A complete lack of accountability.
Now THERE’S something you won’t see in Washington: heads rolling.
Here is part of the Associated Press report on the internal review of the Benghazi Ethics Train Wreck. The bolding is mine: :
“An unclassified version released late Tuesday said serious bureaucratic mismanagement was responsible for the inadequate security at the mission in Benghazi where the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed. Systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department resulted in a Special Mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place, the panel said.
“Despite those deficiencies, the board determined that no individual officials ignored or violated their duties and recommended no disciplinary action. But it also said poor performance by senior managers should be grounds for disciplinary recommendations in the future.”
Any organization that could come to such a conclusion is averse to both accountability and responsibility. If the leadership in a bureaucracy engage in serious mismanagement and show “leadership and management deficiencies,” a competent and trustworthy organization removes the incompetent leadership and installs better personnel. There are two reasons why this is essential:
1. To get incompetents our of leadership and management positions where they can do a lot of harm, and
2. To send a clear message to those retaining their jobs that there will be serious consequences to failure.
An organization that does not regard these as its duty, and more important than closing ranks around incompetent cronies, pals and colleagues, cannot be trusted, and will continue to function poorly.
The last sentence quoted is truly disturbing, and also the smoking gun of an untrustworthy government that is less dedicated to performance than protecting itself. If the conduct in the Benghazi fiasco should justify discipline “in the future,” it obviously justifies discipline now. This is a toxic, transparently cowardly and cynical stance, one that the Obama Administration has happily inherited from the equally unaccountable Bush Administration. You know: “The next time our soldiers in charge of prisoners of war in an occupied nation torture and abuse them for kicks, heads will really roll!” Now we also know that the Obama Administration is serious about making sure that the next group of incompetents who get an ambassador killed don’t just get away with passing it off on a YouTube video, just as, I suppose, the next Attorney General who presides over a fiasco like Fast and Furious and an agency-wide stonewalling effort will have to face the music too.
Without accountability and the certainty that failure has career consequences proportional to the harm caused by that failure, any organization will become more careless, arrogant, and dysfunctional. The appalling thing is that accountability is the easiest value in the world to reinstate in an organization, any organization.
All it takes is competent and responsible leadership at the very top.
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Spark: Drudge
Graphic: Robert Arneson
Ethics Alarms 
That was especially egregious is the idea was used to attack freedom of speech, even going so far as to argue that Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969) (per curiam) should be reconsidered.
I can think of 2 other reasons not to trust the Federal government (mostly because it isn’t Federal anymore):
1) 17th Amendment, redesigning the Senate to be a nationally popular chamber of Congress. Yes, it is directly elected, but now it has vastly disproportionate ratios of ‘direct representation’. This amendment was an attack on federalism, which was meant to be a balance of power between the people (House of Representatives), the States (Senate), and the entire Nation (administered and presided over by an indirectly elected President)
2) The un-updated Public Law 62-5, fixing the House of Representatives at 435 members, ensuring on average that each member represented 685,000 people. Hardly what the Founders had in mind when they established the Constitutional minimum of 1 representative per 30,000 people (to ideally get as close to the grass-roots as possible). I understand the unwieldy number of 10,000 representatives if the minimalist ratio were maintained, but 1 representative for 685,000 people??? Precisely the conditions needed for the wildcat Gerrymandering we see after each census.
These developments (all occurring when “Progressives” were at the helm) lead to a situation in which Checks are only symbolic because Balances no longer exist.
Really? Only two?
2 for now…..
but can’t I “hand wave” a lot of unconstitutional legislation that was passed by the less-federal government after the 17th Amendment and Public Law 62-5 was passed???
Wait Wait Wait, hold on…
Add the legislation passed requiring State Electors to give ALL their votes to the individual state’s most popular presidential candidate.
Legislation by whom?
The following states are winner-take-all states:
Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
The following states also have legislation penalizing Faithless Electors:
Alabama, Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
Do you realize how campaign finances would matter almost negligibly in the election of the House of Representatives if it were truly CLOSER to the 1:30,000 ratio???
And since the House of Representatives (led by the Speaker) had always been envisioned by the Founder’s to have a slight edge in the Checks and Balance then I’d say “dang…we need more representation”
Add the 16th Amendment and its associated Revenue Act of 1913 and the Current Tax Payment Act of 1943.
The government has continued to spiral to disarray at a greater proportion than technology (the micro-chip) has advanced is notable yet somehow acceptable by usurping fear as a means for control and dominance, and further incorporating only the most incompetent of the inherited wealthy into the fold.
There is an abundant absence of truth, democracy, and civil rights – of which only the most prominent are fought for (aka, the 2nd amendment) . As the intelligence of the nation decays, the power-tripping will increase (using their own past as a meter). While their power increases, general freedom decreases — that is the balance — if you have 30% freedom, they have 70% control.
Upon pondering over the various facets that comprise of the government — I can say that there does not appear to be anything functioning properly at any level. And how could it when we try to organize something which simply should not be organized. At the quantum level, our universe is based on principles of chaos — which is really the universes way of organizing, and completely the opposite to the way we try to “organize”. In order for a government to organize, it perceives that as control, and must control something before it can organize it. They then use fear (threat of death, threat of jail, etc) as a mechanism to encourage people to act under their rule — or else — then make up really complex rules which no single person has learned it’s entirety to date, and put various types of gangs in place to ensure that fear level is maintained.
I am sure one could go to the most extreme levels and claim that all of this is necessary, however, we have proven in the past that we can take care of our own problems without resorting to such tactics.