Parkland Underscores How Americans Pay For Garbage Government While Doing Its Job Ourselves
Link here. Essentially, the article outlines how, at every single level, government in the U.S. is failing, while demanding more money and more power as a reward. Parkland is only a recent single example.
Each day Americans wake up to hear new revelations of government incompetence that enabled the Parkland, Florida school shooting. First it was the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s failure to follow existing protocols to investigate a highly detailed tip that the shooter was planning and had the means to do exactly what he did. The FBI and local police received at least four separate tips warning of the shooters’ plans and means, and local police had received 45 calls summoning them to the family’s home since 2008.
Then we learned of the police officer — the only person initially onsite able to return the shooter’s deadly force and tasked by his salary-paying community with doing precisely that — hesitated for approximately four minutes to enter the high school as students lay dying. Then local sources told reporters three other Broward County police officers joined that onsite officer in hiding behind their vehicles until police from another jurisdiction showed up. Reports say the Broward County police didn’t even follow the others inside.
Then it was that police didn’t know they were watching the wrong security tape, putting them off the shooter’s whereabouts by 20 minutes, leaving a mass murderer to endanger more people longer. To add insult to literal injury, the hesitating onsite school police officer, Scot Peterson, was allowed to resign and will receive a lifetime public pension of approximately $60,000 a year plus benefits.
The list of failures above for Parkland is actually not complete. However, they do provide a metaphor for our government, which functions about as badly in every other area as well. Readers of Behind the Black will of course be aware of SLS/Orion, NASA’s own failed boondoggle that will never get us into space.
What must happen is a major house-cleaning. Many thought Trump would do it. I continue to see Trump as a transitional figure, willing to slash and burn in a few areas (EPA) but not in most other areas (FBI, Justice Department, NOAA, NASA, to name a few). Essentially, almost everyone working in Washington needs to be fired. Many can reapply for the work, but no one should be guaranteed a job.
Unfortunately, I do not see this happening. Instead, I see this cabal in Washington teaming up with corrupt elected officials and a corrupt national press to defend their positions of power, even as they fail again and again to simply do their jobs. Witness for example how so-called conservative Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has teamed up with Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida) to criticize the mere suggestion by the Trump administration that ISS will be transitioned to private hands by 2024, no longer getting federal funds.
This is just one example. The power in Washington is deep and profound, and the people who have it will not give it up lightly.
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 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
Link here. Essentially, the article outlines how, at every single level, government in the U.S. is failing, while demanding more money and more power as a reward. Parkland is only a recent single example.
Each day Americans wake up to hear new revelations of government incompetence that enabled the Parkland, Florida school shooting. First it was the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s failure to follow existing protocols to investigate a highly detailed tip that the shooter was planning and had the means to do exactly what he did. The FBI and local police received at least four separate tips warning of the shooters’ plans and means, and local police had received 45 calls summoning them to the family’s home since 2008.
Then we learned of the police officer — the only person initially onsite able to return the shooter’s deadly force and tasked by his salary-paying community with doing precisely that — hesitated for approximately four minutes to enter the high school as students lay dying. Then local sources told reporters three other Broward County police officers joined that onsite officer in hiding behind their vehicles until police from another jurisdiction showed up. Reports say the Broward County police didn’t even follow the others inside.
Then it was that police didn’t know they were watching the wrong security tape, putting them off the shooter’s whereabouts by 20 minutes, leaving a mass murderer to endanger more people longer. To add insult to literal injury, the hesitating onsite school police officer, Scot Peterson, was allowed to resign and will receive a lifetime public pension of approximately $60,000 a year plus benefits.
The list of failures above for Parkland is actually not complete. However, they do provide a metaphor for our government, which functions about as badly in every other area as well. Readers of Behind the Black will of course be aware of SLS/Orion, NASA’s own failed boondoggle that will never get us into space.
What must happen is a major house-cleaning. Many thought Trump would do it. I continue to see Trump as a transitional figure, willing to slash and burn in a few areas (EPA) but not in most other areas (FBI, Justice Department, NOAA, NASA, to name a few). Essentially, almost everyone working in Washington needs to be fired. Many can reapply for the work, but no one should be guaranteed a job.
Unfortunately, I do not see this happening. Instead, I see this cabal in Washington teaming up with corrupt elected officials and a corrupt national press to defend their positions of power, even as they fail again and again to simply do their jobs. Witness for example how so-called conservative Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has teamed up with Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida) to criticize the mere suggestion by the Trump administration that ISS will be transitioned to private hands by 2024, no longer getting federal funds.
