Zero training? A single web server? No end users even touching the system till it's time for mission critical use? No frigging redirect of http->https? And it looks like, as has happened more than once in my professional life, people outside of the management structure saw possible risks and were blown off by those in charge.
Even if you supported Romney, this has to give you some pause about the man's management skills and who he hired to run things.
> Even if you supported Romney, this has to give you some pause about the man's management skills and who he hired to run things.
Wait, what?
There's a difference between people taking responsibility for what their staff do (thus, he should take responsibility for it) and people actually being responsible for what their staff do - especially if those staff are not staff but sub-contracted service providers.
If you don't hire people with adequate management skills to assess risk and take proactive steps to mitigate problems before they become dangerous to the mission, that's a failure at the highest level. Someone should've see this coming, or Romney clearly doesn't know how to delegate responsibility well.
There is a magnitude of difference between the two. When you run a top heavy campaign to get elected and a critical project fails miserably, that falls on you. When you preside over a government that consists of a large number of relatively autonomous agencies and departments, and something goes wrong deep inside one of them, that falls on the project managers and department heads.
To provide some scale, Romney's campaign employed approximately 500 staff. The Federal government employs more than 4 million.
Eric Holder is not one of 4 million. Eric Holder is a personal selection. It's not like it is a random failure in some lowly backwater office. It is a failure and a coverup going to the very top - to people personally appointed by the President. So if you think people are responsible for a mobile app done for them - then they should be responsible for the mess in their administration too.
And if we start counting how many projects endorsed, sponsored and initiated by the federal government failed recently, we could be here all night.
I think Holder claiming the email having words "Fast and Furious" doesn't talk about Operation Fast and Furious, and his and Obama's refusal to comply with document request is ample evidence of coverup going on.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20115038-10391695.html
Read the docs yourself and try to explain how comes Holder says he did not hear about F&F until 2011 when these documents are from 2010 and are addressed to him and his immediate subordinates.
Only one explanation is logical - Eric Holder flatly lied to the Congress. And got away with it. That's the coverup, and if seeing it with your own eyes is not a proof, then I don't know what could prove it.
This whole "fast and furious" thing is just mind-bogglingly stupid. Seriously-- it takes a lot of effort to be this stupid.
Do you realize the reason why Mexican drug gangs buy guns in Arizona? It's because the gun laws there are extremely, extremely weak, to the point where random 18-year-olds can walk out of the door with $20,000 of guns, with no oversight. Who keeps the gun laws this weak? Republicans. Who then cynically try to frame Obama for a problem they created.
Even if David Voth ever asked anyone to sell a gun to a bad guy-- and if you read the Fortune article, it seems pretty clear that he probably never did-- so what? Are we going to start prosecuting undercover narcotics agents for dealing drugs? This whole thing just shows such a tremendous lack of logic that it's just... gah.
The especially ironic thing is that since the witch hunt, the ATF's seizures of weapons has dropped 90%. There will be a lot more Brian Terrys as a result of this stupidity.
Even if what you said about F&F were true, this does not change the fact Holder lied about it to Congress. If he thought it's a good operation - he should have said "yes, I knew about it since 2010 and it's just fine and nothing wrong with it", not "I just learned about it in 2011".
Now back to F&F. If you took a moment to educate yourself, you'd learn the whole point of F&F was to CIRCUMVENT the gun laws and allow the cartels to buy massive amount of guns from dealers that otherwise they would not be able to buy. The dealers signalled the ATF multiple times, but where told to shut up and sell. The rank agents asked to arrest the buyers and take the guns, but were told to stand down and not interfere since it is an operation to track the guns into Mexico, so everything is going fine and the guns should "walk". In fact, there was no way to track them and no tracking actually happened - the guns just disappeared. Blaming gun laws for the sales that were specifically protected by the government agency whose purpose is to monitor gun sales - well, yes, mind-bogglingly stupid. Using government agency fuckup to prove that we need more government involvement - mind-bogglingly stupid. Trying to sell guns to Mexico without actually being able to find them and without telling anybody on Mexican side a thousand guns is heading their way - mind-bogglingly stupid. Blaming Republicans for the mess - I'd say it takes a lot of effort to be this stupid, but apparently it does not. It comes naturally to some - whatever the problem is, Bush is at fault. Doesn't require any effort or any thinking at all. Saves a lot of mental energy that can be spent on blaming Bush for more stuff.
