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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of
the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your
everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political
Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm totally fabulous this morning. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm fabulous, too. Though, I got to admit I'm feeling like I need to be checked.
N. Rodgers: See? I'm not traveling anytime soon. I'm not traveling, and I'm not going to go visit with
anybody on an airplane anywhere. That's part of why I'm feeling fabulous, is I am not going to deal.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because where I was going with these listeners is that today in our podcast episode as
we continue our series of looking at government agencies. Not cabinet-level departments but just
agencies.
N. Rodgers: That have caught our eye or that are interesting in some way. If you've been listening to this
series, and the first one, we said, we're not going to do all the agencies because that's approximately
800 billion agencies, and we are going to reiterate on a fairly regular basis, as of recording, this agency
still exists. Could be that tomorrow it doesn't.
J. Aughenbaugh: Trump administration version 2.0, could have issued an executive order disbanding a
particular agency that we just got done recording and discussing. But as of today, the Transportation
Security Administration still exists. Thus my rather poor attempt at making a joke about being checked,
groped, fondled by some unknown stranger before I board an airplane flight so that a different level of
anxiety can wash over me.
N. Rodgers: Because flying wasn't bad enough, especially these days with people crashing into each
other all over the place.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or you have landings where all of a sudden the plane is upside down.
N. Rodgers: Wait, how did we get here? What are we doing? But you know what? Miraculously, nobody
injured in that crash. So wonderful. Can I just say, though, right before we started recording this
episode, Aughie said, let's be positive about this agency and after I was finished cackling.
J. Aughenbaugh: Like I am now.
N. Rodgers: You want me to do what? I will say in the positive sense, I'm going to say something nice
about this agency, probably for the last time during this episode. Is that this is one of the few agencies
that people actually interact with on a relatively regular basis, like regular people. If you're a traveler,
you have probably dealt with the TSA. In fact, if you have traveled since 911, you have dealt with the
TSA in one way or another. Whereas a lot of agencies, if you don't live abroad, you're probably not
listening to the Voice of America. If you don't have any alcohol, tobacco, firearms, or explosives in your
home, you are probably not dealing with the ATF, but regularly, people deal with the TSA. The TSA is one
of those agencies, and here's where I'm going to just go ahead and be as negative as I'm going to be
because this is who I am. Because the TSA causes people such distress when people say, I hate the
government, this is one of the agencies they're talking about sadly. It's not good for anybody. Going
through the TSA line sucks for every single person. It sucks for the person going through. It sucks for the
TSA agent. It's difficult.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, what Nia is referring to is the fact that most of us who live in the United
States will not ever have meaningful experiences with important elected officials. But we will interact
with agents of the TSA. We will interact with clerks at the Department of Motor Vehicles. We will
interact with teachers or law enforcement, the infamous street-level bureaucrats.
N. Rodgers: But all those good interactions don't stick in your brain.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because some of our interactions with these street-level bureaucrats are negative.
Then our perception of government as an institution.
N. Rodgers: The whole thing sucks.
J. Aughenbaugh: The whole thing.
N. Rodgers: Because when the TSA guy is winding you down for the second time, you're not thinking
about your second-grade teacher who was totally fabulous and taught you wonderful things about
science. You're thinking, I hate everybody who's ever worked for the government now and in the past
and in the future.
J. Aughenbaugh: The cop who went ahead and gave you a warning instead of a ticket.
N. Rodgers: Or the Park Ranger who was very sweet and showed you all kinds of fabulous things when
you're out at the Grand Tetons. Those people slip away when you are in the airport being subjected to
the TSA.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then when you get randomly picked for that search.
N. Rodgers: The complete search down, and you're like, I didn't know I had these cavities, but now
they've been looked in. This is distressing at every level possible.
J. Aughenbaugh: The last time I actually had a full body search from a TSA agent, all I kept on thinking
about Nia was my mom saying to me and my sisters when we were kids, always put on clean
undergarments because you never know what circumstance you might get into. All I kept on thinking
about was, do I have clean underwear on?
