A person heading a federal agency has a lot of things they have to focus on. Recruitment and retention are two of those things. Increasing recruitment efforts geared towards women might indeed be necessary and achieve the goal of improving the caliber of employee with the Secret Service. Too many folks have a mindset that diversity comes at the expense of merit. It's wrongheaded.
The weirdness grows: Trump Rally Gunman Was ‘Definitely Conservative,’ Classmate Recalls Will be interested if we ever find out what his reasons were. (I have no doubt they were crazy.)
So I saw an NBC reporter who was on YouTube talking about this area outside of the SS security perimeter. The fence to the right that those people are lined up against is the "perimeter" fence they put up to keep people away from the rally crowd and Trump. The buildings to the left were outside the perimeter obviously and the reporter said a lady who lives right in between the rally area and those buildings (I think it's a glass factory?) had minimal local sheriff protection but where the building was he was up on had no officers. It just had a security guard who worked for the the factory who would keep people away from the surface parking area behind the building.
My argument is that diversity cannot come at the expense of merit. If diversity is a box to be checked it needs to be a tiebreaker and not before that point in the selection process. A federal agency head that must rely upon several layers of staff under them will have to live with the consequences of any snafu resulting from poor choices by them and their underlings. All the more reason to get things right the first time. Your last post is your most level-headed in this short series of posts. We might be closer to agreement than you think…
The sex of the person who developed the security plan and overlooked securing the building is immaterial
The problem with your view is it pretends there is an objective way of measuring "merit." There isn't. These days, most diversity practices are geared towards ensuring that worthy candidates don't get overlooked due to biases (whether that's biases in the hiring process or in creating the recruitment pool). If women aren't applying to work with the Secret Service or are overlooked in the hiring process, there's good reason to retool agency-side practices. But let me be clear, I still do not see how any of this is relevant to the shooting. It may prove necessary to fire the Director of the Secret Service after how poorly this all was handled, but it has nothing to do with hiring goals six years from now.
Smith shared an American history class with Crooks, and remembered a mock debate where their teacher made students stand on one side of the classroom or another to signal their allegiance. “The majority of the class were on the liberal side, but Tom, no matter what, always stood his ground on the conservative side,” Smith said. “That’s still the picture I have of him. Just standing alone on one side while the rest of the class was on the other.” Sure doesn’t sound like a liberal.
Wow that’s nuts. Nobody could radio the SS to get Trump out of there, and get a SS sharpshooter on the guy? Really bad look there literally dozens of people and cops pointing him out.
I agree. Haven’t said otherwise. Check my posts #512, 536, and 580. I was responding to gator_lawyer mentioning that the SS has had staffing and performance issues, and that appears to be a justified concern after yesterday. If, however, someone in the chain of command was placed in their position to increase diversity, I will contend that their ability to perform at the same level of a potentially better candidate can be an issue. Gender or race have no bearing.
