riot, chronicling his efforts to "modestly test" the effectiveness of the Transport Safety Administration's airport security regime. Suffice to say, the results were not encouraging. An excerpt:

Schnei­er and I joined the line with our ersatz boarding passes. “Technically we could get arrested for this,” he said, but we judged the risk to be acceptable. We handed our boarding passes and IDs to the security officer, who inspected our driver’s licenses through a loupe, one of those magnifying-glass devices jewelers use for minute examinations of fine detail. This was the moment of maximum peril, not because the boarding passes were flawed, but because the TSA now trains its officers in the science of behavior detection. The SPOT program—“Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques”—was based in part on the work of a psychologist who believes that involuntary facial-muscle movements, including the most fleeting “micro-expressions,” can betray lying or criminality. The training program for behavior-detection officers is one week long. Our facial muscles did not cooperate with the SPOT program, apparently, because the officer chicken-scratched onto our boarding passes what might have been his signature, or the number 4, or the letter y. We took our shoes off and placed our laptops in bins. Schnei­er took from his bag a 12-ounce container labeled “saline solution.”

“It’s allowed,” he said. Medical supplies, such as saline solution for contact-lens cleaning, don’t fall under the TSA’s three-ounce rule.

“What’s allowed?” I asked. “Saline solution, or bottles labeled saline solution?”

“Bottles labeled saline solution. They won’t check what’s in it, trust me.”

They did not check . As we gathered our belongings, Schnei­er held up the bottle and said to the nearest security officer, “This is okay, right?” “Yep,” the officer said. “Just have to put it in the tray.”

“Maybe if you lit it on fire, he’d pay attention,” I said, risking arrest for making a joke at airport security. (Later, Schnei­er would carry two bottles labeled saline solution—24 ounces in total—through security. An officer asked him why he needed two bottles. “Two eyes,” he said. He was allowed to keep the bottles.)

The trouble with the airline industry

Here in eastern Canada, the big news a couple weeks ago was that Zoom Airlines, a discount airline, suddenly went out of business. And boy, was it ever sudden. They were literally still booking flights the morning before the announcement, apparently in hopes that their creditors would bail them out.

Zoom is not the only carrier to be suffer these past few years. Skyrocketing fuel prices and unsustainable labour costs have hit the airlines hard. So is the era of cheap flight over?

Yes, that era is over, and frankly, it should have been over a long time ago. The truth is that airlines benefit from all kind of government subsidies, from tax exemptions, to protectionist barriers against foreign competition, to subsidized production infrastructure. Government patronage also leads to ridiculous situations like this.

Fares have been allowed to stay artificially low. The inflation adjusted price of airfares since the late 1970s (when the industry was deregulated in the US) has fallen by roughly half. And now that reality is setting in with the end of cheap oil, the airlines have tried to keep the illusion real, by making passengers pay for everything from headphones to pillows. To say nothing of the loss of complementary in-flight meals.

This is not working. The industry is expected to lose billions of dollars this year. And the continued existence of these basket cases have led to no end of headaches for travellers. Flight delays and cancellations are the norm in most major hubs.

So what needs to happen? First, a lot of airlines need to go out of business; no more subsidies for the losers. And those that are left need to be regulated. Minimum fares would be a good place to start. Fares need to start reflecting the true cost of air travel. We've had a free lunch the past few decades, but it turns out that travelling on a plane isn't nearly as cheap as we thought.