N. Rodgers: I always think to myself, you should have to buy me dinner if we're going to be [inaudible]
J. Aughenbaugh: It's good to be all right.
N. Rodgers: Because they touch you in places. It's like, whoo, hey. That's usually a third date move
they're doing.
J. Aughenbaugh: we've had some meaningful conversations before you start touching it.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. In this way.
J. Aughenbaugh: For our listeners who don't know this, the TSA did not always exist, it's not like the
United States Postal Service.
N. Rodgers: Came before the government.
J. Aughenbaugh: You want to talk about a government agency that was created in response to a
problem.
N. Rodgers: Specific events.
J. Aughenbaugh: The TSA is that government agency. TSA, as an agency of the Department of Homeland
Security, was created in response to the infamous September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United
States, particularly because the main weapons of those attacks were planes.
N. Rodgers: Were airplanes. In fact, for listeners who don't know, one of the reasons that the two
planes were used in the towers is because they had come out of Boston. They were going to California
and they were full of fuel. They were very, very large bombs happened to be carrying passengers as well.
All lives were lost. I'm being unfair to TSA, and I will now admit that I can't believe in recording. They
have a huge job. They're supposed to keep the American flying public safe.
J. Aughenbaugh: Correct.
N. Rodgers: They have to keep you safe from explosives and firearms and people who shouldn't be on
planes because they're mentally unhealthy and dangerous. They're trying to whack a mole on a lot of
problems.
J. Aughenbaugh: Correct.
N. Rodgers: That's a pretty big mission.
J. Aughenbaugh: You have the number and type of incidents they have to prevent. That's one. Two, the
sheer number of sites, you're talking about over 450 US airports?
N. Rodgers: That's a really good point.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then all the daily flights at those airports.
N. Rodgers: Because 450 flights, but even if you just took Chicago LAX and Atlanta and Kennedy.
J. Aughenbaugh: Kennedy in New York City.
N. Rodgers: You're talking about thousands of flights a day.
J. Aughenbaugh: All those people on those flights who are already nervous, anxious, did I remember my
boarding ticket? Did I pack X?
N. Rodgers: Do I really want to go to Aunt Edna's wedding? I don't really like her fiancee, he seems like a
jerk. Oh my goodness, what am I going to do?
J. Aughenbaugh: The person I'm flying with is a jackass. They're already nervous, anxious.
N. Rodgers: There's a child screaming in this airport because there's always a child screaming in this
airport.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then you're just talking about the sheer geographical expense.
N. Rodgers: Volume.
N. Rodgers: I didn't even think about that. I should be more fair about the TSA because it's a hard
mission.
J. Aughenbaugh: It is a hard mission. Then the expectation that was placed on it, we're going to create
an agency that is going to make this mode of transportation safe. I don't know about you, but that
seems like the United States Congress telling the EPA in the 1970s, we want you to clean up the nation's
water.
N. Rodgers: Make all the air breathable and all the water drinkable. What am I going to do after that?
Because that's going to take till next Thursday and then what do I do? That's a huge.
J. Aughenbaugh: Once we accomplish that by noon.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. We can go home take a nap.
J. Aughenbaugh: We can take the afternoon off. Binge watch our favorite shows, take a walk in the park
because it's an easy task. No, it isn't. We're being sarcastic listeners.
N. Rodgers: How many people?
J. Aughenbaugh: The TSA officially created March 2003, as of fiscal year 2023. Within 20 years, the TSA
has a budget of $9.7 billion and employs over 47,000 TSA officers. That doesn't include, all of the
administrative types. We're just talking about the people who are at the airports.
N. Rodgers: Doing the screening.
J. Aughenbaugh: Doing the screening, 47,000.
N. Rodgers: You should note that there are some airports that don't have. There are some tiny regional
airports that jets don't fly in and out of there. Cessnas and Pipers and smaller planes fly in and out of
there and personal jets, but not the big major jets don't fly in and out of those airports, which is.
