I want to pick up the pace a bit in this article series but I have some background context to add before pressing on. The easiest thing to do would be just go full, rampant, bellicose Orange Man Bad style dripping venom to make the case that Obama-Dona’Linsky-was responsible for just about everything that happened to undermine the Trump presidency, leading to an attitude of “by any means possible” on the part of those who took up the cause on his behalf against the Orange Man in earnest.
Before I do that I also feel compelled to add here-again-the caveat that it was somewhat of a slow, steady one step at a time journey getting to where I sit on the affection meter -love-like-dislike-disaffection-or hate- on Obama. As a civil servant-former military-you eventually must follow the policies of those appointed over you, so it pays to maintain an even-somewhat disinterested keel-with regards to politicians that are destined to slip into the chain of command. I later traveled the same journey on candidate Trump-I initially told my wife I didn’t think he was serious-he knew he would be able to raise tens of millions of dollars on name recognition alone and would elevate his brand in regard to golf course development and property opportunities around the globe no matter how it turned out-it was the art of the deal personified and an act of branding.
She took to listening to him whenever possible and made the transition from a person never interested in talking about politics-to a near rabid Trump fan. She had been an interested observer as the Tea Party came to prominence and was shocked and astounded at how the group who benefitted the most from their energy-republicans-seemed the most dogmatic in deriding them-somewhat culminating in McCain frequently referring to “them” as “wacko birds.” Long before Trump sounded on him McCain had not exactly ingratiated himself cozying up to folks like John “Bolt Neck” Kerry, who has verified that McCain approached him about being Kerry’s Vice President.
The mainstream (or lamestream) republicans who were largely part of the RINO Club definitely misread and missed the boat on the Tea Party, as one of the major conservative and republican gripes was that when an issue came up where the republicans did the math and realized they lacked the votes on legislation, they simply caved and laid down. Myriad issues went down with republicans unwilling to take a principled stand, notwithstanding it was a known losing cause-to the point where republican leaders in both houses seemed to consider such efforts a waste of time. Recall when Senator Cruz did a filibuster that included a portion where he read Dr. Zeuz Green Eggs and Ham to his kids (what a racist) his own party thought it was embarrassing and a waste of time since the issue was going to pass. That is a disturbing and bothersome thing when elected officials don’t fight the good fight-don’t fight at all-because an issue that may represent a huge concern for constituents-is not winnable on the floor of the house or the senate. Undertake the debate with passion and integrity.
I mentioned in a previous article I shared the same sentiment as Mark Levine-only I didn’t see a viable candidate in a party that had delusions of Jeb Bush-who can forget that Bush raised some 225 million dollars just by throwing his hat in the ring-with views on several issues that were clearly socialist liberal democrat aligned, totally out of the mainstream of conservative thought. Then there was John Kasich and others competing for the center left of the republican party-I pretty much walked the same decision path with Levine as he went from a Cruz supporting, Trump basher to an unapologetic Trump supporter and now champion.
My wife would later (with her father) attend the Virginia Republican Convention and have a Birdseye view of never-Trumpers-led by Ken Cuccinelli-attempt to take over the convention and steal delegates to the national convention from Trump: Cuccinelli was stopped in his tracks, shouted down, threw down his credentials like a 6-year-old and stomped out of the convention like a democrat. Of course, this “fair weather” Trump supporter would be the problem along with many like him who jumped on the Trump train because they were political animals and not believers, who were there for the hors d’oeuvres and the positions.
Having worked for some 50 years including the military, as a government civilian and contractor, I honestly have a surprisingly short list of those I disliked or hated over the years-and it was often mutual. Now those I developed a lack of respect for through experience reached scores and scores and scores of people: when you are in the government program management and acquisition business there are those with funded projects, and those working to “appropriate money for the good of national defense”-looking to steal it from them/you.
If you think of this process as a journey of candidate consideration that then morphs to a job assessment for the winner-now I’m not talking about those automatically in the tank for an “D” or an “R” sight unseen-but in terms of the scale of liberty wielded by a blindfolded adjudicator, or in terms of balls and strikes-unforced errors in tennis-penalties in football-notwithstanding in the military we are fond of saying that one “Aw poop” cancels out a hundred “attaboys”-an unbiased person experiencing the Obama administration in full throat had plenty to consider and digest as the scales filled up.
I’ve been making the case in this series that the Obama scandals that occurred on his watch were numerous, various, sundry and all-encompassing, by which I mean there was no particularly weak area-weak link or specific Achilles heel exposed or illuminated by a study of the problems that came about under his “leadership” (lack thereof) : all problems mostly evidence of poor or a failure of leadership but constituting a trend that shows there was more going on than mere incompetence. A decent analogy might be looking at the Nixon Watergate case, where it is difficult to believe a seasoned politician-with-albeit-somewhat of a flawed personality-would have sanctioned the effort of “the plumbers”-had he known that they were taking his words and vitriol for action-and what a damned fool thing they were going to do.
Many of us watched and listened carefully in the assessment phase, noting tidbits like while he seemed to support marriage as between a man and a woman, it was a bit weaselly as he almost debated against his own argument in making the case that the states should decide the matter as an issue of local jurisdiction that the federal government had no business interfering or directing. Which-coupled with his seeming reticence to directly answer questions on his background-as evidenced by his certificate, relationships, etc.-was my initial yellow or caution light on Obama the candidate. From a pragmatic standpoint when you think about federally administered programs-taxes, social security-Medicare among others, it struck me as a cop out to let the states handle a matter that could have far and widespread ramifications and be problematic from a federal perspective if thought to be just a local or state problem.
Similarly, abortion policy where regardless of the belief that it should have been an issue for the states, activist courts dictated for all. And it was becoming increasingly clear that the democrat side of the issue was recasting or branding it as a woman’s health issue and began a process that would culminate in the removal of the “rare” part of the grudgingly accepted description. These changes to the democrat party plank heading into the convention provided concrete information and much more insight to where the candidate-Obama-stood as compared to the rhetoric of his speeches.
From my view in light of the above-admittedly subjective-Obama was guarded, less than forthright, often cleverer by half than necessary-apparently in his own mind-on many issues, an inveterate liar when needed and it suited him, but most always disingenuous, smarmy and cagey. I first paid attention as he was necking out of the pack and I wanted to track down where this guy came from-what he stood for-the things he had championed in Chicago-what he had studied-his background, etc. These items did not yield easily to a casual search. His wasn’t a name that first came to mind when you thought about black influencers in politics.
There were quite a few Obama administrative or governance issues that clearly evidenced lack of leadership, inadequate or apathetic oversight and poor management, as well as poor judgement in the selection of the people leading business units. While disconcerting and costly in terms of government resources, remedies and taxpayer dollars, these were somewhat of the classic bloated bureaucracy problems that often arise in new administrations: but Obama had more than his share-and there were more in the second term than the first-and they were worse by far.
I’m certain the average John Q Public citizen has no idea what the ramifications of some of these government SNAFUs entail-or cost, although everybody now has their own personal tale of woe about the ACA. None of my family suspected anything amiss when I shared the notification on this little gem when the public found out the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was cyber breached/hacked by the Chinese in 2015-also note how late this was in the administration….The House Oversight Committee report was damning, as was the associated timeline of events (embedded in the report.)
The original announcement from OPM was actually earlier but wasn’t particularly helpful: In July 2014 OPM acknowledges (in response to press reports) material was exfiltrated in 2014 but does not identify this material as related to background investigation systems and states no personally identifiable information (PII) exfiltrated (emphasis added.)
Of course, if no PII was taken, what’s the big deal, right? But that was a total and absolute lie. This tactic of assuaging the bad news with lies about the worst news was the most commonly used communications aspect in all the Obama administration scandals, resulting in somewhat of a new rule in dealing with them: when weasels are categoric, be wary-they are lying. This was a big Lesko flipp’n deal, with initial reports that some 10 million government civilians were compromised, while the current OPM notice now states it was 21.5 million, but I’ve seen reports of totals as high as 25 million.
The hack involved the data base containing (among other “stuff”) Department of Defense Form (DD) 398 Special Security Background Investigation (SSBI) applications filled out for top secret security clearances. If not familiar with the form, anyone hired into a civil service/government or government contract position, or a military position requiring a Top Secret (TS) clearance with Special Compartmented Information (SCI) access, fills out an DD398. Most civilian or contract positions these days also require a counterintelligence (CI) polygraph (poly-although not typical for most military positions)-or the more intrusive life-style poly. Clearances are good for five years and at about the four-and-a-half-year mark, an updated or “bring up” DD398 is completed, submitted, a new interview is conducted with a CI agent and a fresh poly is completed.
What does all that mean in practical terms? Well, let’s say a person we know (named Winky Martindale) hypothetically filled out the DD398 and passed a poly in ~1978. Winky would have filled out nine DD398s and taken a minimum of nine CI or lifestyle polys over the course of a military and civilian career through 2018 (Winky was the military exception for the necessary poly because of the sensitive nature of projects.) Each DD398 lists five references and immediate family-as well as neighbors-with all pertinent information (address, phone number, social security number (for family) etc.)-so for Winky this meant a minimum of ~60 contacts who were compromised. In perspective this compromise was more like ~100-125 million personnel’s PII stolen by the Chinese…
Now don’t worry, as part of the 2015 notice of the compromise-Winky received a personal notification letter from OPM-each of the DD398 filers received one year of taxpayer funded credit protection from Experian or whomever-but it did not include protection for any of the references. Just using round numbers this well warned against failure to update OPM’s network cyber security protection cost taxpayers at least two billion dollars in credit protection alone because OPM leadership was too incompetent to implement OPM IG security upgrade recommendations. Who knows what the toll has been on banks and financial institutions in terms of credit card and other fraud as these lists with social security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, full names, date and place of birth, etc., made it around the world. Winky later had purchases made in his name for laser printers from Belgrade, an ice machine from Sarajevo, a big screen television from Berlin, as well as dozens of purchases-pizzas, theater tickets, concert tickets, events at Madison Square Garden from New York City-just a coincidence.
One Obama scandal, one big cost for American taxpayers. The OPM Director at the time-Katherine Archuleta had time to do a blog and all manner of feel good workplace stuff-taking care of employees-communicating Obama policies: but unfortunately, no time or priority to implement security recommendations from the IG.
Malfeasance of a more serious nature would include something like the IRS scandal with Lois Lerner’s actions to go after groups that flagged because of conservative and patriotic keywords: perhaps the most blatant and clear-cut case to cite. Lerner-a US taxpayer funded government civil servant, highly compensated senior executive, was responsible for overseeing IRS determinations on tax exempt organization filing status. She later pleaded the fifth in somewhat of an unprecedented situation where her actions were nearly singularly responsible for illegal efforts taken by the IRS business unit that she led, resulting in her being held in contempt of congress. Now did Obama give direction for her to go after Tea Party entities in the lead up to the election to blunt the effectiveness of those groups in countering all manner of dogma coming out of the democrats leading up to it? Given the gains the Tea Party made in the mid-term election it was more than coincidence that the IRS targeted the perceived enemies of the Obama administration for foot dragging and shenanigans in advance of the 2012 election.
That is very doubtful, but much-like the recent findings in the Michigan Governor kidnapping case and the emerging findings in the 6 January 2021 effort-scandalous events that just keep happening like a continuous drumbeat where nobody takes responsibility and citizens have to resort to the courts to get information-facts-justice from the government-that we fund with our tax dollars-and rely on the inspectors general to detail the facts-time after time after time, repeatedly on an administration’s watch-will eventually taint even the most glib, well-spoken and LSMBTG supported president as “feckless.”
27 March 2022
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Concerning that data breach, if no PII was stolen why was it reported? It makes me think that someone was lying about the PII being stolen.
Lois Lerner should be in jail, no retirement, nothing. She used her office for political gain and punished those who tried to use what the laws allowed.
I knew I liked your wife.
Hey Mark! By the time they took the action to buy credit protection for ~20 million people, it had been a year since they knew it was a big Lesko deal-several billion more tinkled away to cover their butts and let them sleep at night. She was subsequently somewhat quietly let go-total incompetent-quota success, while the CIO was moved into the bowels of the Pentagon. You could tell they were lying cause lips were flapping.
Lerner should have been dragged through the mud and forced to take the fifth in front of God and everybody as they detailed what she did and held her accountable for it-our government owe that to the people who were wronged. If you don’t make an example of civil servants when they knowingly commit crimes and disgrace their oath it makes a mockery of the system, and you make it easier for the next one to cross the line for a “good cause” or to play team ball: punishment-well publicized in the public square-helps keep honest people honest.
I hope Sussman and the entire HRC Perkins Coie cabal similarly goes through the mud so we send a loud signal that you can’t lie, cheat nor steal or tolerate those that do.
My wife was on the Trump train when it was just an idea-mainly because of what he said about supporting the military and his comments about America first-bringing back manufacturing with his “magic wand.” She signed me up for the convention as well-but talk about crossing the line-that would have been a yuge problem for this civil servant. The back story on that event is a good one that I will write about one of these days. MD
I hope you do write about that. My attitude about Trump changed so drastically between the primary and election night that I thank God that I had the capacity to keep an open mind.
I still laugh at the time when Sarah Palin gave her acceptance speech, the one where the teleprompter broke and she kept on going like the Energizer Bunny she is. My wife was at her computer, computing away, and asked me “Who is that? I like her!” Of course, she denies ever saying that.
Lois Lerner gave up her 5th Amendment rights when she answered the first question in that committee hearing. I remember that being brought up, during the hearings. She should have been compelled to answer the rest of the questions, or held in contempt. Such a waste of an opportunity.