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Bush Admin Uses Anti-terror funding for pork
Topic Started: May 31 2006, 06:07 PM (1,597 Views)
Rick Zimmer
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Fulla-Carp
The 89th Key
Jun 1 2006, 06:17 AM
Let the experts decide where to spend it Jeff.

I think the point is, Isaac, that the experts are NOT deciding where to spend it. The politicians have developed a formula to make everyone happy, not to protect the nation.
[size=4]Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul -- Benedict XVI[/size]
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AlbertaCrude
Bull-Carp
Look, terrorists can go after critical infrastructure anywhere and get the global attention they crave and covet. The destruction or highly resistant water born pathogen contamination of a water treatment plant in Kalispel, Montana for example is just as devasting to its victims and the national psyche as an attack on the NY Subway.
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The 89th Key
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Rick Zimmer
Jun 1 2006, 12:45 PM
The 89th Key
Jun 1 2006, 06:17 AM
Let the experts decide where to spend it Jeff.

I think the point is, Isaac, that the experts are NOT deciding where to spend it. The politicians have developed a formula to make everyone happy, not to protect the nation.

Actually, politicians are mad about this....

But this is how Homeland Security decides:

Quote:
 
To help federal officials make the allocation decisions, Homeland Security officials from throughout the nation participated in panels that reviewed various applications for grants and then made recommendations. The final decision, though, was left to the federal department.
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Jolly
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Geaux Tigers!
AlbertaCrude
Jun 1 2006, 10:53 AM
Look, terrorists can go after critical infrastructure anywhere and get the global attention they crave and covet. The destruction or highly resistant water born pathogen contamination of a water treatment plant in Kalispel, Montana for example is just as devasting to its victims and the national psyche as an attack on the NY Subway.

Psychologically, yes.

Economically, no.

OTOH, there are places in the United States that could bring the economy to a grinding halt - and I ain't talking about Wall Street.

One of them is in South Louisiana....and you know exactly where it is....
The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.- George Soros
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AlbertaCrude
Bull-Carp
I do indeed- as I am sure you realize what the economic consequences would be if terrorist action took place about 350 miles north of where I hang my hat.
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JBryan
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I am the grey one
That is impossible. Bedouins in Yemen have never heard of "South Louisiana".
"Any man who would make an X rated movie should be forced to take his daughter to see it". - John Wayne


There is a line we cross when we go from "I will believe it when I see it" to "I will see it when I believe it".


Henry II: I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody.

Eleanor: At my age there's not much traffic anymore.

From The Lion in Winter.
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iainhp
Middle Aged Carp

OK, I'll state our case. San Diego:

1. Home port to 4 aircraft carriers if memory serves me correct (can be seen across the harbour from downtown) at NAS North Island (Coronado), plus all the air wings from the carriers.

2. MCAS Miramar - home to Marine fixed wing and helicopter squadrons (you know, the ones flying around Iraq).

3. NAVSTA San Diego - homeport to 60 Navy ships, 50 separate commands and 48,000 military and civilian personnel. There are actually 98 ships home ported in San Diego including aircraft carriers and submarines.

4. Naval amphibious base, Coronado - SEAL team training.

5. Point Loma - Naval Submarine Base and Anti-Submarine Warfare Training Center, plus all the research facilities on the point.

6. Camp Pendleton in North County - home to 1st Marine Expeditionary force, 1st Marine Division plus other groups (logistics, aircraft,...). 60,000 persons work at the base.

7. Busiest border croossing in the world at San Ysidro. Should I mention the tunnels that keep appearing?

8. Several of the Sept 11th hijackers were living in San Diego.

9. 6th largest city in the country (or maybe it's 7th now).


San Diego received less money than Ft,. Lauderdale! The theory is that we have sufficent military personnel around to protect us.



Actually, I think the discussion is on the wrong track. $80 million would have been no use to protect the World Trade Center buildings - you just can't protect them. The only real protection is either done at the architectural level when designing a building, or at the intelligence level to prevent attacks. $80 million to New York is a waste, as is $6 million to San Diego. All it will be used for is to buy radios that communicate with the neighbouring city/county's radios. Intelligence should be handled by the intelligence agencies who coordinate with local law enforcement; and stockpiles of anthrax vaccines, etc... should be handles by Homeland Security on a national basis.

