No experience necessary at Department of Homeland Security senior positions

One of the positions that Libertarian Presidential candidate Gary Johnson has taken is that the Department of Homeland Security should be abolished.

Now, current Janet Napolitano seems to be making his case for him.

Janet Napolitano:  Naw, Senator, I
don't see why anyone in charge of
Honeland Security really needs
experience . . . .

If Homeland Security is such a critical department--and indeed the life of the nation is in daily peril from people stuffing explosives into their underwear--then why don't the senior people she's hiring need any relevant law enforcement experience to get their jobs?

The Daily Caller gives us several examples.

First, there's Jordan Grossman: 

Jordan Grossman was a special adviser and deputy to the deputy chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, for instance, yet his resume shows no law enforcement experience. Before Grossman got his post in January 2009, he was a “special assistant” at the Obama-Biden presidential transition team after working for Obama’s 2008 election campaign.

Before that, Grossman worked as a research assistant at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, a communications think tank at the University of Pennsylvania. Grossman also interned for the left-wing Center for American Progress, and for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

He lists no law enforcement experience on his resume, even though the Obama administration had hired him into a senior law enforcement role. Grossman has since left his government position for to attend Harvard Law School.

Then, there's Vladmir Skoric:

Apparently working
for Obama for
America is all
the qualifications
Vladimir needs.

Vladimir Skoric serves as a “special assistant” to the Homeland Security “deputy under secretary for cybersecurity.” Skoric began his career in politics in May 2007 as a “volunteer coordinator” at Obama For America. He then interned for Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray and served as Obama For America’s Washington, D.C. youth director.

Skoric has also worked for The Small Business Project, Inc., as a business development analyst for a little more than two years. That organization describes itself as a company that “brings knowledge and expertise in starting small business programs to intermediaries, which in turn serve to strengthen small businesses locally,” focusing specifically on “providing forestry sector expertise.” Its mission does not have anything to do with law enforcement.

Even so, Skoric scored a senior level position in Obama’s Homeland Security Department.

Sadly, there are actually more examples in the article.


The two most immediate thoughts I have in response to this are Golan "McGreevy thought he was hot" Cipel and Michael "Brownie's doing a hell of a job in New Orleans" Brown.


The reality is that the Department of Homeland Security has been a pork-laden, civil-rights-trampling, alarmist entity since the first days of its creation.


In 2003 I did some consultancy work with the Office for Domestic Preparedness (for which I had an actual military background) in training DHS State and Local Readiness Officers.  There I met a young lady who had just been been appointed to a senior assistant position in cyber-security.  Her previous job had been as a personal assistant to actor Tom Hanks, while he was filming The Green Mile.  So it has happened with DHS since the very beginning, under both Republicans and Democrats.


It needs to go.