Month: December 2018

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Vice President Pence is obviously an intelligent, gifted politician who is a loyal advisor to President Trump.  Also, I’m sure he works long hours faithfully serving our nation.  But I would like to suggest that his talents can be used in additional ways.  There is still some swamp to drain and the President does not have the time to lead all of those efforts. 

VP Pence should take on some high-profile tasks commensurate with his abilities and position.  Here is a starter list that should provide his President and the nation tremendous return and value added.

First task, Active Legislative Liaison.  The decades-long adversarial relationship that has festered between the Executive and Legislative Branches is not serving we-the-people well and it needs some in-depth attention.    

If he is not already doing so, Vice President Pence should spend some significant amount of time each week establishing and reinforcing working relationships, one-on-one, with Congressional leaders of both parties. 

He could routinely call on and meet with important committee leaders.  He could seize opportunities to address various caucuses in both the House and Senate.  It would send a positive message if the Vice President met individually with all newly elected Representatives and Senators.

Schedule monthly luncheon meetings with leaders of both parties and both houses so that it becomes business-as-usual rather that a media event.  Be conspicuous on the Hill every week, not just when there is a crisis brewing or a projected tie vote in the Senate.  

Second task, Infrastructure Repair.  President Obama’s trillion dollar “shovel ready” stimulus program turned into a race to the pork barrel by members of Congress without structure or accountability, resulting in untold billions of dollars in fraud, waste, and abuse with little or no overall impact on the economy. It did not lower unemployment as advertised, did not lift millions out of poverty as advertised, and it did not stimulate the overall economy as advertised,

The American Society of Civil Engineers has given the nation’s infrastructure an overall grade of “D”. Fixing deficient bridges, tunnels, dams and sewage-treatment plants, not to mention expanding high-speed Internet and modernizing the electricity grid, should be clear priorities. 

Put Vice President Pence in charge and do something unique in Washington; that is, start with a strategic plan with an end-state and end-dates.  Put the plan in the form of a phased campaign of prioritized projects.  Develop measures of effectiveness to track progress against predetermined completion dates and budget. Do these things and then assess the overall value added to the nation.

Third task, Government Downsizing/Restructuring: A mammoth, sprawling, uncontrollable federal government was never the vision or intent of the founding fathers.  Organizations have a propensity to grow to a point of diminishing returns, to where it ceases to be efficient, effective and no longer performs the functions for which it was created.  At that point a large organization may even have a tendency to look inward and becomes self-perpetuating. Some or all of that could apply to the Departments in the Executive Branch today.  It can be fixed but it will take some strong leadership, attention to detail and months of hard work. 

Two years ago, America voted for change; we have seen a lot of it and it has been positive.  But for any large organization, especially one as large as the Executive Branch, change is hard. Fear of the unknown is a powerful human force. Especially in government, there can be an entrenched, layered bureaucracy that is stiff and stifling.

There are over two million civilian employees in the Executive Branch, excluding the postal service.  Most, I’m sure, are loyal, dedicated government employees who work hard every day.  However, there are also legions of “bureaucrats”, defined in the dictionary as mechanical, unimaginative and inflexible.  These are the ones showing up for “work” with their “rice bowl”, just putting in their time until retirement.  They will vehemently cling to their lifestyle as change agents attack their stronghold.  Change is enemy number one to the bureaucrats. 

Accomplishing real, meaningful change requires a strategic plan and a relentless campaign that is led by someone senior enough to plow through all the obstacles and defeat the bureaucrats. The Executive Branch needs to be analyzed, block by block, and restructured to become more capable.  That process needs someone as senior as Vice President Pence to pull it off.

On the subject of change: it is not the strongest of organizations that survive, nor the most intelligent; the survivor is the organization that is most adaptable to change.  Structure your organization with agility.

How does all this get accomplished? It is a long and tedious process (even explaining it is a long, tedious read) but there are no viable shortcuts to re-thinking, re-designing and re-structuring large organizations and make them be all they can/should be. 

First, Vice President Pence needs to set up a senior task force consisting of the deputies of all the departments, agencies and commissions. They will be the change agents and become the junkyard dogs of Washington.

Secondly, define the end state and end date for the campaign. For example, VP Pence might say, “Over the next six months our task force will look inside every organizational element of the Executive Branch.  We will assess their mission (is it relevant today), their structure (too many or too few people), layering (is it OK or dysfunctional), can the organization integrate (communicate) vertically and horizontally efficiently and effectively on a day-to-day basis and finally, is the organization as a whole agile (able to deal with change as a matter of course)?”

Third, organization charts: The process begins in every department, agency, commission by putting together a very detailed organization chart. That’s the visual and it provides an immediate sense of the size, complexity and layering.  Big government is layer after layer after layer.  Some of the layers produce nothing; they exist just to oversee what is being produced at the layers below.  Why the organization chart?  Because it allows one to begin the analysis and restructure at the bottom of the organization.  You CAN NOT reorganize and restructure top down; to be successful it must be bottom-up. 

Using the Department of Agriculture as an example, there are 65 different organizational elements that come under the headings of departments, agencies, councils, institutes, programs, foundations, services, authorities, offices of, boards and facilities. Inside of them are departments, directorates, branches, sections, cells and individual elements.  Every one of those becomes a “box” in the organization chart.  Each organizational “box” must list the name of the element, number of employees and the grade of the leader, GS 10, 12, 13, whatever.

