Archive for September, 2010
Postal Service’s Financial Woes
The U.S. Postal Service is in a lurch after Congress wrapped up business until November without giving the USPS a break on a $5.5 billion retiree health benefits payment that’s due tomorrow. Combined with an expected loss in the billions of dollars, the USPS could run out of money in October.
In addition, the USPS’s regulator today rejected the USPS’s request for an exigent postal rate increase. The Postal Regulatory Commission acknowledged that the recession has led to a substantial decline in mail volume. However, the PRC rejected the request because the rate adjustments “represent an attempt to address long-term structural problems not caused by the recent recession.”
The PRC singled out “an overly ambitious requirement for the Postal Service to prefund its future retiree health benefit premiums.” The prefunding requirement stems from a 2006 law that sought to address unfunded obligations for retiree health benefits. Last year, Congress agreed to reduce the USPS’s 2009 payment by $4 billion in order to help it keep its head above water.
Congress did not provide such relief this year, which some members of Congress have inappropriately criticized as being a “taxpayer bailout.” However, allowing the USPS to defer its obligations only increases the possibility that future taxpayers could be on the hook. Therefore, policymakers who are critical of giving the USPS another break are correct when they state that the government mail monopoly needs to be substantially reformed.
The PRC’s rejection of the rate increase request points to the problem with the government trying to run a business. If UPS or FedEx had to ask a federal regulatory body for permission to raise prices for their services, it’s unlikely that either would survive.
As I’ve previously discussed, the USPS is currently trying to get Congress’s blessing to eliminate Saturday service. While it’s ridiculous that the American people are forced to use a government monopoly that wants to raise prices while simultaneously degrading services, having to get Congress’s approval to alter delivery schedules is a serious problem for a commercial operation.
Postal management has succeeded in cutting costs, but still lacks the necessary flexibility that a private firm would possess. For instance, if the USPS wants to close post offices, it has to jump through numerous regulatory and congressional hoops. Last year, for example, the USPS proposed consolidating 3,000 postal outlets, but following a congressional outcry, the number under consideration was reduced to a paltry 157.
While the USPS has been able to eliminate a substantial number of employees through attrition, the USPS’s predominantly unionized workforce continues to account for 80 percent its costs. When weighing a decision on postal union contracts, arbitrators are not allowed to take the USPS’s financial situation into consideration. In addition to extracting benefits that are generous even by federal employee standards, inflexible union contracts also make it difficult for the USPS to efficiently manage its workforce.
Beyond the nostalgic depictions of the USPS being a “national asset” that “binds the nation together” is the unglamorous fact that it provides a service just like millions of other commercial outfits. Electronic communication and other technological advances are making the USPS’s mail monopoly increasingly irrelevant. Instead of haggling over six-day mail delivery and retiree health benefit prefunding formulas, Congress should start focusing its attention on getting the government out of the mail business once and for all.
Three Views of Matt Ridley
Matt Ridley’s new book, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, is garnering rave reviews. Ridley, science writer and popularizer of evolutionary psychology, shows how it was trade and specialization of labor–and the resulting massive growth in technological sophistication–that hauled humanity from its impoverished past to its comparatively rich present. These trends will continue, he argues, and will solve many of today’s most pressing problems, from the spread of disease to the threat of climate change.
The Cato Institute has now presented three different looks at the book, with a review in the Cato Journal, another in Regulation, and an event at Cato with Matt Ridley himself.
Powell on Ridley
My colleague Aaron Powell published the first Cato review of The Rational Optimist with a piece in the Fall 2010 edition of the Cato Journal (pdf).
What The Rational Optimist makes clear, in perspicuous prose and enchanting storytelling, is that, just as biological evolution populated the world with the wondrous variety of life, exchange allowed one of those species to achieve a wondrous standard of living that will only improve and become more uniform as we trade and invent.
Powell doesn’t find the book flawless, however. He identifies two problems that weaken Ridley’s argument, the first dealing with the “circular and unconvincing” nature of his claim that trade caused our human ancestors to achieve humanity. The second concern is broader. Powell writes,
It would be easy to get the impression Ridley is Pollyannaish. If nuclear annihilation, super flus, and starvation are nothing to be worried about, what possibly could be? Unfortunately, Ridley’s response to this critique is less convincing than it could be, for he fails to adequately draw a line between when an anticipated disaster is real and when it’s just pessimism writ large.