I think Vegas is the next symbolic target.

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Jeffrey
Senior Carp
Here's more evidence: http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/422633p-356751c.html

"More money to guard nothing"

Feds to city: drop dead

Homeland honcho cuts funds by 40%

BY MICHAEL SAUL in New York and MICHAEL McAULIFF in Washington
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS


Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff


A new report from the Homeland Security Department deems that New York City has no national icons that deserve special protection from potential terrorist threats.

The city was stunned yesterday to find that its share of federal anti-terror funds was slashed nearly in half by bureaucrats who said it has no national icons to protect and lousy defense plans.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff determined, however, that cities that have never been targeted by Al Qaeda — like Louisville, Atlanta and Omaha — deserve whopping increases.

"This is a knife in the back," fumed a furious Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. "As far as I'm concerned, the Department of Homeland Security has declared war on New York."

Mayor Bloomberg ridiculed Homeland Security's reasoning.

"When you stop a terrorist, they have a map of New York City in their pocket. They don't have a map of any of the other 46 places or 45 places [that get funding]," he fumed.

The city will get $125 million from the feds' high-threat bank account, a 40% cut from the $207 million it received last year. The Homeland money pot was smaller overall this year, but the rest of the country is being trimmed just 14%.

The lowball dollar amount puts at risk the NYPD's plan to build a "ring of steel" of security measures around lower Manhattan — surveillance cameras, computerized license plate readers and vehicle barriers.

The NYPD had asked the feds for $89.1 million for the system, modeled after London's security program. London's system gained worldwide recognition last summer when police cameras provided images of the bombers who attacked its transit system.

Heaping insult on injury, Homeland Security reviewers slammed some of the city's key anti-terror programs as among the worst in the nation — including the vaunted NYPD counterterrorism unit.

Emergency plans for the police, fire, hospitals and other city departments were considered so inferior that "a special condition will be included in the grant award prohibiting drawdown of funds ... until they have been approved through DHS," Homeland's assessment concluded.

"These are the same bean counters who think that the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building and Brooklyn Bridge are not national monuments or icons," scoffed Bloomberg spokesman Jordan Barowitz.

A Homeland Security spokesman insisted New York's cut was based on a powerful new matrix that crunches millions of bits of data to figure out where money is most needed.

"We're quite frankly getting highly sophisticated in our ability to analyze threat," said Russ Knocke.

Knocke would not address specifically why a threat-based assessment cut funds for a city that has been attacked twice and targeted repeatedly by Islamic terrorists.

"It's not so much fighting the last war, it's taking in the threat picture today," he said. "We've got to apply dollars where they will have the greatest impact."

But a document obtained by the Daily News that explains what Homeland Security reviewers were looking at in their analysis suggests key data were missing.

For instance, in the category "national monuments and icons," the feds list none. For banking and finance businesses, they could find only four worth more than $8 billion, when the Bloomberg administration estimates there are at least 20.

"How do you leave every single landmark in the most famous city in the world off of that list?" said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), who along with King was demanding a meeting with Chertoff.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) blamed the White House and said, "I don't think the President should come back and express solidarity with New York until there is more funding."

Bloomberg said the city wouldn't change its approach. "We're going to continue to do what it takes to keep this city safe and then worry about the money," he said.

With Alison Gendar and Dorian Block
More money to guard nothing


The fire chief of Charlotte, N.C., admits his city doesn't have any national monuments in danger of being bombed. And a spokesman for Omaha is "not aware" of a single credible threat against his municipality since 9/11.


Yet these cities are among 15 that received an increase in homeland security funding this year, while New York City's allotment was slashed.

Most of the lucky localities are using their windfall to buy equipment, beef up training or create emergency response plans.

In Louisville, Ky., for instance, the money will go toward creating a new communication system for first responders to a disaster.

A spokeswoman drew on the failure of FDNY radios in the World Trade Center attack on 9/11 — even though the tallest building in Louisville tops out at 35 stories.

Here's how some cities are faring under the new budget:

Jacksonville, Fla. 2005 funds: $6.8 million. 2006 funds: $9.2 million. Increase: 26%. Major landmark: Alltel Stadium, home of Jacksonville Jaguars.