Within the Department of Agriculture, for example, the deputy Secretary (part of VP Pence’s senior task force) will form his/her own internal departmental task force.  That task force (and this should be happening as well in every department in the Executive Branch) needs to task the leader of every organizational chart “box” to submit (“by tomorrow”) a one-page report to the task force.       

The report format should include, as a minimum:

1. MISSION STATEMENT: in one or two sentences describe what it is that element collectively does.  (for example: responsible for writing, executing and enforcing Department Regulation 135, Beef Export Program, and reporting results quarterly to ………

The task force’ job is to ask itself: do we need Dept Reg 135 any longer?  If so, could this be done with fewer people?  Could the same number of employees also be responsible for Dept Reg 246, Pork Export Program? Do we need the report quarterly?

There are probably tens of thousands of worthless reports written every year by an entrenched bureaucratic mass that lives on forever sucking up tax dollars, stifling initiative and being a roadblock to progress. 

It is inevitable that the task force will find elements that were stood up years or even decades ago to deal with a particular problem.  The problem may no longer exist but the branch or division just keeps cranking out paper.

2. GRADE STRUCTURE OF THE EMPLOYEES:

Is the grade structure commensurate with the degree of complexity of the mission? Could two or more similar “boxes” be combined, perhaps scaled down and led by this same leader (a span of control issue)? Is the leader a “working leader” or just grading the papers of his/her subordinates and passing them up the chain?

3. HOW MANY MEETINGS DO YOU ATTEND PER WEEK? 

This can reveal a lot about an organizational element and its leader.  Many meetings are just to fill up time, or are a daily social coffee clutch, or make the person in charge feel like he/she is actually “leading”.  Many are a colossal waste of time. If employees have time to attend too many meetings, they probably are not very busy to begin with.

4.  WHAT DEPARTMENT REGULATIONS GUIDE YOUR WORK? 

After reviewing the answers to the other questions, it may become apparent that these regulations are no longer necessary.  This is another piece in getting the big organizational picture.

5. PRODUCT.  A LIST, IN SINGLE SENTENCES, OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN THE PAST 12 MONTHS:

Task force:  Are the accomplishments in line with the mission or are they just doing “busy work”?

6. A SHORT STATEMENT OF VALUE ADDED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF…..(AGRICULTURE).  That is, “without us the Department would not/could not do the following……….”

Human nature being what it is, some of these “one-page” requirements will become multiple pages from those subordinate leaders who believe their work to too important to be summarized onto one page.  This is where the task force makes it known this is a serious and important initiative.  Reports that do not meet the task force’s standard should, without even being reviewed, be returned with an “F” on it and a note to, “re-do in the proper format and submit by 0800 tomorrow.”  This will get everyone’s attention.   Any leader of an element should be able to produce their one-pager in a few minutes.

Task Force progress:  Having looked at this first layer in the organization chart, the task force will then assess the relevance of the next level; are they adding value or just a pass-through to the next higher?  They will assess span of control issues. This review process may lead the task force to come to an overall conclusion that the Department has too much layering which slows everything down, stifles ingenuity, complicates communications, leads to dysfunction and misunderstanding of assignments. 

Vice President Pence should randomly attend Departmental Task Force sessions every week.  He will be grading their work and progress; are they tough enough, too tough, thorough enough, on the right track?  The VP will also be able to pick up strong points of a Department’s process and pass it along to other Departments as best practices. 

During the process, it is important to not lose sight of the objective.  The objective is NOT to reach some specific lower number of federal employees.  The objective is to rid the government of “boxes” in the organization charts that have no “value added”, they just exist because they have always been there.  The end state is an organization that is leaner, more focused, more efficient, more effective, and agile. 

But, it will take leadership and a trememdous organized effort by someone senior enough to make it happen.  Vice President Pence is the logical choice.

This process may look tedious and time consuming.  Because it is.  But unless you begin at the bottom and unless you include every element, you will never achieve complete success.

Once the task force has worked it way up from the bottom, looking at every element and finally looking at the mission, value added, etc. of a Directorate, then and only then will they be capable of looking back and seeing how many subordinate elements are off track, irrelevant, unnecessary or even counter productive.  Then the task force will be capable of restructuring, re-aligning, re-tasking re-organizing the subordinate elements to create an organization that is more focused, aligned, responsive, innovative, agile and get rid of pockets of resistance.

Why do all of this work?  Two reasons: 1) The most common attempts at downsizing, in my experience used numerous times over the past few decades, have been to declare a hiring freeze or order an across-the-board 10% cut, neither of which makes any sense nor achieves any positive result.  2) What I have described above has never been done before.  We have just allowed the Executive Branch to grow without ever undertaking a necessary pruning process. 

When completed, many positions (perhaps tens of thousands of them) will be eliminated. It will then take a couple years of shuffling the deck by the Office of Personnel Management to get folks reassigned or retired, but it is within the art of the possible and monetarily worth the effort. This could easily result in a 10-20% reduction in the Executive Branch civilian work force.  Every 1% reduction in end-strength equals about a $1.5 billion saving in annual salary plus elimination of long-term retirement pay.

These three efforts by the Vice President will change the look, the feel, the capability and the agility of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.

Marvin L. Covault, Lieutenant General, US Army, retired. Author of VISION TO EXECUTION, a book for leaders and WETHEPEOPLESPEAKING.COM, a blog on politics, national and international issues.

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Yep, we sure did, a couple thousand of them and it has stirred up a lot of controversy and absolute apoplectic behavior by the mass media. 

