$460 millon ... & counting

1/6/21, a shit show for the ages, not only performed by the idiots inspired by Agent Orange but also from the massive failure of the Capital Police's inability to control these people in any way shape or fashion even though they are flush to the max, have complete knowledge of the small area they cover and are supposedly the most experienced of all the nation's polices forces in terms of handling large crowds. 

NOT

The Capitol Police, as much as any federal law enforcement agency, has been the huge beneficiary of the boom in government security spending, nearly tripling in size in the past quarter century—in no small part because it’s the agency in charge of protecting those who appropriate the money in the first place. It has also consolidated its control of Capitol Hill, merging in 2009 with the previously separate Library of Congress police.

Today, the Capitol Police boasts advanced resources equal to the largest and best police departments in the country, including a bomb squad, intelligence unit, hazmat units and specialized dignitary protection agents, as well as crowd control and riot gear and access to an arsenal of weapons that would impress many small armies. Its officers are well-wired with other local and regional police departments and participate in FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces. Plus it has the entire federal government and numerous local and regional D.C. police departments to call upon for help when needed.

It gets better ...

The Capitol Police should, in theory, have had the crowd-control skills to meet the moment. It’s an agency uniquely experienced in handling First Amendment protests and protesters—on issues as varied as abortion rights, health care or anti-war activists. After run-of-the-mill traffic offenses, protest-related arrests account for the majority of the department’s total arrests; it probably arrests and confronts more protesters than any other police department in the country. Nor are the Capitol Police a stranger to securing high-profile events, from presidential State of the Union addresses to the inauguration set for later this month on the very scaffolding and stands that the Trump mob rampaged over Wednesday.

Yet despite all of that, there appeared to be zero contingency plans, no meaningful reinforcements at hand as the pro-Trump mob approached, and none of the multiperimeter, defense-in-depth strategies one would expect to see in response to such a widely foreseen and publicized protest. There was no quick reaction force poised out of sight in buses around the corner, as one would normally expect to see at a potentially explosive protest situation. “Where were the guys in hats and bats?” asked one law enforcement leader, using the colloquial term for riot gear. (During anti-war protests during the Nixon era, 300 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division were kept on reserve in the White House cafeteria in case protesters broke through the outer rings of security.)

Last but not least ...

It wasn’t just the building that had them horrified. In the past two decades, the Capitol Police has grown into one of the largest, best-funded and most single-focus police departments in the country, with a budget of more than $460 million and around 2,000 sworn officers to guard just 2 square miles of the capital. (By comparison, that’s half the size of the entire police force for Washington, D.C.)

To yours truly, this incompetence points out the fact YOU DON'T SOLVE PROBLEMS BY THROWING MONEY AT IT, a skill set the politicos have perfected as art form whether it be the bloated 740 billion dollar 2020/21 defense budget or HC costing over a cool 3.4 trillion a year while COVID-19 runs amuck in the US. Not acceptable. Seems Sortition is the right way to go regarding the art of governance as the "elected" government we have right now is useless, kinda along the lines of tits on a bull.

End of rant for now.

Addendum: Read the entire Politico piece as you will learn a lot. I know I have. 

A modest proposal ...

The kleroterion was a stone thing that you stuck names in. Then you ran come colored balls through a tube, and the row/column the white ball landed on would be the ‘winners’. Animation via TedEd

Back in 2015, BRT posted a piece titled Sortition = Equality by Lot, whereby citizens of ancient Athens were randomly selected by lot to run the government for X amount of time, the only true way democracy can actually happen as the notion of "electing" specific individuals goes away, thus eliminating the creation of a defacto ruling oligarchy, a situation that has plagued the US for over 200 years.

To whit:

Sortition,  election by lot, a method of choosing public officials in some ancient Greek city-states. It was used especially in the Athenian democracy, from which most information about the practice is derived. With few exceptions, all magistrates were chosen by lot, beginning with the archons in 487–486 bc; likewise the Boule (council) of 500 and the juries of the law courts were chosen by lot. The practice of sortition obviated electoral races and provided for the regular turnover of officeholders. The operations of government were thus not in the hands of experts, but, through the system of sortition, the Athenian democracy provided at least some practical political education for its citizens.