This is just one example. The power in Washington is deep and profound, and the people who have it will not give it up lightly.
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 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
Re posted because it belongs here.
“Wayne, there is no such thing as consequences such as pension or any other form of cost within government, none.
In the real world there is, but not in government, everything is guaranteed to the max. Its part of the communal criminality model of operation to some extent, ala the Clinton crime family. Everyone knows and so no one can be held responsible.”
Just load up the guaranteed pension, competency or consequences related to failure not even an issue.
Kinetic Typography
“V for Vendetta” revolutionary speech
https://youtu.be/zbmmDAoDugE?t=67
“Then we learned of the police officer — the only person initially onsite able to return the shooter’s deadly force and tasked by his salary-paying community with doing precisely that — hesitated for approximately four minutes to enter the high school as students lay dying.”
This part of the narrative still seems open to question. The officer claims that when he arrived at building 1200 in response to firecrackers going off in its vicinity, he heard what he believed to be shots coming from outside the building — which is certainly plausible give echoes between buildings and real-world acoustics. Then, instead of retreating into the perceived safety of the building, he took up a tactical position outside in order to better determine the situation and direct the response. If true — and this should be determined during investigation from his radio calls and his reports to other officers arriving at the scene — then he did everything by the book. This theory would also explain why the subsequent responding officers didn’t immediately charge into the building.
Recall the contradictory reports which came out of Las Vegas in the weeks which followed October’s shooting? Perhaps the officer’s claims are total BS, but if they are true, this would suggest that Sheriff Israel rushed to judgement in order to establish a scapegoat.
criticize the mere suggestion by the Trump administration that ISS will be transitioned to private hands by 2024, no longer getting federal funds.
Who wants it? It might not be economical for anyone to take it over since it wasn’t built with economics in mind.
If the public expects average cops to do the duty of SWAT teams they should be prepared to vet them, pay them, train them and equip them as SWAT teams.
Kirk,
The 72-hour rule has lapsed a long time ago — 11 days ago.
http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/restrain-yourself/
At some point we have to be able to start discussing what happened and why, and we have to figure out how to prevent it in the future, and not let those incompetents in government once again botch the job of preventing it in the future. It is clear that somehow we have to regain our self-governance, because the government has failed us so miserably.
All,
Apparently, we can no longer depend upon government to successfully protect us, either before or during such an emergent event. Not only are the proper authorities minutes away when immediate action is necessary, but even when they arrive they all too often seem slow or ineffective, although there are many exceptions to this statement, including the response at the Pamela Geller art contest.
From the Federalist essay: “If government agencies can’t follow existing violence-prevention laws and procedures, how can they be trusted to effectively implement additional rules that wild-eyed partisans insist will ‘do something’ to prevent mass murder?”
Some places are better at first response than others, and Sheriff Israel is one who needs immediate replacement. He does not have a grasp of the concept of responsibility, thinking that his responsibility begins and ends only with his immediate actions, not the actions or training of the people he is supposed to be leading.
A good leader makes sure that his people do the right thing as well as do the thing right. This sheriff’s people are among the ones who kept dropping the ball — Promise Program or not.
Government started to admit failure of doing its job when it began handing out money to people without jobs. The Great Depression in the 1930s was only great in the US, where government failures had worsened the depression. The rest of the world recovered fairly quickly, and their recovery would have been greater had the US government not mucked up its country’s recovery.
Governments have only three responsibilities: 1) protect its people from all enemies, foreign and domestic; 2) peacefully resolve disputes; and 3) stay out of the people’s way. These are the three reasons that humans invented governance in the first place. They wanted their freedoms without having to worry about harm.
As we have seen with Parkland and many other similar events, US governments at all levels have failed at the first responsibility, and depending upon their grievances — many perpetrators’ reasons for instigating these events — these governments are also failing at the second responsibility. That they keep trying to solve the problems by additional regulation, rather than follow current legislation, shows that they no longer have any intention of their third responsibility.
When government started taking care of people directly, often becoming the ersatz — but still absentee — father for millions of children, they seemed to be undertaking their first responsibility but were actually entrapping millions into a system that keeps them from succeeding easily. Many of those who did not take care of themselves never taught their children to take care of themselves either. This violates the third responsibility — government got in our way of caring for ourselves or each other.
A friend of mine once lived in a poor part of town, and as she came home from work the neighborhood children would stop playing outside and stare at her. One day one of them got up the courage to ask her where she went all day, and she said that she went to work, which turned out to be a concept that none of those children understood, because none of them had a parent who set such an example. None of them had to set such an example, because government was the replacement breadwinner — taking money from the rest of us in order to give to those parents for doing nothing more than raising a bunch of children who thought it natural that the government pay their parent(s) for sitting around at home all day.