The whole F&F operation was a poorly executed screwup. It should have never happened and whoever thought it is a good idea should be reassigned to issuing parking tickets. However, the worst part is not this - anybody who follows the current events knows that for government projects screwup is a normal mode of operation. The worst is that AG Holder lied to the Congress about it - brazenly, openly and with full understanding that he will get away with it - and with President's help he did. For me and you, lying under oath would mean jail time. For him, according to you, it's just fine and if anything is wrong, the Republicans are at fault anyway.
>>> The especially ironic thing is that since the witch hunt, the ATF's seizures of weapons has dropped 90%.
Given that the purpose of F&F was specifically NOT to seize weapons that could be seized - relating the inevitable blowup of F&F to the lower seizures, is, well, you know... gah.
"Quite simply, there's a fundamental misconception at the heart of the Fast and Furious scandal. Nobody disputes that suspected straw purchasers under surveillance by the ATF repeatedly bought guns that eventually fell into criminal hands. Issa and others charge that the ATF intentionally allowed guns to walk as an operational tactic. But five law-enforcement agents directly involved in Fast and Furious tell Fortune that the ATF had no such tactic. They insist they never purposefully allowed guns to be illegally trafficked. Just the opposite: They say they seized weapons whenever they could but were hamstrung by prosecutors and weak laws, which stymied them at every turn.
Indeed, a six-month Fortune investigation reveals that the public case alleging that Voth and his colleagues walked guns is replete with distortions, errors, partial truths, and even some outright lies. Fortune reviewed more than 2,000 pages of confidential ATF documents and interviewed 39 people, including seven law-enforcement agents with direct knowledge of the case. Several, including Voth, are speaking out for the first time."
What is written there (esp. Fortune) is contrary to known facts and written from the words of very interested and involved people covering their asses after their operation blew up in their faces. I do not know who specifically gave the orders - was it prosecutors, ATF, or whoever else - but the fact is orders were given to not intercept illegal purchases and to let the guns "walk". From DOJ IG report:
We found that the lack of seizures and arrests was primarily attributable to the pursuit of a strategic goal shared by both the [Phoenix] ATF and the U.S. Attorney’s Office -- to eliminate a trafficking organization -- and the belief that confronting subjects and seizing firearms could compromise that goal.
This tactic was significantly different from previous tactic, e.g. in Project Gunrunner - where straw purchasers were arrested at the moment they handed off the guns. Here, they were allowed to proceed - to great dissatisfaction of the field agents. Whoever though up this was thinking that this would lead up the chain to eliminate the bigger organisation - but due to multiple failures in the execution - such as ATF agent tracking the buyer going on vacation and the buyer just disappearing with the guns - it did not happen and guns just disappeared in Mexico to the hands of drug cartels.
Nothing to do with gun laws. Anti-guns bunch would have to look in other place to feed their political agenda.
In a meeting on Jan. 5, 2010, Emory Hurley, the assistant U.S. Attorney in Phoenix overseeing the Fast and Furious case, told the [ATF] agents they lacked probable cause for arrests, according to ATF records. Hurley's judgment reflected accepted policy at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona. "[P]urchasing multiple long guns in Arizona is lawful," Patrick Cunningham, the U.S. Attorney's then–criminal chief in Arizona would later write. "Transferring them to another is lawful and even sale or barter of the guns to another is lawful unless the United States can prove by clear and convincing evidence that the firearm is intended to be used to commit a crime." (Arizona federal prosecutors referred requests for comment to the Justice Department, which declined to make officials available. Hurley noted in an e-mail, "I am not able to comment on what I understand to be an ongoing investigation/prosecution. I am precluded by federal regulation, DOJ policy, the rules of professional conduct, and court order from talking with you about this matter." Cunningham's attorney also declined to comment.)
It was nearly impossible in Arizona to bring a case against a straw purchaser. The federal prosecutors there did not consider the purchase of a huge volume of guns, or their handoff to a third party, sufficient evidence to seize them. A buyer who certified that the guns were for himself, then handed them off minutes later, hadn't necessarily lied and was free to change his mind. Even if a suspect bought 10 guns that were recovered days later at a Mexican crime scene, this didn't mean the initial purchase had been illegal. To these prosecutors, the pattern proved little. Instead, agents needed to link specific evidence of intent to commit a crime to each gun they wanted to seize.
Yep, sounds like this is all the fault of some renegade ATF agent. Nothing to do with the laws in place, no sir.
Nobody is blaming Bush (protip: he is not the president any more, and even if he were, the president is not responsible for determining gun laws in Arizona.) However, the fact that a random 18-year old can buy $20,000 of guns in Arizona and just walk out the door is the real cause of the problem. The ATF, by law, can't even set up a database of who bought what gun. I am in favor of gun rights, but this is just ridiculous.
Given that the purpose of F&F was specifically NOT to seize weapons that could be seized - relating the inevitable blowup of F&F to the lower seizures, is, well, you know... gah.
Here's a deep thought for you. If "Fast and Furious" was really the cause of those guns getting to Mexico, then why are guns still getting to Mexico, now that "Fast and Furious" is over? And why did so many of them get there before the operation started?
>>> However, the fact that a random 18-year old can buy $20,000 of guns in Arizona and just walk out the door is the real cause of the problem.
Nope, it is not. Random 18-year olds do not resell thousands of guns to Mexican drug cartels. The guys that did were known to ATF and sellers repeatedly alerted ATF - the agency that by law is designed to stop it - about them. The system worked - until it did not, because ATF thought they would be geniuses to allow the guns to "walk".
>>> The ATF, by law, can't even set up a database of who bought what gun.
By which law? This sounds like complete baloney - ATF knew who bought the guns. They just didn't intervene because this was the plan - to let the guns "walk", not because some law prevented them from knowing who bought what.
>>> If "Fast and Furious" was really the cause of those guns getting to Mexico
What you mean "if"? It is the fact that F&F was the reason of those guns getting to Mexico. If F&F was not underway, these buyers would have been stopped and the guns were confiscated before they reach Mexico.
>>> why are guns still getting to Mexico,
Because there are other ways of getting guns to Mexico, duh. You'd make a fine defense lawyer: "If my client sold these drugs on the street, as this footage and this undercover officer suggests, how comes drugs are still sold on the street when my client already had been arrested?". Too bad this defense makes no sense at all - of course ATF is not the only channel Mexican gangs can smuggle guns. That does not diminish the fact those specific guns were smuggled with full ATF cooperation and help, which should not have happened. And this does not diminish the fact AG lied about it after the fact that this ill-conceived mess of an operation was exposed. They knew it's a mess, they lied to cover their asses - and they got away with it. And Obama shares the blame for it.
Really, with this kind of argument I would not be so quick to throw around the "stupidity" word if I were you. I'd first learn to figure out difference between "X caused this specific instance of Y" and "X caused all instances of Y ever".
I'm honestly perplexed by your answer here - did you read the Fortune article? It has quoted sources and emails to back up the fact that state prosecutors refused to allow the ATF agents to do anything with these gun runners. That is, they told them that buying a large amount of guns was legal, and that even transferring them to someone else was legal as well.
If the state DA isn't will to prosecute, then what would you suggest the ATF agents do? And if the ATF agents know that guns are being purchased, but then cannot arrest those individuals because they do not have probable cause, why would you call that "allowing the guns to walk"?
I would point at the campaign manager as the person who should be responsible. The Campaign Manager is the CEO, the candidate is actually the product being sold. Granted, the candidate is being sold with promise that he or she will be a good CEO, but, during the campaign the CM is the CEO.
But then he is a product that can talk back and makes his own decisions for the entire campaign.
While I get your analogy, it simply isn't the way campaigns actually work. The candidate is the CEO - he's making the big decisions based on data fed to him or her by his campaign staff.
Leaders have to allocate attention to detail based on the strategic importance of that detail. The innovative application completely supplanting traditional Election Day strike list processes? The CEO had better be assured that's going to work by several different checks, and by multiple sources. Even then he probably had better have some backups in place.
I voted for Romney and yeah, this does have me reconsidering just how competent he is.
Are we sure that Romney thought this system was that critical? It could be reasoned, for instance, that it was more of a fallback mechanism than anything else; it's not very likely fervent Romney supporters were just going to forget about Election Day. The article says the system was conceptualized by two deputies, and complex organizations like this one have many moving parts; it is entirely plausible, imo, that Romney saw this project as a relatively minor component of a much larger organization, something nice to have but not crucial. After all, elections have been won without similar systems in place before.
I dislike Romney and did not vote for him (or Obama), but I don't think this should necessarily be seen as a major strategic failure. Was this project going to get Romney the 1 million + additional voters he needed? It's hard to think that Romney believes that.
Serious politicians study GOTV the way serious generals study logistics. The technical capacity to maintain a supply line is a crucial strategic detail and is carefully monitored by the most senior military officers. They don't manage it themselves but they make quite sure that it is being managed and managed properly.
Several accounts state that Orca positively thwarted traditional Election Day GOTV efforts. Campaigns think those matter enough to put considerable effort into them. So yes, this could well have made the difference, and its failure does have me rethinking Romney's actual management ability.
Oh yes, people do get fired for buying microsoft. Switch industries and you'll see. Or try spending 2 years building your company knowledge base into sharepoint and you'll see.
