I know this is not exactly new news. Everyone should know by now that HS money has gone to ridiculous things. But it’s good to keep in the front of our minds as the election season gets into full swing.
Homeland Security grants spent on clowns and gyms
Fire departments are using Homeland Security grants to buy gym equipment, sponsor puppet and clown shows, and turn first responders into fitness trainers.
The spending choices are allowable under the guidelines of the Assistance to Firefighters grant administered by the Homeland Security Department, which has awarded nearly 250 grants since February totaling more than $25 million out of the current spending pot of $545 million.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff vowed to redirect grant spending based on risk of a terrorist attack, but Congress has ignored his pleas, federal officials say.
The LAFS for Life program which received a $69,000 grant, partners with the Des Moines, Iowa, fire department to teach fire safety through puppet and clown shows. The Onalaska Fire Department in Wisconsin also has an $8,000 grant for clowns and puppet shows, and Grants Pass in Oregon will use a $22,000 grant to buy an educational robot.
Way to balance the budget Replicspends!! Remember Clinton and the budget “surplus”? Good times.
This is probably the better way to spend the money. At least it is being used for a worthwhile purpose. Left up to Chertoff, the money would be buying more explosive sniffing, shoe checking, nail clipper snatching machines. Just the thing to make the ultra-paranoid feel better.
The chances of dying in a house fire are vastly greater then dying in a terrorist attack. I don’t say ignore terrorism, but don’t go half way. Use the money to help AMERICANS.
Other uses could include CPR and first aid classes for more citizens, Defibrillators in every police car, Home Safety courses, 911 training for Detroit operators, Fire, Police, and EMS training, and a fence along the Mexican border.
when the next major terrorist attack occurs (and it will) the next commission of inquiry will note that Homeland Security money was doled out like standard political pork, instead of being targeted against the vulnerabilities.
what will we say when it is pointed out that there’s money enough for puppet shows but not enough to inspect freight containers for dirty bombs?
If they cut this out they will be accused of not supporting firefighters.
doug, get real
· On average in the United States in 2003, someone died in a fire about every 2 hours (134 minutes), and someone was injured every 29 minutes (Karter 2004).
· Four out of five U.S. fire deaths in 2003 occurred in homes (Karter 2004).
· In 2003, fire departments responded to 402,000 home fires in the United States, which claimed the lives of 3,145 people (not including firefighters) and injured another 14,075 (Karter 2004).
· Most victims of fires die from smoke or toxic gases and not from burns (Hall 2001).
· Smoking is the leading cause of fire-related deaths (Ahrens 2001).
· Cooking is the primary cause of residential fires (Ahrens 2001).
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/fire.htm
How many Americans died in terrorist activities in 2003? How about in 2004 or 2005? Since fires are a bigger killer then “terrorist attacks” against Americans, shouldn’t there be a corresponding effort to do something about it? Even the terrible events of 9/11 killed fewer then than 2,800.
Let’s go on to something even more important. Drunk driving. There were 16,694 alcohol-related fatalities in 2004 – 39 percent of the total traffic fatalities for the year. Six times the 9/11 losses and in every state of the union !!!
http://www.alcoholalert.com/drunk-driving-statistics.html
Darn, I sure hope you don’t believe the No-Fly-List has stopped any terrorist, or having people remove their shoes have saved an airplane, or granting an illegal immigrant amnesty has stopped a terrorist. Half baked ideas that try to show the government is doing something are worse then a waste of time. They waste money and people’s energy and intellect. This is akin to counting paper clips as the dollars fly out the window.
5. Oh, I am real. I also recognize that fire prevention and day-to-day law enforcement is a State and Local responsibility, not a Federal one. If the local PD and FD wants to put on puppet & clown shows, let them pay for it themselves.
Also, funding is the first step to control, just ask the school districts struggling to comply with No Child Left Behind testing mandates. I don’t want the Feds in charge of my local fire department.
thus, any funding should be limited to those things beyond the ken of the local first responders – preparing for terrorist attacks and natural disasters.
This program was and is a big pork barrel. Congress mandated these kinds of rules for providing funds just so they could hand out the pork to the folks back home. When these rules and this money were being discussed the DHS wanted to give the funds in a narrow scope to those areas that were most likely to be terrorist targets. Congress(Dems/Rep) said no….and wanted and got the wider interpatations before alloting the cash.
This is why the DHS, even if it was run perfectly couldn’t possibly cover all the REAL potential targets, ….as Emril Lagasse the chef says…..*pork fat rules*
5. Oh, I am real. I also recognize that fire prevention and day-to-day law enforcement is a State and Local responsibility, not a Federal one. If the local PD and FD wants to put on puppet & clown shows, let them pay for it themselves.
But whenever there is something happening, the Federal Government will rely on local responders 100% of the time. Not 99% or 82%, of the time,100% all the time. Gee, remember last year, after Hurricane Katrina ravaged Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana? Yup all three states. That makes this an INTERSTATE problem, so it should be a Federal responsibility. And all those Bush apologists kept blaming the local governments for not doing anything? Sort of like what you are claiming now.
