Crunch Time
Howdy folks.
If the blog seems a little quiet over the next week or so, it’s because exactly one week from today I’ll be defending my Ph.D. dissertation, so I’m just a little busy.
I’ll keep your brain fed as much as I can in between preparing for the Snake Fight™, but I might also be curled up in the corner of the library in a dissertation-induced fetal position.
Ah, who are we kidding? Next week I’ll be Dr. Joe, right? I got this!! Yeah!
Yeah, totally.
Man, I hate snakes.
“The Washington Post has reported that there are 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies in 10,000 locations in the United States that are working on counterterrorism, homeland security, and intelligence, and that the intelligence community as a whole includes 854,000 people who hold top-secret clearances. According to a 2008 study by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, private contractors make up 29% of the workforce in the US intelligence community and cost the equivalent of 49% of their personnel budgets.”
—United States Intelligence Community (Wikipedia).
1,271 government organizations working on national security and intelligence. The Washington Post report in question noted that “The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.”
If this isn’t an indication that the Leviathan is out of control, I’m not sure what is.