J. Aughenbaugh: They are tasked with coming up with all the screening procedures and regulations,
related to passengers concerning checked and carry on luggage, ID verification, which we will talk about.
We've already made light of the pat downs, full body scanners. Then we seemingly are focusing a lot on
explosive screening, which see our previous episode about ATF, where we talked a lot about bombs. But
anyways. That is a huge mission statement.
N. Rodgers: Keep us safe from everything that would make us go Oui?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The problem with that, to me, is that it's a moving target.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because there is always going to be somebody who's going to come up with something
that's a different way to do the thing that they want to do that you have to try to stop.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That's why first, when we had the TSA, nobody had to take their shoes off. Then we got a
shoe bomber. Now you have to take your shoes off and your shoes have to be scanned. There's all these
different as the dangers change, the TSA has to adapt and change.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia, to that point, I'm glad you brought it up. This is one of the problems with the TSA.
We know that large government agencies adopt procedures that will cover, what they usually
encounter.
N. Rodgers: But they struggle with the weird stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, because TSA operates on economies of scale. Broad standard operating
procedures that can be employed at all of those airports to cover all of those thousands of people who
fly in and out of the United States, every day. But we know this about bureaucracies. They struggle with
the new incident, the person who presents, the unusable problem. The normal stuff, Hey, we got
scanners that can go ahead and make sure that you don't have a firearm in your carry on. We got that
covered.
N. Rodgers: The IRS gets regular audits of people who are doing regular malfeasance with their taxes.
But then you get somebody like Birdie Madoff who does something so outlandish. That it doesn't even
occur to people that that's what would be going on until they finally get some proof.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then afterwards, the bureaucracy then can change.
N. Rodgers: But it's always playing ketchup.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes and that's where when you went ahead and you made reference to whack a mole.
Hey, this popped up. Crap. Let's go ahead and pound that down. Hey, there's another one. Crap. We got
to take the mallet over and, push that one down.
N. Rodgers: That's where one of the criticisms comes in of a TSA is people talk about it as security
theater because it's solving the last problem, not the next problem. In the 911 Commission report, one
of the biggest slams against all government agencies, not just TSA because TSA didn't really exist. Before
911. But anyway, the 911 Commission said that 911 was a failure of imagination. We just never occurred
to anybody that somebody would use a plane as a bomb.
J. Aughenbaugh: In many ways, that reflected the fact that the United States, of all the developed
nations in the world, pre 911, did not have the same, if you will, experience with airplane hijackings,
airplane, terrorist events, etc.
N. Rodgers: If you went to other countries.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, in fact, that was what I was just going to say. That's the stuff that goes on in other
parts of the world and in other countries that doesn't happen here. But then it happened here.
N. Rodgers: It freaked us out.
J. Aughenbaugh: It freaked us out.
N. Rodgers: It did. On any number of levels, 911 freaked us out, did all kinds of things to the United
States that we're still recovering from.
J. Aughenbaugh: I mentioned 2003. That's when the TSA was folded into the then brand new
Department of Homeland Security. Technically, Congress created TSA in the Aviation and Transportation
Security Act in November of 2001. Initially, TSA was a part of the already existing Department of
Transportation.
N. Rodgers: Makes sense.
J. Aughenbaugh: Which makes sense.
N. Rodgers: Hence the name TSA.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Department of Transportation is supposed to handle transportation related public
policy problems. Makes sense. But it was moved to Homeland Security in March of 2003.
N. Rodgers: Didn't President Bush sorry, Bush 43.
J. Aughenbaugh: Bush 43, yeah.
N. Rodgers: Didn't he do a whole bunch of agencies where he pushed them under DHS to streamline the
idea of Homeland Security preventing this thing across the board.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's when you see, for instance, not only did TSA go into Homeland Security,
immigration and customs enforcement, ICE, was moved from immigration to Homeland Security, FEMA,
which was a standalone agency was folded into Homeland Security. Again, this was all part of this,
grander plan. We're going to be much more responsive and forward thinking in terms of preventing, but
also responding to, incidents that would harm the United States domestic security.
