Just when you thought the Homeland Security department couldn’t possibly get any dumber…
The two cities attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, will receive far less antiterrorism money under plans unveiled today by the Department of Homeland Security, which has designated more money for many smaller cities throughout the country.
Washington and New York will receive 40 percent less in urban grant money compared to last year, with Washington dropping from $77 million to $46 million and New York falling from $207 million to $124 million, DHS officials said. The combined total means that the two areas bear almost the entire brunt of a $120 million cut in the overall budget for the program, the statistics show.
Chris Beckner has a more charitable view. But I’m with House Homeland Security Committee chairman Peter King on this one: “This is indefensible.”
Those two cities were disproportionately represented in past funding. Must we insist that any change that moves to instead improve defenses in places that have received attention, or even just moves to make the distribution more reasonable, is automatically stupid?
The 9/11 terrorists were smart enough to choose
the airports with the worst security screening
records. Why do we assume they will be idiots
and attack the most heavily defended cities,
where it would be most difficult? Doesn’t it
make sense to concentrate on the softer targets,
now that we have already spent billions on the
obvious ones?
OK here is what you do…you publish this list that becomes public that tells which cities recieve the least security funding from the governement.
You might as well FedEx the list to the Pakistani/Afghan border.
Besides that little thing, the United States is big…with many, many, many holes New York and DC make up two holes of our well many holes…
It just shows that the game is in securing votes with dollars, not in securing against the threat. And since there is no way to really guage the threat, you may as well put those dollars to some practicle use.
We should really be looking more at the “systems” that affect our economy and lives more than the cities that are really symbolic targets. Transportation (Ports, rail, air), Information systems, Communication, Agriculture, Water, Energy, and on and on. Symbols are important, but not very when the electical grid gets shut down or … use your imagination in thinking about the other “systems”.
“Disproportionally represented” by how much?
NYC and DC should not have funding proportional to all other large cities.
“Disproportionally represented” by how much?
NYC and DC should not have funding proportional to all other large cities.