The Washington Post reported in 2010 that there were 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 holding top-secret clearances.[3] According to a 2008 study by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, private contractors make up 29% of the workforce in the U.S. intelligence community and account for 49% of their personnel budgets.[4]
Get that down. Not climbing up the security ladder, but sitting atop "top secret" totem pole status. For a perspective, over twice the population of Cleveland. Put them all in Cleveland at once, there'd be a housing crisis. A lot of homelessness.
Next, 854,000 households means "a lot of knives and forks on the table, gotta eat something."
That quote is as a recent Nobel Laureate has written/sung. Didn't he have another song, "The Mighty Flynn?" Something like that? "When Flynn the Eskimo gets here, pigeons all will crap on him?" Something like that I vaguely recall, so YouTube research is needed. For sure, ya betcha.
UPDATE: With 854,000 of 'em atop the totem pole, consultancies included, and given the way bureaucracies work, we need a new term of national discourse:
CRONY CLEARANCES
They know what we do not. We are insufficient humans, as voters, to be among the anointed; the blessed; the savants. Get that down.
FURTHER: Great story. Big question, going into his election, did he have a CRONY CLEARNACE? Has he one now?
Did not check the word count on that Politico story, but did a word search "clearance." Not mentioned. Wow. Long story, about who he is and how he got to be where he is, . . .
FURTHER: Same story, mid-item quote:
In fact, of the seven countries listed included in Trump’s attempted ban, most of them boast influential officials that spent time in the United States, usually to attend school. Former prime ministers in Yemen and Libya attended American universities. One of them, Shukri Ghanem, was a reformer who worked, with some success, to push Muammar Gaddafi toward reconciliation with the west. Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister who oversaw negotiations of the Iran nuclear deal, went to a private high school in San Francisco, received a B.A. and M.A. from San Francisco State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Denver. An influential rebel leader from Sudan who was a key player in the country’s 2005 peace agreement, John Garang, attended Grinnell College in an Iowan town of 9,000, surrounded by corn fields.
Foreign leaders who’ve spent time in the United States can frequently, if not every time, give the United States government a leg-up when conducting diplomacy. Joel Giambra argues that will definitely be the case with Mohamed: “I believe he would love the opportunity to collaborate with the United States,” he said. “He always said to me that the most effective way to eradicate terrorism in the United States is to stop it in Somalia.”
[italics emphasis added] A thought, would any such "leg up" advantage be in the public domain? Or classified, so that we voters would not know whose leg's up?
FURTHER: Same Wikipedia entry as already cited [quote omits embedded links]:
Among their varied responsibilities, the members of the Community collect and produce foreign and domestic intelligence, contribute to military planning, and perform espionage. The IC was established by Executive Order 12333, signed on December 4, 1981, by U.S. President Ronald Reagan.[2]
[...] Executive Order 12333 charged the IC with six primary objectives:[7]
-- Collection of information needed by the President, the National Security Council, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and other executive branch officials for the performance of their duties and responsibilities;
-- Production and dissemination of intelligence;
-- Collection of information concerning, and the conduct of activities to protect against, intelligence activities directed against the U.S., international terrorist and/or narcotics activities, and other hostile activities directed against the U.S. by foreign powers, organizations, persons and their agents;
-- Special activities (defined as activities conducted in support of U.S. foreign policy objectives abroad which are planned and executed so that the "role of the United States Government is not apparent or acknowledged publicly", and functions in support of such activities, but which are not intended to influence United States political processes, public opinion, policies, or media and do not include diplomatic activities or the collection and production of intelligence or related support functions);
-- Administrative and support activities within the United States and abroad necessary for the performance of authorized activities and
-- Such other intelligence activities as the President may direct from time to time.
This Wikipedia link, on Executive Order 12333, including a sidebar pic of the ol' Gipper himself; whether the order text is online or not is not known, but the above points of inclusion as listed show it elastic enough to be stretched wide enough to drive a Kenworth full logging truck through with much clearance top-bottom, side-to-side. Last bulleted item; what about a president elect; would that not be included by implication? That Logan Act stuff sure seems to be a smoke screen for "Get Flynn." As such, individual political proclivities aside, it's bogus and improper, whether you voted Trump, Clinton, Jill Stein, or otherwise; or just stayed home liking Bernie. Just bogus. Hard to see it differently.
What Romney did visiting Bibi is far, far more suspect - a candidate hunkering with a foreign head of state with an election pending - than Flynn, whose status was a to-be-appointed intelligence official designated as such by a president elect. Election over, in Flynn's case. No hunkering. No head of state. Not on foreign soil. What's your reader judgment? Romney deserves a keelhaul? Or keelhauling Flynn was improper? Is there any "Clintonian" third way?