Posted on 08/02/2017 7:23:14 AM PDT by MarvinStinson
WASHINGTON – Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) slammed a Homeland Security official on Thursday for allowing $160,000 in taxpayer money to be spent on a collaborative songwriting approach to fighting homegrown terrorism.
In December 2015, Congress appropriated $10 million in state and local grants for combating the rise of violent extremism. The Department of Homeland Security awards the money to various government organizations, universities and nonprofits.
DeSantis took issue with a $160,000 grant that the DHS awarded to Massachusetts-based Music in Common in January 2017. The Florida lawmaker noted that the group’s mission is to empower diverse cultures through collaborative songwriting, multimedia projects and performance.
The group writes on its website that it has served thousands of American-born and foreign participants all over the world since 2005, including Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East, Somali and Bhutanese refugees in Clarkston, Ga., and Jews, Christians and Muslims in Orange County, Calif.
“In terms of effectiveness, collaborative songwriting – is that an effective approach to warding off terrorism?” DeSantis asked George Selim, DHS’ director of Countering Violent Extremism. “Is this a good use of tax funds? Was there any measurable success as a result of awarding this grant? Are there other groups which, I would say, are more fuzzy in terms of their approach? Has there been documented success from there? Because we looked for it. It was hard for us to find it, and it’s a concern.”
The conversation took place during a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on national security.
DeSantis, the subcommittee’s chairman said the fact that Music in Common has not received any further grants signaled that the approach was not very effective. Selim said that the group was dropped from the grant program because Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly and leadership have brought in their own ideas.
In defense of the $160,000 award, Selim said, “What I can say conclusively … radicalization is not a linear process. There are multiple ways that individuals in the United States and across the globe have been radicalized, thus the solution sets to preventing and intervening in the process of radicalization are equally diverse and multidisciplinary.”
He said that the main objectives of Countering Violent Extremism is to view overall readiness for preventing radicalization with a focus on recruitment, community willingness to engage law enforcement and increased capability for law enforcement. The grant program, he said, “ups our readiness game.”
DeSantis asked Raheel Raza, a practicing Muslim and president of Muslims Facing Tomorrow, if the collaborative songwriting approach sounded like an effective strategy for combating radicalization. Raza called for a more direct approach, stating that this “fluff stuff” has not led to any direct decrease in radicalization and hasn’t led to countering violent extremism. She said DHS needs specific policies in place that tackle the ideology, while also speaking against government agencies that dance around the term of radical Islam in government manuals, a trend that DeSantis acknowledged.
Separating Islamist ideology from the spiritual message of Islam, Raza said, “is a very pro-Islamic thing to do.”
“It’s not about political correctness,” Raza said. “There are people here in the West who are afraid to use the term ‘radical Islamic ideology’ because they think that it is anti-Muslim. It is actually very pro-Muslim because it makes the ordinary masses of people understand the fate of Islam and an ideology, which is political in nature, and which is evil in its agenda.”
DeSantis asked if DHS should be designating groups like the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist supporting organizations, which he believes could impede finances to domestic groups.
“In order to fight the ideology, you have to name it,” Raza said.
The Islam Truth Tellin' Blues
If you call that Islam bad things, well, you know you're gonna die
You call it truthful bad things, you know you're gonna die
Your head will leave your shoulders, buddy
And not real funny, like a face and a pie
If you say The Prophet was a madman baby, well, your head is gonna roll
A pedophile madman, baby, yeah, your head is gonna roll
Right off your shoulders like a bowling ball
And roll right across that floor
You make an Imam angry friend, he'll put a fatwa on your head
Make that Imam crazy, man, he'll fill you full of lead
Park a car with TNT outside your house
Right by the window with your bed
You tell the truth about The Prophet and Koran, son, they'll push a bunch of lies
You talk about those things son, your stock with them, well, it isn't gonna rise
They got this thing they call Taqyia baby
It smells like crap and beckons flies
First of all Clinton had erected a wall between the FBI and the CIA rendering a very weak intelligence community. That weakness lead to 9-11.
