UNCOMPLIMENTARY COMMENTS ON INTELLIGENCE (?) SERVICES SENATE HEARING 2-13-18

Senate reveals itself to be a gaggle of babbling self-aggrandizing chest thumpers and a waste of our nation’s time and money.  It should be decommissioned.  

Intelligence services ignore the threat of crumbling infrastructure to our nati0onal security and instead prefers to focus on our national debt instead.   The massive duplication of our so called “intellegence” services (we have 14 different ones) has shown to provides us no advantage over the simpler two service system we used to have.  Time for change. 

Some conclusions and observations.

After observing the broadcast of the Senate Intelligence Committee-as they interviewed the heads  of our massive so called intelligence agencies I was struck by some desperately needed structural changes.   

1. It is apparent that we have too many Intelligence Agencies!  Making a good cut back of the number of these so called “intelligence” groups would save money and eliminate wasteful duplication.  In the UK there are  only two organizations, MI 5 and MI6: the latter the internal and the former the foreign intelligence service.  We have fourteen or seventeen with no better batting average—and some say worse than the Brits.  

2. The Senate is a massive waste of time and money.  

The founding Fathers (bless them) made one massive mistake when they set up our government so long ago.  Fearful of the unwashed body politic as they developed our institutions..they decided to emulate a political entity that was an ancient but undemocratic component of  British political system they knew—-the House of Lords.  Unwilling to use that “royal” designation—they called the US body the “Senate” (or perhaps after the Roman Republic).  This body was to serve the same function as the House of Lords—a means of insulating the government from the direct will of the people.  In time the “Lords” in Great Britain was  disengaged from any political decision-making and now is a politically powerless group of oatmeal dribblers who make incoherent pronouncements.  Unfortunately not so for our Senate.  Unlike the British parliamentary system (which disempowered the Lords years ago) our system can not evolve so easily—-we have a Constitution which admits of  change only with great difficulty, if at all.   

The decision to establish  a House of Lords and call it a “Senate” was the Founder’s worst mistake.  Our Senate with its laughable “60 vote majority”, is undemocratic, unrepresentative, abrogates the “one person, one vote” rule, operates to stall or prevent needed change, wastes time and money,  and is so full of puffed up, self-important, self-aggrandizing, bloviating low IQ types that it makes the ancient and now powerless British House of Lords look a Periclean democracy.   The British wisely disempowered the House of Lords long ago as a waste of time, effort and money.  We should do the same with our US Senate. 

On another matter, Director Dan Coates..should know  how to properly pronounce “nuclear”. It is nuc lee ar. not nuc U lar!  Ugh!

Then too Director Coates after going through a laundry list of world “hot spots” for concern and suggesting that every one of them..in the most far flung places around the world—must be attended to by the US military or CiA as if we were caabable of absolute world domination.    We simply do not have the resources, ability or even the moral right to take on these problems and in effect dominate the world.  

But most distressing was Director Coate’s final “hot spot”..one that he considers a “threat”to our national security.   That threat to our security, according to Coates, was right here in Washington. The threat was our burgeoning national debt now nearing  20 trillion dollars. So according to intelligence czar Coates our national debt is a threat to our survival.  But our crumbling infrastructure, collapsing bridges, trains running off their tracks, air facilities and coastal ports are all in decline and these are not a threat to our survival.     A nation that can not reliably get to work or depend on their wifi, electrical grid, transportation services, roads, bridges, etc. etc. is not one long for world survival and certainly not likely to dominate the world..  So Director Coates should rethink his list.  Perhaps he could cut his world threat list down a bit.  We could spend less than the nearly three quarters of our budget on “defense”.  We should then cut Coates  budget—-or eliminate him all together.  

Spending less on the fools task of trying to dominate the world and more on strenthing our own nation is where we should be putting our efforts.  We would be wise to ignor intelligence from Coates and concentrate on bringing the infrastructure of the USA back into the 21 Century...with our real competitor China.  That would be the intelligent move.