In a surprise to no one, the gun lobby is ramping up its efforts to undermine gun safety. Its latest game? Trying to convince Americans that large-capacity magazines—used to fire dozens of rounds in mere seconds—are “standard.” 🙃

Thoughts?

Government waste is often non-obvious and undetectable. When I was on the Army Staff in the Pentagon, the Army was in the midst of a major weapons system acquisition, and ALL maintenance on that system—including forward organizational and direct support maintenance in a combat zone—was to be done on a civilian contract basis, with the prime maintenance contractor being the weapons system’s prime manufacturer. This was a half a billion dollar maintenance contract. I was and am a staunch opponent of doing battlefield maintenance with civilians. Every soldier is an infantryman first, and if you don’t think mechanics pull triggers, go study up on the Battle of Chipyong-ni or non-linear warfare in general. Soldier/mechanics can and do fight. Civilian mechanics cannot—in fact, they draw away combat power so someone in uniform can defend them. So on my own initiative I did a study comparing costs of the maintenance contract versus the costs of uniformed force structure providing the same maintenance services. The cost savings of doing forward maintenance with actual solders instead of civilian contractors was about $100 million over ten years, plus you had the added benefit of not needing to protect civilian contractors in a combat zone. The Program Manager for this system came to hate me. Ultimately I pitched my findings to the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army. He was polite but patronizing, and that’s as far as the initiative went—it was buried. One year later that same Vice Chief of Staff of the Army was retired from active duty and working as a Vice President for a major sub-contractor of the same weapons system. That’s an unauditable $100mm in spending that no one knows could have been realized. Our government is filled to the brim with such examples.

Donald Trump goes home to Mar-a-Lago in Florida to golf before he heads out to New Orleans to attend the Super Bowl on Sunday. Working hard for the taxpayers. 🙄

wwyd?