Homeland Security: How Much Spending Is TOO Much?

RenMan found another juicy little nugget with typical Federal umpty-zeros-in-the-amount.

"The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It's basically the same number of people who die drowning in the bathtub each year," said John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures in fighting terrorism.

"So if your chance of being killed by a terrorist in the United States is 1 in 3.5 million, the question is, how much do you want to spend to get that down to 1 in 4.5 million?" he said.

Oh, actually?  Quite a bit!!!

The spending has been rife with dubious expenditures, including the $557,400 in rescue and communications gear that went to the 1,500 residents of North Pole, Alaska, and a $750,000 anti-terrorism fence — fashioned with 8-foot-high ram-proof wrought iron reinforced with concrete footers — built around a Veterans Affairs hospital in the pastoral hills outside Asheville, N.C.

West Virginia got $3,000 worth of lapel pins and billed the federal government for thousands of dollars in cellphone charges, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting, which compiled a state-by-state accounting of Homeland Security spending. In New York, $3 million was spent on automated public health records to help identify bioterrorism threats, but investigators for the department's inspector general in 2008 found that employees who used the program weren't even aware of its potential bioterrorism applications. --RenMan quoting LATimes

Yes, it's GWBush, colluding with the "security at ANY cost" faux-Conservative Pubbies, prompted and entertained handsomely by the earmark-oriented Lobbyists of Questionable Technology (a/k/a 'vaporware') and the good old-fashioned Urge To Make Gummint Even Bigger.

Well, now we have it.  Feel safe?  How about a huggy-lovey crotch-grab?