From the howls of outrage from city-slicker Mayors Bloomberg and
Williams, you’d think that the Department of Homeland Security had
given Osama bin Laden the keys to their cities. Mikey and Tony were
beefing about how little DOHS grant money was ladled out to them
last week, their “applications” deemed worth a lot less than they
were last year. The “grant” money is now regarded by its recipients
as just another slab of federal pork, and DOHS is unrepentantly
clueless about what the money is spent on, how the security of
cities and towns is being achieved, and pretty much about
everything else. DOHS remains an acronym properly pronounced only
as the Homer Simpson exclamation.
This conclusion was, unfortunately, confirmed by the remarks of
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. In my interview with
Secretary Chertoff on last Friday’s Hugh Hewitt Show, he said —
and declined to say — a number of important things. (You can read
the transcript here — scroll down.)
We started, as needs be, with the issue of closing the border. I
asked Mr. Chertoff — in two different ways — just when the border
would be closed to illegal immigrants. His answer avoided the
question both times, leaving in its wake the obvious real answer:
not in this President’s term of office. Chertoff claimed credit for
progress toward “controlling” the border by putting National Guard
troops there and working toward ending the inane “catch and
release” program that turns illegals loose after they’ve been
caught. Why haven’t we done even this by now, nearly five years
after 9/11? Please slap your forehead and say, “DOHS!”
If America’s moms spent their household budgets the way the
Department of Homeland Security spends our tax money, every
six-year-old would have 29 pairs of shoes and no socks. We’re used
to reports of places such as the Northern Arctic Borough in Alaska
using about a hundred large in DOHS funds on night vision goggles
(the better with which to see your sled dogs at night, my dears).
But when anti-cigarist Mikey Bloomberg claims the sky is falling
because his cut of the DOHS funding is only $124.5 million
this year — and when Tony Williams says it’s absurd to give
Washington, D.C. “only” $46.5 million — one might ask just what
they’ve accomplished with the last few years’ funding. DOHS doesn’t
know.
Chertoff’s crew awards these hundreds of millions of dollars in
accordance with “standards.” He said, “What we do is we set some
very specific standards for what grants have to do, and the kinds
of capabilities they have to build. And anything that comes in and
gets looked at has to meet one of those standards. We then make an
evaluation of whether we think there’s merit, and it’s a sensible
plan.” If that were being done right, DOHS would be doing what it
should: establishing parameters that have to be met and giving
money only for those purposes. But that’s not what’s happening.
“DOHS!!”
And why should any city — Washington is the latest example —
be given less money because its grant application is poorly drafted
compared to another city’s? (Everyone who lives here knows that the
D.C. government’s sole talent — writing parking tickets — isn’t
easily transferred to anything else.) Chertoff told me that the
state and city grant applications were judged — with the locals’
input — by DOHS experts. But, I asked, why does the “competition”
even take place? Doesn’t DOHS know what’s being accomplished and
what isn’t? Doesn’t it have a way of setting goals and measuring
progress toward them in consultation with the locals? Apparently
not.
Chertoff denied it was a competition, saying the term is too
“colloquial.” Okay, but if it’s not a competition, what is it when
there’s only a limited (though ghastly large) amount available and
cities and states submit proposals to get a piece of it? If it
walks like a pig, and oinks like a pig, and smells like a
pig…
Every city and state should have a federally approved and
classified plan — reviewed and improved each year — on the
specifics it needs to accomplish in order to best protect its
citizens and infrastructure. Every year’s grant should be
conditioned on how the money will be used — and was used in the
preceding year — to achieve specific elements of it, as determined
by DOHS experts. Those experts should be gathered from among the
best in the nation: chiefs of police, border patrols, emergency
management planners and the military. Not the “experts” DOHS sends
around the country to do study after study. From people in the
emergency services business in the field I hear a constant stream
of complaints about how these Gucci-two-shoed twenty-somethings
impose all sorts of immediate demands for information and then
disappear.
MICHAEL CHERTOFF IS A VERY SMART and likeable guy. I feel bad for
him, because he’s in a very tough job for which he is unequipped. A
military talent has to be brought to this military-political job.
Wonder why there was no information on conditions in New Orleans
immediately after Katrina passed over? Think of how you could pack
a C-17 with cell phone transmitting equipment, including towers,
and follow it with a coupla C-130s full of guys and gals who could
set it up in a few hours. And then ask whether FEMA has a plan to
do that in the next natural — or unnatural disaster. What? They
don’t have such a plan even today? DOHS!!!
I asked Mr. Chertoff about the reports of Mexican forces
crossing our borders illegally to cover coyotes smuggling illegal
immigrants. He said there were such instances, and people when
caught are arrested, and that we were getting more cooperation from
the Mexican government in reducing these incidents. But why don’t
we just solve the problem by putting a few more National Guard
types on the borders? The kind who fly A-10 Warthogs and can make a
30-millimeter argument in support of our out-gunned Border Patrol
guys? Oh, sorry. That might offend Vicente Fox. And the mighty
Mexican Air Force might start climbing high into the sun to
challenge ours. Or not.
New York and Washington won’t be left undefended because their
grant money is cut for the coming year. And what they’ve
accomplished with the preceding years’ grants is questionable at
best. Does your city or town have an emergency preparedness plan?
Has anyone told you about how you or your business can help? Are
your emergency preparedness folks — police, fire, ambulance —
ready for what could be the most likely event in your area, or are
they buying night-vision goggles for bicycle messengers? You’d
better find out, because no one else is likely to. DOHS!!!!
Last Thursday, it took me almost two hours to get to the Fox
News studios for a segment with Bill O’Reilly. It usually takes a
bit more than half of that. Trouble was that two accidents on main
roads had gridlocked everything around the downtown area for over
six hours. Just think about that when you hear tell of the great
emergency planning for evacuation in the event of a terrorist
attack. DOHS!!!!!
TAS contributing editor Jed Babbin is the author
of Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe Are
Worse Than You Think (Regnery, 2004) and, with Edward
Timperlake, Showdown: Why China Wants War With the United
States (Regnery, May 2006 — click here to obtain a free chapter).