Henderson on Ridley
David R. Henderson reviews the book in the latest issue of Regulation (pdf). Like Powell, Henderson enthusiastically endorses the style and substance of Ridley’s book, though without identifying the weaknesses highlighted in the former review. His only point of contention with The Rational Optimist is a “jarring misstatement” regarding trade and value. Henderson writes,
Given the important role of trade in Ridley’s theory, and given his obvious understanding of trade, it is surprising that he makes a jarring misstatement: “For barter to work,” he writes, “two individuals do not need to offer things of equal value. Trade is often unequal, but still benefits both sides.” The correct statement is: “For barter or trade to work, individuals must offer things of unequal value.” If I valued what I give up the same as what I get in return, there would be no point in trading. Trading is always an exchange of unequal values.
Henderson goes on to defend Ridley against the negative appraisal his book received in the New York Times. That review, written by famous foreign-aid critic William Easterly, attacked The Rational Optimist for its take on Africa and for failing to “confront[] honestly all the doubts about the ‘free market.’” “Really?” Henderson responds. “All the doubts? I do not know if such a book could be written with the requisite amount of evidence and have under 3,000 pages.”
Ridley on Ridley
And then, of course, there’s the source himself. In May, Ridley spoke at a Cato Institute book forum about The Rational Optimist. He discussed the core arguments of his book and concluded (optimistically) that technology and trade have now made it possible to stop trying to keep the world from getting worse, and instead focus on making it better.
As with all Cato events, full video and audio are available for download on www.cato.org. Or watch it right here:
McDonald’s Case Highlights ObamaCare’s Threat to Low-Income Workers’ Health Insurance, Political Freedom
Many employers, such as McDonald’s, provide health benefits that are less comprehensive than most. They may have an annual claims limit of $10,000 or less. But if you’re young, healthy, and need to pinch your pennies, that may suit you just fine. According to Jerry Newman, a SUNY-Buffalo professor who wrote a book about working at McDonald’s, “For those who didn’t have health insurance through their spouse, it was a life saver.”
These are the health plans (and the workers) that are seeing the highest premium increases under ObamaCare. The Wall Street Journal reports:
Trade groups representing restaurants and retailers say low-wage employers might halt their coverage if the government doesn’t loosen a requirement for “mini-med” plans, which offer limited benefits to some 1.4 million Americans…
McDonald’s, in a memo to federal officials, said “it would be economically prohibitive for our carrier to continue offering” the mini-med plan unless it got an exemption from the requirement to spend 80% to 85% of premiums on benefits…”Having to drop our current mini-med offering would represent a huge disruption to our 29,500 participants,” said McDonald’s memo…
Insurers say dozens of other employers could find themselves in the same situation as McDonald’s. Aetna Inc., one of the largest sellers of mini-med plans, provides the plans to Home Depot Inc., Disney Worldwide Services, CVS Caremark Corp., Staples Inc. and Blockbuster Inc., among others, according to an Aetna client list obtained by the Journal. Aetna also covers AmeriCorps teaching-program sponsors, who are required by law to make health coverage available.
Aetna declined to comment; it has previously indicated that the requirement could hurt its limited benefit plans.
“There is not any issuer of limited benefit coverage that could meet the enhanced MLR standards,” said Neil Trautwein, a vice president at the National Retail Federation, using the abbreviation for medical loss ratio.
Yet again, we have evidence that President Obama’s oft-repeated pledge that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan” should have come with a disclaimer: Offer not valid for low-income workers.
Not to fear, says the Obama administration. According to Bloomberg:
The government may allow some low-cost plans like those offered at McDonald’s, which have limited benefits, to get waivers from the health law’s insurance requirements, according to a Sept. 3 Health and Human Services memo. Those requirements were waived for McDonald’s on Sept. 24, [HHS spokeswoman Jessica] Santillo said.
Sorry, but I don’t find it comforting that ObamaCare gives HHS the power to waive these regulations on a case-by-case basis. Power corrupts. We’ve already seen HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius use other powers granted her by ObamaCare to threaten insurers who contradict the party line about the law’s cost. The waiver power gives her another club to use against insurers and employers who complain about the law or donate to the wrong political campaigns. (Will Home Depot, Disney, CVS, Staples, or Blockbuster dare to misbehave?)
