Posted on 06/12/2002 2:34:51 PM PDT by mconder
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- President George W. Bush (news - web sites) acknowledged Friday that his plan to reorganize the government so that one federal department has primary responsibility for defending against terrorist attacks will be a tough sell, but he expressed confidence that he will succeed.
"This is going to be a tough battle because we are going to step on people's toes. I understand that. You see, when you take power away from one person in Washington , it tends to make them nervous," Bush told supporters in Iowa .
"So, we are just going to keep the pressure on people in the United States Congress to do the right thing. I believe it is going to happen," Bush added.
To create the new department, which will draw 170,000 federal workers from existing agencies and have an annual budget of $37 billion, the Congress must pass new legislation.
Bush said it was essential that all the federal agencies that have responsibility for activities that could help in the defense of the country be brought under one roof.
"You see there are now over 100 different entities of agencies that deal with the homeland, which makes it kind of hard to hold anyone accountable. I believe in accountability in government. After all, you will hold me accountable," Bush said.
"Therefore, it is important to align authority and responsibility to create accountability," Bush said.
Earlier in the day, Bush met with several members of Congress at the White House to begin talking about how to get the government restructuring plan passed by the end of the year.
Bush also used the speech to go over a laundery list of other bills he wants Congress either to work on or to complete, including passing trade-promotion authority and backing up the insurance industry so that businesses can get terrorism insurance.
What are the only departments to be hit with real budget cuts in the past 10 years? Yes, thats right - defense. Even though the Constitution says that the only thing the government is responsible for is the defense of its people and the country, military and intelligence budgets were cut back while welfare and socialism budgets soared. Its only a matter of time before the next Frank Church appears and attacks the Office of Homeland Security and gives its budget to the Department of Eduction, for the children of course.
Except of course now . . . excluding the F.B.I.
What the President seems to mean is that he wants all the agencies capable of exercising martial power outside of the war department, to be "under one roof;" and, that he wants the same roof to cover the Central Agency for Information from Intelligence Agencies Division.</P
"Therefore, it is important to align authority and responsibility to create accountability," Bush said.
Mr. President, they are all, already accountable; it is up to you to enforce; but you delay.
Will the FBI replace the FAA? Will we have even more stupid regulations authored by bureaucrats even more removed from flying? Regulations which will kill off general aviation in America, one of the only places left in the world where people are free to fly?
We already have plenty of stupid regulations under the FAA. At Orlando Executive, for instance, many pilots fly there for Sunday Brunch at the "Eighth Bomb Group", a place decorated in WWII decor. You can taxi right up to the restaurant.
Unfortunately, the feds put up a chain link fence to keep potential evil-doers out of the airport, which also has the effect of keeping pilots out of the restaurant.
To eat there, you have to taxi your aircraft to Showalters on the opposite side of the airport and take a car or walk the several blocks to the restaurant.
I worked at the Kennedy Space Center at the time of the Challenger mishap, and saw firsthand how NASA tried to shift the blame for the accident onto the "little people" who had nothing to do with the O-Ring failure. They hired thousands of OC people to "watch" the contractors doing the work, and of course hired thousands more NASA overseers to "watch" everybody else.
IOW, they created a massive new bureaucracy which didn't address the problem, but made the guilty appear to "get their act together".
Likewise, I see the feds trying to shift the blame for their airline-security failures onto us little pilots.
How people who work, as well as people who work hard, can manage to not be aware of improvement to their lot, I suspect, is also how they are not quick to observe the nature of [an] organization though they may be concious of all an organization's shape and "who reports to whom."
You have observed the inverse relationship between accountability and organizational size --- where size was ordained by bureaucrats for the purpose --- not to fulfill a productive workload --- but to satisfy appearances of more work being done ("done," as in "stick a fork in it" IMHO).
And to position a greater network of "who reports to whom" as a buffer from "higher-ups'" addressing their responsibilities directly.
When you know that responsibility is what manifests accountability and such courage is what comes from people who will, again, address theirs ... instead of trying to get somebody else or something else to "do something about it."
As lavaroise said in Reply 6, above,
"...Bush is afraid of firing people..."
Precisely; President Bush is a political capitalista; it's his specialty. Trying to expect from him, wartime leadership responsibilities, applied, including his holding people accountable, is like trying to get that silk-tied and sun-tanned car lot salesman to drop what is his nature, selling, and attend to the direction of automobile manufacturing, distribution, and support.
But that nature of the man does not necessarily prohibit him from designating sub-ordinates to affect what he knows he himself lacks in skill (or courage).
It is a test of a man, to [learn to] know how and when to get help (yet this is no disgrace, though disgrace be the vanity of all too many leaders, all too sensitive to their weaknesses).
Unfortunately, the nature of the man may be to unwittingly accept help in unhelpful form --- an unproductive or counterproductive organization --- especially when the nature of the man and the nature of the organization will coincide, purposefully or incidentally, in almost a conspiracy-like project management set up to fail from the get-go.
Designed to fail, as they say --- the shape of the organizational chart, symbolic of work flow; the nature of the organization, to not.
In wartime, we need flow, and efficiently, economically. This means many calls to non-essential government services with orders to cease and desist.
These calls have not been happening, because the seriousness of the workload has not yet sunk in; you, in particular, you, snopercod, know this; we see the near-utter lack of build-up and replacement logistics which would attend serious situations. The nation sleeps.
Because our leaders are afraid to abandon their years of our suffering their mantra, that we should consequently observe how shallow they have been and are, wasting our resources on what is non-essential in peacetime; thinking that they have a right to do so.
Because we are "the wealthiest nation on earth."
Well we will see about that; it requires that we know how to preserve.
And the courage to do it, inspite of all odd[ball]s, foreign and domestic.
It's not necessary. I'm more and more against any new bureacracy for this reason :
1)We've known for 8 years Terrorists (OBL, etc.) were attacking the US and getting bolder and bolder, starting with the '93 WTC bombing.
2)The tools and people were in place to make connections (the memos, whistleblowers, etc. made that clear).
3)The system would have worked if mid-level managers had passed the relevant informatino onto their superiors, rather than cover it up in Clinton's old PC culture.
Actually it's not just socialists/leftists any more. Politicians in general, from both sides are concerned with power. They only care about our rights and thoughts when it comes time for elections. They will get away with whatever they can, if they run into problems, they either bomb or discuss bombing Iraq, or discuss some new arrest that's been made a while back, or some new lead or issue some new warning. This applied to clinton and it applies to Bush.
We have the right to vote.
Otherwise, leave the business of government to "doing the nation's business."
Message received.
bttt
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