Comment Number: OL-10511471
Received: 3/16/2005 3:40:45 PM
Subject: Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Request for Comment
Title: National Security Personnel System
CFR Citation: 5 CFR Chapter XCIX and Part 9901
Attachment: No Attachment

Comments:

I agree with the AFGE Presidents' sentiments her attached that we are losing the very freedoms we are trying to assure that the Iraq people will have as we make an attempt to protect ourselves against the terrorists of the future. And we are starting the process by atacking the rights of that group of folks that to a large part have made our country what it is today. These are the people in whom hands the solution to our national security lies. Does it make sense to demoralize them by removing all their rights in the name of national security, etc. Have we not yet come to grips with the fact that the warfare of the future will be a mind game, not one of brute force of tanks and planes. Why not start our attack on those likely group of folks from which most terroists come. And that group is not the federal worker, believe me. Many of them were the victims of 9-11; not the perpetrators. Today we decry the insensitivity of the encampments of Japanese and other foreigners in WWII as not being politically correct. But hey, it made a lot more sense doing that than it would have to have put restrictions on all the civil servants of the time. After all, we were at war with the Japanese and they were killing our men in the Pacific. Sometimes I think we have lost our good old common sense. An example is here at navy Lakehurst we have barricaded all around our buildings restricting parking, etc. We assume that a would-be terrorist would not have access to the buildings becuase of these barricdes. We must think we are in Iraq or Lebannon. If anyone wanted to blow up one of our buildings (a highly unlikely event.), they could truck the explosives in thru any of the open doors, and then set the timer and be well off base before anything happened. The point is that doing something to show activity such as revising our personnel system or putting barricades around our buildings maight look good for activities sake but it pales in effectiveness to using our mental powers to predict and then find the terrorists before they strike. There are just too many buildings and dams and highways etc. to protect. There is no way we can put up fences and barricades around all of them. Well, sort of gotten astray from NSPS except to say that just like many of our current feeble physical attempts to protect our selves, overhauling our persoinnel system will do nothig to improve the federal work force and will most likely just do the opposite.