Scroll down to read this post.

 

Readers!

 

The time has come for my annual short Thanksgiving/Christmas fund drive for Behind The Black. I must do this every year in order to make sure I have earned enough money to pay my bills.

 

For this two-week campaign, I am offering a special deal to encourage donations. Donations of $200 will get a free autographed copy of the new paperback edition of Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, while donations of $250 will get a free autographed copy of the new hardback edition. If you desire a copy, make sure you provide me your address with your donation.

 

As I noted in July, the support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.

 

In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.

 

Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:

 

4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


Secret Service agent reveals the edifice of incompetency and stupidity that permeates the entire federal government

You would have to live under a rock, or rely entirely on mainstream media news sources, to not know that in the past twenty years the work of most federal government agencies had almost always been incompetent and badly managed, resulting in failed projects and vast amounts of money spent to get nothing accomplished. Only two recent examples come to mind immediately:

The second story is an even more egregious failure. After three years the program has so far failed to provide any American internet service. In that same time period SpaceX’s Starlink service, by itself, provided millions service worldwide, and did it for far less.

Letter of condemnation by secret service sniper
Letter of condemnation by secret service sniper. Click for original.

This reality of governmental failure was driven home even more harshly today when it was revealed that a Secret Service agent has sent out an agency-wide email [enhanced screen capture to the right], condemning the entire supervisor leadership at that agency, and insisting that he will continue to speak up publicly “… until 5 high-level supervisors (1 down) are either fired or removed from their current positions.” He went on to note that

I have conveyed these thoughts to not only supervisors (to include the current Captain of CS [Counter Snipers], but those responsible for training us (SOTS/CS). Only to be brushed off as those with less experience somehow knew more than me.”


The agent’s email makes it very clear that he believes it was the management at Secret Service that is incompetent and caused the problems on July 13, 2024 that almost got Donald Trump killed. And we have independent verification of this position based not only on the absurd testimony by the now-resigned head of the Secret Service Kim Cheatle, but by evidence that says her second-in-command, Richard Rowe and now in charge, was instrumental in limiting security resources to Trump events. And continues to deny it.

As the agent concluded in his email, “The motto of the U.S. Secret Service: Cover your ass. And every supervisor is doing it right now.”

So no one misunderstands, I am not trying to condemn the Biden administration specifically for these failures. It is only the most recent administration in a long string of fundamental disasters. We saw the same thing during the Trump administration, we saw it during Obama, we saw it during Bush Jr, and we saw it during Clinton.

These recent failures are just a continuation of decades of waste, failure, and incompetency, caused by the general stupidity of almost everyone we have put in charge of almost every federal agency. There are of course exceptions, but in general the government we Americans have endorsed and voted for the past two decades has routinely hired stupid and generally ignorant people to run things.

Will the election in November change anything? I guarantee it will not if Kamala Harris or any Democrat wins. That party has been the party of the status quo for decades, working incessently to defend every governmental disaster, always finding someone else to blame, and then turning around and demanding more money and power to do even more with that same incompetent government.

And if Trump wins? He says he intends to drain the swamp, but he said so in 2016 and utterly failed to do so, with his actions to neuter the EPA the exception that proves the rule. Even if he intends to do so now, those government agencies have become more powerful and arrogant in the ensuing years. They have discovered that they really don’t need to do what they say, that they can be total failures at their jobs and face no consequences. And they have also discovered during Trump’s first administration that they can even work to undermine elected officials, even a president, and get away with it. Expect Trump to meet with far more resistence this time, as indicated by the effort now by the Biden administration and the bureaucracy to “Trump-proof” the federal bureaucracy so that he won’t be able to change anything.

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln
The assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Expect
more of this if firm action isn’t taken now.

In a sense, the failure of the Secret Service on July 13th is a great opportunity to force change. There can be no excuse for it allowing an assassin to fire off shots that wounded three (including a presidential candidate) and killed one. If this time Congress allows that agency to walk away unscathed — as it has allowed the FBI, CIA, ATF and numerous other agencies to walk unscathed for the past decade — then there will be no hope. We shall see this new praetorian guard grab power, brutally and without mercy.

If Congress however does clamp down and force a real house-cleaning at the Secret Service, it will let all these other agencies know that any further failures will carry consequences. And it will give both Congress and Trump the power in the next administration to clean house, to push back effectively against any resistence from that corrupt and power-hungry administrative state.

The choice is clear. I wonder if Congress now has the courage to make that right choice and do what is necessary, for its own survival.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

13 comments

  • Related:

    GLOBALISM THE MARXIST NAZI GIFT: THERE WILL BE BLOOD

    “The colonizing white male dominated West being forced through law passed primarily by Leftists to surrender its sovereignty to Islam and foreigners in order to destroy the Patriarchy. THE PATRIARCHY IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE PATRIARCHY! (sigma3ioc.com)”

    https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/globalism-the-marxist-nazi-gift-there-will-be-blood

  • F

    If he should win the election, the best step Trump could take is to publicly draw in constitutional scholars to show that the. various federal agencies are acting unconstitutionally, that their rules and regulations are actually the purview of Congress..

