Government applies 19th Century solutions to 21st Century problems
Government applies 19th Century solutions to 21st Century problems
The Postal Service and Secret Service are dinosaurs in search of reformers to come in and break some china.
Trump was shot July 13. The latest (but hardly the last) postal rate increase took effect July 14. These were related events. Both the USPS and USSS are living in the past, operating by rote. DEI and other factors are turning the Secret Service into the Postal Service with guns. Much or most of the government operates on what worked in the past, slavishly obeying fallacies of sunk costs. When old practices begin to fail, nothing changes to address failures. New thinking is overdue; the last thing Congress is good at. Congress is invested in the status quo, including subsidizing union supporters, to the nation's detriment. Only a reformist president can possess a political mandate to institute policies benefiting the majority, rather than special interests. We will first address the glaring deficiencies of the Postal Service, then examine some obvious Secret Service deficiencies.
Too many government operations are conducted in obsolete ways inherited from past decades and centuries, rather than crafting modern solutions to old problems. Anachronisms abound. The U.S. Postal Service is a metaphor for so much, annually sinking ever deeper into debt, while perpetually raising rates. FY 2023 saw a $6.5 billion loss. The USPS operates under, at most, a 19th Century business model. Every address in the country is serviced six days a week by someone in a vehicle or on foot. Why? It's 2024 and electronic communications are instantaneous. Those willing to travel to central repositories (post offices) under their own locomotion, and save the USPS the enormous expense of visiting every address, are charged for doing so. The P.O. box rental rate varies, depending on location and box sizes. Generally between $100 and $200 annually for smaller options, on up for larger boxes. When P.O. box rentals are calculated on a square foot net basis, landlords drool over such rates of returns.
When you visit McDonald’s or banks, they have new devices called drive-up windows. You may have seen some in recent decades. How about inverting the USPS business model? Instead of the mountain of the Postal Service coming to Mohammed’s house daily, what if Mohammed visited the mountain, maybe every week or two, drove up to an appliance, inserted his card, punched in his code, then his bills and junk (“bulk rate business mail”) mail popped out in a device of some sort (perhaps resembling a dumbwaiter) to his vehicle. Urban residents could access similar options in post offices. People manage to venture out to obtain food, why not mail?
How about two-tier postage rates? A lower charge if mail is sent to a central repository for customer pickup; higher fees for deliveries to remote physical locations. If sending a letter to a P.O. box, $0.25 postage; vs. $0.50 postage to a physical address. Or an annual fee for declining a free P.O. box, the antithesis of the current policy. Saddled with an obsolete business model, the Postal Service racks up debt as it faces increasing costs, declining volumes, and perpetual rate increases. An unsustainable situation. The good news is they have a Soviet style 10-year turnaround plan to staunch $160 billion in projected losses over 10 years. Imagine how many wars Lindsey Graham could fund with that kind of cash. Congress must stop kicking the can and solve the problem, a responsibility it is institutionally incapable of fulfilling.
The USPS has focused on finding new revenue streams, only exacerbating its deficits. Chasing imaginary economies of scale, when your business model sucks so bad you lose money on every delivery, means increasing deliveries burns even more money. This relates to the fallacy of sunk costs, humans’ innate tendency to avoid abandoning losing behaviors because we are emotionally, financially, or institutionally invested in them. Ford recently dug itself a hole, losing $100k per electric vehicle. The difference with the USPS is Ford finally pulled the plug. The USPS buys shovels by the truckload.
Long before FedEx, there was Ben Franklin. He managed to reduce delivery times for correspondence between New York and Philadelphia to under 24 hours, round trip! A standard the current Postal Service can't approach. When it absolutely, positively needs to get there overnight, the current minimum rate for an overnight express letter between New York City Hall and Independence Hall is $30.45 for a service standard in the 1760s. Two-day delivery is $9.85. Or you could send a First Class letter for $0.73, rolling the dice regarding delivery speed. Sending email is free and instantaneous.
The U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General is open for business, ready to accept online complaints of fraud, waste, and abuse. It is time to report the Postal Service itself for the inherent waste and fraud of its business model. Banks invested in ATMs 40 years ago, slashing costs. The USPS automated most letter sorting, but stuck with an antiquated, unionized delivery model, dating to the horse era. To stop the immediate bleeding, six-day mail delivery should be slashed to a couple of times a week, at most. The USPS is largely a jobs program run by grifters awarding themselves huge bonuses for losing money, year after year.
Who is minding the store at the Postal Service? The five members of the Postal Regulatory Commission. Not one of whom has experience as a corporate turnaround specialist. Two of them were former Postal Service employees. All five need to go if the billions bleeding out is ever to be staunched. Those billions represent a subsidy from the U.S. Treasury to mailers. Who is the biggest mailer? Amazon. $200 billion man Jeff Bezos just splashed out $75 million for a little support boat to accompany his $500 million super yacht. Bezos has an exclusive, secret rate agreement with the USPS to deliver Amazon parcels seven days a week. “Proprietary information.”
