(Jon-without sets up an impromptu phone booth and compliance space inside the front door at Willow last night. Photo Chanteuse Mary).

Yesterday’s story regarded the round of severe budget cuts that are coming to the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community.

It prompted a couple thoughtful replies, which naturally I ignored.

Hahaha- no, the points were well taken and I agree with them.

For good or ill, the Congress is the body responsible for setting budget priorities, and of course I support that. There are enough problems abroad in the land involving gigantic new programs that seem to be funded out of thin air.

And another experienced observer noted that “Re: China, Iran, Russia, NK, AQ, et alia, there is plenty of money to defend our country against these threats individually or collectively if DoD, the IC, and Congress are willing to put priorities and money against the threats and not the theater of national security.”

I agree with him, too. What I was trying to say was that if we unilaterally draw down capabilities in the face of some tough adversaries, we need to try to do it intelligently.

That means deep vertical elimination of capabilities and organizations, which is what I intended to get across.

I was part of the shadow bureaucracy after leaving the real one. The reason that legion of contractors exists is to perform the functions that the government could not do because of the idiotic way we cut capabilities after the Cold War.

Literally, the Community hired no new blood for over a decade, and when the need arose, it was the contracting community that had the expertise. The Government no longer could do the job.

I will go you one better. The thicket of regulations required to ensure everyone is following the arcane and complex world of Federal regulations is a real issue. At any moment a corporation (or individual) can fall out of compliance with the law- and like the tax code, there is a bewildering number of laws and regulations.
The Affordable Care Act is just one of them. Add the Dodd-Frank Act and Sarbanes-Oxley (the training required on record retention requirements was mind-numbing) and the EPA and all the rest and it is staggering.

To stay within the law, a new and non-productive category of jobs has been created: data kept by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows an 18-percent increase in the number of compliance officers in the United States between 2009 and 2012.

This is not a partisan rant, by the way. The trend began in the Clinton Administration and continued on its merry way through the second Mr. Bush’s two terms as well as the current one.

At last count, there were an estimated 227,500 compliance officers employed in the United States, according to the BLS. The definition of what this new sort of worker does is “evaluate conformity with laws and regulations.”

I think the time is long past to try to simplify things. Could we give that a try?

Anyway, we talked about that at Willow, as Jon-without talked to Japan. He works for the Heavy Bomber people now, and happy to have a job. He is supposed to ensure they are compliant with everything here, and they called at first light in Asia, which was past last light here.

It was too noisy to talk inside, and too cold to stand outside, so he dragged his stool into the little space between the front and inner doors and talked there.
We laughed at the sight, but then, we did not have to be compliant with anything.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303