St. Louis; 2005 funds: $7 million. 2006 funds: $9.2 million. Increase: 23.6%. Major landmark: Gateway Arch.

Louisville, Ky.; 2005 funds: $5 million. 2006 funds: $8.5 million. Increase: 41.2%. Major landmark: Churchill Downs race track.

Omaha 2005 funds: $5.1 million. 2006 funds: $8.3 million. Increase: 38.2%. Major landmark: Offutt Air Force Base.

Tracy Connor


More: They're making a monumental error





The federal Homeland Security Department has this to say about the home of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the Empire State Building, the New York Stock Exchange, the Brooklyn Bridge, the United Nations, Yankee Stadium, the country's biggest subway system, Grant's Tomb, Grand Central Terminal, the Federal Reserve Bank and Federal Hall.

"NATIONAL MONUMENTS AND ICONS - 0"

Meaning the New York area has nada, zilch, zippo, not a one, a zero that dismisses even Ground Zero. The assertion is made on page 4 of an eight-page Homeland Security Department document that seeks to justify a 40% cut in our federal anti-terrorism funding.

"This is a very sophisticated formula for developing a risk-based approach," a Homeland Security spokesman said yesterday.

He was asked why this same formula set the number of major financial institutions in New York at four when there are, at a minimum, 20, including the federal depository in downtown Manhattan that has more gold than Fort Knox has. He seemed manifestly untroubled by the error and declined to comment any further.

"We're simply not going to provide the specifics to the bad guys," he said.

Which is only understandable, for the Islamic fundamentalists think New York has numerous icons and have actively targeted at least five of them. One early plot involved bombing the United Nations along with the George Washington Bridge and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels. The federal government called this "the Landmark Case."

The terrorists were so convinced the World Trade Center was an icon that they attacked it twice. The second attack led to the creation of the Homeland Security Department, which seems to be happiest giving shiny new rescue vehicles to places no terrorist would think of attacking.

The problem of protecting actual targets has been more daunting, particularly when it comes to the city that is at the top of every Islamic terrorist's hit list. The Homeland Security folks now seem to have come up with a plan they can execute to protect New York's monuments and icons: They simply declare that there are none.

At the same time, the document describes assembling 100 unnamed "reviewers" to issue "objective, consistent and defensible effectiveness scores" for the local anti-terrorism programs it helps fund.

With the same sort of "sophisticated" analysis that determined the Statue of Liberty to be no icon, the Homeland Security reviewers placed the NYPD counterterrorism bureau and its Operation Atlas at the bottom 15% nationwide.

The reviewers apparently do not like all the overtime that is paid to the cops in Operation Atlas, which happens to be aimed at safeguarding the landmarks that the document says do not exist.

True experts consider the NYPD anti-terrorism effort to be the gold standard. Some officials suspect that Homeland Security is acting out of jealousy or seeking to exact a payback for some perceived slight in the past.

Whatever the motivation, the department has issued a bizarre document that cuts our funding by 40%, says there are no icons to protect and slams the Police Department that has taken the lead in the fight against terrorism. The top of the document might as well read Homeland Security to New York: Drop Dead.

This is all the more shameful when you consider that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff once worked in New York. His tenure in his present position is finite and he should forget ever coming back here. His department's sophisticated formula says there isn't much to see here, anyway.



Key passage: "True experts consider the NYPD anti-terrorism effort to be the gold standard. Some officials suspect that Homeland Security is acting out of jealousy or seeking to exact a payback for some perceived slight in the past."

Chertoff is one of the guys who gave us the Katrina response. His actions are simply criminal.


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Jeffrey
Senior Carp
Another accurate editorial from the Post: http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/66843.htm



THE FEDS' FOUL



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June 1, 2006 -- How many national monuments - or, as the feds put it, "icons" - are to be found in New York City?
Well, either one or two fewer than existed on Sept. 10, 2001 - depending on how you count the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

This is important, insofar as the Department of Homeland Security has decreed New York City deficient in national "icons," and thus subject to a breathtaking 40 percent cut in federal anti-terrorism aid.

Unless Washington comes to its senses, Gotham will get $125 million in Homeland Security funds during fiscal year 2006. And while that's still more than any other urban area, it's down sharply from the $207 million awarded last year.



