Dan Wilson’s Blog

Andrew Sullivan is publicly calling for everyone to be fired that ever had Abdulmutallab’s name pass across their desk. Apparantly this is not going to happen. The embassy employees, the spooks, the DHS people who had this and didn’t follow through all get to keep their jobs. I wholehardedly agree they should be fired. It turns out that preventing a terrorist attack and saving the lives of your countrymen is not incentive enough to follow all leads, maybe even working (gasp!) overtime. I think, very tragically, the only incentive that government workers will respond to is losing their jobs, pensions, and benefits. My limited experience working with g-people is that they cover their own individual asses first, protect their own agencies, and shift blame to other entities. If the threat of having to work in the private sector being close to retirement (you know, where your retirement begins at age 70, pensions don’t exist, and social security provides enough money for a ramen noodles diet) than every single lead will be followed. The dots will be connected. If two dots aren’t connected, then you have four people to fire: the case worker of each node and their boss (I say boss because in the real world, higher stature and pay accompanies higher risk). Fire people harshly and scare everyone else into doing their job better. This isn’t Google, where motivation best comes from workplace perks and money, or Wall Street, where doing your job can yield huge bonuses. Motivation here needs to come from fear, and it turns out that fear of a terrorist attack isn’t fear enough. It is, after all, a matter of life and death.

Instead, we will be left paying for machines at airports that allow strangers to look at me, my wife, and daughter naked at a cost of millions, maybe tens of millions. What we really need is an Israelification of our airports (great article, highly recommend reading). But I save that rant for a future post.