top secret america - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

roachboy · 07-26-2010, 06:46 AM

Quote:

Why has the Post series created so little reaction?
By Glenn Greenwald

Remember how The Washington Post spent three days documenting on its front page that we basically live under a vast Secret Government -- composed of military and intelligence agencies and the largest corporations -- so sprawling and unaccountable that nobody even knows what it does? This public/private Secret Government spies, detains, interrogates, and even wages wars in the dark, while sucking up untold hundreds of billions of dollars every year for the private corporations which run it. Has any investigative series ever caused less of a ripple than this one? After a one-day spate of television appearances for Dana Priest and William Arkin -- most of which predictably focused on the bureaucratic waste they raised along with whether the Post had Endangered the Nation by writing about all of this -- the story faded blissfully into the ether, never to be heard from again, easily subsumed by the Andrew Breitbart and Journolist sagas.

Any doubt about whether there'd be any meaningful (or even cosmetic) changes as a result of the Post exposé (it was really more a compilation of already known facts) was quickly dispelled by the reaction of the political class: not just one of indifference, but outright contempt for the concerns raised by this story. On Tuesday -- 24 hours after the first installment appeared -- the Senate's Homeland Security Intelligence Committee removed a provision from the Intelligence Authorization Act which would have provided some marginally greater oversight over the Government's secret intelligence programs, because Obama was threatening to veto any bill providing for such oversight. Then, Obama's nominee to be the next Director of National Intelligence, Ret. Lt. Gen. James Clapper, all but laughed at the Post's work, dismissing it during his Senate confirmation hearing as "sensationalism," praising the bureaucratic redundancies as "competitive analysis," and insisting that the National Security and Surveillance State are perfectly "under control." The Post's Jeff Stein today documents how Congressional Democrats can barely rouse themselves to the pretense that they intend to do anything to impose any restraints or accountability on Top Secret America. And it was revealed this week by McClatchy that our vaunted "withdrawal of all combat troops from Iraq" will be accomplished only by assembling a privatized militia that will serve as the State Department's "army in Iraq" long after our actual army "withdraws."

Political elites don't even feel compelled to pretend to be able or willing to do anything about this. Just think about this: on Monday, the Post documents a vast Secret Government bequeathed with unimaginable secrecy and unaccountability, and the rest of the week is filled with stories of the administration's blocking greater oversight and plans to escalate the privitization of our National Security and Surveillance State. That's why there was so little government angst over the Post's "revelations": aside from the fact that it revealed little that wasn't already known (Priest and Arkin withheld substantial amounts of information at the Government's request), even the impact of having the Post trumpet these facts was not a threat to much of anything, since there's nobody in a position to do much about this even if they wanted to. And few people seem to want to.

It's not hard to understand why. Why would the political class possibly want to subvert or weaken their ability to exercise vast spying, detention, and military powers in the dark? They don't. Beyond that, as the Post series highlights, Top Secret America provides not only the ability to exercise vast power with no accountability, but also enables the transfer of massive amounts of public wealth to the private national security and surveillance corporations which own the Government. Very few people with political power have the incentive to do anything about that. It's probably best not to hold your breath waiting for Dianne Feinstein -- the Democratic Chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee who lives in lavish wealth as a result of her husband's investments in the National Security State (and whose Senate career has a way of oh-so-coincidentally bolstering their wealth) -- to meaningfully address any of the issues raised by the Post series. Despite Feinstein's rhetoric to the contrary, doing so is decidedly not in her interests for multiple reasons.

What ties together virtually every political issue is the one highlighted in this new article in The Nation by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Entitled "No to Oligarchy," it documents with an array of facts how America's wealth is rapidly becoming more concentrated in a tiny number of families while the middle class essentially disappears. As Sanders emphasizes, the outcome is not only the destruction of the "American dream," but serious threats to the very concept of a republican form of government:

Today, because of stagnating wages and higher costs for basic necessities, the average two-wage-earner family has less disposable income than a one-wage-earner family did a generation ago. The average American today is underpaid, overworked and stressed out as to what the future will bring for his or her children. For many, the American dream has become a nightmare.

But, not everybody is hurting. While the middle class disappears and poverty increases the wealthiest people in our country are not only doing extremely well, they are using their wealth and political power to protect and expand their very privileged status at the expense of everyone else. This upper-crust of extremely wealthy families are hell-bent on destroying the democratic vision of a strong middle-class which has made the United States the envy of the world. In its place they are determined to create an oligarchy in which a small number of families control the economic and political life of our country.

