Originally Posted by Eric5273

I'm from NY, and I can tell you that this entire issue is a whole bunch of BS. The whole Dept. of Homeland Security is unnecessary as is all the extra tax money they are spending on this stuff.

The reason they cut the budget is because there is no more money to be made by large corporations on this stuff. When they raised the homeland security budget 5 years ago, their intention was not for it to be used to increase the number of police on the street or the number of security people. Their intention was to give contracts to a few large corporations for projects that could increase security. Those types of projects have all been completed and now that there is no more profit to be made from this, they have cut the budget. It has nothing to do with hating New York.

As far as the Dept. of Homeland Security, a few things you should know:

1) The forming of this Dept. was done BEFORE the 9/11 attacks. People were being hired as early as July 2001 to work for the Dept. of Homeland Security, and the plans were to publicly announce the idea in October 2001. The same thing for the Patriot Act as well -- it was written during the Summer of 2001.

2) If you speak to just about anyone who has worked in a leadership position in the intelligence community, they will tell you that the purpose of having multiple intelligence agencies (we have 16 in the United States) is so that you get different viewpoints and perspectives. What tying them alltogether is doing is eliminating that. Instead, the president is going to be given one perspective. But it appears that the current White House is not really interested in getting real intelligence perspectives anyway. It seems that they decide what they are going to do, and then they only want intel that can serve to support the position that they have already decided. So this new system allows them to squash any opposing viewpoints before the information even reaches the President. Then the President can not be held responsbile for ignoring intel like he was with regard the 9/11 intel and the whole Iraq war debate.

Originally Posted by Eric5273

You have to get over the whole 9/11 thing buddy.

Originally Posted by Winston Churchill

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.