Barbara Boxer

Someone thinks she should be President. Why? Who the heck knows..

One of Boxer's more infamous bills where I work is this one. It involves putting the latest classified countermeasures gear from military aircraft on commercial airliners at government expense.

I was at a class populated by air defense and aircraft survivability people in Washington in 2003 when this came out. Suffice it to say that no one there thought it was a good idea. The first thing that bothered us is the cost. We are talking about $10 billion dollars or so, just to get them installed. Thats a lot of money and the International Air Transport Association considers it prohibitive.

The sad thing is that it is the smaller of the cost concerns. The second and more important costs are maintenance and security. This system will have to be serviced on a large scale over the entire commercial airliner fleet by trained professionals with the necessary security clearances and in a secure environment. That won't come cheap. It must also be protected from prying eyes and prying spys while the plain is simply sitting on the tarmac being loaded with baggage. This is an even bigger deal.

So nobody can afford this, but who cares its an example of "The Republicans aren't securing the Homeland!" so lets run with it anyway.