The 400 richest families in America, who saw their wealth increase by some $400 billion during the Bush years, have now accumulated $1.27 trillion in wealth. Four hundred families! During the last fifteen years, while these enormously rich people became much richer their effective tax rates were slashed almost in half. While the highest-paid 400 Americans had an average income of $345 million in 2007, as a result of Bush tax policy they now pay an effective tax rate of 16.6 percent, the lowest on record.

Last year, the top twenty-five hedge fund managers made a combined $25 billion but because of tax policy their lobbyists helped write, they pay a lower effective tax rate than many teachers, nurses and police officers. As a result of tax havens in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and elsewhere, the wealthy and large corporations are evading some $100 billion a year in U.S. taxes. . . .

But it's not just wealthy individuals who grotesquely manipulate the system for their benefit. It's the multinational corporations they own and control. In 2009, Exxon Mobil, the most profitable corporation in history made $19 billion in profits and not only paid no federal income tax—they actually received a $156 million refund from the government. In 2005, one out of every four large corporations in the United States paid no federal income taxes while earning $1.1 trillion in revenue.

[Quick: look over there at Pakistan, exclaims The New York Times: "Pakistan's Elite Pay Few Taxes, Widening Gap"]. Sanders quotes Teddy Roosevelt in 1910 explaining why a graduated estate tax was not only economically just but -- more important -- crucial to maintaining basic democratic values:

The absence of effective state, and, especially, national restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise.

What was once a word that only the most UnSerious of people would utter as applied to the U.S. -- "oligarchy" -- is today one that can't be avoided if one wants accurately to describe our political culture. Sanders warns of an "oligarchy in which a handful of wealthy and powerful families control the destiny of our nation." The second-ranking Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin, extraordinarily confessed last year that it is Wall Street banks which "frankly own" the Congress. In virtually every area, the subservience of Government to large business interests is so complete that it's impossible to find the line where government ends and corporate power begins. It's a full-scale merger. That's the central fact of our political life. Most everything else is a distraction.

That's why it's simultaneously so astounding and so unsurprising to watch the obscene spectacle unfold that is inevitably leading to cuts in Social Security. In his New York Times column today, Paul Krugman accurately observes that Republicans are attempting to rehabilitate Bush because they are the same GOP with the same platform as prevailed throughout the last decade, just decorated with some re-branding. That's all clearly true, but what isn't quite true is this paragraph:

In recent weeks, G.O.P. leaders have come out for a complete return to the Bush agenda, including tax breaks for the rich and financial deregulation. They've even resurrected the plan to cut future Social Security benefits.

It is absolutely beyond the Republicans' power to cut Social Security, even if they retake the House and Senate in November, since Obama will continue to wield veto power. The real impetus for Social Security cuts is from the "Deficit Commission" which Obama created in January by Executive Order, then stacked with people (including its bipartisan co-Chairs) who have long favored slashing the program, and whose recommendations now enjoy the right of an up-or-down vote in Congress after the November election, thanks to the recent maneuvering by Nancy Pelosi. The desire to cut Social Security is fully bipartisan (otherwise it couldn't happen) and pushed by the billionaire class that controls the Government.

The secret, omnipotent National Security State highlighted by The Washington Post will endure and expand as is because those who control the Government (or, as Dick Durbin put it, who "own" the Government) benefit endlessly from it. Major scandals or citizen-infuriating crises can sometimes lead to some modest and easily circumvented restraints being placed on this power (as just happened with the recently enacted Financial Regulation bill), largely to placate public rage, but it's simply impossible to conceive of the political class taking any meaningful steps to rein in a limitlessly powerful and unquantifiably profitable National Security and Surveillance State -- at least in the absence of serious citizen revolts against it. That Post series produced so little reaction because what it describes -- a Secret Government bestowed with the most extreme powers yet accountable to nobody -- is something to which the nation, as part of our State of Endless War, has apparently acquiesced as a permanent and tolerable condition.

Why has the Post series created so little reaction? - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

go to the original for extensive links.
the main one is here, to the washington post's series about "secret america"

Top Secret America | washingtonpost.com

i don't know if you read this series, but it's a pretty impressive catalogue of the explosion of public/private surveillance and/or espionage and/or "counter-terrorism" bureaucracies since 9/11/2001 prompted our boys on the right to turn the Giant Spigot of Unlimited Resources straight onto one of the central patronage networks that conservatives rely on to operate.

other folk have been tracking the evolution of an off-the-map public/private "Security" apparatus:

Trevor Paglen

and i suppose your relation to the washington post piece may be a function of the extent to which this information comes as a surprise.

note that the greenwald blog excerpt with which this post started links the explosion of "secret america" to the increasing class polarization brought about by conservative economic policies----which converge on the question of oligarchy, of the suppression of the surface features of us "democracy" ---which i don't think it unreasonable to be concerned about.

then there's the non-response to this series, which makes one wonder if anyone actually gives a shit.

this post:

PressThink: The Afghanistan War Logs Released by Wikileaks, the World's First Stateless News Organization

concludes with this observation:

Quote:

I’ve been trying to write about this observation for a while, but haven’t found the means to express it. So I am just going to state it, in what I admit is speculative form. Here’s what I said on Twitter Sunday: “We tend to think: big revelations mean big reactions. But if the story is too big and crashes too many illusions, the exact opposite occurs.” My fear is that this will happen with the Afghanistan logs. Reaction will be unbearably lighter than we have a right to expect— not because the story isn’t sensational or troubling enough, but because it’s too troubling, a mess we cannot fix and therefore prefer to forget.

Last week, it was the Washington Post’s big series, Top Secret America, two years in the making. It reported on the massive security shadowland that has arisen since 09/11. The Post basically showed that there is no accountability, no knowledge at the center of what the system as a whole is doing, and too much “product” to make intelligent use of. We’re wasting billions upon billions of dollars on an intelligence system that does not work. It’s an explosive finding but the explosive reactions haven’t followed, not because the series didn’t do its job, but rather: the job of fixing what is broken would break the system responsible for such fixes.

The mental model on which most investigative journalism is based states that explosive revelations lead to public outcry; elites get the message and reform the system. But what if elites believe that reform is impossible because the problems are too big, the sacrifices too great, the public too distractible? What if cognitive dissonance has been insufficiently accounted for in our theories of how great journalism works… and often fails to work?

I don’t have the answer; I don’t even know if I have framed the right problem. But the comment bar is open, so help me out.

so what do you think?
is "top secret america" too big, too much for folk to handle?
are we watching a case of collective cognitive dissonance in action?

and what about the information contained in this story?
is it news to you?

i'll reserve comment for a little while: i'm interested in what you think.

Cimarron29414 · 07-26-2010, 08:32 AM

I was also surprised at the small response. In truth, there's been more reaction to the lack of reaction than to the series itself.

Yes, our government is too big - in EVERY way.

The right is no more responsible than the left.

dksuddeth · 07-26-2010, 10:02 AM

I thought that most people felt that the 'small government libertarian' viewpoint was just a quaint and outdated concept? Isn't big government all the rage nowadays?

The_Dunedan · 07-26-2010, 10:16 AM

Quote:

Why has the Post series created so little reaction?

Mostly because the people who've been making this same point, using these same sets of allegations and information, for the last fifteen years, have gotten sick of being smeared, insulted, belittled, demeaned, informed-upon, insinuated-against, attacked, libeled, slandered, and browbeaten from Left (during the Clinton and Obama regimes), Right (ditto Bush), and Centre (all of the above) by the very people who now indignantly demand (no, RB, not referring to you in this case) "where were you guys when...?"

Leftists ask "Where were you assholes when Bush was XYZ-ing?" Duh, we were protesting right along with you guys, if you'd bothered to pay attention instead of casually insulting your fellow travelers. Yes, believe it or not, gun-toting Capitalists -can- be anti-war, anti-drug-war, and anti-PATRIOT Act!

Rightists ask "Where were you jerks when Clinton was 123-ing?" Duh, Hannibaugh, we're the ones you called "fruitcakes" and "Wackos From Waco" and who spent 6/8 Clinton years trying thanklessly to call attention to Billy Jeff's -actual- crimes while y'all were busy going into an apoplexy about a friggin' dress and a chubby intern.

Duh. We were saying the same things then that we are now. We've just gotten tired of being asked to prove we no longer beat our wives.

roachboy · 07-26-2010, 11:00 AM

that's all very nice except

(a) this is specifically about the development of a new public/private complex of surveillance/"counter-terrorism"/"security" institutions since 9/11/2001. this poses a basic problem from all these references to clinton.

(b) this sector is not--i repeat not---a matter of "big government." well it is, but the lines are all blurry, just as the lines are blurry in the context of the rumsfeldian "lean and mean" military with its extensive reliance on private contractors/mercenaries/infrastructure providers/friends of friends to provide what were at once point functionalities that the military itself would have done. now in the name of "shrinking government" we get these public/private complexes which are doubly free from any accountability--first behind the veil of secrecy second behind the veil of private-ness.

so there's little if any connection between "big government" slogans and what's detailed in the washington post reports.

if size were in itself a value criterion, i could even see more paranoid libertarians being cool with this arrangement since it involves so much private sector activity. and i can also see that the absolute lack of accountability for the private sector would not be a problem until something happened that made it into one. then folk would be all "wait...i thought private equaled good, but here i can't seem to even start to mobilize..."

at the same time (here i contradict myself almost) there is a longer-term history behind this sector.this metastasis of "security" bureaucracies public and private and the unbelievable amounts of money that's been poured into them (and the lack of co-ordination, and the lack of mapping and the lack of control) is a "resolution" of the "problem" of what to do about the national security state after the cold war.

the national security state is a conservative patronage network par excellence.
and it is very much about a contempt for democratic process that made it the exact parallel of what it was set up to oppose (state of emergency anyone?)
so this is the institution framework for the oligarchy version of the united states, the one that dispenses with any pretense to democratic process.

to my mind, the reasonable response to the end of the cold war would have been to dismantle the national security state altogether---but it appears that there's WAY too much money at stake, WAY too much power at stake for that to happen. so 9/11/2001 was like a giant gift from the cosmos, one that gave this loathesome structure courtesy of the truman administration a reason to mutate.

that's what i think we're talking about here. a specific "security" apparatus that plays by its own special rules.
and under the figleaf of "security" this sector has grown wild.
but have a look at the data.

The_Dunedan · 07-26-2010, 11:44 AM

Quote:

(a) this is specifically about the development of a new public/private complex of surveillance/"counter-terrorism"/"security" institutions since 9/11/2001. this poses a basic problem from all these references to clinton.

Except that the USA PATRIOT Act was mostly a pistache of Clinton-era "anti-terrorism" policies which were dreamed up in the wake of Oklahoma City, shot down by the Gingrich/Hannibaugh contingent, and then ressurected after 9/11. How do you think they came up with the damned thing so fast? Most of it was already written.

Quote:

(b) this sector is not--i repeat not---a matter of "big government." well it is, but the lines are all blurry, just as the lines are blurry in the context of the rumsfeldian "lean and mean" military with its extensive reliance on private contractors/mercenaries/infrastructure providers/friends of friends to provide what were at once point functionalities that the military itself would have done. now in the name of "shrinking government" we get these public/private complexes which are doubly free from any accountability--first behind the veil of secrecy second behind the veil of private-ness.

Which objections (corruption of Private Property, transparency issues, etc) have been being raised for a long time, especially in regards to "private" military contractors and prison construction/administration firms. Libertarians add the further objection that an allegedly "private" company which takes money (and therefore orders) from the Gov't is no more "private" than any other mercenary. Such situations also further and worsen the market distortions caused by Corporate Personhood. William Grigg has some excellent writings on this particular topic going back to the late 90s; I'll find the link to his older stuff, but check out the Pro Libertate blog for newer materiel.

Seaver · 07-26-2010, 12:36 PM

Trying not to threadjack... but I honestly can't make myself give two shits while I've been unemployed for 8 months now and still no job in sight.

raging moderate · 08-01-2010, 06:34 AM

EXACTLY

people don't "have time" to care about this type of issue b/c 1) they can't take care of it themselves and 2) because they don't perceive it as affecting their daily lives.

plus we have so many gadgets and distractions to play with! we'd have to look up from our computer screens and iphones before we'd ever be able to even see what's going on around us

Plan9 · 08-01-2010, 08:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

I thought that most people felt that the 'small government libertarian' viewpoint was just a quaint and outdated concept?

That's a hoot. Turns out you have to have some education, a job, and some money in the bank to be a libertarian.

Word on the street suggests that America is currently hurting for two of those (and the third but they're largely obliviously).

Seaver · 08-01-2010, 12:17 PM

Quote:

That's a hoot. Turns out you have to have some education, a job, and some money in the bank to be a libertarian.

Word on the street suggests that America is currently hurting for two of those (and the third but they're largely obliviously).

Read more: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/tilted-...#ixzz0vO4FpCqc

Reminds me of the chef saying about cooking meat.

"You can have it fast, you can have it good, and you can have it cheap. Now pick 2."

hunnychile · 08-01-2010, 12:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaver

Reminds me of the chef saying about cooking meat.

"You can have it fast, you can have it good, and you can have it cheap. Now pick 2."

Every business I've worked in over the last 18 years uses this line. It's older than dirt.

As for the government, remember that they want to be the Number 1 in the
G8 or is that G12 this week....that seems to change every month depending upon who's sitting at whom's round or oval table.

hiredgun · 08-01-2010, 01:13 PM

Of the two recent large-scale 'revelations' in US media - the WikiLeaks effort, and this one -I think this is actually of far greater real import to ordinary Americans. Unfortunately, because it sheds light on a difficult and abstract set of problems, I imagine it was doomed to be ignored, especially when compared with the racy excitement of secret documents smuggled out of military networks.

Every major indictment made in the article is essentially true, and is common knowledge among govvies and contractors alike. Among these:
- too many people
- too inexperienced because the agencies have grown so rapidly
- too much money spent on too many contracts, many of them enormous projects that never produce anything of value (especially true for large IT projects)
- too much duplication of effort (while at the same time, the separate efforts can't benefit from each other's work)
- a prevailing sense that we're spending huge amounts of money to provide very weak answers to impossibly difficult questions. (this was always really fascinating to me. the army and other government folks seemed to feel that there were certain questions they were ill-equipped to answer but if only they could bring in contractors to work their magic, the questions would become easy. contractors are only too happy to oblige. if the customer asks whether you can do something, the answer is always yes. and if you let your conscience get the better of you and say no, there is always some other huckster willing to say, sure, we can find terrorists via twitter, or design a super-magic-data-sharing solution, or design a piece of hardware that does x, y, and z (on budget, and on time...)

- pessimism that there's really any way to get a handle on which spending/programs are effective. this is the worst charge, because it indicates that reform is essentially impossible in the near-term...

So I'm not sure this is much of a contribution to the thread, really... just an acknowledgement that these problems are real and well-known and that I've never met anyone who believes we can really solve them and that if you're a contractor that basically means stop worrying about it, preserve your sanity, work as hard as you can on the projects you're given and trust that if something nonsensical is going on, it's not your fault but the government's and how could you know whether what you're doing makes sense anyway?

remy1492 · 08-01-2010, 11:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by raging moderate

EXACTLY

people don't "have time" to care about this type of issue b/c 1) they can't take care of it themselves and 2) because they don't perceive it as affecting their daily lives.

Raging hit it well.

Take away people's freedom but give them free cable TV and reality TV shows, and they will not notice.
Take their money, and hours out of their lives in taxes, but give some back and make it seem like Free Money, they will feel grateful.
Run a shadow government of insiders, corruption and theft, but tell the people you are just like them, smile and wave, and they feel happy.

This is nothing new, this is how most governments work. This is NOT how the Republic system of the US was supposed to be however.
You may notice an article like that, but trust me, just like in the Matrix. If you mention it or talk about it, the rest of the sleeping people in the Matrix will oust you and your crazy rock-the-boat ideas, so as to preserve the Matrix.

Every society, before its decline, reaches a point of discomfort and turns to bayonets and guillotines. What will it take to make us that uncomfortable?

-massive unemployment (wont happen with more fake money being printed and a never ending unemployment paycheck)

-impossible living costs, food etc (wont happen, gov is subsidizing food prod with the same fake money being overprinted)

-freedoms being lost. What freedoms? All people want is text messaging, internet, TV and shopping. Give them that and they will burn the Bill of Rights when asked.

-Meteor. Happened 65m years ago to Dinosaurs. ok, this one actually IS plausible.

07-26-2010, 08:32 AM	#2 (permalink)
Cimarron29414 Still Free Location: comfortably perched at the top of the bell curve!	I was also surprised at the small response. In truth, there's been more reaction to the lack of reaction than to the series itself. Yes, our government is too big - in EVERY way. The right is no more responsible than the left. __________________ Gives a man a halo, does mead. "Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly."