N. Rodgers: The idea behind those agencies all being under one department was that their
communications would be better. They would be more likely to communicate across agencies
information because there was some information about the terrorists on 9/11, but it didn't get to all the
agencies and all the agencies didn't have access to it. There were some siloing that was happening and
one of the things that President Bush was trying to do was cut down some of those silos and make it a
flatter information sharing environment.
J. Aughenbaugh: Homeland Security or TSA has moved into Homeland Security. One of the more
interesting things, and this is one of the significant, if you will, issues with TSA is TSA has been in
existence now for, about 24 years. That's about right. No, 23 years.
J. Aughenbaugh: But it has had significant leadership turnover. TSA has had seven administrators and six
acting administrators in its history.
N. Rodgers: Can I just say that you know how often I say, I want this job in the government?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah in the Federal government.
N. Rodgers: I don't want to be in charge of TSA.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: Because the TSA's mission is unaccomplishable. To say we want you to make the flying
public completely safe is not possible. You can do the best you can do and flying is still significantly safer
even given the beginning of 2025, where we've had several accidents and near misses. It's still
significantly safer than getting in your car and driving across your town, most of the time.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, it is.
N. Rodgers: It's significantly safer than riding a bike in The Fan. I'm just saying you're better off taking
your chances on a plane than riding a bike in The Fan.
J. Aughenbaugh: For our non Richmond listeners, The Fan is a section of the city of Richmond that is
N. Rodgers: Notorious for people wandering through stop signs as if they don't exist.
J. Aughenbaugh: The last two times I've actually been hit by an automobile while running was in The
Fan.
N. Rodgers: Yeah exactly. Bikes same thing people get injured.
J. Aughenbaugh: I was running on sidewalks.
N. Rodgers: You got hit. I'm telling you The Fan is crazy. Then you know having never been in a plane
crash and having been hit twice in the fan by a car is still significantly safer to fly. But Aughie is like,
instead of going for a run, I'm just going to take a plane over to the university. It's a tough mission.
J. Aughenbaugh: To your point, in many ways, the United States Congress and multiple presidents have
not done the TSA any favors by not recalibrating its mission and the expectations.
N. Rodgers: One of the things that Aughie has in his notes, which I'm going to leap down to because he
loves when I do that, is and they don't pay the TSA very well.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, good Lord.
N. Rodgers: Here you have this mission to keep the flying public safe, but you are the least paid people
in the airport?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That is pretty scary.
J. Aughenbaugh: For instance, you're going to have to hire a whole bunch of people to do the
screenings. Nia, how much do they make? I don't want to say this because when I was reporting this, all
I kept on thinking was, you get what you pay for. Do you recall?
N. Rodgers: I don't, I'm sorry to say. I know that they were not in the general schedule pay system.
J. Aughenbaugh: They are not.
N. Rodgers: For people who don't know this, the government has a GS pay system a general schedule
pay system. Those GS levels, you're a G1 through 10, G10 through 15, they all mean something. They
have pay bands within that schedule, and if you are hired in or you are promoted to a certain position,
you are guaranteed a certain pay band. That's how federal service works. You go sideways and then you
go up. Within your pay band, you can be promoted a couple of times sideways, and then you either get
promoted or you no longer work for the government. You can't keep staying at your one pay band
forever and just be crappy at your job. That's not how they allow that to work. When you don't pay
people inside those pay bands, when you pay them whatever wage you want to pay them, then I
imagine that what happens is that different airports pay different amounts. You get uneven pay
distribution.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then you also had a situation where because TSA employees, screening agents were
not a part of the general schedule pay system, TSA had a lot of flexibility, which meant that some
airports went ahead and were cheap, didn't hire the best. Others attempted to go ahead and hire
better-skilled individuals attempted to pay them more. But again, one of the benefits of the GS system is
if you get into that particular numbered range, then you will have opportunities, as Nia just explained,
TSA screening agents didn't have those opportunities.