Any such criticism now triggers an autonomic reflex among administration spokesmen where they regurgitate the lines, “Americans have seen what happens when insurance companies have free rein. The Affordable Care Act ends insurance companies’ worst abuses.”
As if giving bureaucrats free rein to engage in abusive government practices is an improvement.
Filed under: Cato Publications; General; Government and Politics; Health Care
Fiscal Report Card on the Governors
We released Cato’s report card on the fiscal policies of the governors today. We calculated data on the taxing and spending habits of 45 of the nation’s 50 governors, between 2008 to August 2010.
The governors are scored from 0 to 100 on seven separate taxing and spending variables. The scores are aggregated and converted to letter grades, A to F.
Four governors earned an “A” this year: Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Mark Sanford of South Carolina, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. You can read the report to find out what these governors did right from our limited-government point of view.
As it turns out, the residents of these four states seem to like the fiscal stance of their winning governors, who favor tax cuts and spending restraint.
Pawlenty has a 52 percent approval rating in quite a liberal state.
Jindal has a 74 percent approval rating.
Manchin has a 69 percent approval rating.
Sanford has a 55 percent approval rating, despite the troubles in his personal life.
Governors shouldn’t just focus on being popular in a superficial sense. These polls tell us that governors who focus on cutting taxes and spending in an honest and intelligent way will be supported by the people.
P. J. O’Rourke on Tour
P. J. O’Rourke, Cato’s H. L. Mencken Research Fellow, is touring the country to talk about his new book, Don’t Vote: It Just Encourages the Bastards. He’ll be doing these Cato events:
September 30 San Francisco, Palace Hotel
October 7 Los Angeles, Beverly Wilshire
October 13 Dallas, Ritz-Carlton
October 14 Houston, Four Seasons
October 28 Washington, Cato Institute
Pretty swanky digs for a guy who once wrote Holidays in Hell. And sorry, San Franciscans — obviously I should have posted this a week ago. But if you’re a Cato Sponsor, you read about it in Cato Policy Report and you got an invitation.
You can find more book signings and media appearances at www.pjourke.com.
Eliot Cohen’s Key to Victory: Shut Up
Today’s Washington Post features an op-ed by John Hopkins’ SAIS professor Eliot Cohen arguing – via a series of fictional statements — that the Obama team’s decision to speak with Bob Woodward is likely to have a devastating impact on our ability to win in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The technique is too cute by half. I could just as easily come up with a series of quotes by people who believe that the costs of the war in Afghanistan far exceed the benefits. (e.g. The widow of a soldier killed in Afghanistan, upon reading the Woodward excerpts, bursts into tears. “Why have we chosen to fight a war that Gen. Petraeus admits we will likely never win, and which our children and grandchildren will be fighting?”)
By the same token, Cohen employs Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Benjamin Netanyahu to make his case that Obama is weak. How hard would it be to make up fictional statements by two other heads of state — say, by allies who have pulled out of Afghanistan, or are preparing to — that they are encouraged to see that someone in the U.S. government recognizes that the war in Afghanistan is a gross misallocation of resources and is looking for ways to refocus counterterrorism efforts, and away from a decades-long nation-building mission that is likely to fail? Not hard.
But I refuse to play Cohen’s game according to his rules. Better to focus on the flaws of his underlying argument — to the extent that there is one — that the reason we aren’t winning this/these war/wars is because the president’s aides are talking out of school. If they just shut up, and did what the generals said (some of whom, by the way, must also be talking to Woodward) we’d be on the road to victory.
Please.
As with an earlier Afghanistan story that began with a few ill-considered remarks to a reporter, we shouldn’t be focused on the fact that people talk off the record. That is the story that Cohen and other war-hawks tell. The more important story is that the Afghan strategy is fatally hamstrung by 1) an unreliable local partner, a necessary ingredient for any successful counterinsurgency campaign; 2) a profound lack of trust between the Afghan people and the American/NATO counterinsurgents; and 3) a complete mismatch between the ends sought and the resources (time, money, troops) available.
I have no idea how Cohen responds to points one and two. Those two problems are not unique to Afghanistan, and the absence of those two conditions has doomed many other counterinsurgency missions.
