The Giles County EMA Maze

Have you ever had one of those times when you just looked at a thing and said that’s just hard to believe and then you take a closer look and find it’s not only hard to believe it’s just plain bizarre.

That’s the reaction I had to the idea that a salaried employee with the county was receiving overtime pay equaled to about half his salary. That was the hard to believe part, and then I got into the plain bizarre part.

A few years ago there was a man who, as an unpaid volunteer, served as the Emergency Management Director. Today the budget for the Emergency Management Office is over $377,000.00 dollars that includes a Director’s salary of $42,000.00 a year, an assistant at $29,960.00 and $21,000.00 for overtime. The overtime is enough for 13.5 hours a week for the full 52 week year. I’m not sure how the overtime was split but according to the 2012 state audit it was about half and half which means each person worked an average of almost seven hours each week or 47 hours but according to the audit there was no time sheets that reflected any overtime. Also according to the audit those time sheets have now been corrected to show those overtime hours.  I don’t know of any businesses where a person would be allowed to go back a full year and add 700 hours of undocumented overtime.

According to the audit there was also a federal grant that is to run from 28 March 2011 to 27 March 2014. This grant was made up of $89,880.00 from the federal government, $14,980.00 from the state government and $14,980.00 from the county government for a total of $119,840.00. Within this amount $46,800.00 was designated for the EMA Director and $39,000.00 for the Asst. Director to be paid at the rate of $30.00 and $25.00 an hour respectively.  During this fiscal year the Director received $31,200.00 and the Asst. Director received $26,000.00 not one hour was documented according to the state audit.

In order to justify these overtime and grant hours in addition to the regular 40 hour work week it would also require a minimum 14 hours a week for the overtime and 20.8 hours a week on the federal grant for a minimum of 74 hours of work each week. This tabulation does include two weeks a year for vacation time but does not include time for sick leave or holiday time which equals out.

Now if you consider that the overtime was divided equally that would mean the Director was paid a total of $83,700.00 and his assistant received $66,460.00 for the fiscal year 2011-2012.

From The Washington Times by James S. Robbins

“Sec. Of Defense Leon Panetta stated, "(The) basic principle is that you don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on; without having some real-time information about what's taking place," Panetta told Pentagon reporters. "And as a result of not having that kind of information, the commander who was on the ground in that area, Gen. Ham, Gen. Dempsey and I felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation."

The information I heard today was that General Ham as head of Africom received the same e-mails the White House received requesting help/support as the attack (in Benghazi) was taking place. General Ham immediately had a rapid response unit ready and communicated to the Pentagon that he had a unit ready.

General Ham then received the order to stand down. His response was to screw it, he was going to help anyhow. Within 30 seconds to a minute after making the move to respond, his second in command (Gen. Rodriguez  apprehended General Ham and told him that he was now relieved of his command.

General Rodriquez has been named to replace General Ham as the head of Africom

These events contradict  Mr. Panetta’s October 25 statement that General Ham advised against intervention. But so far there is nothing solid to back it up. Maybe Ham attempted to send a reaction force against orders, or maybe he simply said the wrong thing to the wrong people. Perhaps he gave whomever he was talking to up the chain a piece of his mind about leaving Americans to die when there was a chance of saving them. At the very least U.S. forces might have made those who killed our people pay while they were still on the scene. The Obama White House is famously vindictive against perceived disloyalty – the administration would not let Ham get away with scolding them for failing to show the leadership necessary to save American lives. The Army's ethos is to leave no man behind, but that is not shared by a president accustomed to leading from that location.

The question remains why the repeated requests – which is to say desperate pleas – to send a relief force were refused. Perhaps Mr. Obama and his national security brain trust thought the terrorist assault would be a minor skirmish and quickly blow over. When it became clear that the attack was something more serious, they may have had visions of the rescue team getting involved in a Mogadishu-like firefight, a “Blackhawk Down 2.” This would have been too much for the risk-averse Mr. Obama, particularly in a Muslim country, and less than two months before the election. Instead they simply watched the live video hoped for the best. If there were American fatalities, they felt they could shift blame for the circumstance to the supposed Youtube video which they had already blamed for the riot at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo hours earlier. In fact the Embassy had sent out its “apology” tweets even before the Cairo riot commenced."

This has become the most outrageous display of incompetency, dereliction of duty, deceit and outright abandonment of American Forces since Robert McNamara betrayed the American people in Viet Nam.

This president and his keystone cop menagerie have betrayed this country and every citizen. They are obsessed with vindictiveness and totally void of integrity and honor.