N. Rodgers: Their average pay is $38,695 a year.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's correct.
N. Rodgers: Which is well below the average pay in the United States, which I think is like 51,000 or
something. They are being paid well below average pay to keep you safe before you get on that plane?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. During the Obama administration, the TSA administrator, John Pistole granted the
limited collective bargaining rights but that only minimally raised their pay, Because let's face it, TSA
could basically just go ahead and say, well, if you don't want to accept what was collectively bargained,
we'll just go ahead and hire other people.
N. Rodgers: What's unfortunate in many TSA offices across the country is one of the reasons they can
keep that pay low is because they hire women.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes
N. Rodgers: Women are notoriously paid less than men on the dollar. That's one of the reasons that you
see many female TSA agents is because TSA is trying to keep that price down by paying women and
paying them less.
J. Aughenbaugh: TSA would accept agents without college degrees. You don't have college degrees,
then your expectation in regards to money in pay.
N. Rodgers: Is lower.
J. Aughenbaugh: Is lower.
N. Rodgers: That's not so good.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's one complaint. The next complaint is identification. Now we're sliding into
incidents, complaints, and problems. We're going to grant the fact that the TSA has an almost
impossible mission to achieve. But some of this stuff just seems like these were self-inflicted issues.
Some of it's beyond the control of the TSA. The first one is identification. In 2005, Congress passed the
REAL ID Act, which was to establish minimum security standards for state-issued driver's license and ID
cards.
N. Rodgers: If any person has ever been in college and bought a fake ID so that they could go to a bar
and drink, back in the day, you could get by with pretty much anything that looked like it had been dog
chewed, and most bars would say, fine, because they knew you were underage and they didn't care.
They knew that you were 20 and they were going to give you a beer anyway, whatever. This was in part
to remove some of that, but in part also to make it more difficult for people who were trying to enter
illegally into the United States and having illegal identification.
J. Aughenbaugh: Correct. However, implementation of the REAL ID Act was delayed over and over
again.
N. Rodgers: Ten years or something?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It's ridiculous. They keep saying it like, no, really, this year, we mean it. It's going to happen,
and we go, [inaudible].
J. Aughenbaugh: Part of the problem here is the United States Congress never fully appropriated
enough money-
N. Rodgers: To do it.
J. Aughenbaugh: So that the states could do it.
N. Rodgers: Because what they wanted was a bunch of layered stuff added to your ID card to make it
harder to forge.
J. Aughenbaugh: Some states have. Other states have pushed back and said, unless you give us the full
cost of us implementing the REAL ID Act-
N. Rodgers: We're not doing it.
J. Aughenbaugh: We're not doing it.
N. Rodgers: But it makes it hard on TSA because those people still want to fly.
J. Aughenbaugh: They still want to fly.
N. Rodgers: Sorry, people from those states still want.
J. Aughenbaugh: States still want to fly. This is the classic example for our non-American listeners of
American federalism in action. United States Congress says, everybody must do this, and some of the
states are like, well, you want us to change our-
N. Rodgers: Who's going to pay for that?
J. Aughenbaugh: Who's going to pay for it? Then the Congress can't come to an agreement. They know
how much it's going to cost. Congress won't appropriate the money. How serious are you about this?
N. Rodgers: How much do you care about your unfunded mandate?
J. Aughenbaugh: That's one problem. Second.
N. Rodgers: Can I bring up the next one?
J. Aughenbaugh: The next one. Good Lord.
N. Rodgers: The next one is so controversial. It is so hard. The no-fly list. The no-fly list has
approximately 21,000 names on it. The names are things like Tom Smith. There are these names that
could be a large number of people.
J. Aughenbaugh: The no-fly list is a list of suspected terrorists who are not allowed to board an airplane
flight.
N. Rodgers: But if you have a name that matches the name of this person and you are not a terrorist,
you also are not going to be able to board a flight.