As for number three, Cohen might believe that talking about victory will convince the American people that they should back the military’s preferred strategy, which OMB said would cost $889 billion over the next 10 years (on top of the $250+ billion already spent), as the best possible use of money that we do not have. Indeed, Cohen has apparently convinced himself that the American people would be anxious to spend another ten or twenty years bogged down in a distant land trying to rebuild roads and schools, if only the president talked about it more often. Cohen might even believe, contrary to all evidence, as well as basic common sense, that the U.S. government is capable of creating a functioning nation state in Afghanistan, and that it constitutes a vital U.S. national interest to make that happen.
In short, Eliot Cohen believes that President Obama shouldn’t question how the Afghan mission aligns with our vital security interests, or even if it is achievable. He’d rather that he just shut up, believe in it — really believe –and back the generals.
I disagree. Where Cohen scorns (via proxies spouting imagined off-the-record quotes) internal administration deliberations as dangerously misguided, I am perversely encouraged that the president seems at least willing to ask hard questions, and that some of his advisers understand the utter futility of the current enterprise.
Of course, I’d be even happier if President Obama did what past presidents have done: determine the strategy, give the order, and expect the military to carry it out. And if the military leaders that he has won’t do it, he can find others. There are lots of them.
ARMs as Automatic Stabilizers
An argument often heard for keeping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or some sort of subsidy for mortgages, is the desire to keep the 30 year fixed rate mortgage “affordable.” The 30 year fixed certainly has some merits – which borrowers should be willing to pay for – but it also has the downside of reducing the impact of monetary policy in stabilizing the economy.
Generally interest rates go down in a recession and up in an expansion. Part of this is the reaction of the Federal Reserve, which tends to cut rates in a recession, but part is also the fact that the demand for credit also declines in a recession and increases in an expansion.
If borrowers moved to adjustable rate mortgages, then in recessions they would likely see a reduction in their mortgage rate, resulting in a reduction in their monthly payment, which would increase their disposable income, which itself should have some positive impact on consumption, helping to stabilize a weak economy.
The reverse would work in an expansion. If the economy became over-heated, interest rates would likely go up, pushing up monthly payments, resulting in reductions in income and consumption. While of course this would be unpleasant for the borrower, it would have the benefit of moderating a booming economy, reducing the likelihood of inflation and the occurrence of bubbles.
The latter effect would also increase the degree to which consumers care about inflation and demand price stability from the central bank. Normally, borrowers have an incentive to favor inflation, as it reduces the real value of their debt. If however, inflation resulted in an increase in their mortgage rate, their preference could switch toward price stability, which would in the long run be better for growth and the overall economy.
While I do not expect the above to settle the debate over the role of the 30 year fixed rate mortgage, we, as a society, should openly and loudly debate its costs and benefits before we simply assume it needs to be subsidized.
Overhauling CBO and JCT Is a Real Test of GOP Resolve, not the ‘Pledge to America’
While I’m glad Republicans are finally talking about smaller government, I’ve expressed some disappointment with the GOP Pledge to America. Why “reform” Fannie and Freddie, I asked, when the right approach is to get the government completely out of the housing sector. Jacob Sullum of Reason is similarly underwhelmed. He writes:
In the “Pledge to America” they unveiled last week, House Republicans promise they will “launch a sustained effort to stem the relentless growth in government that has occurred over the past decade.” Who better for the job than the folks who ran the government for most of that time? …Republicans, you may recall, had a spending spree of their own during George W. Bush’s recently concluded administration, when both discretionary and total spending doubled — nearly 10 times the growth seen during Bill Clinton’s two terms. In fact, says Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, “President Bush increased government spending more than any of the six presidents preceding him, including LBJ.” Republicans controlled the House of Representatives for six of Bush’s eight years.
Redemption is a good thing, however, so maybe the GOP actually intends to do the right thing this time around. One key test is whether Republicans do a top-to-bottom housecleaning at both the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation.
These Capitol Hill bureaucracies are not well known, but they have enormous authority and influence. As the official scorekeepers of spending (CBO) and tax (JCT) bills, these two bureaucracies can mortally wound legislation or grease the skids for quick passage.
