The proverb "For want of a nail" teaches that sometimes it is necessary to sweat the small stuff. Otherwise, a tiny flaw will doom a giant enterprise.
The concept explains the spectacular incompetence of Big Government. America's super-state is the most powerful and richest force ever known, yet it often forgets to tie its shoelaces. In its Keystone Kops moments, it looks too big to succeed.
For Exhibit A, take the Secret Service.
More than 3,500 agents are dedicated to its core mission of protecting the president, his family and other officials. When the president travels, local police close streets and create a wide security perimeter.
Those measures were deployed for President Obama's recent fund-raising visit to a contributor's apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. An unhappy neighbor, Allan Ripp, chronicled the precautions in The Wall Street Journal.
"Rows of blue NYPD barriers extended for a 10-block stretch. Helicopters buzzed overhead and Fire Department ambulances idled conspicuously nearby," he wrote, adding that dump trucks filled with sand blocked off streets and residents of the building and others nearby "were locked down for hours — and instructed not to look out their windows."
The excessive show of overwhelming force was paid for by taxpayers even though the president was on a private visit. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the same Secret Service had lost the proverbial nail.
Just days earlier, an intruder carrying a knife managed to get deep inside the White House before being wrestled to the ground by an off-duty agent who happened to walk by. The intruder came in through the front door — because no one was instructed to lock it. Maybe they should nail it shut.
But save some nails for ObamaCare. The most ambitious and complex piece of social legislation in half a century, it dictates what insurance coverage tens of millions of people will receive and how much they must pay. It involves mandates on businesses and individuals and its tax hikes will, over a decade, cause more than a trillion dollars to flow into and out of government coffers.
This massive enterprise would turn on a very small hinge — a Web site called HealthCare.gov. There was, naturally, a problem: It didn't work. The computers were slow, they crashed, gave out wrong information or no information, and were easy pickings for hackers.
The feds promised to fix them, and the site is working better now, but whether it's truly fixed is an open question. The only thing that's settled is the price: $2 billion, according to recent reports. Yes, the government paid $2 billion for a Web site.
In trying to explain the problems, Obama called them "glitches," a harmless-sounding word that didn't fully describe the fiasco. He might have said "for want of a nail." Or for want of competence.
Wouldn't you know, glitches are in the headlines again, this time to describe another fiasco — the handling of the first known Ebola patient in this country.
Washington gives hospitals hundreds of millions of dollars a year to prepare for emergencies, and Ebola, as a deadly infectious disease, has been a focus since it was discovered in 1976. The sprawling Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issues long protocols for detecting it and treating patients, what workers should wear, how to clean rooms and tell the public. A questionnaire screens travelers entering and leaving African nations suffering an outbreak.
Yet Thomas Eric Duncan was able to leave Liberia and enter the United States because he lied on the questionnaire about being in contact with a sick person. He flew to Brussels, to Washington, DC, and then to Dallas. Think of his lie as the first missing nail.
The second came when a Dallas hospital he visited with a fever, headache and stomach pains sent him home without testing for Ebola. A nurse who treated him noted on an electronic records form that Duncan had been to Africa, but the physician who released him didn't see that part of the form, officials later said.
Duncan returned critically ill two days later, having potentially exposed as many as 100 people. The hospital, in conceding its error, blamed his initial release on a "flaw" in the "nursing workflow" and said the form would be changed immediately to include visits to Africa on the part that doctors see.
That's just swell, but here's a modest proposal for the hospital and other all-powerful, bloated bureaucracies: Keep a box of nails handy as a reminder to sweat the small stuff. Otherwise, the big stuff won't matter.
Now Blas gets mad
Let's hope Mayor de Blasio takes this one personally. If he does, city parents and students will be the winners.
The union pet reacted with fury over the case of a Brooklyn Tech teacher charged with having sex with students and other related crimes, including kidnapping. The mayor's son, Dante, is a student at the school.
"It's disgusting," de Blasio said. "This is someone who clearly should not have been a teacher, and I guarantee you he will never teach in a classroom again."
Whoa, Nellie. The mayor ought to read the union contract he just signed before making such bold pledges. Getting rid of the worst teachers, including criminals, is something the union makes nearly impossible.
In fact, the contract he negotiated does nothing to make it easier to get rid of perv, scum and other lowlife teachers. It will block needed reforms for years.
More galling, the case of Sean Shaynak is remarkable only because Brooklyn Tech is one of the city's eight elite high schools. In many respects, the charges, the hints of trouble in his conduct, a missed arrest in his background — they echo the horrors committed in many schools over many years.
Perhaps this time will be different. Perhaps de Blasio will stop shilling for the union and realize that duty demands he give his loyalty to the children and families of New York.
Perhaps.
Just a simple birthday wish
I have a dream. I have a dream that Cuomo and Clinton and Gillibrand and de Blasio and Stringer didn't fawn over Al Sharpton on his birthday. I have a dream that Cuomo didn't say "the nation is better" for Sharpton's conduct and that de Blasio didn't say he is a "blessing for the city."
I have a dream that Macy's and AT&T and Forest City Ratner and Viacom didn't sponsor the event. I have a dream that they don't need to buy Sharpton's protection.
Yes, it's all a dream. But, as a great man said, maybe one day people really will be judged by the content of their character.
Bring sum munny
The e-mail touting an event for GOP congressional candidate Grant Lally was grammatically challenged. "Your invited," it began, offering details on a fund-raiser.
Maybe he'll use the money to buy an apostrophe.
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