J. Aughenbaugh: The issue with the no-fly list is it's not the government that has the burden of proof of
saying you are this individual on our no-fly list. The burden shifts to you.
N. Rodgers: If Nia Rogers commits a terrorist act and name goes on the list, and I walk up in the airport
and I'm like, here you go. They go, my gosh, you're a terrorist, you can't get on this plane. I have to
prove I am not the terrorist in question, that I am a different person. By the way, I will miss my flight
because it will take longer than I have before my flight to prove this because it always does. I'm very
fortunate that it has not happened to me, but it has happened to an acquaintance of mine, who is who
is Arab descendant and his first name is Mohammed. He's like, I already know that they're going to pull
me aside. They're going to assume that I'm a terrorist because I have the same name as a known
terrorist, and I'm going to have to show them that I am not this person.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then there were controversies about-
N. Rodgers: It's really hard to get your name off that list if you are not-
J. Aughenbaugh: That was one of the controversies I was going to mention about the no-fly list, Nia. It's
hard to get a name removed. Second, there have been a number of core challenges on how people's
names have gotten on the list. The government keeps on arguing that for them to disclose this
information in open court would basically give information to terrorists on how to avoid getting on the
no-fly list, so they shouldn't have to go ahead and disclose how they came to the conclusion that your
name should be on the no-fly list.
N. Rodgers: It's a nice circular argument.
J. Aughenbaugh: Which is extremely problematic in regards to the US Constitution.
N. Rodgers: Because then how do you get your name off the list?
J. Aughenbaugh: Because we have this thing called the Due Process Clause that says if the government
abridges your life liberty or property, they must give you due process. But the government is saying,
well, we don't have to give you due process, because if we gave you due process in court, then we
would expose to terrorists how to avoid getting their name on the no-fly list. I'm sorry. I don't know how
you go ahead and solve that riddle.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. They haven't solved the riddle. What they've done is they just let the riddle lay
there, catching people who have the same name out over and over again.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then we get to screening problems. Nia, we don't have enough time to cover all of the
screening problems.
N. Rodgers: Because there's not enough time.
J. Aughenbaugh: Let's highlight just a couple of these. First of all, the number of passengers in the
United States who think that it is extremely appropriate to bring firearms onto airplanes-
N. Rodgers: My great googly moglis.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's truly phenomenal.
N. Rodgers: Y'all stop bringing guns on planes. Just stop.
J. Aughenbaugh: In a nine-year period, from 2009-2018, the number of firearm incidents went from
976-4,239. You need to pack heat when you get onto an airplane flight? This is truly phenomenal. ABC
News did an undercover investigation, where they had people bring weapons through security, and 70%
of the time they were able to do so.
N. Rodgers: That's a terrifying failure rate.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm like, so not only do we have a whole bunch of Americans who seem to be hell-bent
on bringing guns onto planes. The TSA isn't all that effective at catching them. That is horrific to me.
N. Rodgers: It is terrifying on any number of levels. It's not because Aughie and I think people should not
be allowed to own guns. I think we've pretty much established on this podcast that we believe in your
Second Amendment right to own a reasonable gun. I think, Aughie and I differ on maybe what's
reasonable, because I don't think you should be allowed to have a grenade launcher, or things like that.
J. Aughenbaugh: I was about to say, I have never said publicly or on this forum that a person, in their
home, should have a grenade launcher. Let me be very clear.
N. Rodgers: Fine. You have not said that. But generally speaking, we're not about you not having a gun.
We're just about you not having a gun on a plane.
J. Aughenbaugh: On a plane.
N. Rodgers: I know what you're going to say. You're going to say, but if the plane was taken over by
terrorists, I could use my gun to stop them. Unless your gun is sitting in your lap at easy access, no, you
won't.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: No, you won't be able to use it to stop them.