    This was touched upon by the recent Supreme Court decision, but we still need to formally restrict those agencies, and to reduce them to strictly advisory roles.

  • Oh, and its going to get crazier and much more stupider:

    “MSNBC contributor Molly Jong-Fast claimed Tuesday that Republican Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio was “kind of racist” because he wanted more women to have children.

    Vance has come under fire for his 2021 comments on women without children at various events during his successful campaign for a Senate seat. Jong-Fast claimed that Vance, despite having biracial children, was using “an authoritarian playbook” before she labeled Vance, whose wife Usha is the daughter of Indian immigrants, as “cruel” and “racist.”

    The words and concepts these radical desperate media mavens are going to have to twist themselves into will be a never before sight to see and hear.

    You have seen nothing yet.

    And then if and when Trump crushes Kamalla Harris who is not for one second qualified to be the president of the United States they will without doubt attempt to deny Trump the presidency in courts and somehow Constitutionally in the Congress and the Senate.

    And them and their street force may well become very violent.

  • Jeff Wright

    Just remember big ISPs keep our internet slower too.

    Any Government incompetence story has about five private business incompetence stories to go with it.

    If I were a private businessmen and wanted to slime the party that believes in proper government oversight over Mammon worshipping business tycoons–I would pay to have the DNC taken over by the blood-guilt intersectionalists.

    I am starting to think George Soros is really a right winger after all and having a good laugh.

  • Jerry Greenwood

    Like in any organization where you do the same process week in and week out, complacency creeps in. The. Peter Principal comes to mind.

  • James Street

    “routinely hired stupid and generally ignorant people to run things.”

    And evil.
    https://t.ly/R5dQS

  • M. Murcek

    Most of the bad in the world isn’t done by evil people, it’s done by stupid people.

  • BLSinSC

    Simple fix to a LOT of the issues with the miscreants in Our Gov’t : Shut it DOWN!! Yes, just SHUT IT DOWN, make a LIST of the “NON-ESSENTIAL” personnel, and rather than issue BACK PAY for their VACATION – FIRE THEM ALL! PRESIDENT TRUMP should follow through with dismantling many of the agencies! I know the UNIONS will fight back, but he can just ISSUE AN EO to RESCIND President Kennedy’s EO 10988 that “allowed” Federal Gov’t EE’s to unionized! Would that be EXTREME?? Well, maybe!!

    Another approach would be to ARREST and CHARGE Individuals with SEDITION if they disobeyed a DIRECT ORDER to do their jobs in certain LEGAL and DOCUMENTED ways! If a CLERK is ordered to work from 8 am to 5 pm with ONE HOUR for lunch and they fail to appear for work – FIRE THEM! If a MANAGER if given an ORDER to produce a LIST of EE’s who have not returned to the workplace – FIRE THEM! If it is shown that a person or GROUP ACTIVELY ignore or defy legally ordered actions then ARREST THEM and PROSECUTE for SEDITION – they are actively trying to undermine Our Government! It might not take more than a few hundred prosecutions to get the message – DO YOUR JOBS!

  • RockwellT

    “…but in general the government we Americans have endorsed and voted for the past two decades has routinely hired stupid and generally ignorant people to run things.” It’s not just in the government ( and by government I include State and local as well) it is exists well into the private sector.

  • Alej Marcos

    “Secret Service agent reveals the edifice of incompetency and stupidity that permeates the entire federal government”

    Hence, TEXIT .

  • Stoli

    Well written piece. Agree that our inept Government needs a pink slip

  • pzatchok

    I look at our federal government bureaucrats as an ever regressing bunch. Each pathetic group hires the next even more pathetic group.

    Sort of like the English officer core before WW1. Made up entirely of privileged elites not capable of actually doing a real job or having any real world skills. Nor any real connection to the troops they are supposed to lead.

    As soon as they get out to the real world you find 95% of them will fail all tests. They would never survive the private sector.

    Trumps major mistake in his first term was trusting those very same bureaucrats and not firing each and every one and placing his own new people in. If he is smart he already has a group of trusted people working on this problem and making a huge list of trusted possible replacements for all government agencies. Including the military.

  • Druid144

    From the other side of the pond, it looks to me that the rot set in when the Secret Service was move from the Treasury to Homeland Security. A case of tidying up a system that was working perfectly well, in the way that bureaucrats love. Perhaps they should be moved back; they may even be able to investigate the debasement of the currency.

Readers: the rules for commenting!

 

No registration is required. I welcome all opinions, even those that strongly criticize my commentary.

 

However, name-calling and obscenities will not be tolerated. First time offenders who are new to the site will be warned. Second time offenders or first time offenders who have been here awhile will be suspended for a week. After that, I will ban you. Period.

 

Note also that first time commenters as well as any comment with more than one link will be placed in moderation for my approval. Be patient, I will get to it.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *