The latest Homeland Security Department snafu is a perfect example of The Peter Principle: "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence."
The HSD, the bloated bureaucracy that ate 22 agencies, has been criticized in a new bipartisan congressional report for "extensive waste and misspent funds" in its multibillion-dollar federal contracting operations.
Headed by Secretary Michael Chertof, HSD spent money like Shriners at a Las Vegas convention on no-bid deals. The Washington Post, quoting the report, relates that 32 Homeland Security Department contracts, worth a total of $34 BILLION, have "experienced significant overcharges, wasteful spending, or mismanagement."
"Among the contracts that went awry were deals for hiring airport screeners, inspecting airport luggage, detecting radiation at the nation's ports, securing the borders and housing Hurricane Katrina evacuees.... whole security systems needed to be scrapped." Contractors billed for luxury hotel rooms, and HSD officials bought personal items with government credit cards.
The next big HSD spending spree will be the "multibillion-dollar contract for border security that has only the vaguest of requirements."
It is Chertof who is in charge of this out-of-control department that has "overall problems.... including contracting, poor planning, a dependence on no-bid contracts and inadequate oversight." And, our national security.
So he will be fired, right? Wrong.
The Bush administration and Congress are planning to put Chertof in charge of processing at least 11 million illegal aliens for amnesty programs. This is much worse than the Peter Principle.... this is criminal abuse of taxpayer money and a guarantee that the illegal alien fiasco is about to become much worse.
Perhaps the real problem is that the Peter Principle starts at the top with Bush the Unready, who has promoted not only Chertof to his level of incompetence and beyond.... but frighteningly, also our Secretary of Defense "Less is More" Rumsfeld, and Secretary of State Condi "I Leaned My Job in School" Rice.
Voter outrage will be felt in November!
No comments:
Post a Comment