J. Aughenbaugh: If you did have a gun and you were trying to stop a terrorist attack-
N. Rodgers: They would shoot you.
J. Aughenbaugh: Missed the terrorist, you're going to end up shooting a hole into the fuselage of an
airplane, which is going to affect air pressure, which means that more than likely the airplane's going to
go down anyways. The only thing you did was give another reason-
N. Rodgers: Was hasten the demise.
J. Aughenbaugh: Demise of you and a couple hundred other people.
N. Rodgers: Please stop doing that. We're just asking. Aughie and I are just asking you, on a personal
level, please stop carrying. You can put it in your checked baggage. Nobody minds if you do that. Please,
take the bullets out of the gun first.
J. Aughenbaugh: First.
N. Rodgers: But can I mention the next one that just is something I mentioned before, which is, you
should buy me dinner if you're going to pat me down this way.
J. Aughenbaugh: Both Nia and I have gone through-
N. Rodgers: My goodness. They would touch your actual personal parts.
J. Aughenbaugh: Pat-down procedures. I made the mistake of actually saying this in a trip to Mexico
about six months after the 9/11 attacks, where I went ahead and made a joke while I was in line.
N. Rodgers: You're an idiot. What did you say?
J. Aughenbaugh: I went ahead and said, well, I hope I get one of those.
N. Rodgers: You did not. Why would you ask for that? What is wrong with you? Wait, that's too long a
question. Anyway.
J. Aughenbaugh: But nevertheless-
N. Rodgers: My great googly moglis. The flying public is really pretty split pretty evenly. People are like,
no, I want you to be able to pat me down. I don't know, maybe those people are masochists and they
like being patted down. I don't know what the deal is with that. I fall into the 50% of people who are
like, heck to the no. I don't even like the radiation thing where I have to hold my hands above my head
and you take a picture of me. I don't like that, and Aughie's going to talk about that in a minute, why we
don't like that. But I don't even like that, let alone, and then I step out of the thing and now you feel like
you should grope me. Where does this end? At some point, am I just going to have to show up to the
airport naked and hope for the best? What? I don't know.
J. Aughenbaugh: Part of the issue with the pat-down procedures is that some of the agents have
targeted women.
J. Aughenbaugh: We have gender discrimination. We also have concerns about how aggressive the pat
downs are. It's not just women. It's the fact that you have agents with no discernible reason because if
this was a cop on the streets.
N. Rodgers: There's a thing called a Terry pat down where they're allowed to touch your pockets to
make sure you don't have a weapon you're going to then pull and hurt somebody, even the police
officer.
J. Aughenbaugh: But they have to be able in court to give a good reason.
N. Rodgers: Good reason. Aughie was just walking down the street and I decided to give him a Terry pat
down. No. That's an illegal search. Aughie was standing out in front of a coffee shop looking like he was
getting ready to rob the place.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now you can do the search.
N. Rodgers: Because if you were going to rob anybody, you'd rob a high-end coffee shop. I'm going to
need all the beans. Put them in a bag. I'm taking them now.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm taking them now, and this will be for the good of everybody in society. That's part
of the civil liberties concern, is the fact that TSA agents don't have to have a reason to go ahead and pat
you down.
N. Rodgers: You came to the airport. That's the only reason they have to have is that you got in the line
which I find questionable in terms of civil liberties, but we'll have to have that discussion another time.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because that would seemingly violate the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on
unreasonable searches. Then we've mentioned the full body scanners. They have proven controversial
due to privacy, but also health concerns.
N. Rodgers: It does give you a certain amount of radiation, which I'm not a big fan of, but I think the
bigger concern, and Aughie mentioned it there first is they can save the image and they now have an
image of your nude figure. If you think that they are not leaking those images, you are sadly and sorely
mistaken because some of them have been leaked. Aughie and I are not famous enough or hot enough,
although Aughie's pretty hot, but I'm not. We're not famous or hot enough to have our images saved,
probably, but some people are. When famous people go through the airport, sometimes their images
have been saved, particularly, attractive women have gone through the airport, their images have been
saved. That's just wrong.
