Tuesday, April 13, 2010

"Useless" Air Marshal Service too busy aiding human-trafficking ring to stop underware bomber

Catchy title, yes?

Well what can I say?  Homeland Security appropriates $860 Million for this agency who have had more air marshals arrested than actual suspects. 
We now have approximately 4,000 in the Federal Air Marshals Service, yet they have made an average of just 4.2 arrests a year since 2001. This comes out to an average of about one arrest a year per 1,000 employees.
Now, let me make that clear. Their thousands of employees are not making one arrest per year each. They are averaging slightly over four arrests each year by the entire agency. In other words, we are spending approximately $200 million per arrest. Let me repeat that: we are spending approximately $200 million per arrest. 
 From here.  Based on what I see on the web site I might have a few issues with Congressman Duncan, but this message is spot on.

If you don't click on the link, the following is a painfully true statement about the nature of almost any response to government RFPs:
Professor Ian Lustick of the University of Pennsylvania wrote last year about the money feeding frenzy of the war on terror. And he wrote this: “Nearly 7 years after September 11, 2001,'' he wrote this last year, “what accounts for the vast discrepancy between the terrorist threat facing America and the scale of our response? Why, absent any evidence of a serious terror threat, is a war to on terror so enormous, so all-encompassing, and still expanding?  The fundamental answer is that al Qaeda's most important accomplishment was not to hijack our planes but to hijack our political system.”
“For a multitude of politicians, interest groups and professional associations, corporations, media organizations, universities, local and State governments and Federal agency officials, the war on terror is now a major profit center, a funding bonanza, and a set of slogans and sound bites to be inserted into budget, grant, and contract proposals.'' 

Back to our regularly scheduled madness...

No comments: