1. United States
2. Alaska
3. Letter

Today I found out we are no longer represented by a union step 1 of the plan to privatize the TSA. Privatizing the TSA to save minuscule amounts in the budget will lead to a focus on profit over public safety. It will lead to high turnover and a drop in the security of decent pay and benefits to 55,000 Americans who take their job of keeping planes safe seriously. In Alaska we barely retain enough staff to do the job now with good pay and benefits. The government puts all employees through rigorous background checks and training. The United States has more airports than other countries. Our population is distributed at the coasts but with cities and towns throughout the country. Before 9/11 security contracts were awarded to the lowest bidder. Officers were poorly trained and turnover was high. You hear that we fail tests but those tests are like crash tests designed to fail to improve the process and we did use those tests to improve our processes. Contracting out or public services will only lead to higher costs to enrich the technocrats. It will make things worse for thousands of workers who dedicated themselves to protect the nation’s transportation system. I don’t think that government is bloated and needs to be cut but if cuts are to be made then do it slowly and carefully with input from both sides over many years like the RIF done under Clinton. Per capita the US is actually near the bottom of industrialized nations on government spending and also on how many federal workers there are compared to the rest of the population. We have 15 percent employment in (state, local and federal) government as and countries like Sweden and Norway have 30 percent. Even countries like Austria, Latvia and Slovakia have more workers in government than the US. We are below the average of industrialized nations. Our government budget per capita is 32 percent which is lower than the majority of industrialized nations and many countries that are poorer than us. The speed at which the firings and privatizations is happening without going through Congress is done with the purpose to set up a kleptocracy where the majority suffer and a few very rich people benefit at the expense of others. They are doing it to get rid of people who are not loyal to them. The bulletpoints are done with the intent to justify firings. They literally wrote out plans to do this and follow even more extreme people like Curtis Yarvin who is quoted by J D Vance and buddies with Musk and Vought. The Office of Special Counsel was illegally fired even though his position is not supposed to be partisan and protected. All the checks and balances and guardrails are being trampled on.