Deb and I were having breakfast this morning and she said, “I don’t completely understand the whole Syria thing.”  I told her what I believe has been, and is, going on and she said, “You get in your office today, type up what you said and put it on your blog; maybe someone else needs to know this.”  After 56 years, I know how to follow orders.  So here goes.    

Hafaz al-Assad, the father, ruled Syria 1971-2000.  Upon his death, the son, Bashr al-Assad, has been in charge; together they represent a brutal dictatorship over Syria for 47 years.  Twenty-seven years ago, following deep-seated discontent, a group of rebels tried to bring down Assad.  They are still trying. 

In the process Assad is responsible for 300-500 thousand dead men, women and children (the exact number will never be known).  Thousands suffered and died from chemical weapon attacks.  The question is, why has al-Assad not been hauled before the world court to be tried for these atrocities like Slobodan Miolsevic (Serbian dictator) was for killing tens of thousands in Bosnia and Kosovo?  But I digress.

With the Syrian civil war raging for years, al-Assad has been desperate for aid; economic, weapons, ammunition and people. Iran to the rescue.  Iran has eyes on dominance over the Middle East and Syria became a willing ally.  Not to be outdone, the Russians, looking to be a long-term influence and player in the Middle East also signed on for aid. 

When the US pulled out of Iraq in 2010, a vacuum was created and it was quickly filled by ISIS.  With no resistance from the US, ISIS, by 2014, created an ISIS-led 35,000 square mile “country” referred to as a “Caliphate”.  They had a governmental headquarters, a leader al-Baghdadi, staff, tax collectors, they were selling oil and financing the rise of ISIS elements in 38 countries around the world. 

The US finally said enough is enough and began air strikes and some ground operations inside the Caliphate, but achieved little success.  The problem was the restrictive rules of engagement imposed by the Obama White House.  You need to recognize that in the Syria/ISIS type scenario, much of the success/progress results from timely attacks on “actionable intelligence” targets of opportunity.

Actionable intel targets are normally fleeting in nature and most of the “high-value” targets of opportunity required approval so far up the chain of command that we rarely successfully attacked a high-value, time-sensitive target. 

Early on in 2017 President Trump and Sec Def Mattis decentralized the rules of engagement approval authority to the commander on the ground.  We blew the hell out of ISIS and the caliphate has ceased to exist. 

But the mass media, politicians and Washington pundits are screaming, “But ISIS is not yet defeated.”

They are correct but neither is Hamas, neither is Hezbollah, neither is Boko Haram, neither is Al-Qaeda, neither is ISIS in dozens of countries.  And what’s more, they may never be “defeated.”  It is the world we live in. 

Ok, folks, if the 2000 US troops stay in Syria, tell me what the hell do you want them to do?  Fight the Russians?   Fight the Iranians? Declare war on al-Assad? Or maybe just set up camp for 17 years like we have done in Afghanistan?  I know, some will respond, “Well what if they rebuild the Caliphate?”  Why would they be so dumb? But if they do, we will just blow it up again with a few airplanes. But we do not need 2000 of our absolute finest sitting around in Syria doing “what ifs.” There is plenty for them to do elsewhere. 

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas

Marv Covault

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Funding THE WALL; we can’t find $5 Billion.  Well, maybe there just isn’t $5 billion to spare.  Let’s take a look. 

On October 29^th, a few weeks ago there was a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal. The headline read, America Needs a War on Waste!  The subtitle said, 100 Examples of Federal Taxpayer Abuse. Below that it invited the readers, “To learn more about these examples,visit OpenTheBooks.com.

I selected 30 of the 100 examples at random from the printed news page. 

Here is a tiny portion of  the waste we are talking about: 

BUYING BOOZE FOR EMBASSIES AROUND THE WORLD–$79,000, final week FY2017, State Department.

USE IT OR LOOSE IT SPENDING–$50 Billion, final week FY2017, all federal agencies.

MISTAKES & IMPROPER PAYMENTS DISTRIBUTED BY 20 FEDERAL AGENCIES – AVERAGED $92 BILLION PER YEAR – FY2004-FY2017 / Congressional Research Service

MISTAKES & IMPROPER MEDICARE PAYMENTS – AVERAGED $30 BILLION PER YEAR– FY2004-FY 2017 / Health and Human Services.

MISTAKES & IMPROPER MEDICAID PAYMENTS –AVERAGED $18 BILLION PER YEAR– FY2004-FY2017 / Health & Human Services.

PERKS TO IVY LEAGUE COLLEGES – AVERAGED $8 BILLION PER YEAR – FY2010-FY2015 / Federal Payments, Subsidies, Tax-Breaks / All Federal Agencies

COLLEGES OF BEAUTY& COSMETOLOGY — $677.4 MILLION – FY2017-FY2018 / Department of Education

AVERAGE FEDERAL EMPLOYEE RECEIVES 43 DAYS PAID TIME OFF — $22.6 BILLION – FY2016 / U.S.Office of Personnel Management

35,212 FEDERAL LAWYERS — $4.8 BILLION – FY2017 / Office of Personnel Management

PURCHASING $800 PENCIL HOLDERS & $7,000 EXECUTIVE DESKS – FY2015 / Environmental Protection Agency

MISTAKES &IMPROPER SUBSIDY PAYMENTS — $3.7 BILLION – FY2004 – / FY 2017 / Department of Agriculture