Unfortunately, that clout gets used to dramatically tilt the playing field in favor of bigger government. It was CBO that claimed that Obama’s stimulus created jobs, even though the head of CBO was forced to admit that the jobs-created number was the result of a Keynesian model that was rigged to show exactly that result . You would think that would shame the bureaucrats into producing honest numbers, but CBO continues to produce absurd job creation estimates regardless of the actual rate of unemployment.
CBO favors deficits and debt when it is asked to analyze proposals for more spending, but it rather conveniently changes its tune when the discussion shifts to tax increases. Since we’re on the topic of twisted economic analysis, CBO actually relies on a model which, for all intents and purposes, predicts that economic performance is maximized with 100 percent tax rates.
The Joint Committee on Taxation, meanwhile, is infamous for its assumption that taxes have no impact – at all – on economic output. In other words, instead of showing a Laffer Curve, JCT would show a straight line, with tax revenues continuing to rapidly climb even as tax rates approach 100 percent. This creates a huge bias against good tax policy, yet JCT is impervious to evidence that its approach is wildly flawed.
And don’t forget that CBO and JCT both bear responsibility for Obamacare since they cranked out preposterous estimates that a giant new entitlement would lead to lower budget deficits.
Not that we need additional evidence, but the head of the CBO just repeated his higher-taxes-equal-more-growth nonsense in testimony to the Senate Budget Committee. With this type of mindset, is it any surprise that fiscal policy is such a mess?
Douglas Elmendorf said extending breaks due to expire at year’s end would increase demand in the next few years by putting more money in consumers’ pockets. Over the long term, he said, the tax cuts would hurt the economy because the government would have to borrow so much money to finance them that it would begin competing with private companies seeking loans. That, in turn, would drive up interest rates, Elmendorf said.
I’ve already written once about how the GOP sabotaged itself when it didn’t fix the problems with these scorekeeping bureaucracies after 1994. If Republicans take power and don’t raze CBO and JCT, they will deserve to become a permanent minority party.
First Lady Asks Nurses to Engage in Legislative Advocacy with Their Patients
No, seriously. First Lady Michelle Obama is asking nurses to promote ObamaCare to their patients.
With hundreds of thousands of medical errors occurring each year — a problem that ObamaCare does nothing to address — this is exactly what I want my nurse thinking about as she’s inserting a needle into my arm.
Filed under: Cato Publications; General; Government and Politics; Health Care
Head Start Fraud
It’s been a tough week for the Department of Health and Human Services. As I discussed earlier, the Government Accountability Office reported on fraud problems with the Child Care and Development Fund program. Another new report from the GAO finds fraud problems with HHS’s Head Start program.
GAO investigators attempted to register children from fictitious families in Head Start programs in six states and the District of Columbia. The GAO created 13 fictitious families that earned too much income or possessed other characteristics that would disqualify the children from participating in Head Start. The result is embarrassing:
In 8 out of 13 eligibility tests, our families were told they were eligible for the program and instructed to attend class. In all 8 of these cases, Head Start employees actively encouraged our fictitious families to misrepresent their eligibility for the program. In at least 4 cases, documents we later retrieved from these centers show that our applications were doctored to exclude income information for which we provided documentation, which would have shown the family to be over-income. Employees at seven centers knowingly disregarded part of our families’ income to help make over-income families and their children appear to actually be under-income. This would have had the effect of filling slots reserved for under-income children with over-income children. At two centers, staff indicated on application forms that one parent was unemployed, even though we provided documentation of the parents’ income. A Head Start employee at one center even assured us that no one would verify that the income information submitted was accurate.
The GAO finding is not surprising given that previous reports show that HHS does a poor job administering the program.
In 2000, the GAO found that 76 percent of Head Start grantees reviewed were not in compliance with financial management standards. In a subsequent review, more than half remained out of compliance. In 2005, the GAO reported that HHS still couldn’t adequately identify financial management weaknesses of Head Start grantees. In 2008, the GAO reported that HHS still had not undertaken a comprehensive assessment of Head Start’s risks, and said that it had made “little progress” in ensuring that the data it collects from grantees are reliable.
But as a Cato essay on Head Start explains, the program’s biggest problem is that it isn’t effective in helping children from low-income families succeed later in life:
In 2010, HHS released a long-anticipated study of Head Start’s effectiveness, which is the most rigorous analysis to date. The program is supposed to give disadvantaged children a “head start” in life. However, the study found almost no advantages to children in kindergarten and grade one from having gone through Head Start, compared to children who had not.
Of the 112 measurements in the new HHS study—which covered areas such as academics, socio-emotional development, and health—only a handful showed any statistically significant benefit to participants of Head Start. In addition, most measured benefits disappeared once more rigorous statistical methods were applied. In other words, there was virtually no benefit to children of having attended Head Start.
After 45 years and $166 billion in spending, it’s apparent that this Great Society relic isn’t the best way to help disadvantaged children.
Opponents of federal welfare programs are often accused of being unconcerned about the needs of the poor. However, the burden of proof should be on the advocates who claim that federal bureaucracies and concomitant subsidies are the best option for assisting the less fortunate. Head Start, and other smoldering embers from the Great Society’s “War on Poverty,” continues to show otherwise.
KFF/HRET Survey, Part III: Employers Can’t Shift to Workers a Cost that Workers Already Bear
In a previous post, I promised to address the negative spin that the Kaiser Family Foundation put on its annual Employer Health Benefits Survey, released this month. I do so in an op-ed that ran today at the Daily Caller. An excerpt:
The Kaiser Family Foundation recently issued its annual survey of employer-sponsored health benefits, declaring: “Family Health Premiums Rise 3 Percent to $13,770 in 2010, But Workers’ Share Jumps 14 Percent as Firms Shift Cost Burden.” That’s half-right — but the other half perpetuates a myth about employee health benefits that stands in the way of real health care reform….
[Y]ou pay the full cost of your health benefits: partly through an explicit $4,000 premium and partly because your wages are $9,770 lower than they otherwise would be.
Kaiser therefore claims the impossible when it says that firms are shifting costs to workers. Employers cannot shift to workers a cost that workers already bear. Yet this year, as in past years, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, CNN, Kaiser Health News, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post uncritically repeated the cost-shifting myth.
The bolded sentence is Cannon’s Second Rule of Economic Literacy. (Click here for the first rule.)
I have also collected a series of excerpts from past Kaiser Family Foundation surveys showing this is a persistent issue. Here are a few:
1998: “Workers in small firms bear a much larger share of the financial burden for health benefits than employees of larger firms.”
2005: “The average worker paid $2,713 toward premiums for family coverage in 2005 or 26% of the total health premium.”
2007: “Annual Premiums for Family Coverage Now Average $12,106, With Workers Paying $3,281”
The folks at the Kaiser Family Foundation were exceedingly gracious when I approached them to discuss this issue.
Strip-Search Machines on the International Scene
This week, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano is pressing countries around the world to use “strip-search machines,” low-power x-ray and radio wave scanning devices that reveal what is underneath travelers’ clothes. The machines provide a small margin of security at a high risk to privacy.
And those privacy risks are manifesting themselves overseas. On AllAfrica.com, news service This Day reports on how strip-search machines have been used to peep at travelers as nudes in Lagos, Nigeria:
[D]uring off-peak periods, the aviation security officials, who are trained on the use of the scanners, usually stroll from the cubicle located in a hidden corner on the right side of the screening area where the 3D full-body scanner monitors are located. They do so to catch a glimpse of some of the passengers entering the machine and immediately go back to view the naked images, in order to match the faces with the images since the faces are blurred on the monitors while passengers are inside the machine.
The report notes that one of the “conventional scanners”—a magnetometer, most likely—was put out of service to corral people into the strip-search machine.
Italy has abandoned strip-search machines after a six-month test, due both to privacy issues and “because they are slow.” This is the sleeper issue that may soon wake as more machines show up in our airports: Strip-search machines take a very long time compared to magnetometers.
There are more than half a billion enplanements in the United States each year. If each traveler is delayed by 10 seconds, strip-search machines would waste nearly 1.4 million hours of Americans’ time directly—much more if you include the schedule-padding that all fliers would have to practice to avert strip-search machine delays.
The margin of security provided by these machines is small. In an interview on Fox’s local affiliate in D.C. last night, I said, “If we go down the strip-search machine route, there’s going to be more methods of concealment, and we certainly don’t want the TSA looking there.”
Hopefully, my poor grammar distracts you from the full import of that line.
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