WASHINGTON - Sen. Chuck Schumer says the yokels who rated New York City's terror attack risk need to go. The New York Democrat is pushing a bill to quash Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's beloved "peer review" program, which had teams of anonymous peons decide in secret that the city's terror funding should be slashed.
This year, the Chertoff way - which Schumer said is flawed and politicized - resulted in New York City losing $80 million in funds to protect against security threats.
"It's the most idiotic procedure," Schumer told the Daily News yesterday. "A sheriff in a small town in the Rockies shouldn't be deciding how homeland security funding is spent. It's just ridiculous ... they don't have the experience.
"Chertoff assured us that this money would be distributed in a smart way, and it was done in a dumb and probably political way," he said.
Schumer's bill proposes eliminating "peer review" in deciding the Department of Homeland Security's Urban Area Security Initiative grants, which totaled $710 million this year. The overall fund was cut 14% from 2005, but New York lost more than 40% of its annual funding.
But it's unclear if Schumer's measure could pass the GOP-controlled Congress to reach President Bush's desk, since it's a pork barrel bonanza for greedy lawmakers from no-threat zones.
Evidence of that came in a report this week by Chertoff's own inspector general, who offered a list of bogus terror targets that have boosted security funding for obscure U.S. "assets" highly unlikely to catch Osama Bin Laden's eye.
There were petting zoos, a Kentucky bourbon festival and golf tournament, bingo and ice cream parlors and a cookie shop. Breweries, fishing shops, gyms, pet food makers, redwood trees and an Illinois "Apple and Pork Festival" also were deemed at risk from jihadists.
"It just causes your head to shake in bewilderment," marveled Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) on the Senate floor.
The inspector general probe suggested that some rural states eager for a payout from the feds lumped in everything they could count, including more than 8,591 assets in Indiana compared with 5,687 identified by New York.
Even the dead were protected in one state claiming evildoers may clobber a casket company.
The inclusion of these "out of place assets" in the risk assessments "taints the credibility of the data," wrote Inspector General Richard Skinner. His report said many assets were counted twice and that few states understood what qualified as a target.
Still think the war on terror is real, and not just a ploy to make some people rich(er)?
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%>
Tell a friend
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'sets variables
dim email, sendmail
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sendmail.Subject = "Check out this website"
'send a specific page or send a site url
dim url
'url = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
url = "http://www.aspbasics.net"
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%>
"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
