Learning from Big Government Bureaucracy when it Fails Us

After President Bush Signed into law the new airport security legislation after 911 creating a new multi layered bureaucracy called the TSA people were joking about how a bunch of idiots were going to put on fancy new uniforms to pretend to protect all of us from terrorists. Then came the Shoe bomber and everyone was forced to take their shoes off to get though airport security. Senator Ted Ed Kennedy ended up on the no fly list. Innocent 90 year old domestic grandmothers were reported stripped naked and interrogated as potential terrorists. The signs were apparent that the joke about the fancy new suits had already come true as expected! Would be terrorists were all the time observing the new security protocol and systems in place with an eye to finding a way to defeat it. By Christmas 2009 they almost had figured out how to defeat the system in a way that would make the government security operations look a comedy team of boobs a few steps lower down the mental retardation level than the three stooges or recipients of the Darwin awards. Being government workers none of them can ever be fired short of committing some vile crime that they actually plead guilty to.

The day after the terrorist scare, The president is not apologizing but is talking about getting to the bottom of it what ever that means. What went wrong is already on the news. The terrorist from Nigeria's father reported that his son was likely going to be a problem and no less to the American Embassy. The man responsible for the attack was already placed on watch lists by various agencies. The news almost immediately came out that in the Amsterdam airport that the suspect did raise warning flags from detection equipment that he might have had a bomb or bomb making materials on his person. He did board an American plane bound for the US as a foreign national possibly without a passport and maybe without a valid visa. The terrorists had already figured out that on holidays like Christmas the best most experienced security personnel would be on leave to celebrate the holidays in most western/ Christian countries. The terrorists clearly picked a day like Christmas for their planned attack because contrary to the anti-profiling stance of the US PC government that most love to attack on a holiday that attacks the enemy's perceived opposing religion. The terrorists knew there was a short window of opportunity with somewhat more lax security over the Christmas new years. Foreign monitors picked up chatter in advance that people in Yemen were looking to counter attack the US for recent blows taken by their own people blamed on the USA. Information became available on this a few days after the attack in the news media. Not only are the holidays understaffed by the best security people but they have some of the heaviest traffic of the year stretching thin the general security process. The terrorists seemed to know this was their window of opportunity.

The terror suspect had the help of an other person with some influence at the departing airport helping the suspect to get past security and airline regulations and onto the plane. More details of government ineptitude then just keep coming out in the press probably with more to come. The suspect was not searched as much as Grannie might have been the same day even being on various watch lists and having tripped warning signals before getting to the departure gate. The same thing seemed to happen when USGS monitors figured that they "did not know who to call" Christmas day or Christmas eve when the 9.0 quake hit the coast of Indonesia and they certainly were predicting a very large Tsunami was possible. Maybe because of Christmas the best people were not left minding that office either and a large number of people especially at Western resorts along the indian oceans with English satellite Television links could have spread some warnings. The terrorists also knew damn well that the news media would be on vacation or asleep too at Christmas time. Had the terrorists sent out more than one bomber that day it could have been catastrophic because sending just one decreased their chances of success not thanks to Big Government security but thanks to the passengers on the plane that was attacked. It was in spite of big expensive government security that this actually happened.

Then after the attack came the big government knee jerk reactions. The passengers would be punished with stupid new rules that passengers would not be allowed to have blankets on their labs, their tray tables down over their laps or read books for the last hour of a flight and who knows maybe random passengers would have to be stripped naked just in case too. The first thing a bureaucracy does, even when no one can ever be fired, is to deflect the blame to the blameless. Here was a terrorist with a rap Sheet at and a warning on his label who set off all the bells and whistles of the security system that it was designed to set off that actually got on the plane with what seemed to be explosive materials going though detection equipment. At least these are the reports one keeps hearing on radio and television. What comes next? Probably a billion dollar investigation. If you ever wonder why Rome and Imperial Ancient China collapsed it clearly was due to entrenched bumbling bureaucracy that had the same sort of attitude ours does today that they know better than we do for our own good in all cirucmstances. That is why so many American are screaming mad that the congress is passing a health care system that will force people to buy more expensive health care insurance that gives them less for the money, then tax them on all medical devices to make medical care more expensive for those who already care barely afford it and still not cover 50 million people but will be sure illegal aliens can see doctors before showing up at emergency rooms. The American people know that big goverment is only interested in it's own self interest which is Why the congress has once again exempted itself and their families from the same health care nightmare they are planning to subject the rest of to. The Obama administration promises to put more spiffy white medical gowns on more people who are not even doctors to spend more federal money pretending everyone is getting healthier under the new plan- it's guaranteed just like our airline and national homeland security with the expanded TSA. Of course their are true believers in Obama care because they imagine the government actualy gives a damn about them. These people are the same ones who went out to protest against the draft during the Vietnam war and have not figured out yet that big government really has not changed and did not even listen to their own democrats party people as the ones again calling for popular conscription citing the need to make the all volunteer army one that fairly takes the children of more well to do people without free will being involved. A quick reading of the health care bill that seems to be the one passing makes it hard to understand how it is anyone believes they are getting some new health care benefits as an entitlement at all except for special deals for particular states that get exceptions or Medicare dollars phased out for the rest of the states. It just seems unbelievably corrupt.

Big government has once again proved that big fancy complex systems like commercial air travel security just might not work very well at all when really put to the test. Fortunately the terrorist suspect tried to mix his suicidal flammable chemicals in his lap. He had been reported to have had third degree burns to his legs. Hopefully he burned away his inner thighs too. Unfortunately for the passengers that saved the plane from burning they had to save the suspect too. Now he will get to grand stand his nonsense ideology in a Manhattan court room with 911 suspects and a bunch of civilian lawyers that hope to make household names for themselves prosecuting and defending these terrorists. The more big government they say the better? Right?

It was only this year that the Army corp of engineers admitted in a court room that it was not maintaining the sea walls in new Orleans properly as their primary purpose but instead were building fancy new headquarters buildings and bike paths on subsiding levees. Amazingly someone sued the government and actually won their case against the Army crop but no one ever gets fired for was obviously incompetence and inadequacy. How did the United States of America Ever end up with this lopsided system of paternalistic bureaucratic life time mandarins and a unionized communist party trying to run state government services? If only the nobility class of eight to one hundred and twenty thousand dollar a year government employees felt a chill down their spines that they could actually be fired for not doing good work maybe they wound not make as many horrible mistakes. Most Americans can't understand they all know if they have a boss in the private sector there is a good chance at any time they can be fired. It is interesting to note that in most private organization people when they don't know what to do tend to try to ask or double check before taking any authority. That does not seem to be true with government were too many people have a power and glory complex. There seems to be a law of economics where in big government the more expensive and complex something is the better and smarter it is supposed to be. If it costs too little and is too effective it is not worth trying.

The terrorists are probably watching with glee how the US government reacts to the recent unsuccessful attack just because it was effective enough to force the government to change the entire system , to get the president on television more than once, to put fear in air travelers and to find out how many incompetents will get to keep their same old jobs with more enhanced authority afterwords. This is the reason that the costly means of defense going back to ancient roman walls and the great wall of china never managed to give those countries any long term security regardless of their very high costs. Just having a system or putting up a major wall tells the enemy how to get around it, find its weak spots or find ways to breach it. Sometimes the better system might be less of a system, less predictability and more ordinary citizens involved without all the special benefits?

The lessons learned are just about the same ones ignored during and after Katrina, 911 and the recent stock market crash where the solutions seemed to be political favoritism or complete disorganization with government in panic mode. One solution to airline security might be to have private security companies do what government is proving itself incapable of and at least then as contractors they can be fired when they fail to preform properly.

The worst revelations are yet to come from this case as it may still be the case this Nigerian terrorist was on a plane bound for the USA without a valid passport and he had paid for a one way trip ticket in cash at the airport the moment he arrived there and he tripped the mechanical detection equipment alarms and got though security and possibly US official were forewarned by departing airport officials and they had a chance to review his warning files in advance of letting him on the plane. In a way we all sort of hope that something like that should have occurred even without any hindsight.