Hey, before you claim this is a stretch, remember the Federal Government, ya that was Bush’s Administration, argued before the Supreme Court that States could not regulate medical marijuana because it might cross the border thereby making it a FEDERAL RESPONSIBILITY. And, that was like, only last year too.
Well fires happen all the time, in fact, way too often. They too could conceivably cross state lines. So can drunk drivers cross state lines. And it will be local responders that react.
Now getting a lot more serious. My six yr old is in kindergarten. One standard teaching method of what to do in a fire is STOP, DROP, and ROLL. They are taught to crawl towards a door in a smoke filled room. To wrap towels over their mouths. That age group is often shown animated films and puppet shows to get onto their level.
If there was a terrorist attack, complete with fire, I think it quite prudent for her age group to know how to react in a fire. Or do you honestly think smaller children would be automatically spared from a terrorist attack. Did you forget that of the 168 people killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, 19 were nursery school aged children?
Quibling over who is responsible is bullcrap. The same resources will be used to combat a fire from smoking as it will a fire from a terrorist plane crash. The Federal Government has tossed billions of dollars at fighting terrorism through Home Insecurity. Yet, they can’t even slow down the flow of people illegally entering the country. ( BTW, The Border Agents work for Homeland Insecurity.)
8. “Quibling over who is responsible is bullcrap.”
no, not quite. who makes policy about what is the essence of government. I live in a jurisdiction with fairly high state and local taxes that go to pay for a fairly high level of local services. lots of cops, lots of firemen.
turn law enforcement and fire-fighting funding over to the federales and those jurisdictions that don’t feel like taxing themselves for sufficient basic services (*cough* Red States), can just pass the expense on to Uncle Sucker. So not only will the Blue (high tax) States be ponying up for their own fire-fighters and cops, they will be subsidizing the rest.
And you would please note that I was NOT talking about hurricanes (as I said very explicitly in my posting), I was talking about who pays to teach stop, drop and roll. As you noted further upthread, the likelihood of being killed (or trapped in a burning building for that matter) as a result of a terrorist attack is pretty low, but your regular house fires are depressingly regular. Therefore, since the possibility of terrorist involvement is so miniscule, so should the role of the federal government in teaching stop, drop and roll.
Our local fire department (I am a volunteer) was monitoring a truck accident in the townships west of mine where 30 cannisters of radioactive materials (the load weighed 58,000 lbs) were being shipped to Utah on Thanksgiving day during a blizzard. The driver had choked on beef jerky and slid off the road. I assure you there were NO Federal agents responding to this accident. It was the LOCAL departments called to the scene who operated under the advisement of the vendor and state officials who handled the whole mess.
What went right:
-one volunteer department had been awarded NBC suits (and funds used to train in their use) by HS that were used to inspect the scene.
-800mhz radio communications which allow every agency (law, ems, fire, etc.) to communicate state-wide to the scene incident commander. HS money helped some agencies obtain these radios.
-Proper communication allowed the departments to “find” a geiger counter and someone qualified to use it at the hospital where the driver was transported.
-Communications allowed the vendor to identify the load contents and provide information on how to safely inspect it.
this action prevented release of the contents into neighboring Lake Michigan. (side note: who the H#@@ allows this stuff near the Great Lakes anyway???)
Of course, I can understand anyone wishing to dump the entire HS program because some clown put on a puppet show… That makes me mad to read a headline like that, too. However, we found Fire Safety training programs to children are very effective — we have not had a child die in an accidental fire (or any fire for that matter) since we stared our fire safety programs (on our own time and $$$) 30 years ago. Could that have been what the puppet show was intended? Could that have also been considered innovative had it been presented in a different context?
What really gets me is that this incident barely made the local news let alone national news, probably because nobody died or the accident wasn’t caused by bin laden. Fire Departments are using this “pork” to obtain training, personal protective equipment, communications equipment, trucks, etc. because there is no other way to get this stuff. If the news media would report on things like this that happen in YOUR BACK YARD then people might care and departments would be better equiped. As it goes, most are hurting for basics but HS money is helping,
Our department has never received an award from HS. I’m just telling you the way it is from a lowly volunteer fire-fighter’s perspective.
It seems things always get “fixed” when somebody dies. Many departments see this money as a way to fix things BEFORE one of us dies. I can’t blame them for applying for these funds. Too bad the government doesn’t rename it for what it is being used for… I think most people would support it on face-value for the good it is dong if only they knew.
I guess helping fire departments will not stop terrorism. What will? But if/when terrorism happens again, it will be your local fire/ems/law enforcement who will be called in. We’re not ready yet but as you can see from the above example, we’re getting closer. My department is now trained on how to set up a portable hazmat decomtamination station our county now keeps on hand, just in case.