Has the terrorist threat to New York really gone down that much? No way.

The feds even admit as much: "It does not mean in any way that the risk in New York is any different or changed or any lower," conceded Assistant Secretary Tracy Henke.

But according to a risk-assessment scorecard obtained by City Hall, funding assessments are apparently driven in part by the number of "national monuments and icons" to be found within city limits.

Of which New York City, according to the Department of Homeland Security, has none.

Zip.

So let's hope Michael Chertoff & Co. have better luck locating infiltrating terrorists than they had finding, say, the Empire State Building.

Not to mention the fact that the Justice Department put the infamous blind sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman, away for life for specifically conspiring against such national landmarks as the George Washington Bridge and the Holland Tunnel.

So let's get real. As Mayor Bloomberg put it yesterday, "When you stop a terrorist, they have a map of New York City in their pocket. They don't have a map of any of the other 45 places."

Places like Omaha, Neb.; Louisville, Ky., and Charlotte, N.C. - all of which had their funding sharply hiked under some mysterious new "risk analysis."

And yet Undersecretary George Foreman insists that the latest allocation ensures that Washington will "get the maximum benefit out of those dollars."

If, by "maximum benefit," he means keeping the pork-happy hogs on Capitol Hill satisfied, maybe he's right.

But if he means ensuring that homeland security funds actually go where the threat of terrorist attack is the greatest, then he's dead wrong.


As Bloomberg pointed out, "The federal government gives you money to do new things. They do not give you money to pay for things that you've already bought. And what we've said from Day One is that we're not going to wait for the federal government - we go out and buy every single thing we need to keep this city as safe as we possibly can right away."

Moreover, he notes, the feds "don't give you monies for ongoing operations."

That's a foolish policy. New Yorkers shouldn't have to pay a price for City Hall's commendable refusal, as Bloomberg put it, to "put this city in jeopardy by waiting for federal dollars."

Rep. Peter King (R-Nassau), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has vowed to make the feds "very sorry they made this decision."

We believe him.

And we expect that New York's entire congressional delegation - and its extraordinarily powerful business community - won't sit still for this outrageous pork-barreling.

The last time New York City was attacked, the economic impact reverberated far beyond the five boroughs.

The next time - if there is a next time - it won't be any different.

That can't be said for Omaha, Louisville or Charlotte.




Yup - my points exactly.


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Jeffrey
Senior Carp
Continued:


D.C.'S STUPID SCROOGES SLASH NYC TERROR AID AND SPLURGE ON THE STICKS


By GEOFF EARLE Post Correspondent



June 1, 2006 -- WASHINGTON - Less than five years after the murder of 2,749 people in the Twin Towers on 9/11, the feds yesterday shockingly slashed anti-terror funds needed to protect New York City against future attacks.
The Homeland Security Department announced it was hacking funds distributed to the city by 40 percent compared with last year, while pouring hundreds of millions into unlikely terror targets like Kentucky and Wyoming.

The shocking stinginess from Washington comes just one week after a Pakistani national was convicted of a plot to blow up the Herald Square subway station.

New York City will get its vital anti-terror funding chain-sawed from $208 million this year to $124 million next year - even though security experts agree it is vastly more threatened than any other city in the country.

The unexpected move set New York lawmakers in both parties fuming - especially since Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, a native of the region, vowed to dole out money based on risk.

Two cities in Chertoff's home state, New Jersey, made out like bandits - Jersey City and Newark will receive a total of $34.3 million, a 79 percent increase from the previous year.

"As far as I'm concerned, the Department of Homeland Security and the administration have declared war on New York," said Rep. Peter King (R-L.I.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.



"It's a knife in the back to New York and I'm going to do everything I can to make them very sorry they made this decision."

King said he would launch "rigorous investigations" of the Homeland Security Department - including a $21 million DHS contract with a Virginia limousine service accused of arranging hotel trysts between lawmakers and prostitutes.

"They have cut $80 million in funding to New York City," King said. "Meanwhile, they gave a $21 million limousine contract to the company that was driving pimps and prostitutes around."

Sen. Charles Schumer had a more personal message for President Bush.

"I don't think the president should come back to New York and stand in solidarity with us without changing this formula," said Schumer (D-N.Y.).

