Homeland Security Down the Toilet

* resulting in the collapse of the Anderson firm

* and the loss of 26,000 Anderson jobs.

The Supreme Court overturned the Anderson conviction, but the company was already bust, so it was a meaningless reversal, particularly for the pink-slipped. The mishandling of that Chertoff prosecution resulted in new legal guidelines preventing just such attack-dog conduct before juries.

Unfortunately, it is beyond the jurisdiction of the Court to make the PIC go to the blackboard and write “sorry I lost your jobs” 26,000 times. But it would be an appropriate lesson to thuggery, huh? Like so many in the Bush administration, Chertoff’s reward for failure and bad judgment was to elevate him to the job of Patriot-In-Chief.

It was a gut call. Another confirmation of the Peter Principle.

“Seven high-risk cities received a total of $410 million, or 55 percent of the money set aside for an Urban Area Security Initiative, while 39 other cities shared the remaining $337 million.

“But Chertoff warned that he does not consider the annual grants an entitlement and said that high-risk cities should not assume they will continue to receive large amounts. The Overall state and local grants have declined by about $1 billion, or by roughly one-third, since 2004.”

Well, certainly the PIC wouldn’t want to give the impression that high-risk cities will continue to be included in the homeland he purports to protect. That might make them think he and Bush were serious. With a $45 billion annual budget, the PIC Scrooged $747 million (less than 2% of their dough) to the most at risk 46 cities in the country.

The Decider wastes that amount in four days in Iraq.

This mis-administration headed by Cheney’s office took a reasonably configured and half-ass successful intelligence community and turned it into something that

* pisses away $45 billion each and every year,

* advises the nation on ‘gut’ feelings,

* elevates threat levels to support political moments,

* under-funds the nation’s anti-terrorist infrastructure and

* gathers so much information it hasn’t the vaguest idea of how to sort through and use it. Or even find it.

“Separately, DHS and the Commerce Department announced $1 billion in grants yesterday to fix longtime emergency communication problems underscored by troubled responses to the 2001 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.”

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