CONGRESS AT FAULT FOR SECRET SERVICE FAILURE

The media is saturated with stories concerning security breaks at the White House and on an elevator in Atlanta. I am not surprised or impressed with the average response, the fury of the coverage, or with the superficial nature of the investigation; it is business as usual. As expected, the congressional hearing advertized as looking “in depth” into what happened, is no more than a media circus giving congressional members camera time for their righteous indignation. I listened to the hearings and heard nothing that was not already in the media. The only solution I heard was fire the Secret Service Director. One congressional representative mentions the broad sweep of the sequestration as a cause but a fellow member severely castigated her for mentioning it. In the associated coverage, one of the reporters mentions the uniformed secret service officers were short staffed due to shortage of funds, was therefore overworked, and consequently had low moral but that was the extent of the explaination. In addition to the White House breech, several congressional members mention a person with a gun who was on the elevator with the president in Atlanta was a “low level” contractor security guard.

I wonder how many people see the connection of this near disaster and our over all “government on the cheap” economic approach to government and realize that what this approach is giving us is exactly the opposite of what we want. I make this remark in reference to “small government” people like Joe Scarborough on MSNBC, who constantly say they want smaller government but of course, they are inevitably the first one to criticize the government when something like this happens. Classically, they say we should have had an advance team investigating everyone the president would be in contract with him. Do they know how much this would cost? The interesting thing is that people like Joe often embellish their remarks with something like, “we ought to have more highly trained secret service agents” or “there ought to be a law” against this or that. Being patriotic Americans, they demands our president and his family be protected, wither it cost a lot of money or not. Surprisingly, even these penny-pinchers and the radical Obama haters put all the blame for the Secret Service failure on the director, and demanded the president fire her.

There was a contractor involved in the Atlanta episode because there is a massive belief, especially among conservatives that private contractors can do a better job than government. We never seem to learn that many, if not most, private contractors are there to rip-off the taxpayers. For some odd twist of reason, Republicans seem to think that if taxpayers pay contractors—privatization—it doesn’t cost money. We have been experiencing that same swindle for centuries but it is getting worse with time. A contractor, more than likely paid directly by the government, hired the man with the gun who was on the elevator. Among other things, he had a criminal history. I assume he had a gun permit, which should mean someone, vetted him, as being mentally competent—perhaps a clerk in a gun store acted as a psychologist. However, more that likely, in our gun crazy culture, even that did not happen. If we examined the contractor’s books, I will guarantee that the U. S. Treasury or some government treasury paid big money to a company executive with an organization (big office and office staff, etc,) to provide security—to do what Secret Service could do better. Look at what we got for our money? U.S. congressional representatives, both Republicans and Democrats, were adamant, during the hearings that the U.S. Secret Service be faulted for not doing that same thing all over again because, and get this; because “the Secret Service could do it better”. Last time I looked, the Secret Service (even if under funded), is the government. Do I have to point out these Representatives are the same people who demand that private contractors can do it better. Jeremy Scahill wrote his book, Blackwater (2007) as an exposé about the privatization of the military including cooks and plumbers, Privatization made Dick Cheney, among many, many others, made millions and millions of dollars for doing a very, very poor job’ ever hear of private contractors being killed on the front line? No but you did hear about soldiers being electrocuted while showering. Ever hear of an ex criminal on an elevator with the president with a gun that was vetted by a private contractor. Well, I have. It wasn't the director who was blaming someone else, it was Congress.  

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