New at Reason

Tim Cavanaugh | March 2, 2006

Veronique de Rugy finds the undisclosed locations where $180 billion in Homeland Security funding disappeared.

Comments

|3.2.06 @ 8:25AM|#

The truth is that all of those wasteful items listed in the article are really just part of an accounting trick to cover up the diversion of money into top secret programs.

Which top secret programs, you ask?

The development of sharks with laser beams on their foreheads, of course.

|3.2.06 @ 8:30AM|#

Thanks, T. About time somebody round here made that connection.

|3.2.06 @ 8:33AM|#

It took a lot of secret designers to get the digital controllers on the laser beams right so that the sharks wouldn't cut each other to pieces while swimming in the tank. Now the laser beams only switch on when there's a person in their path.

The secret designers went through a lot of ill-tempered sea bass to figure that one out.

|3.2.06 @ 8:48AM|#

Thoreau: agh, this is killing me. Reveal it. Is it Simpsons? It feels like it. Real slick Simpsons geek I am, if that's where it's from.

|3.2.06 @ 8:55AM|#

Evan-

Austin Powers. At the end of the first movie, Dr. Evil wants to throw Austin into a tank of sharks with laser beams on their foreheads, and is furious when his underlings explain that they couldn't quite make that happen.

|3.2.06 @ 8:58AM|#

Thor: THAT's riiiight. Thanky.

|3.2.06 @ 9:02AM|#

Man, I thought I was having a bit of deja vu. It's early, I thought, and you just haven't had enough coffee yet. Think again, me.

From De Rugy's "Are We Ready for the Next 9/11?":

"Since September 11, Congress has appropriated nearly $180 billion to protect Americans from terrorism. Total spending on homeland security in 2006 will be at least $50 billion�roughly $450 per American household. But far from making us more secure, the money is being allocated like so much pork."

And then, from De Rugy's & Gillespie's article in the SF Chronicle, "The War On Hype":

"Since Sept. 11, 2001, Congress has appropriated nearly $207 billion to protect us from terrorism. Total homeland security spending in 2006 will be at least $50 billion, split between the Department of Homeland Security and many other agencies, including, improbably, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Commerce and NASA. But far from making us more secure, the money is being allocated like so much pork."

So, take a story, jumble up the sentence structures a little bit, apply the thesaurus liberally, and viola! It's like a whole new article!

Ah, you know, I kid, I kid...

|3.2.06 @ 9:03AM|#

As long as dollars spent is the public measure of how much a politician cares about something, we are stuck with a competition to see who can set more money on fire under an appropriately titled program.

If anyone knows a way to stop this, I'll be your campaign manager.

|3.2.06 @ 9:07AM|#

Ligon:

Yeah, this morning, I hear calls (and bills!) for appropriating $400 million more to port security. Great, I say. If the fed gov't should be doing anything at all, it's protecting our ports from external threats. Problem is, do you think the money will be reallocated from other HSA black holes? Of course not. They'll just write more checks.

|3.2.06 @ 9:39AM|#

If anyone knows a way to stop this, I'll be your campaign manager.

Good luck with that, Jason. A politician who doesn't burn tax money will be regarded(at least portrayed by his opponents) as screwing his own constituency.

Warren|3.2.06 @ 9:56AM|#

Problem is, do you think the money will be reallocated from other HSA black holes? Of course not. They'll just write more checks.

It's much worse than that Evan. All the money will be spent on pet pork projects that won't make our ports more secure.

|3.2.06 @ 10:40AM|#

Warren, Evan:

If only we could figure out a way to import pork projects by sea, the ports would suddenly become a priority.

-Allen

|3.2.06 @ 10:40AM|#

Jason -

The only politicians who are going to be able to slow it down (I'm not sure stopping is possible at this point short of a complete collapse ala the USSR) are those in China. Once they let their currency float, and stop buying our debt, inflation's gonna hit like Mike Tyson in his prime. At that point, the government's gonna have to start raising taxes to keep spending like drunken sailors, and there will actually be a little accountability in the feedback loop.

For right now, the electorate seems happy enough to let the Fed crank up the printing presses to monetize the national debt - there's little negative feedback for increased spending. And what little feedback there is will decrease even further this month when the fed eliminates the best measure of how much new money it's creating.

So, it's not like I'm really eager for the status quo to change. I'm afraid it's going to suck, big time, when it happens. Enjoy the ride for now, while you can.

|3.2.06 @ 10:40AM|#

On a semi-related note, I read something yesterday about the secretary of HHS talking to a congressional committee about the bird flu threat. He said it's only a matter of time before it hits our shores. Naturally, he was saying this during a hearing about the budget for his own department.