J. Aughenbaugh: The last problem we're going to mention, and this just blows my mind.
N. Rodgers: Then I promise, we're going to end on a good thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: TSA has been criticized because of an increase in baggage theft.
N. Rodgers: Things going missing out of people's bags, like computers going missing, and expensive
weapons going missing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Cell phones. My goodness, this just blows my mind. Within the first three years of TSA,
60 screeners were arrested for baggage theft. In 2009, 11,700 theft and damage claims were reported
to the TSA. Even if they weren't ripping off your bags, they're breaking your bags.
N. Rodgers: Keep dropping your stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or the contents within it. Again, this goes back to, do you get what you pay for? If
you're not hiring people at a good wage, you may not necessarily get TSA agents who care how they
handle your bags.
N. Rodgers: That was a $500 camera? That's too bad.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sorry.
N. Rodgers: Crush, mangle.
J. Aughenbaugh: If you're not paying them, hey, might they decide, who's really going to go ahead and
report that I stole $1,000 firearm.
N. Rodgers: You were trying to bring it to the airport anyway.
N. Rodgers: The likelihood is that you're not going to. I think a lot of it now is probably more
butterfingers than it is theft because they've really cracked down on that with cameras, a lot of stuff like
that. Our data is a little bit old, and I suspect that some of that has dropped because of the camera
situation, but these are also people under enormous pressure to handle long lines very quickly. Some of
that damage is just because of the speed that they are trying to work at. Because one of the things that
you will hear if you stand in line with people is you will hear them complaining about how long it's
taking. But we're going to end on a positive note, and that is y'all need to stop leaving your loose change
laying around at the airport because we kid you not, it is a lot of money that gets left behind. You know
that part where they say, put all your lose change, because you're not supposed to go through the metal
detector with metal in your pocket. Here, put it in this bowl.
J. Aughenbaugh: What was the figure that I found in my research?
N. Rodgers: You found, I just love this, fiscal year 2018, a total of $6,904,035.98, I love it that it goes
down to the $0.98, was left behind.
J. Aughenbaugh: Obscene amount of money.
N. Rodgers: Nine hundred and twenty six thousand dollars of it was unclaimed. Some people come back
and say, hey, I left my $5.84 in change in your cup, and they get it out. Nine hundred and twenty six
thousand dollars, people are like, whatever because they're leaving it in 10 cent, 12 cent. You know
what I mean? A couple of quarters, whatever, but that stuff adds up and I just think that's hilarious. I'm
like, so on a good note, they are not stealing your loose change. You're leaving it behind and they're just
putting it in a bucket, and somebody gets the money. I'm assuming it goes into the budget of whatever
airport that is.
J. Aughenbaugh: But anyways, Nia, thank you very much. I enjoyed our discussion of the TSA.
N. Rodgers: Thank you, Aughie. I would like to end by saying, you know what, we do recognize these
people work very hard with almost impossible job. Even though I have been complaining most of this
episode, kudos to you, TSA, for showing up and doing the job.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, listeners, I know many of you have heard me say this in other contexts. TSA was
created post 9/11, and some of the constitutional issues that we made reference to in this episode have
never been truly deliberated and addressed.
N. Rodgers: Congress, you could help TSA out a bit by having an actual discussion.
J. Aughenbaugh: But that's for a different episode. For our listeners, if you're going to be flying, get to
the airport early.
N. Rodgers: Don't take a gun.
J. Aughenbaugh: Don't take a gun.
N. Rodgers: Don't have change in your pocket.
J. Aughenbaugh: Don't make smart ass comments when you're in line because that will lead to you
getting a pat down.
N. Rodgers: There you go.
J. Aughenbaugh: These are lessons learned from today's podcast.
N. Rodgers: Rules to live by.
J. Aughenbaugh: Thanks, Nia.
N. Rodgers: Thanks, Aughie.
You've been listening to civil discourse brought to you by VCU Libraries. Opinions expressed are solely
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Workshop for technical assistance. Music by Isaak Hopson. Find more information at
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