The rationale of sortition was the equality of all citizens. 

Seems more people are starting to ask why sortition cannot be the law of the land in the US given just how corrupt, expensive and inept our government has come to be.

The Greeks called this system of random access democracy sortition. Think for a moment how sortition would look in the modern world. It would basically look like jury duty. You’d go to vote and instead of selecting the local lord or drug lord, you’d put your own name in, if you wanted. There’d be no campaigning, no advertising, just go home and watch the lottery results. Then you’d end up with a Parliament that literally represented the people.

You’d immediately get 50% women’s representation, no quotas required. You’d immediately get far more poor and middle-class people represented, and much fewer millionaires. You’d immediately get more minorities represented (still within the racist ways we define citizenship).

Sortition actually leads to a far more representative democracy than Representative Democracy. And representation matters. What we have now is a bunch of rich people maybe deciding to do something for the masses, whose lives they really cannot understand and who aren’t even in the room. Under sortition the poor, etc would simply be in the room, able to speak for themselves.

Sounds like a plan to me.

Sortition = Equality by Lot

The kleroterion (Ancient Greek: κληρωτήριον) is a randomization device used by the Athenian polis during the period of democracy to select citizens to the boule, to most state offices, to the Nomothetai, and to court juries. The kleroterion was a slab of stone incised with rows of slots and with an attached tube. Citizens' tokens—pinakia—were placed in the slots and the tube was filled with different-colored dice. The dice were released one by one, each die corresponding to a row of pinakia. The color of each die determined whether the owners of the pinakia in the corresponding row were selected to hold office or to become jurists.

In essence, equality by lot is the only true democracy whereby citizens of a given state are chosen by lot to fulfil a designated position in government, something radical, disruptive and wise, with a bit of luck thrown in, originating in Athens around 486 BC.

Sortition,  election by lot, a method of choosing public officials in some ancient Greek city-states. It was used especially in the Athenian democracy, from which most information about the practice is derived. With few exceptions, all magistrates were chosen by lot, beginning with the archons in 487–486 bc; likewise the Boule (council) of 500 and the juries of the law courts were chosen by lot. The practice of sortition obviated electoral races and provided for the regular turnover of officeholders. The operations of government were thus not in the hands of experts, but, through the system of sortition, the Athenian democracy provided at least some practical political education for its citizens.

The rationale of sortition was the equality of all citizens. 

Or, in a really interesting piece titled Early Elections, Bush or Clinton, one sees this.

ME. On the contrary. True democracy existed long ago and only briefly. In the Athens of old, public offices were drawn by lottery among those who qualified – in the instance, the heads of a household. Names were mixed in an urn and a boy with a scarf on his eyes drew the names. The process was called ‘sortition’, that is, the selection of officers from a larger pool of candidates.
Aristotle clearly stated the argument, “Democracy arose from the idea that those who are equal in any respect are equal absolutely. All are alike free, therefore they claim that all are free absolutely… The next is when the democrats, on the grounds that they are all equal, claim equal participation in everything.”

And he was even more categorical on elections, “It is accepted as democratic when public offices are allocated by lot; and as oligarchic when they are filled by election.”

There you have it. Sortition is the only and true democracy. At elections time, there is a lottery. Your next door neighbor can be President, the postman Minister of Defense, the milkman Minister of Agriculture and so on till the last public office.

True democracy is a lottery. Every other political structure, including voting-based government is camouflaged aristocracy, though given the times, even aristocracy is a misnomer. The Greek word “aristo” means “best”, hence government by the best. A closer definition, to borrow again from the Greek, would be “coprocracy”, or government by the shittiest.

Kind of says it all regarding the current state of America doesn't it?

Fortuna, Goddess of Luck