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Literature Discussion - Lit-Talk.com
Department of Homeland Security - To Be or not To Be
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Why We Should Expect Another 9/11
Article #25 –
Department of Homeland Security - To Be or not To Be (Part 1)
By
Chris Cobar
From whence I come, theory is ethereal and reality is real. As you gathered, I do not come from D.C.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) might have been great in theory, but it is not working in reality.
Three days before Thanksgiving, 2002, the DHS was formally created. It took over, absorbed or otherwise sucked in 22 other entities, including but not limited to:
U.S. Customs
Immigration and Naturalization
Federal Protection Agency
Transportation Security Administration
FEMA
Coast Guard
U.S. Secret Service
Office of Domestic Preparedness
National Domestic Preparedness Office
and a bunch of other agencies
Why we need or needed an Office of Domestic Preparedness (formerly under the Department of Justice) and a National Domestic Preparedness Office (formerly under the FBI, which is under Justice) is beyond me. It’s not like we were preparing for anything anyway. 9/11 proved that.
Perhaps it’s just me, but I always thought of the Coast Guard as a military service. They wear uniforms, take and give orders, have military ranks and man weapons and boats. Isn’t that what the military does?
Secret Service also baffles me. Their charter is and always has been very specific; the protection of the President, visiting heads of state and other bigwigs. In-between gigs, they do counterfeiting and fraud. And exactly how do these activities relate to ‘homeland security?’
Before DHS, the Secret Service wasn’t broken; it actually worked. More surprizing, it worked well, a novelty for D.C. Soon after the ‘assumption’, DHS instituted a programme which for lack of a better term, I call “Pay for Performance.”
Under this system, Secret Service Agents would get pay raises and promotions predicated on their performance. And here I thought that taking a bullet for the President was sufficient. Go figure.
I can see it all now:
“Mr. President, you’re going to have to take care of yourself today. I’ve got to go bust some counterfeiters so I can get a pay raise. See you tomorrow. Oh, have a nice day and keep your head down.”
Care to guess how well that programme worked out?
It has now been over 7 years since DHS came into our lives. Let’s take a quick review of their scorecard:
The GAO (Government Accountability Office) discovered major misuse of DHS credit cards, including the purchase of beer brewing kits, I-pods, boats purchased at twice the retail price, which often turned up missing and, my personal favourite, $70,000 in plastic dog booties which did not work.
(I get the I-pods, the beer brewing kits and the boats, but the doggie booties?)
An “Employee Morale” test of all 36 government agencies was administered and then reported in July, 2006. The DHS scored as follows:
33rd Talent Management Index
35th Leadership & Knowledge Management Index
36th Job Satisfaction Index
36th Results Oriented Performance Index
Given the government grading procedure, it’s really got to make you wonder. We’re not talking the private sector standards here.
In September, 2008, Congress ‘estimated’ that the DHS wasted approximately $15 billion in ‘failed” contracts. Damn scary, when Congress does the ‘estimates;’ we all know how financially precise they are.
For the Fiscal Year, 2010, the DHS was given a budget of $42.7 billion. Their final tally came in at $56.4 Billion ‘net.’ It really makes you wonder what the ‘gross’ tally added up to. I wish that I could run over my budget like that from time to time. It must be nice.
I will not bother to address in detail all the issues of the DHS “Fusion Centers” that are enjoying an ever escalating record for civil rights violations and other travesties. Wisconsin views anti-abortionists as potential terrorists. Maryland put anti-death penalty and anti-war folk into the federal terrorism database. The DHS itself described roughly half of the American voting population as “right-wing extremists.” And for this we got the privilege of paying $42 million? Believe it or not, this has been publically reported previously. Yes, you’re right; the Fusion Centers aren’t working either. What a surprize!
So we have now returned to the initial question: DHS: To be or not to be? As previously noted, I do not come from ‘within the Beltway.’ By definition, it indicates that I tend to operate in reality instead of theory. To the best of my knowledge, theory has never earned a dime.
In the real world, something must exist and mildly function in order for it “to be.” If it has “never been” then it cannot “be.”
As close as I can tell, the DHS has never remotely reached any minimal level of competence where it could qualify as “being.” According to the federal, bureaucratic scorecard, the only place where the DHS has excelled and exceeded expectations is in expenditures. Not exactly the record we taxpayers would like to break. We’re broke enough as it is.
The DHS is “not to be” for two reasons:
1. It has never “been”
And
2. We cannot afford it “to be.”
The Department of Homeland Security is now over 7 years old. It has never worked and odds are high that it will never work. The good Lord knows that we cannot afford it.
It’s not protecting us, it’s milking us dry. Yes, there is a bottom to the well and we’re almost there, if not there already.
Now that we know that the DHS hasn’t, doesn’t and won’t work, in the next article I will offer a solution. This is not rocket science. All one has to do is look around the globe. The answer is staring us right in the face.
Until next time,
CC
Thanks for your comments, please keep them coming –
Chris Cobar: rajamuda001@aol.com
Please visit my new blog, www.terrorlog.com
P.S. For those of you who want more than a snappy synopsis of the whys and wherefores of 9/11, I refer you to www.intelwire.com. It is managed by a good friend, John Berger. He is a certified terrorist consultant, who documents his colons and commas. If it's there, you can take it to the bank.