"This is unfair. This is wrong. This is an outrage. This is basically abandoning New York."

Even though the feds had less money to hand out this year because of spending cuts, New York's massive drop was far out of proportion to the overall reduction.

In fact, New York City absorbed more than half of the nationwide cut of $119 million in money for urban areas. The city reduction amounted to $66 million below the prior year.

Federal officials said they based the new funding on a "two-by-two matrix" based on "risk" and "effectiveness" - but offered no specific justification for why New York's share plummeted.

"We have to look at the risk of New York City in relation to the rest of the country as well," said Tracy Henke, a DHS assistant secretary. "You're only as strong as your weakest link."

New York leaders weren't buying it.

"There's no question, they should have given us a lot more," said Mayor Bloomberg.

"When you stop a terrorist, they have a map of New York City in their pocket. They don't have a map of any of the other 46 places" that got money yesterday from the feds.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said city funding cuts and a big cut for Buffalo "demonstrates a pre-9/11 mentality that we should not tolerate" and called for Senate hearings on the issue.

"There's something seriously flawed with a process that results in a 40 percent cut to the city highest on the terrorists' target list," said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

"We lost almost 3,000 people that day," said Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.), who held a press conference with Rep. Vito Fossella (R-S.I.) at Ground Zero. "Yet Washington is blind to what happened."

While New York got more than any other city - $124 million - it has twice been hit by al Qaeda attacks, and major plots have been uncovered for attacks on the Brooklyn Bridge, tunnels, Wall Street, and numerous other targets.

Even as New York braced for massive cuts, several small-city mayors were poised to bask in a security bonanza. Seven cities that got big increases have populations smaller than Staten Island.

Louisville, Ky. - home to Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), who chairs a powerful Homeland Security Appropriations subcommittee - got almost $9 million.

Memphis, in the home state of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), got $4 million.

"Political considerations played no part in the allocation process - none whatsoever," said George Foresman, DHS undersecretary for preparedness.

But security experts were at a loss to explain the funding decisions.

"Omaha is not target No. 1 for Osama bin Laden - it's New York. What is the administration thinking?" asked Scott Bates of the Center for National Policy.

Of the $1.7 billion in security funds being awarded, $1.3 billion goes out based on risk. Another $400 million goes to states by a formula that guarantees something even to states with tiny populations like Idaho and Wyoming.

The feds say funds were awarded through a secret peer-reviewed process. But each peer group of five to seven people included at least one rural or small-state representative - giving small towns an edge.

DHS officials hinted that New York's paperwork wasn't up to par. That led King to respond: "What they're trying to do is take a cheap shot here by saying the application wasn't filled out right. That can result in thousands of people being killed."

Of the 46 cities that got special grants, New York City ranks 23rd per capita, getting $16 per person.

But residents of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., got $67 per person, and residents of Atlanta got $45.


Additional reporting by Stephanie Gaskell, Murray Weiss and Tom Topousis


In short, this has convinced me that Bush is not serious about fighting terrorism. Smoke and mirrors. These actions are simply criminal.


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Rick Zimmer
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Fulla-Carp
Good articles Jeffrey.

Explains exactly how out of touch these guys are.

But then, weren't Chertoff and his buddies the ones who were telling us all was under control and no one was in danger in New Orleans when we had all spent two days watching the people on the roofs of their homes desperately trying to get help? Weren't they the ones who told us that there was no problem at the Superdome, even after we had heard for two days about the horrendous conditions there?

It seems like they don't see what is there.

But then, given the Bush Administration's protestations about the WMD's in Iraq ("we know where they are," claimed Rummy!), they also seem to see things that do not exist.

I just wonder if these guys ever even look up from their desks or walk ouitside their offices and cubicles -- much less think about what they hell they are saying?

God lord! Someone must have asked about NYC getting cut and wondered why. One would think they'd look at it and immediately note that their precious little model had not identified any national icons in that city at all? None. In NYC? How could anyone be so stupid?

But then, this Administration has also shown itself not very good at asking the questions that a reasonable person would ask.