PAYMENTS TO GAY MEXICAN PROSTITUTES FOR SAFE SEX — $53,419 – 2015 / National Institute of Health

FEDERAL FUNDING INTO THE 50 WORST COMMUNITY COLLEGES –$923.5 MILLION – 2017-2018 / Department of Education

TWO SCULPTURES FOR THE VA FACILITY THAT SERVED BLIND VETERANS — $670,000 – 2016 / Department of Veterans Affairs

FANCY ROCK SCULPTURE — $482,960 – 2016 / Department of Veterans Affairs

COMEDY CLUB HOLOGRAMS — $1.7 MILLION – 2017 / Department of Commerce

HOW TO USE A LAWYER GUIDE — $728,000 – 2015 / Department of Agriculture

FARM SUBSIDIES INTO URBAN AREAS — $626 MILLION – FY2015-2017 / U.S. Department of Agriculture

WHERE IT HURTS THE MOST TO BE STUNG BY A BEE — $1 MILLION – FY2015 / National Science Foundation

REFRAMING BELIEFS ABOUT DEATH AND DYING AMONG LATINOS — $882,841 – FY2015 / Health and Human Services

CAUTION………THOSE OF YOU WITH A HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE ISSUES, PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!!

Here are a few, among perhaps thousands, of the funding actions sponsored by members of the House of Representatives. 

MEDITATION BREATHING MOBILE APP — $687,989 – FY2016 / House Representative Jim Clyburn / South Carolina

CIGAR TASTE TEST — $114,375 – FY 2016 / Rep Robert Scott/ /Virginia

USING SOAP OPERAS TO REDUCE HIV IN URBAN BLACK WOMEN — $567,529 – FY 2016 / Rep Mike Capuano / Massachusetts

HOW FACEBOOK AFFECTS ALCOHOL USE — $147,686 –FY2016 / Rep Jim McDermott / Washington

VIRTUAL REALITY TO TEACH CHILDREN IN CHINA HOW TO CROSS THE STREET –$183,750 – FY2016 / Rep Terri Sewell / Alabama

TAI CHI FOR THE ELDERLY — $696,723 – FY2016 / Rep Mike Capuano / Massachusetts

STUDY: ARE PHYSICIAN TRAINEES RACIST? — $932,741 – FY 2016 / Rep Tim Walz / Minnesota

VIDEO GAME: THE LOGICAL JOURNEY OF THE ZOOMBINIS — $658,388 –FY2016 / Rep Katherine Clark/ Massachusetts

RESEARCHING STIGMATIZATION OF DANISH SMOKERS –$330,176 – 2016 / Rep Lou Barletta /Pennsylvania

MOBIL APP FOR SEX DIARY — $1 MILLION – 2016 / Rep Grace Napolitano / California

CONVINCING MOTHERS TO STOP TEEN GIRLS FROM USING TANNING BEDS — $671,522 – 2016 / Rep Ed Perlmutter / Colorado

MEASURING BLOOD PRESSURE AT BLACK BARBER SHOPS — $2.1 MILLION – 2016 / Rep Adam Schiff /California

SEX ED FOR PROSTITUTES IN CALIFORNIA — $1.4 MILLION – FY2016 / Rep Barbara Lee /California

OR, MAYBE WE SHOULD JUST TAKE BACK SOME OF THE $10.6 BILLION WE GAVE TO MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA THIS YEAR. 

Restating the immortal words of Vince Lombardi, “What the hell is going on out there?”

Bottom line:  All of these examples of taxpayer waste can be fixed with a single concept, ACCOUNTABILITY.  Accountability is something that ranks somewhere between SORELY-LACKING  and NON-EXISTENT in the Washington swamp. 

I am working on some ideas as to how to fix it………..stay tuned………WeThePeopleSpeaking

Marv Covault

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December 17, 2018

Subject: A MODEL FOR MOVING THE NATION FORWARD

Memorandum for: President Trump, Chief of Staff (designee) Mick Mulvaney,  Kellyanne Conway

The working relationship between the Executive and Legislative Branches is, at best, tenuous. Additionally, within the congress extreme partisanship is the norm, often putting the nation at risk as critical national security issues get batted back and forth but not moved forward.  These two assertions, if true,tell us Washington is not being-all-it-can-be when it comes to doing the peoples’ work.  Furthermore, it appears the situation may deteriorate further during the 116^thCongress. 

In the annual Gallup poll that rates Americans’ confidence in institutions, the US military, as usual, finished first with 74% in the categories of “a great deal” and “quite a lot” of confidence.Also, as usual, congress was dead last with 11%. With those numbers, year after year, one would think the congressional leadership, if for no other reason than embarrassment, would look for ways to change. But they don’t and probably won’t. Dysfunction has become the accepted norm.

Can it be fixed?  Yes, and there is a model for doing so.

In 2010 President Obama selected Erskin Bowles, a Democrat, and Alan Simpson, a Republican, to lead a study entitled,The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. It turned out to be a brilliant, six-month piece of work and was possibly the best bipartisan document produced in recent history.  In fact, it was too good, too timely, too realistic and so comprehensive that President Obama and the congress put it in the too-hard box never to be acted on.

Undaunted, in 2013 Bowles and Simpson delivered a short paper to President Obama and congressional leaders reiterating the depth and breadth of the nation’s problems and the potential cataclysmic outcomes if they were to continue on their present path.

The Bowles-Simpson paper’s closing paragraph reads as follows: “The problems are real, the solutions are painful and there is no easy way out. What we are calling for is by no means perfect, but it could serve as a mark for real bipartisan negotiations on a plan to reduce the deficit and grow the economy. It is time for our country to put this ultra-partisanship aside and pull together, not apart. We must do it for our grand children, we must do it for ourselves and we must do it for our country.”  Neither President Obama nor the Congress took any action. 

Back to the question, what can we do about congressional dysfunction? The purpose of this memorandum is not to look at the Bowles-Simpson study results per se, but to look at how they went about doing their work. It could be the perfect model for getting more accomplished in Washington.  Most importantly, the product has a decent chance of actually looking like a valid long-range strategic plan with a campaign to execute it. 

If we put the model into action, it is a pretty simple process: President Trump would select a problem to be worked; for example, immigration, reduced spending, election reform, health care reform. He then selects two highly accomplished, prominent national leaders with opposing party affiliations who are no longer in government. The two commission leaders would then select a few subject matter experts as part of their temporary staff. President Trump would then invite the House and Senate leaders to appoint two House members, a Republican and a Democrat, and one Senator from each party to be part of the Commission team.  

The final Commission product, PRODUCED IN SIX MONTHS OR LESS, would be proposed legislation the president could send to the congress for action. Upon arrival, the Bill would be co-sponsored in the House and Senate by the bipartisan congressional members who sat on the commission.

That’s the Bowles-Simpson model. The president could/should have multiple bipartisan commissions on-going simultaneously and thereby create a steady flow of important issues for congress to work on and pass into law. 

The advantages of this model are:

One, the issues should be bipartisan on day-one and remain so for the duration of the process.

Secondly, there is still a lot of “swamp” to be drained in Washington. President Trump is THE leader of this nation and this model allows him to drive the agenda and the narrative, something congress seems incapable of doing. 

Three, by carefully defining the scope of the study, up front, the president can make all of his on-going commissions “fit”into an overall campaign to move the nation forward.

Finally, and most importantly, from day-one the problems will be worked by proven leaders and the best minds available.  What happens now is that the majority of bills are drafted by congressional committee staffers whose depth, experience and expertise may be questionable. 

Proposed legislation that comes out of a committee is almost guaranteed to be politically biased, depending on which party chairs that particular committee. But the problem gets even worse; on big issues, health care for example,there may be multiple committee staffs simultaneously working on a draft bill on the same subject.  What happens is, instead of selecting THE best plan, all the staffs’ products are likely to get mashed together.  The result is utter chaos.  The best example in our history is The Affordable Care Act that came out of multiple committees and when combined resulted in a 2200-page law that not a single member of congress had  read prior to voting for it.  But it gets worse, in order to make a 2200-page law “operational”, legions of bureaucrats then produced thousands of additional pages of implementing instructions. 

Will the Boles/Simpson model work?  It can. What we know for sure is that what the Executive and Legislative Branches are doing now is not working.

The bottom line:  very rarely, with the exception of the Defense Department, do we see important issues executed from a completed, well thought out, long-range strategic plan. Executive Branch departments (other than DOD) and all of congress just do not have strategic planning expertise and the result is often chaos, lack of direction, dysfunction and grid lock. 

Will the Bowles-Simpson model eradicate political polarization? Probably not, but it can provide a road map to systematically move the nation forward. 

Marvin L. Covault, author of VISION TO EXECUTION, a book for leaders.

Note:  I now have a conduit to the White House and this memo is in the West Wing. However, I do not know if any of the addressees have read it. 

The FBI Director, James Comey/Hillary Clinton email investigation has been bothering me a lot since July 5th, 2016 when Comey announced that he was not going to recommend the filing of criminal charges against Hillary Clinton over her use of a private, unsecured email server.  Comey said there was insufficient evidence to show Clinton had malicious intent.  

Perhaps we should not take him at his word and re-look some of the facts.

I listened to Comey’s presentation live on the radio and have since read the entire presentation a couple times.  His conclusions and recommendations absolutely fly in the face of the very simple verbiage in the law and in his findings. 

Comey, 5 July, 2016:  “Good morning.  I’m here to give you an update on the FBI’s investigation of Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email system during her time as Secretary of State.”

Comment:  It was not an investigation “update”; he shut it down.

Comey: “The investigation began as a referral from the Intelligence Community Inspector General in connection with Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail server during her time as Secretary of State. The referral focused on whether classified information was transmitted on that personal system.

Comey: “Our investigation looked at whether there is evidence classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on that personal system, in violation of a federal statute making it a felony to mishandle classified information either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way.”

Comment: The mission statement was perfect.  This is a good time to take a look at the simple law the FBI was investigating:

18 U.S.C. 793(f) “Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document…… relating to the national defense,through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost,stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, …. and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer…… shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

Comment:  The law is clear as a bell.  I spent years of my service with classified documents in my possession. When one gets a security clearance, be it low level or Top Secret, you must meet with a documents expert who clearly defines what you can and cannot do. While they are with you, you must also read a document that again clearly tells you what you must do to secure the documents at all times.  Then they require you to sign the document, in their presence, stating that you understand it all and they keep the document. Hillary would have signed just such a document like the rest of us were required to do. It is designed to scare the hell out of you and it does just that.  Bottom line, screw up and you go to jail. People do screw up and they do go to jail.  

Comey: “Secretary Clinton used several different servers and administrators of those servers during her four years at the State Department,and used numerous mobile devices to view and send e-mail on that personal domain.” 

