I'm pretty sure they're ALSO confiscating the items or making them be checked or whatever.

I don't advocate being rude to public employees. My dad spent most of his career working for government (20+ Army, 10+ DOD civilian) and I've worked for the Army and state universities.

I'm just saying having a bad attitude shouldn't be a fineable offense--sure as hell absent due process.

My parking tickets, for example, warn that if I don't pay or file a court claim within 30 days, the fine will double. I think it's crappy, but it's within the law if it is done correctly.

This year my wife wants to visit Fairbanks -- it will have been five years since we moved away -- and unfortunately we have to use the airlines to get there.

Lucky for me they can't fine me for two and a half solid years of bad attitude. Yet.

As for the issue of whether a govt. employee "gets" to be rude or not: If you want a certain level of quality from your govt. employees, you should be prepared to pay for it. You don't always get lovely helpful shining examples of humanity when you pay the lowest price you can. As the govt. continues to privatize various functions, in fact, you can expect more and more rude behavior, because the companies competing for the contracts are going to keep their pay as low as they possibly can to 1) gain the contracts in the first place, and 2) maximize their profits. In fact, it's not just the attitude that's going to suffer, it's the general level of quality in all such metrics.

But hey, at least it's cheap, right? Yeah, right.

This sort of illustrates my point (not really, but pretty close). There's a Fry's and a Safeway across the street from each other in my neighborhood. Fry's has slightly cheaper prices, but significantly snottier clerks and marginally worse meat & produce. So I shop at Safeway, where I have to pay a little more.

But like I said, that's not quite the point. Cause the government does pretty much have a monopoly on the services they provide. But, when they start outsourcing their services to the lowest bidder, you can't expect that the quality is going to be what you want it to be.

(actually, wasn't there a big push to privatize TSA after 9/11? I can't remember the details. Did I hallucinate that?)

As for checking or mailing a prohibited item, it seems that if I don't pay attention to what I put in my bag then I should pay for the checking/mailing not the TSA. It's your stuff in your luggage then you pay for it. Seems like there would be a good business in having a stand selling boxes, envelopes and stamps at the airport.

Now they're telling me I could be fined because one TSA person decided something was dangerous that no other TSA person would??? No wonder I'm developing an attitude....