[size=4]Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul -- Benedict XVI[/size]
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
Not out of touch at all, Rick and Jeff. X amount of money has poured into various sectors over the years. Adjustments are now being made to supply other areas that did not receive as much funding and need to beef up. What happened to the $207M that NYC received? It went (presumably) into necessary infrastructure, personnel, etc. to meet the perceived needs of the time. Now the powers that be have determined to cut the funding for a different budget. Other monies are needed elsewhere to beef up other security sectors in the US. The locals are whining because their funding has been reduced, but do they really need an additional $207M on top of what they've already recieved? I can't say, but I can say that the whining coming from east of the Hudson sounds like a bunch of career politicos and news agencies trying to make political hay about how out of touch / evil Bush is -- and you are buying it wholesale.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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JBryan
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I am the grey one
NYC got 19% of the total outlays for the past four years. This year they get 18%. Maybe some of us out here in Hicksville could kick in that lost 1% if it would stop the whining. I would gladly trade a bit less funding for hereabouts in exchange for not having to listen to all the pissing and moaning.
"Any man who would make an X rated movie should be forced to take his daughter to see it". - John Wayne


There is a line we cross when we go from "I will believe it when I see it" to "I will see it when I believe it".


Henry II: I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody.

Eleanor: At my age there's not much traffic anymore.

From The Lion in Winter.
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Jolly
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Geaux Tigers!
As I said, I can function without Wall Street.

Give it a couple of weeks, put the servers somewhere else, reboot the data.

I alluded to a place that means you don't drive your car, you don't have electricity, and your social services essentially shut down.

Think 1840, folks.

It can be done...and it's not all that hard to do....
The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.- George Soros
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JBryan
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I am the grey one
Ah, the voice of self-reliance.

Contrast that with our friends on a certain northeastern island who have gotten ~480 million in the last four years. I mean, how many times do you have to erect a concrete barrier in front of the court house or add video surveillance to transportation infrastructure. We have poured money into NYC and it is still not enough for them. Their latest grant application included overtime pay for the police ferchrisakes. It is obvious that their view of this funding runs counter to the rest of America. They see it as some sort of entitlement to be funded at the same level on into perpetuity just because "We impo'tant". Cut it 1% and they bang on their high chairs.

And Jeffrey actually had the stones to insinuate that I am a welfare recipient.
"Any man who would make an X rated movie should be forced to take his daughter to see it". - John Wayne


There is a line we cross when we go from "I will believe it when I see it" to "I will see it when I believe it".


Henry II: I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody.

Eleanor: At my age there's not much traffic anymore.

From The Lion in Winter.
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The 89th Key
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I see Jeff still hasn't apologized nor changed the title of the thread. :lol:
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George K
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Finally
From another source:

The DHS awards of block grants for the Homeland Security Grant Program (HSGP) touched off a fiery round of criticism, with some calling for George Bush to fire DHS chief Michael Chertoff after seeing funding cut to New York City and Washington, DC. However, a look at the numbers calls the accuracy of this blamethrowing into serious question.

First, the reaction:

New York City will receive $124 million — the largest amount under the Urban Area Security Initiative. But that's just 60 percent of the $208 million given in 2005. The cut comes primarily because the Homeland Security Department determined that New York has no national monuments or icons. ...

Rep. Peter King, a Republican from New York and chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, called the cut in funding “indefensible and disgraceful.”

“As far as I’m concerned the Department of Homeland Security and the administration have declared war on New York,” King added. “It’s a knife in the back to New York and I’m going to do everything I can to make them very sorry they made this decision.”

The Urban Area Security Initiative is meant to help cities and urban areas prepare for and respond to terrorist attacks and other disasters. About $710 million is being allocated to 46 cities in 2006, compared to nearly $830 million last year.


Chertoff responded by saying that threats and intimidation would not make him change his mind. He also pointed out that NYC, DC, and LA have received the lion's share of DHS grant money for four years, allowing them to progress quite far in their preparedness. Chertoff argued that other cities need to catch up, and that at some point the federal government has to start considering potential secondary targets as well.

The New York Times reports that some ineptitude on the city's part may explain some of the cutback:

The federal agency distributing $711 million in antiterrorism money to cities around the nation found numerous flaws in New York City's application and gave poor grades to many of its proposals.

Its criticism extended to some of the city's most highly publicized counterterrorism measures.