Comment: Another nail in the coffin; indisputable piece of evidence. And none of these pieces of equipment were secure.

Comey: “From the group of 30,000 emails …. 110 emails in 52 email chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received.  Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent.”

Comment:  There it is,there is the damaging information that routinely sends mere mortals to jail. Period. But it gets worse.  Later in his statement Comey said:

“Seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters.” 

Comment:  I am sure you all recognize that any document with a Top Secret classification will contain information that is sensitive to the extent that it can most certainly negatively impact national security if it falls into the wrong hands.  But, some of you may not be familiar with “Special Access Program” information.  Let’s say,for example, that the CIA has an informant who is very highly placed in the Iranian government and is also very close to Iran’s leader, Hassan Rouhani.  This would be an example of a Special Access Program.  There may be only a few (perhaps as low as 4 or 5) who would have access to that case.  Special Access Programs have special requirements.  You are “read in” by  member of that particular program. Discussions are held only in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) where sensitive information can be viewed and discussed to preclude spying, surveillance or interception. It is never transmitted by any means that is subject to interception.  When special access information is compromised, people can die. Hillary would definitely be knowledgeable about all of the requirements and restrictions associated with Special Access Programs. There is no greater crime associated with US Code 793(f) than this violation.  “Gross negligence” doesn’t even begin to define what has happened.

Comey:“There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation. In addition to this highly sensitive information, we also found information that was properly classified as Secret by the U.S. Intelligence Community at the time it was discussed on email.”

Comment:  OK, it is beginning to look like a cut-and-dried case.   

Comey: “Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in the handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

Comment:  As we will learn later, this is the point where Comey begins to retreat from the hard, irrefutable evidence.  First, understand there is no requirement in the US Code 793(f) that any prosecutor has to even deal with intent; just being“gross negligent” is enough to convict. Also, we see here that Comey has made a distinction between “gross negligence” and his new chosen words “extremely careless”.  On this subject, I recall listening to a law professor comment on the distinction the day following Comey’s presentation.  The professor’s position was that anything can be defined and if he asked his first-semester law students to define “gross negligence” and they responded with “extremely careless”, they would get an “A” on the quiz. 

Comey: “Only a very small number of the emails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information. But even if information is not marked “classified” in an email, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.”

Comment:  Comey is absolutely correct.  But, during the FBI investigation, you will recall whenever Hillary was asked about emailing classified material, she would say, “I never sent or received any emails that were marked classified.” That is not a valid defense. 

Comey: “While not the focus of our investigation, we do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account. We also assess that Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent. She also used her personal email extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related emails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account.”

Comment:  This is about as far beyond “gross negligence” as one could possibly get. Maybe, we should call it extremely-gross-negligence-and-stupidity. During a House Judiciary Committee meeting, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, said the inspector general of the intelligence community found that most of the emails on Clinton’s server were sent to a “foreign entity”.  Also, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported that a Chinese state-owned firm located in the Washington, D.C., area had access  to Clinton’s emails in real time courtesy of a code embedded in the New York-based server which then made copies of the emails, some of which contained classified information.

Comey: “Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgement is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”

Comment:  Absolutely false. The following day, 6 July, law professors and prosecutors across the country were being interviewed and the consensus was that this would be a slam-dunk conviction for a first-year law student.

Comey: “Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent.” 

Comment: Again, THE CODE DOES NOT REQUIRE THE PROSECUTORS TO EVEN CONSIDER INTENT.  The reason is, if someone clearly “intends” to put highly classified information in the wind,they fall into an entirely different category of offenders; they are conducting treasonous actions.  US Code 793(f) is about negligence.  

Comey: “Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past.  We cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts.”

 Comment: That is pure,unadulterated BS. For example, a recent case in the news was about a sailor, Kristian Saucier, who took some pictures while serving on a US nuclear submarine to show his family what his job was. The FBI investigated, a grand just indicted, he was found guilty and went to jail. 

Comey: “I know there will be intense public debate in the wake of this recommendation, as there was throughout this investigation.  What I Can assure the American people is that this investigation was done competently, honestly, and independently.  No outside influence of any kind was brought to bear.”

Comment: RE Comey’s “competence”. Well known former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy has gone so far as to say that replacing the words “gross negligence” with “intent” rewrites the stature to serve political ends.”

RE “no outside influence,” Comey’s boss, Attorney General Loretta Lynch,instructed Comey to refer to the entirety of the FBI actions as an “inquiry”rather than an investigation.  

RE“competence”. Witnesses were allowed to have co-conspirators attend their meetings with the FBI investigators.  No records were kept of the discussions.  Co-conspirators were given immunity but were not interrogated against the primary target, Hillary.  Hillary was not interviewed until the last minute and she was allowed to defend herself by having a poor memory.  

RE“competence”. The FBI Director decided that “extreme carelessness” was a better description of the actions of the co-conspirators and it was not equivalent to gross negligence so there could be no prosecution. 

Oh, by the way, recall that the AG, Loretta Lynch, met on the tarmac in Phoenix, June 28^th, 2016, to have a supposed-to-be-secret meeting on Bill Clinton’s private airplane while the Hillary investigation was in its final days. Judicial Watch said, “Lynch’s decision to breach the well-defined ethical standards of the Department of Justice  and the American legal profession is an outrageous abuse of the public’s trust.  Her conduct and statements undermine confidence in her ability to objectively investigate and prosecute possible violations of law associated  with President Clinton and Secretary Clinton.” Clearly, there should have been media outrage and Obama should have fired her.