07-26-2010, 10:02 AM	#3 (permalink)
dksuddeth Junkie Location: bedford, tx	I thought that most people felt that the 'small government libertarian' viewpoint was just a quaint and outdated concept? Isn't big government all the rage nowadays? __________________ "no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

07-26-2010, 11:00 AM	#5 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	that's all very nice except (a) this is specifically about the development of a new public/private complex of surveillance/"counter-terrorism"/"security" institutions since 9/11/2001. this poses a basic problem from all these references to clinton. (b) this sector is not--i repeat not---a matter of "big government." well it is, but the lines are all blurry, just as the lines are blurry in the context of the rumsfeldian "lean and mean" military with its extensive reliance on private contractors/mercenaries/infrastructure providers/friends of friends to provide what were at once point functionalities that the military itself would have done. now in the name of "shrinking government" we get these public/private complexes which are doubly free from any accountability--first behind the veil of secrecy second behind the veil of private-ness. so there's little if any connection between "big government" slogans and what's detailed in the washington post reports. if size were in itself a value criterion, i could even see more paranoid libertarians being cool with this arrangement since it involves so much private sector activity. and i can also see that the absolute lack of accountability for the private sector would not be a problem until something happened that made it into one. then folk would be all "wait...i thought private equaled good, but here i can't seem to even start to mobilize..." at the same time (here i contradict myself almost) there is a longer-term history behind this sector.this metastasis of "security" bureaucracies public and private and the unbelievable amounts of money that's been poured into them (and the lack of co-ordination, and the lack of mapping and the lack of control) is a "resolution" of the "problem" of what to do about the national security state after the cold war. the national security state is a conservative patronage network par excellence. and it is very much about a contempt for democratic process that made it the exact parallel of what it was set up to oppose (state of emergency anyone?) so this is the institution framework for the oligarchy version of the united states, the one that dispenses with any pretense to democratic process. to my mind, the reasonable response to the end of the cold war would have been to dismantle the national security state altogether---but it appears that there's WAY too much money at stake, WAY too much power at stake for that to happen. so 9/11/2001 was like a giant gift from the cosmos, one that gave this loathesome structure courtesy of the truman administration a reason to mutate. that's what i think we're talking about here. a specific "security" apparatus that plays by its own special rules. and under the figleaf of "security" this sector has grown wild. but have a look at the data. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 07-26-2010 at 11:04 AM..

07-26-2010, 12:36 PM	#7 (permalink)
Seaver Junkie Location: Fort Worth, TX	Trying not to threadjack... but I honestly can't make myself give two shits while I've been unemployed for 8 months now and still no job in sight. __________________ "Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

08-01-2010, 06:34 AM	#8 (permalink)
raging moderate Insane Location: Whatever house my keys can get me into	EXACTLY people don't "have time" to care about this type of issue b/c 1) they can't take care of it themselves and 2) because they don't perceive it as affecting their daily lives. plus we have so many gadgets and distractions to play with! we'd have to look up from our computer screens and iphones before we'd ever be able to even see what's going on around us __________________ These are the good old days... formerly Murp0434

08-01-2010, 01:13 PM	#12 (permalink)
hiredgun Addict	Of the two recent large-scale 'revelations' in US media - the WikiLeaks effort, and this one -I think this is actually of far greater real import to ordinary Americans. Unfortunately, because it sheds light on a difficult and abstract set of problems, I imagine it was doomed to be ignored, especially when compared with the racy excitement of secret documents smuggled out of military networks. Every major indictment made in the article is essentially true, and is common knowledge among govvies and contractors alike. Among these: - too many people - too inexperienced because the agencies have grown so rapidly - too much money spent on too many contracts, many of them enormous projects that never produce anything of value (especially true for large IT projects) - too much duplication of effort (while at the same time, the separate efforts can't benefit from each other's work) - a prevailing sense that we're spending huge amounts of money to provide very weak answers to impossibly difficult questions. (this was always really fascinating to me. the army and other government folks seemed to feel that there were certain questions they were ill-equipped to answer but if only they could bring in contractors to work their magic, the questions would become easy. contractors are only too happy to oblige. if the customer asks whether you can do something, the answer is always yes. and if you let your conscience get the better of you and say no, there is always some other huckster willing to say, sure, we can find terrorists via twitter, or design a super-magic-data-sharing solution, or design a piece of hardware that does x, y, and z (on budget, and on time...) - pessimism that there's really any way to get a handle on which spending/programs are effective. this is the worst charge, because it indicates that reform is essentially impossible in the near-term... So I'm not sure this is much of a contribution to the thread, really... just an acknowledgement that these problems are real and well-known and that I've never met anyone who believes we can really solve them and that if you're a contractor that basically means stop worrying about it, preserve your sanity, work as hard as you can on the projects you're given and trust that if something nonsensical is going on, it's not your fault but the government's and how could you know whether what you're doing makes sense anyway?