Your tax dollars at work
Remember when Homeland Security officials promised a new grant-steering system would be put in place to ensure those areas most likely to be targeted by terrorists would receive the lion’s share of anti-terrorism funding? Well, that didn’t work out so well:
The net effect was that the grant to New York City, which was $207.6
million last year, will drop to $124.5 million this year, while
Washington will see its grant dollars drop a similar 40 percent, to
$46.5 million this year.
Meanwhile, the gravely threatened locales of Omaha, Charlotte, and Louisville saw 40-percent gains in their anti-terrorism funding. Must be all those Louisville Sluggers–the terrorists know that once they destory the hit-sticks of the national pasttime, they will break the American spirit and bring victory to their cause.
The new-and-improved system, you see, now incorporates not only an esoteric risk-assessment calculus into the decision-making process, but also an evaluation of cities’ spending plans. Homeland Security doesn’t like your plan, you don’t get the cash.
Senior department officials, in explaining the cut in funding for New
York during a private briefing for Mr. King [Peter King, R-NY], made clear that they were
unimpressed with the city’s spending plan, he said.
It gets better.
Overall, New York State will get $183.7 million, which is a 20 percent
drop from last year. That means New York State’s per capita share of
grant funds, which totals $2.78 per person, will drop to an even lower
level compared to some rural states, like Wyoming, which will get
$14.83 per person this year.
Wyoming must be safe. So, what’s behind the teeter-tottering of anti-terrorism funding for our states and cities? Why did New York and D.C. receive such big cuts? Homeland Security official Tracy Henke wasn’t forthcoming.
“It does not mean in any way that the risk in New York is any different
or changed or any lower,” she said, in responding to one of the many
questions on this point. “It means that we have additional information,
additional clarity. Our risk analysis has been a maturing process. It
is the best we currently have.”
Just ask the fine citizens of Wyoming.
Let’s see, now: which of our esteemed federal gummint stars has a Wyoming connection?
You’re so right — to think that anything might ever happen in Omaha, Charlotte, and Louisville is as ridiculous as supposing that a building might ever be blown up in Oklahoma City.
Seriously, the discrepancy between Wyoming and New York City is a bit disconcerting, and I’d like to know the reason why. It might be because of economies of scale — it’s easier to protect a million people packed on a little island than to protect a few hundred thousand people scattered across a state the size of Wyoming.
Anyway, it’s not as if the 9/11 terrorists spent much time at all in New York or DC prior to 9/11 — from what I can tell, they spent the vast majority of their time in places like Florida, Arizona, California, New Jersey, and Connecticut. And as David Neiwert has catalogued for years (e.g., http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2004/03/lucky-us.html), there are countless instances of home-grown terrorist plots. All over America, not just in New York.
Even if you cared about stopping only those terrorist plots that target New York or DC, it wouldn’t be enough to spend money in NY or DC. You’d have to catch or impede would-be terrorists as they were making preparations in a hotel in Kansas or somewhere.
No one is suggesting only New York and D.C. should be funded. Neither is anyone arguing for the evisceration of smaller cities’ anti-terrorism funding. But Homeland Security slashed New York and D.C.’s funding by nearly half, and raised Louisville’s by the same percentage. That requires a detailed explanation, which isn’t yet forthcoming.
Where terrorists train and organize is one thing. What they want to blow up is another.
I agree that a detailed explanation should be forthcoming. And given that this is a federal bureaucracy that we’re talking about, I have little doubt that much of the money is being misallocated.
But this — “Where terrorists train and organize is one thing. What they want to blow up is another.” — is exactly my point. If you want to catch terrorists BEFORE they blow up something, it doesn’t make much sense to poke fun at the whole idea of spending money in the sorts of places where terrorists train and organize.
Of course you want both. But finding terrorists and protecting targets require very different resources. As you know, there are several steps in the process. Discovery and surveillance aren’t necessarily local operations (e.g. NSA wiretapping and phone-records gathering). Protecting known targets is.
The Homeland Security secretary was interviewed tonite on the Lehrer News Hour, and what he said made sense. If you go to http://www.pbs.org, you might be able to retrieve his comments.
Hey, for the sake of defending my hometown, Charlotte…
…it is, technically-speaking (and some members of the J. Peter Nixon hate to be reminded of it), the home of Bank of America, plus it is the home of Wachovia (a.k.a. Walk All Over Ya) as well as a few other growing banks such as BB&T.
Omaha has loads of insurance companies. I mean, who didn’t watch “Wild Kingdom” that was brought to you by a certain little insurance firm based there?
Then there’s Lew-uh-vuhl. I didn’t realize that Humana would get that much attention. But then, Standiford Field (as the old guard continue to call Louisville Airport) is the big UPS hub although the company is based in Sandy Springs, GA. The nation’s economy will get thrown for a loop if the packages either get lost or do not arrive on time. Lest we forget what can happen if a bad package gets loaded onto a jet.
The Charlotte shell masquerading as Bank of America is no more BofA than A. P. Giannini was the Grand Klagon of the KKK.
And, what pray tell does this mean: ” and some members of the J. Peter Nixon hate to be reminded of it “?
Homeland Security Guy was on NPR the other day explaining this. He said that the NYC and Washington allocations were reduced because those cities had been secured by previous years’ spending, so they didn’t need as much this year.
He said, by way of an analogy, that if your home had been broken into, you’d put locks on the front door (i.e., NYC and Washington), but it wouldn’t make sense to KEEP putting locks on the front door without security the back door and windows (i.e., the other cities Grant mentions).
This was clearer than the “maturing process” hot air Henke was blowing in the bit Grant quoted, and it makes a certain amount of sense, so long as the Bad Guys haven’t figured out ways to pick the front door locks, as it were.
I continue to find it a point of concern that Homeland Security, charged with keeping us all safe in our beds, seems to have a hard time communicating anything useful (remember Saran Wrap and duct tape?) or clear (as above).
I think this is the right link:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5448320
The folks in charge of assessing the needs of various cities apparently objected to New York’s priorities. They were prepared to pay for one-time purchases of hardware, security systems, objects that could be used again. The NYPD’s preference for aggressive policing of key areas of the city of course was an expense that would need to be disbursed time and again. Never mind that it might work.
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