Lots of Americans have smelly feet. They find it very embarrassing having to take their shoes off in public.

I had no problem with the TSA until they gave me the opportunity to buy my way out of security. I can handle being poked a bit, so long as everyone else is poked all the same.

1. Added burden compared to pre-TSA days. This varies considerably from airport to airport, as some are much more efficient than others. Also, the regulations today are more relaxed than they were when TSA first started up. They have eased off over time, such as now allowing children and seniors to keep their shoes on; and instituting a pre-check category of preselected exempt passengers.

2. Perception that TSA is ineffective, so there is little return for the burden/expense. TSA was implemented after 9/11, but there were still some high-profile security breaches like the shoe bomber. Is the lack of plane hijackers now the result of TSA security measures, or simply because nobody is trying? If you really wanted to bring something weapon-like aboard a plane, it is pretty easy to imagine a way to do it that would defeat current TSA measures. Maybe you couldn't bring a machine gun, but you could manage something more effective than the fingernail clippers or a 3.5 oz. bottle of evian water.

3. Heavily publicized bad PR incidents. TSA has had several controversial incidents that resulted in public outrage, like using body scanners to check out women's bodies and make inappropriate comments about passengers. Or forcing children away from their parents for patdowns.

You can't develop a terrorist profile since back in the early 1970s a terrorist snuck a bomb into the luggage of his pregnant Irish wife and sent her off on El Al without telling her about it. Even a few years ago there were reports of suspicious, but not lethal objects found in children's stuffed toys where they had been left unattended.

You have lots of complaints of people still being kept off planes because their names show up on terror lists that never got updated and TSA agents doing things that violate existing guidelines.