The bozos running the place have convinced themselves that Amazon’s packages represent a great deal for them. It’s a great deal, but not for all the other postal customers who, along with taxpayers, subsidize Amazon’s profits. If only more packages could be diverted from private carriers to flow through the USPS swamp, that would supposedly be a money maker for the Postal Service. Not if you are losing money on every delivery. Are they really that stupid or are the massive, perpetual losses a function of postal worker unions buying influence in Congress and oligarchs bleeding the rest of us to subsidize them? Postal worker union members pay dues. They don’t need strike funds, so where do those millions end up? The same place teacher union dues flow to. Welcome to Late Stage Democracy 101.
The great economist and libertarian, Nobel laureate Friedrich von Hayek, maintained that the best way to prevent corruption is to ensure everyone plays by the same rules. Try walking into a post office on a Saturday and requesting next day delivery without paying a minimum of over $35 to deliver an Express Mail letter. This is for a letter, not a package. The PRC requires renaming: Bezos’s Bozos.
THE CLOWN SHOW PRETENDING TO BE A PROTECTIVE AGENCY
Consider the Secret Service’s archaic protocols highlighted by Trump’s shooting. Why isn’t a reaper drone (or lower altitude options) patrolling overhead at rallies to provide scene commanders battlefield omniscience? A 14-year-old with a $200 drone could provide better real-time intelligence. When even Crooks sent up a drone to scout out the location, this deficit borders on the absurd. Even the criminal. Continuous aerial surveillance is a given for modern battlefields. It is overdue for the USSS to bring in military tacticians to point out obvious deficiencies.
Why are agents’ torsos used to shield protectees, rather than stashing ballistic shields or kevlar blankets on stage so everyone can be safely evacuated? Trump’s evacuation bordered on a joke. A blob of agents, struggling to move Trump off the stage by a set of steps while attempting to shield him with their bodies, was another accident waiting to happen. And Trump was ambulatory. A bulletproof protective capsule needs to be prepositioned and steps need to be preemptively covered with a drop-down ramp once a protectee ascends on to a stage. Similar to how airline passengers are quickly and safely evacuated in emergencies. Or a ballistic lined chute — something like a bobsled track — can be installed, with the motorcade parked at its base. In his interview with Jesse Watters, Trump revealed the Secret Service, fearful he was more seriously wounded, wanted to transport him off the stage on a stretcher, but he refused. It’s probably a safe bet that the stretcher was not balistically shielded.
Briefcase ballistic shields are also available. As are ballistic blankets. Putin’s security detail is equipped with the former, ready for instant deployment. In Putin’s previous career, his employer specialized in creative assassination techniques. He travels in a protective bubble containing everything up to frequency jammers, anti-tank grenade launchers, and anti-aircraft missiles. Presidential details need to be staffed with battle-hardened special operators, not sorority sisters backed up by Barney Fife.
Rather than one shooter, if a conspiracy of snipers was to target a stage from a mile distant, agents’ bodies become problems, not solutions. The oldest trick in the world is an initial shooting, wait, then attack the responders. Porous bodies are particularly ineffective against the latter. Trump’s detail made horrible errors if additional shooters were waiting. Allowing him to stand up to his full height, fetching his hat off the stage, broadcasting their conversation out over an open microphone, were just dumb moves. Watch the video of murdered firefighter Corey Comperator receiving CPR and being carried from the stands. Placing an audience behind the stage not only endangers those individuals, but exacerbates factors which interfere with rapid evacuation of the protectee.
The evacuation huddle surrounding Trump and navigating down the steps to come off the stage was madness. It is slow, by definition. Even with an ambulatory protectee. Agents were jumping off the stage behind the blob. Armed shooters were standing on the stage scanning for incoming threats. They are wearing helmets but there is no protocol to stash helmets behind the podium for the protectee and his agents? The president (presumably wearing a kevlar vest) was a helmetless sitting duck for a couple of minutes while the guys with rifles are far better protected. This was any assassin’s dream come true. Watch the video with the screen grab below of the point where they are about to stuff Trump into the SUV. A half-dozen helmeted agents are rushing from the motorcade into the stage area, after Trump’s vehicle is already departing. As we now know, this additional force was probably composed of other Homeland Security Department personnel, not from the USSS. Regardless, they should have already been brought up. When seconds count, minutes were wasted. From the time of the first shot until the reinforcements showed up was about 2 minutes, 30 seconds.
In the video, the first shot is at 8:10. Trump is not moved until after the agents state that “hawkeyes here,” referring to the guys armed with rifles who reached the stage at 8:41. These are USSS personnel dressed in black. The armed guys in camo arriving after the excitement is almost over are almost certainly from elsewhere in the Homeland “Security” bureaucracy. It took them five times as long as the hawkeyes to engage. Where were they? After having inspected Trump for additional wounds and confirming the known shooter was dispatched (and assuming no other assassins exist), the blob rises off the floor at 9:10, one minute into the drama. The bottom of the stairs is reached at 9:50. The SUV door finally shuts at 10:18, 2 minutes, 8 seconds after the first shot. Then Holster Girl, having relocated from cowering behind the stage, begins fumbling with her weapon after the door closes.
There is no way an individual walking at a rapid pace requires 28 long seconds to travel from the foot of the stairs to the SUV. Or that it takes 68 seconds to travel from the podium to the bottom of the stairs, even with Trump’s fist thrusts. The blob is a slow-motion means of transporting the protectee to the safety of the SUV. The blob is an assassination squad’s dream come true. Contrast this shooting with the circumstances of Hinckley’s attack on Reagan. That occurred on the sidewalk, immediately in front of the limo. Forming the blob around Reagan and immediately stuffing him into the limo was the best strategy for that situation. Reagan arrived at the hospital in 9 minutes. But different protocols need to be established for different scenarios.
The podium is a joke, flimsy wood. It should be wide and steel, allowing the protectee to duck behind it without waiting for agents to swarm him. When fractions of a second count, the podium should be the very first line of defense. The podium should have a wraparound steel enclosure, providing 360 degree protection, at least four feet high. The bunting at the front of the stage conceals steel, but it is far too low — especially in this case when the shooter was elevated about the stage level. This video of Trump’s brief Butler, PA rally held in the closing moments of the 2020 campaign shows the podium placed in front of the bunting. This is dangerously dumb.
This is the first presidential assassination shooting in 40 years, broadcast live, providing an opportunity for this sort of through, crowd-sourced analysis. Hopefully, lessons will be learned and protocols adapted. Some reforms are obvious. The microphone should be cut as soon as the shooting starts, so assailants can not eavesdrop on the protective detail’s communications. There is a reason agents wear earpieces. The SUV should be backed up immediately next to the stage. There should not be an audience behind the podium. The stage should be enclosed in bulletproof glass.
It’s 2024, but the tactics and materials are hardly better than what could be had in the 19th Century. With all the effort to protect presidents, Air Force One, elaborate motorcades, etc., no effort has been put into wargaming how to protect them when they are standing on an outdoor stage. It would not be at all difficult to install a button to create a smoke screen permitting evacuation under cover. James Bond was doing this kind of stuff in the 20th Century. It almost might make sense to be able to push a button and a steel barrier pops up.
This is not complicated. Presidents are safe within motorcades. They are unsafe moving out of motorcades into the open. Safety largely resumes inside buildings. They are sitting ducks when stationary atop outside podiums. It is no secret terrorist cells are in place, awaiting orders. If a kid with a cheap gun can get to a president, use your imagination. Trump is not blameless either. Hopefully his close call will bring changes. Massive open-air events, with a backstop of sign waving attendees, must be reconsidered. Pursuit of political optics just led to death and critical injuries. How about a bulletproof enclosure surrounding the stage? Convenience store cashiers in high crime environments enjoy better protection.
Government is largely reactive, not proactive. After Dallas, presidents no longer ride in open cars, but are protected inside de facto armored personnel carriers. July 13 marked the first time a presidential detail fired a weapon. Welcome to reality. One lesson local police need to take away from the incident is a suggestion made by Eric Prince. The officer who was hoisted over the roof line by his partner and then confronted by Crooks before dropping back to the ground should have immediately fired his weapon into the ground. This would have alerted the protective detail of the need to rush Trump to safety. This raises a second archaic problem with a simple solution. Local officers operate on one frequently, the USSS on another. Simply embedding a local officer with the USSS command (which appeared absent) would allow near instantaneous communications between the two forces, while the USSS could continue to maintain the secrecy of their channel. All gents appear to be expected to participate in the physical protective tasks, rather than a general standing apart and overseeing a strategic operation. There is a reason the military does not operate this way.
With modern drone platforms, it would be a simple matter for advance teams to produce highly accurate 3D site models extending out hundreds of yards. Sightlines, relative elevations, etc. can all be easily worked out remotely and shared with local law enforcement to assign protection sectors.
Skipping profound incompetency questions raised by the shooting, alongside the Secret Service’s obvious negligence in allowing the shooter to occupy the high ground, much blame resides on the nature of human inertia, doing things today because they worked yesterday. The shooting was the result of a cascade of unforced errors, an accident waiting to happen due to policies of the Secret Service and Trump. There is an almost unconscious policy of assuming threats of a certain magnitude cannot be protected against. Protocols address threats falling below a certain threshold. Such policies can eventually turn into self-fulfilling prophecies. Minds need to be opened to developing protections against far higher threat levels than now contemplated.
Professional snipers agree: the only reason Trump survived was the local officer who peered over the roofline, forcing Crooks to immediately react and begin rushing his shots. Through no fault of the Secret Service. Forget all the other issues of whether this was a conspiracy: if Trump’s detail was intentionally short-staffed, why the sniper hesitated before dispatching Crooks, Kimberly Cheatle’s stonewalling, if there was a second team of assassins, etc. The Secret Service is not a 21st Century agency. And the century is already a quarter over. The July 13 incident served to expose long-standing deficiencies in place long before this year. Will anything be done about them? The question is almost whether the shooter or the USSS was more delusional.