Bush’s answer, as always, was more government, another layer of bureaucracy over the FBI and the CIA. That is no answer.
The answer was to remove the Clinton barriers and streamline our intelligence community and make it lean, and mean, and agile. What we have now is a bloated, wasteful bureaucratic blob.
Do you realize how many security departments the feds have now?
- the National Security Council (NSC) and a National Security Advisor
- the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a useless layer over the FBI and the CIA
- the hideous National Security Agency
How much freaking “security” does this mostly unconstitutional and paranoid federal government need? It’s beginning to look like a Nazi regime.
The constitutional job of the federal government is to protect the freedom of American citizens which is constitutionally assigned basically to the military and the CIA for external threats, and the FBI and the courts for internal wrongdoing. But instead, this bloated, mostly unconstitutional federal government is now grown and structured to protect itself by the control and coercion of American citizens.
Per the founder’s Facebook post here, the grant was revoked a few weeks ago: - - - — - -
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
YIPEEEEE GO TRUMP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The answer was not DHS. And DHS was not something they thought of at the moment, it was sitting there waiting and when 911 hit, they rolled it out. Another layer bureaucracy was the last thing we needed.
What should Bush have done differently?
Frozen and confiscated all Saudi visas and maybe financial assets here. Not classified the Saudi section of the 9/11 Warren Commission report. Raised holy hell that Jaime Gorelick was on the commission when she was part of the cause. Then he could have maybe....NOT told us it’s a religion of peace? He could have NOT increased Saudi student visas 16 fold and let in about 800,000 new moslems of every stripe. He could have not thrown the border open for his best Mexican buddy Vicente Fox.
But yeah, creating a new agency with more manpower than the USMC and twice the budget was a solution only a simpleton establishment patrician could come up with.
Don’t tell me it was about protecting America, not while the border was wide open and he flooded in as many moslems as Obama.
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/dhs-warns-deep-fry-turkey-dangers-15009863
This is an official DHS video on the dangers of frying that thanksgiving turkey. Yes, this is from the organization Bush created to protect us after 9/11.
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/video/counterfeit-items-putting-family-risk-31089105
Or who can ignore the work DHS does in protecting us from fake purses and makeup?
“I’ve decided to apply for this grant. I’m writing a song called, “Don’t blow me up, bro”.”
Make a little jingle for writing a little jingle.
Not bad...go for it.
Mohamed was a rolling stone....where he tethered his goats was his home....
“Stupid is as stupid does.”
“In December 2015, Congress appropriated $10 million in state and local grants for combating the rise of violent extremism. The Department of Homeland Security awards the money to various government organizations, universities and nonprofits.”
More RINO collusion with the RATs. We should not be awarding ANY GRANT MONEY for anything from the DHS. I for one am really getting pi$$ed off at Trump for his snail’s pace at getting rid of this stuff. It isn’s effing rocket science to stop.
“Without your having the benefit of hindsight being 20-20, what should the Bush 43 administration have done differently? It was an idea whose time had come, however forcibly.”
He didn’t need to capitulate to the government unions right off the bat and allow the “unionization” of the TSA! Face it WBoosh was and still is a POS globalist who wasn’t up to being president and as a consequence let us to 8 year of the Halfbreed.
The loser bush family is rich. We lose. They ARE losers.
At the time, I had enormous faith in Bush-Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Mueller, Tenent, etc...and there wasn’t anybody else I could think of. I wasn’t aware of the CIA-FBI issues involving Gorelic until 2004, didn’t realize the degree to which PC affected them all. Our men and women of the military seemed to support their missions despite the negative press and pain-in-the-ass activism. Otherwise, how much worse it could have been, I had no idea.
WORTH REPEATING
The constitutional job of the federal government is to protect the freedom of American citizens which is constitutionally assigned basically to the military and the CIA for external threats, and the FBI and the courts for internal wrongdoing.
But instead, this bloated, mostly unconstitutional federal government is now grown and structured to protect itself by the control and coercion of American citizens.
Cut their budget by tens times this amount.
L
“I hope someone FOIA’s the grant application and makes it public.”
You look like someone to me.
L
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