Posted on 04/14/2005 6:59:08 PM PDT by CHARLITE
Tax Day is a good time to take a hard look at the way government spends your tax dollars - if you have the stomach for it. Since Sept. 11, 2001, Congress has poured nearly $6 billion into homeland security, and this year's $1.7 billion appropriation represents a 306 percent increase over last year's.
But Congress has also ignored the 9/11 Commission's recommendation to use this colossal sum primarily to protect the nation's most vulnerable and strategic targets - including Washington. Instead, hundreds of millions of dollars have been squandered on political pork, according to House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Chris Cox, R-Calif., who says the money's being "doled out to every local community in the country, whether they need it or not." In turn, local officials use homeland security funds to purchase such "necessities" as air-conditioned garbage trucks and orange traffic cones.
'Rational manner'
Cox has introduced a bill to change the way these funds are distributed by switching to a risk-based formula. A similar measure failed in Congress last year and this one may too - unless citizens hold their representatives' feet to the fire. The current method of dividing Department of Homeland Security grants between all 50 states along political power lines has to be one of the worst possible ways to ensure that the remaining billions are spent in a rational manner.
Rationality has had little to do with it so far. As "60 Minutes" reporter Steve Kroft found out, the nation's capital is just as lackadaisical with its homeland security funds as the Santa Clara, Calif., sheriff's department, which purchased four Segways to transport its bomb squad in the event of a terrorist attack on Silicon Valley. They won't get very far at 12.5 mph.
Similar outrages can be found closer to home. According to Citizens Against Government Waste, $208,100 in port security grants went to a private yacht company that operates luxury dinner cruises in Washington, Boston and Chicago. What are they protecting, the contents of the bar? Kroft also reported that some of D.C.'s homeland security money was spent on leather jackets, a computerized car towing service, developing a rap song on emergency preparedness and sending city sanitation workers to a Dale Carnegie class.
Meanwhile, a DHS report concluded that it took far too long to inform local officials about an anthrax scare at a Pentagon mailroom and nearby satellite facility in Fairfax County last month, detailing continuing confusion between federal, state and local officials. Nearly 900 local government workers had to take what turned out to be unnecessary antibiotics during the false alarm because the sensors weren't functioning properly. And we're squandering homeland security funds on Segways and rap songs?
So it's actually a good thing the Washington region lags behind the rest of the nation in spending its $145 million in anti-terrorist grants, and that the District of Columbia's legendary bureaucratic ineptitude makes the city likely to miss a June 30 deadline for spending another $46 million. Residents living in and around the nation's most at-risk city have another chance to scream loudly before local officials blow the rest of the funds. Hopefully, they will make the most of it.
High stakes
The nature of terrorism makes domestic attacks extremely difficult to predict or prevent. Given what's at stake, we've at least got to try with the utmost urgency and seriousness. Making a list of probable targets and directing the bulk of federal funding to them should and must be newly appointed DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff's top priority.
The congressional purveyors of pork who've been handing out homeland security funds like candy, without requiring detailed plans for spending or accounting for it, have demonstrated a callous disregard for the common good. So have all the grant recipients who've already frittered away critical resources. God forbid that innocent people die someday because of their inexcusable negligence and stupidity.
Shhh! Careful, you say that kind of thing here, you could get booted off.
Well, I don't know... Does Narragansett Bay have no need for patrol boats? Perhaps not. Two boats and eight people for 250K/yr is an average of $31,250 for each crew member. Is this too much? You tell me. I'm on the other side of the country from there. If the city of Tacoma was patrolling Commencement Bay for even double or quadruple that amount, I'd be grateful.
Awww, piffle. The picture-lickers already piled on today; they're busy with "our politicians are sooooo dreeeeeeamy" and whistling past the graveyard.
I think yours is an important post. It's easy to believe that we have high-security fences until a picture shows otherwise.
"Giving government money and power is like giving car keys and whiskey to a teenage boy."
P.J. O'Rourke
Very true.
Well, they cost too much for what they do, they have limited range and frankly they are pretty dorky! You're right about the technology though, it's very sophisticated although not foolproof. I understand they are unstable when the battery gets low and there was a recall for that. The only place I see them now is at rental places in Hawaii and that's about it. The reason I compared the TSA to them is because they were both hyped to high heaven and they both failed.
Just think of what they could do with the savings!
Strange, ain't it.
So they got a free $68K boat. That's fine. That it costs a quarter-million $$$ per year to run isn't.
It's kinda like a friend's free horse. Not sure how she ended up with it, but it was free. The barn to house it wasn't free. The food to feed it wasn't free. The second horse to keep the first one company wasn't free. The grooming wasn't free. The training wasn't free. The saddles weren't free. The bridles weren't free. So much for a "free" horse.
That's got to be embarrasing.
Performance Honda
16123 W. Colonial Drive
Winter Garden, FL. 34787
407-905-9330
Segway Dealer.
Obviously Honda sales SUCK, so they needed a viable product to improve their standings with their homo clientele.
<|:-)~~
H-D not selling so well, neither. So NEENER.
....Does Narragansett Bay have no need for patrol boats? Perhaps not. Two boats and eight people for 250K/yr is an average of $31,250 for each crew member.....
You forget that the harbor on Narragansett bay consists of two mooring fields, and two rivers about 2 miles long, seperated by Bay water of about five miles; with the patrol boats only operated from late May to mid September. They're there to make sure that power boaters don't exceed 5 miles an hour and kick up a wake, and to be sure that boaters don't empty the contents of their toilet bowl (head) in the area, so we can make room for the 800,000 gallons of municipal raw sewage dumped in the bay after every rain exceeding 1/4 inch.
With this patrol schedule, that means that Binny can just cool his jets until the kids are back in school to make his attack.
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