One democratic senator was quoted as saying "$2 billion is not enough" to prepare for this pandemic. So I imagine it won't be long before we see articles about how bird flu money is being spent on pool tables and bowflexes. And not the cheap one, of course - it has to be the one that's $2k.

|3.2.06 @ 10:50AM|#

Welcome to Homeland Security ™
a subsidiary of Homeland, Inc
-- what's good for Homeland Inc, is good for the country
Milo Minderbinder, CEO

|3.2.06 @ 11:18AM|#

Because they have the attention spans of 2-year-olds, members of Congress immediately turned all their attention to firefighters and natural disaster preparedness.

More likely because the majority of their constituents have the intellect and attention span of 2-year olds.

By normal definitions leadership consists of evaluating a situation, determining the most preferable course of action, then convincing and coercing others to follow you. In other words, it takes time. In Washington leadership consists of listening to the hysterical and ignorant electorate, wetting one's finger and holding it up to the wind, finding out which programs will most increase the probability of re-election and maintaining the grip of power, then bolding falling to the back of the line trying to convince everyone in front that the line is so long they are actually the tail end.

The personality type that leads one to want to become an elected official in Washington is, by and large, not the type needed to solve these problems. We are asking for leadership from a class of people who are clearly not up to the task.

|3.2.06 @ 11:40AM|#

Excuse me gentlemen, but this is a

THREADJACK!

quasibill, please do me the favor of a response here: http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2006/03/manifesto_facin.shtml#comments

If you're interested in an exchange of knowledge, that is. You seem to know a lot about me, so one guess I'll make about you is that you're only interested in making off-the-cuff remarks that you can't defend.

And that concludes today's threadjack. Apologies all around.

|3.2.06 @ 12:05PM|#

Amanda,

Already done. Apparently we cross-posted.

"so one guess I'll make about you is that you're only interested in making off-the-cuff remarks that you can't defend"

Sigh.

Larry A|3.2.06 @ 12:34PM|#

Simple cockpit barricades, which the airline industry has now installed at relatively low cost, can prevent all 9/11-style attacks.

While stronger doors are a good idea, what actually changed is the policy that if someone announced a takeover he would be allowed to enter the cockpit. This was replaced by a policy of putting him face-down in the carpet and sitting on him.

|3.2.06 @ 1:07PM|#

"The personality type that leads one to want to become an elected official in Washington is, by and large, not the type needed to solve these problems. We are asking for leadership from a class of people who are clearly not up to the task."

hear, hear

Getting elected is a highly specialized skill which has nothing to do with the craft(!) of "governance" or the rational conduct of public policy (whatever that may be).

As for professional career politicians, I regard them as monomaniacal sociopaths, and a subspecies of career criminal.

|3.2.06 @ 1:14PM|#

This was replaced by a policy of putting him face-down in the carpet and sitting on him.

I believe this was El-al's policy from day one.

According to the Frontline film on the 1970 hijackings by the PLO they missed out on flying to the Jordanian desert by shooting one hijacker and restraining the other. I have at times found fault with the Israeli government, but I admire their no-nonsense approach to issues like this.

|3.2.06 @ 2:23PM|#

As I have tried to say before itis not DHS's functions that I have a beef with. After all, it is mostly just a reshuffling of existing agencies with many of the powers they've always had. (OK, expanded powers a la Patriot Act are a problem).

My problem is the very concept of an agency with the name Department of Homeland Security. The name has a Stalinist buzz to my ear.

Maybe I'm too sensitive, but I seem to remember a time when the agency responsible for "Homeland Security" was the Federal Government. It seems to have found it couldn't do that after it took on the responsibility of domestic nanny and world policeman.

|3.2.06 @ 2:28PM|#

My problem is the very concept of an agency with the name Department of Homeland Security. The name has a Stalinist buzz to my ear.

Agreed. Although I'm also bothered by those PSAs against cigarettes using the name "Truth", which was the name of the Russian newspaper that printed propaganda (truth in russian = "Pravda")

|3.2.06 @ 2:38PM|#

Excuse me gentlemen, but this is a THREADJACK!

We need a Department of Blogland Security so this never happens again. I nominate myself for the post, for the meager salary of $250,000 / year.

|3.2.06 @ 4:05PM|#

We need a Department of Blogland Security so this never happens again. I nominate myself for the post, for the meager salary of $250,000 / year.

Which big campaign contributor do you know?

Have to check that you have the proper qualifications, after all.

TDM|3.2.06 @ 8:21PM|#

$180 billion of pork-land security has given us very little increased security. I doubt that better oversight can make this much more cost effective. Surveillance is the most cost effective security measure. The NSA has probably done much more to improve security at far less cost than DHS. The tiny risk of having your civil liberties shredded is preferable to the risk of having your body shredded or the guarantee of having your money shredded.