To have Hollywood tell it, the bare knuckles end of the machinery of state is just oh, so super bad. While at one time, say during that era in which Time Life was the Google of our world, this may indeed have been the case. But since the era in which Moore's Law has run wild, and during which the 1% have sponged up more wealth on a vaster scale than the Medici ever dared imagine, things have changed considerably.
See, the DOJ, the NSA, and all the rest of the alphabet soup (with the exception of the CIA's self-funding fronts, blinds, and other business interests) have all had to compete for talent and manage personnel under the exceedingly cumbersome rubric of the general schedule system.
This is a system which has produced generations of deeply inbred and incumbent double and triple-dippers, i.e., young retirees from the military who then get on the federal civil service roll and who know and have gamed the system to such an extent that many don't have to produce a whole lot in order to maintain their status, their station, and their lucrative incumbency. I'm guessing that in large measure, the whole complex of outsourced contractors in just about every field of federal endeavor is a response to the realities and limitations that a moribund federal work force imposes.
But back to the topic at hand, outside the echelons of certain elite, or should we say "rogue", self-funding CIA operations, is there really any entity of government that can compete toe-to-toe for talent, or, provide greater access and exposure to a whole world of accumulated knowledge and data than an enormous, brilliantly run, multinational corporation with deep and globe-spanning infrastructural and specialist knowledge?
The minute you understand what Koch Industries is, what it does, and how superbly it does it - in that precise moment you will be forced to accept the very distinct possibility that it is indeed possible for certain entities, under certain circumstances, and with the appropriate malice of forethought - to flatly contradict Jean Paul's admonishment to over-the-hill CIA enforcer Brian Mills "you can't beat the state Bryan!"
What if, consistent with their principles, their politics, and their means - Koch minions have scripted the unfolding episode which has so galvanized our collective short attention spans? Fist tap sistah Joyce!
