TSA waste map

However, this is not a clear message. It's full of visual noise that provide little insight.

For example, the 3988 employees in the D.C. headquarters have an average salary of $103,852. That's $90,304 if you take out the single person who got paid $5.4 million. (Who was it? It's only mentioned as an anonymous statistic.) I also found "Total compensation for federal workers [in DC], including health care and other benefits, last year averaged $126,369, compared with $122,697 in 2009."

This seems to imply that TSA workers at the DC headquarters are being paid less than average for a federal worker in DC, so isn't that a good number?

The timeline towards the bottom is meaningless. Nothing happened in 2007 or 2008, and there was a rush of events in 2011? Not likely! It's only the things the author wanted to use. Plus, the length of the connectors between the dots doesn't mean anything. Oh! And why isn't there a connection from 2011 to 2012?

Then there's the strange insertion of Ron Paul into the discussion. So what if he raised $250,000 in three days? Lady Gaga's bracelet raised the same amount in the same time for for Japan Relief, and gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna did the same for his race. Does that mean that I should send money to Japan, or support McKenna for governor?

The claim that we could save $1 billion in hiring private security for the 35 biggest airports is quite suspect. The TSA budgets for FY 2011 was roughly $8.1 billion, of which $4,809 million was for 'aviation security.' The argument is that private security can reduce the price by 20%? By only changing security at 35 of the 450 or so airports with TSA staff? Color me doubtful.