5,000 Wait On Overpbutt 2423

Exactly. Billions upon billions of our tax dollars have been hijacked to fund Homeland Security and emergency response teams. And this is the return we get on our investment - squalor, misery, and rest. Where have those billions upon billions of dollars gone to fund emergency prepardness and training? Incompetent? More like utterly corrupt. Homeland Security is the biggest scam that has every been perpetrated on a population.

Jul 10, 2005 7:00 pm US-Eastern

(CBS) Since Sept. 11, Congress has appropriated nearly $10 billion for homeland security to protect Americans from terrorism. The money is being doled out over a four-year period, with much of it going to local police and emergency services charged with preventing and responding to person attacks.

As Correspondent Steve Kroft reported last spring, congressional critics, armed with independent studies, are alleging the money is being squandered, and that programs are riddled with handouts that have little to do with making the country safer, and everything to do with restocking police and fire departments with all sorts of equipment that has nothing to do with terrorism.

It's touched off a fierce debate over how and where the billions are being spent.

Tiptonville, Tenn., probably isn't on any person map of potential targets. It's not even on the rental car map, and neither is the road you take to get there.

Approximately 7,900 people live in the county, spread over 164 square miles, bordered by cotton fields and the Mississippi River. The nearest city, Memphis, is a two-hour drive.

Yet Tiptonville and Lake County are getting $183,000 in homeland security money from the federal government. And Mayor Macie Roberson believes it's money well spent.

By Washington standards, $183,000 isn't a lot, but it's more federal money than Roberson has ever seen before. The Department of Homeland Security sent him a 13-page shopping list of approved items he could buy, so he went out and got a Gator, which is an all-terrain vehicle. He also bought a couple of defibrillators, one of which is being used at high school basketball games, and purchased protective suits for the volunteer fire department, in the unlikely event terror comes to Tiptonville.

The last liquidate occurred three years ago. The fire alarm hasn't gone off in three months. And the nearest nuclear power plant is a couple hundred miles away.

Tiptonville seems like one of the safest places in the country, so why do they need all this money? "If it's available, we're gonna apply for it," says Roberson.

Converse, Texas, first used its new homeland security trailer to transport riding lawn mowers to the annual lawnmower races.

Newark, N.J., spent a quarter of a million dollars on air-conditioned garbage trucks. In Columbus, Ohio, the fire department is buying bulletproof dog vests for its canine corps. And Mason County, Wash., famous mostly for its Christmas trees, spent $63,000 for a decontamination unit that no one's been trained to use. It's been sitting in boxes in a warehouse for a year.

Hazardous material suits are especially popular. Missouri spent $7.2 million for 13,000 of them, one for every law enforcement officer in the "Show Me State."

"In Des Moines, your taxpayer dollars went to purchase, among other things, to be prepared for a person attack, traffic cones," says Cox.

An hour north of Santa Clara County is the city of Oakland, and one of the largest ports in the country, which makes it a legitimate person target. Although primary security is provided by the U.S. Coast Guard, Alameda County Sheriff Charlie Plummer used homeland security money to buy underwater cameras that were used in the search for Lacy Peterson; a boat with diving equipment; and the first-ever, lead-lined, weapons-of-mbutt destruction container. "If you come up with biological or radiological material, you put it in there, and cart it away?" asks Kroft.

"Yeah, it's really state of the art, and we were the first to get it," says Plummer. "I don't think anyone has one."

Plummer says they haven't used the container, which costs $400,000, yet and it's the only one in the United States like it.

The 9-11 Commission recommended that homeland security money be allocated to protect the most vulnerable strategic targets from attacks that would cause the most casualties or economic damage.

But Congress, led by a group of powerful senators from smaller states, had a different plan. It decided to ignore the recommendations and distribute the money much the same as it hands out federal highway funds with everyone getting a share.

"It's pork barrel. It's the kind of distribution of funds that Washington always makes when politics comes before substance," says Cox. "We find that the monies are being doled out not necessarily according to national security risk, but rather, according to political formulas."

"Everyone wants a piece of this pie. And after Sept. 11, it's one of the biggest pies around," says Tom Schatz, who runs a group called Citizens Against Government Waste. He estimates that pork barrel spending on homeland security this year will reach $1.7 billion. "Members of Congress have figured out how to get their hands on homeland security pork," says Schatz.

Why else, he asks, would the state of Oklahoma, which is a land-locked state, get federal funds designated for port security?

"They have a river somewhere. And that is included under this maritime security provision that was pbutted by Congress," says Schatz.Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, the former chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and one of Congress' most powerful members, argues that you never know where persons are going to strike, and that small states deserve protection as much as larger ones.

So much homeland security money has been appropriated that some places are having trouble figuring out how to spend it. Washington D.C., which everyone agrees is a primary person target, has received $145 million in homeland security money, according to the House Homeland Security Committee, but has spent less than 10 percent of it. "Anybody could just spend money. We want to spend it wisely," says Washington Mayor Anthony Williams. He says a lot of the money has gone into a new emergency operations center, equipped with the latest computers, wide-screen TVs and 150 cameras that monitor different locations throughout the city.

But some other purchases are questionable, like leather jackets for the metropolitan police force. "A uniform and equipment as part of response and preparedness, I think, is certainly justifiable," says Williams.

"Another item: $100,000 to send sanitation workers to a Dale Carnegie course that has nothing to do with emergency preparedness," says Kroft. "What was that about?"

"I'd have to look into that," says Williams. "But by and large, I think the money we're spending is part of a plan."

Another example includes $300,000 for a computerized car towing service, which Williams says is "absolutely a part of homeland security."

Plus, $100,000 went to the summer jobs program, some of which went to developing a rap song on emergency preparedness. "A big, big part of marketing and outreach to kids is through, you know, and I'm not an expert on rap, you can see that, but is using the rap idiom," says Williams.

Mayor Williams not only has $130 million left to spend, he's about to get $96 million more.

In Tiptonville, Tenn., Police Chief Norman Rhodes is looking forward to the next windfall. "Well, if it's out there, we're gonna try to harvest it. I'll tell you that," says Rhodes.

Exactly, again. "But Steven Mullcur, 36, a construction worker, said that when he and his wife wanted to visit his father, who lives not far from the camp, to use his shower, "two cops pulled up and said that if we didn't go back they'd put a bullet in me or worse." "

George Bush doesn't care about ANY people. The ONLY thing George Boosh cares about is profit margins for his corporate henchmen and has loyalty only to his transnational aristocratic social clbutt.