Sharepoint. Ugh. The mandated use of Sharepoint completely impeded communication on a multi-institution task I work on -- it was clunky when up, and often not up.
The solution? Instead of the project administering Sharepoint, the admin was handed off to the division of the corporation that specializes in administering Sharepoint. (It's a very large company.) Now we have two-factor authentication and double logins to upload monthly status reports. And still nobody can actually communicate.
SharePoint. Oh my head. When I saw us using that in the future ops center for Fukushima, it was the same feeling I had when I came back from sea duty and there was this thing called PowerPoint: I felt like they were asking me to put my brain in egg slicer. Giving a bunch of Marines with history degrees network and expecting them to understand version control is a step to far. Maybe in ten years. But the interface is sooooo bad, they'll never figure out how to use the one feature the system is intended to provide.
Is there really an age gap in basic understanding of the Internet? I submit most 18 yo kids know as little as most 48 yo management types. Or 48 yo teachers, or 48 yo anything-other-than-hacker types. If there is any function that filters Internet literacy, it's self selection of certain people (mostly men) into CS/IT.
I'm referring to SIPRNet security policies that gave millions of its users access to the same "Top Secret" data, and where the DoD decision tree strongly correlates to seniority.
I was referring to Private Bradley Manning and Sharepoint. To be fair, it took a few years to crack the MS file encryption. But now the world has wikileaks.
SharePoint dev here. The problem is that Microsoft attempted to build the product to cover every environment/workload/userbase, and as a result fails pretty miserably at all of them.
-You want a CMS? Use SharePoint!
-How about site for delivering BI dashboards? Use SharePoint!
-Large, mostly static public facing site? Use SharePoint!
That's true! I met Microsoft last year at the start of a large project for a client, and we were asking them to recommend a CMS to run in a .NET environment. They DID suggest Sharepoint. I laughed at them - "you are joking" I said. But they insisted, and we had to add Sharepoint to the shortlist of recommended CMS's just so that the client thought we considered everything their Microsoft salespeople were saying. But it was always a joke at that point.
Generally Objectionable. I think it gets packaged with windows server and exchange server for free (or nearly free) which is probably the only reason people use it.
What, he didn't have any say in who he hired to make this work?
The POTA doesn't actually personally work on many projects. He relies on people to get them done. If Romney couldn't get something as crucial as this right, then how the heck would he have gone running the country?
The CEO of any large company is usually not personally involved in the running of day to day operations. The president is not personally involved in the administration of Social Security, Medicare, the military, or any of the other multitude of services the government provides. But at the end of the day both are held responsible for the successful functioning of their organization. How can you be expected to run a country if you can't even run a campaign?
If he can't pick a reliable deputy to manage a single IT project how could he possibly manage a government? The President has to delegate well: Mitt either couldn't or didn't place a key service under someone reliable.
If Romney has to pick n reliable deputies for various things, then for sufficiently large n, he's inevitably going to make a mistake you can pounce on, even if he's really good at picking out people. Good judgement is not an all-or-nothing dichotomy.
Oh, certainly - I would just have thought that getting out the vote is so widely recognized as a key factor in modern campaigns that he'd have put his best people on it. Would we be talking about leadership at all if, say, many of his ads were a little ham-handed?
I was unclear. I am saying that since it is not the job of a president to micromanage, it is legitimate to criticise him for fuckups he was not directly involved with.
If his job were micromanaging, then "Hey, he wasn't in the room" would excuse him of responsibility, but that is not the case. Since his job would be pretty much the greatest opposite of micromanaging I can conceive of, there can be no excuse. The failure of his campaign is his failure.
That still seems a bit unclear to me actually. Not sure how to effectively reword this.
The United States has the following federal executive departments:
* Agriculture
* Commerce
* Defense
* Education
* Energy
* Health and Human Services
* Homeland Security
* Housing and Urban Development
* Interior
* Justice
* Labor
* State Transportation
* Treasury
* Veterans Affairs
Now there is literally no way you can micromanage you way through this. Nobody, and I mean nobody can possibly single handedly do it.
However, you can delegate. Part of that is to choose honest brokers and managers who know their area well enough to ensure that their departments work well.
In this situation it is your job to delegate to the right people. If you are the President of the United States of America and you aren't able to do this with your own campaign to get elected, you must take responsibilty for your failure and accept a great deal of responsibilty for the fact you did not get elected to high office.
Harsh, but being the POTA is not a job everyone can do. I know I couldn't.
But he wasn't president. Romney was managing a campaign. And a function critical to his campaign - you gonna tell me he wasn't involved? Or at least briefed?
Even if you supported Romney, this has to give you some pause about the man's management skills and who he hired to run things.