My conclusions:  Comey was wrong on the law.  He chose to ignore blatant, damaging,irrefutable evidence against Hillary, no matter how potentially damaging her actions were.

The “I’ in FBI strands for investigation yet Comey set himself up as investigator, prosecutor, judge and jury. 

Clearly, Comey should have recommended that the DOJ, at the very least, convene a grand jury to decide whether the case had merit to indict.

Without a grand jury finding to indict, there would be no  warrants.  There would be no subpoenas. There would be no compelling testimony of any sort.

 In spite of his contradictions and pathetic investigation, Comey knew he was covered; Obama had his back; his boss, Loretta Lynch, had his back; the mainstream media had his back.

The fact that President Trump eventually fired Comey should not be an issue.  The issue is, why didn’t Obama fire him in July, 2016 for dereliction of duty.  But of course, that could not happen as Obama was campaigning for Hillary referring to her as, “the most qualified presidential candidate in history.”

Best courses of action going forward: 1) the new Attorney General takes the FBI investigation findings, as is without Comey’s conclusions and recommendations, and gives them to a grand jury for action. 2) Then, perhaps appoint a Special Council to look into the possible politicization and outright dishonesty in the upper echelons of the Justice Department and FBI during the 2016-2017 time frame. 

Marv Covault

Hard to realize that we are not too far from another marathon of primary elections.  Ugh, I can hardly wait.  As I recall, at times during 2016 I was, confused,frustrated, and just plain fed up with the presidential primary election process? Open, closed, proportional, winner-take-all, caucuses, uncommitted delegates, you name it, we have it in our system.  

What a mess. I would give most of the states a grade of “D” on the handling of their state’s primary.  We need to start over with a simple, 10-page,unambiguous federal law and get back to what elections are supposed to be about;that is, one eligible voter, one vote and that vote counts.  

THE PROPOSED LAW

1. INTENT:  The underpinning for this law is one person, one vote that counts, all the way to the party convention, done in a more streamlined,fair system.

• CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICTS:  The existing 435 districts will provide the basis for equal representation of delegates.  There will be four delegates per Congressional District totaling 1740. 

• LIMIT THE PRIMARY SEASON:  There will be no “campaigning”before January 1^st of the election year.  Include in the law a very detailed,unambiguous discussion of what constitutes “campaigning”.  Appoint a panel of retired federal judges to rule on complaints of campaigning before January 1^st.  If found guilty, the penalty will be that the candidate’s name will be removed from the ballot in the state in which the infraction occurred. 

• NO CAUCUSES:  Take a look inside the Iowa caucuses.  On a cold evening 25 neighbors in a small community will crowd into someone’s living room and listen to speeches for several hours then vote by raising their hand. Given the option to actually go to the polls during the day, perhaps 250 folks from that same community might have actually cast a secret vote.  

• FOUR VOTING DATES:  There will be four regional primary election days with about fifty campaigning days for each. The actual dates will be the Sunday closest to February 19^th, April 9^th,May 29^th and July 17^th.  Voting will take place on a Sunday to maximize voter participation. 

• The regions will consist of a group of contiguous states with a total number of Congressional Districts closest to 109 (approximately one fourth of the 435 Representatives).For example, the Northeast Region would include the 13 states in the northeast bordered on the southern edge by Virginia and West Virginia. 

The order in which the regions will hold their primaries will be based on a drawing held July 1^st, six months prior to the commencement of campaigning on January 1^st.

• OPEN PRIMARIES:  On April 19^th,2016 New York held its primary election. But not for all the voters.  New York had a “closed” primary.  Closed to whom?  In this case 25% of the voters were registered as “other” or “Independent” and were denied the right to vote.  To add insult to injury New York voters was required to have finalized party registration SIX MONTHS prior to the primary.  Dumb.

Here is the fix.  All political parties will hold their elections on the same day and all primaries will be “open”.  No one needs to be “registered”, be on the roles or be prior-committed.  Just walk up to the nice lady at the polling station, show your ID and request the party ballot you want, period.  Can anyone show me that registration nonsense in the Constitution?  I thought not.

• COMMITTED DELEGATES:  The abomination known as“Super Delegates” and “uncommitted delegates” absolutely flies in the face of what our democracy is all about.  Every delegate must be chosen by the voters.

• PROPORTIONALITY:  The delegates allocated to a particular candidate in every state will be proportional to that candidate’s share of the total votes cast.   

1. IN OR OUT: Candidates will not be allowed to “suspend” their campaigns.  A candidate is either in or out.  If a candidate quits prior to the last regional primary, the delegates they have gained will be reallocated proportionally.

For example:  a state has 120 delegates;candidate A got 50% of the vote (60 delegates), candidate B 30% (36 delegates)and candidate C 20% (24 delegates). Subsequently, candidate C drops out. Candidate C’s 24 delegates will be proportionally allocated to candidates A and B based on the per cent of the total vote they received. 

1. CONVENTION RULES: There is one more thing going on that just defies all logic and commonsense.   At the 2012 Republican Convention, THE DAY BEFORE IT BEGAN, the Rules Committee met to set the rules.  One new “rule” was that any candidate without a win in at least eight states would not be placed in nomination.  Incredible. The Republicans did it again in 2016; the Rules Committee meet just prior to the start of the Convention.

The new federal law will simply say that the convention rules will be written and finalized by December 31^st before campaigning begins on January 1^st.  Some will argue that it can’t be done.  Certainly it can, just stop taking stupid pills and make it happen.  