From the Federalist essay: “We should all be managing our our own health care, preparing for our own old age, and assuming responsibility for our children’s education. We should also be ready to defend ourselves and others until the police can show up. This is what self-government means.”
Self-government is not the government doing it all for us, it is us doing it for ourselves and government concentrating on its three responsibilities.
Socialist countries also fail their people by violating the third responsibility and failing at the first by becoming the villain themselves. It was socialist countries that removed many of their citizens’ rights, that prevented them from caring for themselves, and that killed 100 million of their own people in the past century.
What a colossal failure of government.
If the Promise Program is supposed to make it look like government is being fair (what is fair, anyway) by protecting certain groups of people over the protection of others, then it is failing the second responsibility each time it lets a criminal get away with crime.
What was it that Benjamin Franklin said about giving up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety? Well, we gave up liberties when we allowed certain anti-gun laws, and we now have even less safety. Government still fails to protect us, and now we have a much harder time protecting ourselves or others. The Sutherland Springs Church incident was a rare occurrence in which someone was able to protect others, and he did so long before the appropriate government authorities were able to arrive at the scene. He did the job of the government, because the government cannot be in all places at all times. Sometimes we have to do the job of government by protecting ourselves and protecting others, as has always been the case. As the Federalist essay noted, this is part of self-governance.
Without the law abiding having their own guns, then only the law-breakers have the guns, as the students tragically learned in Parkland a couple of weeks ago. Those students, however, think that new laws will make the law-breakers suddenly abide by the law, but that philosophy has never worked before and has only made things worse over the past three decades.
The US keeps becoming more and more the villain by pretending to protect us, but in reality they restrict our freedoms and hamper our ability to care for ourselves as they take over the role of caretaker. Then they fail to take care of us. When US citizen Kate Steinle cannot enjoy a sunny day on Pier 14 in San Francisco without being killed by a five-time deported felon illegal alien who was actively protected by the “sanctuary city” government — he is in one of those protected groups — then government is a failure. That killer even got away with his homicide. Talk about being privileged! Protecting him was deemed more important than protecting her or the rest of us, even after he killed her.
Recently, the Democrats in the House introduced a bill to ban semi-automatic weapons. Why should I and the rest of the law abiding US citizens have our rights taken away because of the actions of a very, very few Americans and the inability or unwillingness of government to properly govern?
Andrew_W,
You wrote: “If the public expects average cops to do the duty of SWAT teams they should be prepared to vet them, pay them, train them and equip them as SWAT teams.”
So, you think that the police are not there to protect us from the law-breakers? Fortunately, the police at the Pamela Geller art contest realized that their job was “to protect and to serve,” as the Los Angeles Police Department motto goes; they stopped a mass shooting as it started and before it became a mass shooting. Fortunately, the neighbor at the Sutherland Springs Church did not think that he should wait around until the SWAT team arrived; he stopped a mass shooting that was already underway.
Apparently some people are braver than others.
In the “art contest” incident the gunmen fired on officers who returned fire, they didn’t have an option other than to engage the attackers, in the Sutherland Springs Church case the gunman was leaving the Church when he was shot. Neither of the incidents are even close to what happened at Parkland where an officer was expected to fill in for a SWAT team, with nothing like the manpower, equipment (including weaponry and body armor), training, planning and on scene intelligence that a SWAT team would justifiably expect to have before going in.
Andrew_W,
You wrote: “Neither of the incidents are even close to what happened at Parkland where an officer was expected to fill in for a SWAT team”
OK, if police officers shooting at active shooters or a good Samaritan neighbor exchanging fire with an active shooter is nothing even close to an active shooter in a school, then you may have a point. But I disagree that we must always wait for the SWAT team to arrive. The officers at the Geller art contest (no quotes, that is what it was) and the Sutherland Springs good Samaritan could have pulled a Scot Peterson and hid in safety, but they actively engaged their bad guys, avoiding the need for SWAT teams and saving lives in the process.
When seconds count, the police are only minutes away, but the SWAT team is even longer away than the nearest police officers.
Self governance requires that we govern ourselves, even if that means that we — civilians as well as police officers — take risks by confronting active shooters.
Since you would rather let a shooting continue for as long as the shooter chooses, then I think we have to disagree on the function of the police officer. For you, he just passes out tickets and makes arrests after the SWAT team is done, but for the rest of us, he protects us from the bad guys. That is why we issued him weapons of various sorts.