Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Accountability
“ ACCOUNTABILITY”
The world is aflutter over “bad boy” Edward Snowden.
I am not.
Snowden is a bit player in what should be a standing room only trial for anyone charged with leading the information gathering required for the defense of this nation.
The greatest nation on earth spends the largest sum of money on earth to uncover information designed to protect the citizenry. Just to be certain you are following my argument: we are talking billions of dollars a year.
In carrying out this task there are hundreds of thousands of employees at home and abroad, known and unknown, from receptionists to cloak-and-dagger agents.
They work in buildings with “state of the art” security systems. They talk in code. They carry multiple passports and speak many languages. They are known to have the most sophisticated weapons with new inventions being added to their inventory daily.
The President of the United States makes crucial decisions based on the information provided to him by these people.
The decisions made by the President of the United States affects people all over the world.
Back to Snowden.
He is a junior player for a firm our government contracted to help them do business. I emphasize: even with the billions of dollars and hundreds of thousand employees our government is still contracting with management consulting firms to help them get the job done.
The outside consultants hire people like Edward Snowden.
It is unlikely he was subjected to any of the scrutiny we would give to someone actually applying to work at the NSA or the CIA. Yet we gave him the keys not only to the front door of our security apparatus but also to the safe where we keep the most sensitive stuff.
Evidently he was not only pretty good using the keys we gave him but also very effective at stuffing one or more suitcases with all the paper and discs he could carry right out into the street in front of the building.
He was able to purchase tickets and haul our national secrets from the homeland to Hong Kong.
Let us remember you and I cannot get access to a commercial airliner if we happen to have one bottle of water on our person. Good old Ed carried the secrets of the free world right over to the center of Communism.
So lets just forget about Ed.
We need to put on our big boy pants and get really angry with our government. While the New York Times and other papers launch a campaign to provide Ed with a first class ticket home and a ticker tape parade down Broadway, we should be looking for bigger game.
Last time I looked the same guy was running the CIA who was running it before Snowden got his 15 minutes of fame. Ditto the guy at the NSA. Ditto the guy at the FBI. Ditto the Senators who chair committees charged with supervising intelligence. Ditto the Congressmen.
The responsibility for this embarrassing international mess rests way above the pay grade for a clerk like Snowden.
I am angry that neither the President nor the Congress has seen fit to “deep six” or at least “drop kick” a few of these highly paid and poorly performing spy agency heads.
And I have a secret suspicion that the same consulting firm that gave the keys to the kingdom to Edward Snowden is still getting government checks while they continue to help us out.
On this matter, as on so many other matters lately, we seem unwilling or unable to hold anyone accountable for their performance.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
I'm Just Wild About Harry
NOTES OF CONCERN...
.....Jack Blair
“I’m Just Wild About Harry “
(and Bess)
This was the title of a song by Eubie Blake for a Broadway Musical but in my mind it applies to Harry Truman. Over the Christmas Holiday I was watching C-Span’s program on First Ladies, specifically about Bess Truman, and it reminded me of how much I admired Harry Truman.
When FDR picked Missouri Senator Harry S. Truman his health was failing. Knowing how shrewd Roosevelt was, it is a certainty in my thinking that he felt the Senator from Missouri would be a good successor.
As it turned out, Harry S. Truman succeeded to the presidency in a very short time after Roosevelt’s historic fourth term electoral victory.
The Roosevelts, over many years, had assembled many personal things in The White House. They had tables, sofas, chairs, pictures, paintings etc. When Harry and Bess Truman moved into The White House, they brought only their piano from their small Washington apartment.
Harry Truman respected the presidency and demanded that others do so. He did not require that they like him personally but that they honor the position.
It is reported when he entered The White House he made an inventory of the items in his desk, right down to the number of pencils. When he left The White House he made certain all those items were still present in his desk drawer ready for Ike’s use.
When he returned to his home in Independence, Missouri, he told reporters who were present that he would respond to their questions after he “carried the valises into the house.” No servants. No Secret Service. No personal aides.
Harry and Bess were happy to be at home in Missouri. After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Congress provided Secret Service protection to former presidents. Truman railed against this. His position was that if someone had wanted to assassinate him they would have done so between 1952 and 1963.
As the Secret Service tried to convince him to permit them a presence on his property and the opportunity to protect him, he refused. This resulted in their having to establish a perimeter of protection and operate off the Truman property, across the street, in a house they had to buy.
In the 1960’s I worked on the advance staff of The White House. Specifically, I was working a trip by President Nixon to speak to newspaper editors and publishers to be held in Kansas City, Kansas.
It was understood that sitting presidents who traveled to geographic areas where former presidents lived would make a courtesy call on the former president. Accordingly, Nixon would call on Truman in Independence, MO. Truman didn’t want to see him and Nixon didn’t want to go. Bess stepped in with an illness that sent her to the hospital and Nixon grabbed onto that as a reason not to bother Harry with a visit and I was tasked with going to Independence to hand deliver a letter from Nixon to Truman.
So fate provided me an opportunity to meet a man I had so admired.
I will never forget the warm and pleasant atmosphere of a small town that boasted a former leader of the free world as a resident. From the Victorian that served as home to Harry and Bess they looked out their windows on their friends and neighbors. In their safe little neighborhood Harry would take his daily constitutional. Like so many American families, the house was inherited from parents. In this case, it was the home in which Bess had grown up.