Marv Covault

By the way, I have just provided this proposal and three others to my re-elected Representative, Richard Hudson.  The other three issues; 2018 MID-TERM ELECTIONS, TERMS AND TERM LIMITS……WHY IS ELECTION DAY TUESDAY,NOVEMBER 6^TH….and A NEW WAY TO LOOK AT IMMIGRATION REFORM……are all on this wethepeoplespeaking blog.  I have suggested to Representative Hudson that he take on the task of causing legislative action on all four issues.  I further suggested that he attempt to get the entire North Carolina Congressional Delegation (2 Senators and 13 Representatives) to co-sponsor the  bills.

My point being, if any of you would like to present any one or all of these four issues to your Senator or Representative, please do so.  Thanks.   

“To appreciate what ____________ has achieved, you’d have to go back to the previous drifting, demoralized America, of the one that had made its peace with decline, the America of stagnation at home and drift abroad and a general even un-American defeatism.

The challenge had become how to stave off defeat as long as possible, just to survive, not how to triumph. The spirit of that America was unnatural, ungainly and unflattering.

If it can ever be said that one man, ___________, changed everything, he is the one man. And he did it the way he does everything, dramatically. There is no conventional way to explain so unconventional turn of events.”

Comment: My wife, Deborah, was digging through some old files and came upon this short article by syndicated columnist, Paul Greenburg.

I call this a classic case of what goes around, comes around.

Fill in the blanks, Reagan or Trump? This was originally written about President Reagan but it sounds about like the corrections President Trump has undertaken to get America back on track. I just find it interesting that we survive at all, the way we seem to get whipsawed with each change of party in power.

I do not know the exact date or which newspaper published it.

Marv Covault

Leader Pelosi and likely Chairpersons of the major committees in the 116th Democratic controlled House of Representatives are saying there may be dozens of investigations initiated against President Trump after they convene in January 2019. So what? The so what is, if they proceed, it could have a devastating downside for our nation.

For a few days following the November elections there was some talk of cooperation among the Executive Branch, the House and the Senate. It was brief and, I believe, wishful thinking.

The round of investigations that are planned in the House have the real potential to deepen the divide in this country and transform the “ditch” dividing us now into something resembling the Grand Canyon.

Take off your rose-colored glasses America; the intent of the investigations is to eventually prompt a vote of impeachment in the House against President Trump; notwithstanding the likelihood that it would never be consummated with a conviction in the Senate.

The investigations have the potential to promote so much animosity between the House and Senate, that the Congress will be beyond dysfunctional, bordering on complete abrogation of their constitutional responsibilities. The investigations reportedly may include everything Donald Trump has done in his business career, everyone he has associated with prior to entering politics and all of his positive initiatives since becoming president.

A relevant question is, could the House Democrats doing the investigating withstand that same level of scrutiny of their lives and their conduct as politicians? Remember that sage old saying about throwing rocks while living in a glass house.

There will also be issues other than the investigations that will contribute to the widening of the divide. For example, Pelosi has vowed to roll back the tax breaks for tens of millions of families; the tax breaks that also were the catalyst for the resurgence of every aspect of our economy. Her actions threaten to halt economic growth.

While the “caravan” has now legitimized serious concerns over national security and citizen’s safety, Democrats called the caravan a sham dreamed up by the Republicans to win the mid-term elections. Obama called President Trumps actions at the border a “stunt”. Meanwhile, Democrats refuse to cooperate on desperately needed immigration reform.

Additionally, one of the great ironies in political history, rather than cooperate on health reform the liberals continue to blame Americans’ number one concern, health care, on President Trump for his inability to “fix” Obamacare. Obamacare has been a disaster from the day 100% of the Democrats voted for it and is the greatest single “tax” ever perpetrated on the middle class.

The list of critical issues facing our nation is long; but the Democratic party platform can only be summed up as, resist everything.

How bad can the nation-wide divide get? A reputable journalist, New York Times Pulitzer Award winning columnist Thomas Friedman, recently wrote, “A civil war in America may be coming if we cannot find a way out of the tribalistic political and cultural fracturing that threatens our future.”

Also, historian, author and strategic analyst Gregory Copley writes, “Yes, there is a civil war looming in the United States. It will appear as an evolving chaos.”

We are not talking about the 1860’s kind of civil war with hundreds of thousands of soldiers doing battle. It will principally be a war of words and actions that threaten the necessary interaction of the functions of our Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches as we know them today. However nonthreatening that may sound, it has the potential to do irreparable damage to the very foundation of our society.

If the past eighteen months is an indicator, the predominance of the national mass media will be generally supportive of the liberal-led investigations. Polls continue to affirm the findings of a Harvard study in May, 2017, that, in rounded numbers, about 90% of the daily reporting on the Trump administration has been negative by ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Those organizations reach the majority of Americans and shape their thinking.

A civil war needs fuel, and a series of divisive House investigations will be that daily fuel. So, what will Copley’s “evolving chaos” look like?

As I have written many times over the years, culture is a powerful and pervasive force and when it is negative one cannot move forward. Conversely, with a positive culture, you are on the track to greatness. It is possible that the current culture of blame and hate that has consumed our country will reach a tipping point and move us towards a civil war.

It could happen. It could happen during the upcoming 116th Congress.

Lieutenant General, US Army retired, Marvin L. Covault is the author of Vision to Execution, a book for leaders.