Secret Service, Like Any Bloated Government Agency, Continues Unscathed
"Wheels up, rings off."
Secret Service traveling mantra
In the wake of an ongoing series of embarrassing security breaches, Secret Service Director Julia Pierson resigned last week. She is thinking about going into something new and exciting, like security.
The fence jumper got so far into the White House that he ran into Hillary Clinton's decorator measuring for drapes. In addition, a member of the housekeeping staff found evidence that previously undiscovered gunshots had hit the building. Joe Biden was ruled out, as he has no shot at the White House.
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Joseph Clancy of Comcast Cable was appointed to replace Pierson. Any knife-wielding White House intruders will now have to schedule their assaults "sometime between 9 AM and 2 PM on Tuesdays or Thursdays" and be frustrated into surrendering.
For those keeping score at home, pencil tips are snapping in frustration. The Secret Service is just another boated federal agency, like the VA, that's spared from consequences and is even rewarded for incompetence with more money.
Remember the South American meetings in 2012 where eleven advance Secret Service agents got drunk in an expensive hotel and were being secretly serviced by local prostitutes? Agents were sent home -- with pay, of course, unlike the hookers.
Secret Service agents were sent home after an all-night bender in Amsterdam; one agent actually passed out in the hallway of their hotel. You thought agents wore those sunglasses to better spot potential threats and to look intimidatingly cool? Apparently they are worn to disguise the agents' perpetual hangovers. Instead of an earpiece, maybe they should wear those helmets with a beer on each side and a tube to better identify themselves.
And who investigates the CIA, IRS, TSA, the Federal Reserve, FBI or the Secret Service? They know all they have to do is say they are "looking into it," let one person who is about 65 retire early, and say they handled it until it disappears from the news in about a week. Then it's back to business as usual.
Insiders tell me that two things are hurting the Secret Service. First, it was moved from Treasury to Homeland Security and became a PC bureaucracy. This is the same Homeland Security Department that runs TSA but is unwilling to "profile" Muslim men age 18 to 25 who are 100 percent of terrorists.
Second, the agents doing their job are good, but the managers (and there are lots of them) are self-serving dolts, focused on promotion and a go-along-to-get-along attitude. It has long been the unwritten code among government workers in every agency in D.C. not to rat each other out. It might mess up their sweet, taxpayer-funded gig.
The only truth you get from a federal employee is when he retires or decides to blow the whistle.
There are now more than 6,500 Secret Service employees, and we still just have one president. This over-the-top Praetorian Guard for our president should, like all parts of bloated government agencies, be cut back and made more efficient.
All agencies start with some grandiose mission, in this case to protect the president. Then they grow unchecked into monstrous bureaucracies accountable for neither results nor their use of taxpayer money. I don't care what they did to the hookers -- just stop doing it to us taxpayers.
I understand why we need maybe a 1,000-person Secret Service whose agents remain skilled at what they do --- just in case we ever get a president we want to keep.
Every four years agents are called upon to protect presidential candidates. Resources are assigned to candidates based on the importance put on them by, of course, the government. This will range from full Secret Service protection for Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden, who was given some nunchucks and told to "be careful out there."
Rick Santorum was eventually assigned Secret Service coverage for his 2008 presidential race; it was the first time he had ever used protection. Glitter was thrown on Newt Gingrich that same year. If you missed it, the whole episode is nominated for a Tony Award.
Homeland Security head homey Jeh Johnson praised Julia Pierson for "30 years of distinguished service to the nation." She left knowing that she might miss the White House, but it would be easy to sneak back in any time she wants.