In a report that outlines why it cut back New York City's share of antiterrorism funds by roughly 40 percent, the Department of Homeland Security was so critical of some highly viewed local measures — like Operation Atlas, in which hundreds of extra police officers carry out counterterrorism duties around the city each day — that the Police Department and other city agencies must now seek further federal approval before drawing on the money they were given to pay for those programs.

At the same time, federal officials said yesterday that the city not only did a poor job of articulating its needs in its application, but it also mishandled the application itself, failing to file it electronically as required and instead faxing its request to Washington, where it had to be entered manually into a computer system. City and state officials denied making that mistake.


A look at the actual dollars granted by DHS shows that NYC, DC, and LA/OC still get over a third of all grant monies ($263.51M, or 37%). In FY '05, the three areas combined for $366.11M, or roughly 43% of all grant monies. Bear in mind that this is not funding for federal resources in these cities that provide for national security, but block grants for the cities themselves to use for their proposed security initiatives. In the fifth year post-9/11, shifting some of that funding for other cities isn't exactly unreasonable, especially since the program itself lost about 17% of its funding -- and that decision came from Congress.

The entire block grant program got cut even more by Congress, going from $2.5B in FY '05 to $1.7B this year, a drop of 32%. Again, this funding comes from Congress, not the DHS, which has to administer the program based on the monies allocated by Congress. Considering the overall hit to the program, DHS redirected a greater proportion of funds to urban areas than last year, even as it tried to spread it out to areas overlooked in past years.

Perhaps the amounts allocated could have been adjusted, but I see nothing inherently unreasonable in this outlay. New York City still gets 18% of all UASI funds for FY '06 (24.3% in FY '05) despite holding about 3% of the nation's population. The LA/OC area gets 12.8% despite accounting for the same percentage of the population. Should they get more? It depends on how they planned to spend the money and how they justified it, and it appears that they did poorly at that task -- and still wound up with almost a fifth of the grants available.

Is a six-percent drop in their share really worth all of this hew and cry?

This is the kind of irresponsible reporting that leads to this hysterical reaction:

The city was stunned yesterday to find that its share of federal anti-terror funds was slashed nearly in half by bureaucrats who said it has no national icons to protect and lousy defense plans.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff determined, however, that cities that have never been targeted by Al Qaeda — like Louisville, Atlanta and Omaha — deserve whopping increases.

"This is a knife in the back," fumed a furious Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. "As far as I'm concerned, the Department of Homeland Security has declared war on New York."


NYC's share was not halved; its share went from 24% to 18% of all grant monies given to urban areas across the nation. That's a reduction of 25% in their share. Someone needs to send Michael Saul and Michael McAuliffe back to math class.

And someone needs to give Peter King an ice bath. After 9/11, I thought we all would put aside stupid war analogies when we saw what happens when an enemy really does declare war on the US. If that's what Peter King thinks the DHS has done to New York City by giving them one-fifth of all urban block grants available, then I suggest he get himself to a treatment center and get fitted for a new jacket with extra-long sleeves. If he wanted New York City to get more money, then perhaps Congressman King could have gotten the House to allocate more for the program.
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Rick Zimmer
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Chertoff's protestations are hollow....

If one of the major components of the supposedly objective formula is the existence of national icons as potential targets and if the data used in the formula shows no national icons in NYC, the data are seriously flawed and hence the results are also flawed and invalid.

If Chertoff wanted a formula that included icons which were now adequately protected and did not need further funding, his Department's formula should have included that in the formula. But it did not. DHS simply indicated there are no icons in NYC.

When obviously wrong data are entered into a formula and then the results of that formula are justified on the basis of fairness, one can only assume the results were cooked because the formula did not give the decision makers the results they wanted.

The question then becomes, what was the criteria these decision makers used in order to allow the manipulation of the data to give them the results they wanted.

If they wanted to simply make a political decision to spread the wealth around regardless of need like we do with highway funds, then say that. But don't play the game that the Administration's primary purpose in distributing these funds is to protest those areas most at risk. They chose to keep out of the formula the very types of facilities in NYC they, themselves, claim are the high risk targets.

They cannot have both -- ignore the high risk targets and then say they are distributing the fund to protect high risk targets.