If living in a big white house on Pennsylvania Avenue and traveling all over the world to be greeted by kings, queens, dictators, despots, and people from so many nations impressed them one would be hard pressed to find any evidence of it.
Bess Truman probably spent less time in The White House than any other First Lady. She preferred Independence, MO. In Harry’s collected letters you can find many written to Bess from The White House telling her how much he missed her and how lonely he was when she was away.
Bess Truman hosted royalty at The White House but it was well known that the party she planned with greatest care and concern was the one she gave for her bridge club from Missouri when they came to visit her in Washington.
Harry and Bess Truman were great examples of what I believe government should be.
They were plain people with simple needs who stepped up to serve for a period of time during which their greatest dream was to return home to the simple pleasures of life in Independence, MO. They did not expect the people of the United States to provide for them, to protect them, or to see to their every need when their service was done.
They were citizen servants in the great history of government. Their term of service did not change who they were. They knew exactly who they were when they went to the presidency and when they left.
Bottom line: they were glad to “help out.”
.....Jack Blair
“I’m Just Wild About Harry “
(and Bess)
This was the title of a song by Eubie Blake for a Broadway Musical but in my mind it applies to Harry Truman. Over the Christmas Holiday I was watching C-Span’s program on First Ladies, specifically about Bess Truman, and it reminded me of how much I admired Harry Truman.
When FDR picked Missouri Senator Harry S. Truman his health was failing. Knowing how shrewd Roosevelt was, it is a certainty in my thinking that he felt the Senator from Missouri would be a good successor.
As it turned out, Harry S. Truman succeeded to the presidency in a very short time after Roosevelt’s historic fourth term electoral victory.
The Roosevelts, over many years, had assembled many personal things in The White House. They had tables, sofas, chairs, pictures, paintings etc. When Harry and Bess Truman moved into The White House, they brought only their piano from their small Washington apartment.
Harry Truman respected the presidency and demanded that others do so. He did not require that they like him personally but that they honor the position.
It is reported when he entered The White House he made an inventory of the items in his desk, right down to the number of pencils. When he left The White House he made certain all those items were still present in his desk drawer ready for Ike’s use.
When he returned to his home in Independence, Missouri, he told reporters who were present that he would respond to their questions after he “carried the valises into the house.” No servants. No Secret Service. No personal aides.
Harry and Bess were happy to be at home in Missouri. After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Congress provided Secret Service protection to former presidents. Truman railed against this. His position was that if someone had wanted to assassinate him they would have done so between 1952 and 1963.
As the Secret Service tried to convince him to permit them a presence on his property and the opportunity to protect him, he refused. This resulted in their having to establish a perimeter of protection and operate off the Truman property, across the street, in a house they had to buy.
In the 1960’s I worked on the advance staff of The White House. Specifically, I was working a trip by President Nixon to speak to newspaper editors and publishers to be held in Kansas City, Kansas.
It was understood that sitting presidents who traveled to geographic areas where former presidents lived would make a courtesy call on the former president. Accordingly, Nixon would call on Truman in Independence, MO. Truman didn’t want to see him and Nixon didn’t want to go. Bess stepped in with an illness that sent her to the hospital and Nixon grabbed onto that as a reason not to bother Harry with a visit and I was tasked with going to Independence to hand deliver a letter from Nixon to Truman.
So fate provided me an opportunity to meet a man I had so admired.
I will never forget the warm and pleasant atmosphere of a small town that boasted a former leader of the free world as a resident. From the Victorian that served as home to Harry and Bess they looked out their windows on their friends and neighbors. In their safe little neighborhood Harry would take his daily constitutional. Like so many American families, the house was inherited from parents. In this case, it was the home in which Bess had grown up.
If living in a big white house on Pennsylvania Avenue and traveling all over the world to be greeted by kings, queens, dictators, despots, and people from so many nations impressed them one would be hard pressed to find any evidence of it.
Bess Truman probably spent less time in The White House than any other First Lady. She preferred Independence, MO. In Harry’s collected letters you can find many written to Bess from The White House telling her how much he missed her and how lonely he was when she was away.
Bess Truman hosted royalty at The White House but it was well known that the party she planned with greatest care and concern was the one she gave for her bridge club from Missouri when they came to visit her in Washington.
Harry and Bess Truman were great examples of what I believe government should be.
They were plain people with simple needs who stepped up to serve for a period of time during which their greatest dream was to return home to the simple pleasures of life in Independence, MO. They did not expect the people of the United States to provide for them, to protect them, or to see to their every need when their service was done.
They were citizen servants in the great history of government. Their term of service did not change who they were. They knew exactly who they were when they went to the presidency and when they left.
Bottom line: they were glad to “help out.”
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Happy New Year
Dear Readers,
It is the first day of 2014 and I wanted to write and thank you for following my blog, Notes of Concern, and for the comments many of you have shared with me about the topics on which I have written.
This comes with every best wish that this year will bring you happiness, good health and prosperity.
Jackson Blair
It is the first day of 2014 and I wanted to write and thank you for following my blog, Notes of Concern, and for the comments many of you have shared with me about the topics on which I have written.
This comes with every best wish that this year will bring you happiness, good health and prosperity.
Jackson Blair
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