It is really serious when the Bush Administration places political pork barrel politics above the nation's needs, when it is clear to anyone who has any common sense that the data included in their formula was skewed from the beginning.

(Hmmmm...sounds like the run up to the Iraq war; skewing the data).
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Jolly
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Define high risk target.

There are two types of high risk targets, those of the political realm and those that are essential for the function of the country.

I would hope that the emhasis is on the latter, even though it would be political suicide to publically state that position.
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Rick Zimmer
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Jolly
Jun 2 2006, 07:13 AM
Define high risk target.

There are two types of high risk targets, those of the political realm and those that are essential for the function of the country.

I would hope that the emhasis is on the latter, even though it would be political suicide to publically state that position.

By political realm do you mean a target which American politicians think is important to his political credibility or a target which is symbolic of the US, such as the Statue of Liberty or the Washington Monument?

Given the purpose of a terrorist attack, I am not sure it matters as long as it has the desired effect of raising fear and getting a massive reaction out of the society being attacked.
[size=4]Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul -- Benedict XVI[/size]
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Jolly
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I would think it matters a great deal.

The destruction of an icon is little when compared with a terrorist action that can kill millions or can cripple the country economically.
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Phlebas
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Rick Zimmer
May 31 2006, 08:40 PM



in Queens, it may only be the subway that needs protecting.


Well, there's also those two little airports in Queens - JFK and LaGuardia.

Speaking of the subways: One of the stupidest things NY police did was check bags in high profile subway stations. It would be so easy to take a bomb onto a train in - say - Jamaica Queens, or Bay Ridge Brooklyn, or Fordham Rd in the Bronx where no one ever checked a bag. Once you're on the train, you're home free. Next stop: Grand Central Station, Whitehall St. - next to Battery Park and South St. Seaport, Rock. Center, 33rd and 5th (you know what building's there, right?).

I tend to agree with the new model of spreading the money more around the country. Spending it all in NYC and DC is "fighting the last war." We will definitely have more terrorist attacks in the US. I believe the targets will be different next time around - crowded mall, stadium, movie theater, etc.
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Rick Zimmer
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Jolly
Jun 2 2006, 07:39 AM
I would think it matters a great deal.

The destruction of an icon is little when compared with a terrorist action that can kill millions or can cripple the country economically.

On that scale, you are correct, Jolly.

But in terms of instilling terror and getting a reaction out of the American people (the primary purpose of terrorism), I am not sure it matters.

As I have said several times in this thread, this money should be distributed based on the need to eliminate risk -- both of the kinds you speak of -- not based on some sort of formula intended to spread the money around.

Let us define the most obvious targets -- either because they are symbolic targets or because of the potential for widespread death, injury and damage -- and let's secure those and not care whether every state, every city or every congressional district gets their bit of pork.
[size=4]Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul -- Benedict XVI[/size]
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iainhp
Middle Aged Carp

Perhaps all these NY newspapers that are complaining could publish an accounting of what the funds issued to date have been spent on. I'll wager that they have at least partially been siphoned off to support something other than anti-terror.

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ivorythumper
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Rick Zimmer
Jun 2 2006, 09:04 AM
Jolly
Jun 2 2006, 07:39 AM
I would think it matters a great deal.

The destruction of an icon is little when compared with a terrorist action that can kill millions or can cripple the country economically.

On that scale, you are correct, Jolly.

But in terms of instilling terror and getting a reaction out of the American people (the primary purpose of terrorism), I am not sure it matters.

As I have said several times in this thread, this money should be distributed based on the need to eliminate risk -- both of the kinds you speak of -- not based on some sort of formula intended to spread the money around.

Let us define the most obvious targets -- either because they are symbolic targets or because of the potential for widespread death, injury and damage -- and let's secure those and not care whether every state, every city or every congressional district gets their bit of pork.

Rick: You (and Jeff) are the ones who have defined the whole operation as "pork". The ostensible facts are that sufficient funds have already been distributed in the highest risk areas (such as $800M to NYC), and there are other lower priority but still important areas that need coverage.

Do you have any actual data as to how all the money has been used over the past 4 years, and how effectively it has been used, and whether the same level of funding is still required in these areas, and what the exact parameters are for considering distribution of funds in the present budget against what has already been implemented? Or are you just using this as another opportunity to grind your ax?
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