You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
Homeland Security’s grant of $240,000 to my placid city of 30,000 to purchase an armored truck for the police department illustrates one thing:
Those folks in Congress who keep harping on government spending aren’t reticent when it comes for doling out the big bucks for items that do little or nothing for the common American.
Since Dover is an unlikely spot for terrorists to attack, could we use some of that money to pay off student loans? For starters?
You know, the $240,000 grant to buy our police department an armored truck would go much further in local classrooms.
I know of a local public charter high school that could really use it, with plenty to spare, just to approach the per-student spending of the neighboring high schools. Not that they don’t need that kind of infusion, either.
Homeland Security’s grant of $240,000 to my placid city of 30,000 to purchase an armored truck for the police department has me concluding:
Anyone who thinks this is fighting international terrorism has a lot of explaining to do. This place is the epitome of calm vanilla, even with all the college students and nightlife.
Until I hear otherwise, the conclusion continues: if those officials see this town as a hotbed of terror, it’s time to abolish the Department of Homeland Security. Even if it means starting over.
I’m waiting to hear from the right-wing of the political isle on the latest local issue of government waste. Yes, I know this one adds nothing to the city’s property tax bill, but it still comes out of our pockets.
I’m referring to last Wednesday night’s City Council vote on a $240,000 Homeland Security grant to purchase an armored truck for the police department.
That’s for a relatively quiet city of 30,000 residents.
It’s not the kind of place we have riots, much less terrorists.
Well, there’s some talk of using it in domestic-violence disputes, but honestly, I don’t see how a truck of any size is going to fit in a bedroom to calm things.
As for drug raids?
What do those have to do with fighting terrorism, anyway?
No matter how you slice it, this is government waste – from a federal agency that obviously has way too much money on its hands. Money approved by a Tea Party Congress.
With a cap placed on the city’s major source of tax revenue, Dover’s public services have been stressed. The library, for instance, is closed most evenings as well as early Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday. The public schools are in trouble, as you hear from parents, students, and teachers. Street repairs are often on a long list, along with other infrastructure upkeep and improvement. City hall had a leaky roof that went years to replace – there were buckets in the auditorium to catch the rainfall. You get the idea.
So City Council’s decision to accept a $240,000 Homeland Security grant to purchase the police department an armored truck – the description sounds like a flying saucer on wheels – does nothing to suggest common sense in high places. In fact, it’s salt in the wounds.
Does the police chief really expect public sympathy next time he’s trying to avoid staffing cuts and layoffs? Think again. And rely far more on those officers on the street than that armored truck, ever.
The Ballistic Engineered Armored Response Counter Attack Truck my little city will be getting from Homeland Security – presumably to fight domestic violence and riots rather than international terrorism – is described as a personnel carrier that can transport at least 10 police officers (who knows about regular folks) and comes equipped with gun ports on each side and a rotating center hatch.
Get that, Darth Vader? I assume it has blinking lights all over as well. And maybe steam or fog pouring from under.
Yes, the Department of Homeland Security has been playing Santa Claus with its Law Enforcement Terrorism Prevention Program.
This decision does nothing, of course, to make me feel any more secure. Quite the opposite, actually. I hate to think what might happen if this vehicle gets out on the streets. Or bullets start flying. Or worse, it falls into the wrong hands.
It’s enough to suggest that too many bureaucrats in some high places have been watching too many weird action movies. Or are they really just 14-year-old male adolescents?
Some folks in Washington are all too happy to approve $240,000 grants to buy armored trucks for little ‘burgs like Dover – while trying to derail health care for all Americans as too expensive.
Huh?
Dover City Council voted, 7-1, Wednesday to accept a $240,000 grant to purchase the police department a BearCat.
This ‘cat, by the way, is not the least bit fuzzy – in fact, the name is an acronym for (get this with a straight face, if you can – its pomposity says everything) a Ballistic Engineered Armored Response Counter Attack Truck. That is, an armored vehicle for a city of 30,000 mostly average Americans.
More galling is the fact that the grant comes from the federal Homeland Security department. Are they trying to tell us international terrorists have put us in the bull’s-eye?
It’s really ridiculous.
A hearing Tuesday, with very little advance notice or public input, paved the way for Wednesday’s abrupt vote.
This is not how democracy’s supposed to work, especially at the local level. Some of us are feeling steamrollered by that truck. And steamed up, as well.
At the office, we had the farewell to the switchboard operator who’d been replaced by the new phone system – someone who had been there when I arrived two decades earlier.
Oh, the weird calls we’d get, the ones she usually screened yet some still managed to slip past her.
The woman from California, “Can you tell me what state New Hampshire’s in?” and I wanted to reply, “How the hell did you get this number?”
All of the ones wanting to know my opinion, as if it mattered.
Or the drunks or the individuals convinced of this conspiracy or that. Especially late at night.
As the publisher told one, “What do you think this is, a call-in radio show?”
Listen. We’ve got work to do, rather than yap. Piles and piles of work.
~*~
Oh, my, the telephones! They become a chorus of their own in my novel, Hometown News.
One of the ways Quakers have stood apart from the larger society is in our opposition to gambling. Across America, though, the tension has grown in recent years, as governments (led by New Hampshire’s example) and Native American tribes have engaged in lotteries and casinos. Even causes we support commonly turn to raffles as fundraisers.
Still, we can witness to the fact that a lottery is an inefficient way to raise money for education or other socially valued causes. If you want something, you should be willing to pay for it directly, rather than expect someone else to foot the bill. As for gaming, the odds are vastly against winning, and I long found myself working far too hard to enjoy throwing hundreds of dollars down the drain. Even a weekly Megabucks ticket adds up. As one of my coworkers insisted, “Lotteries are a tax on stupidity.” He might have added, “a tax on despair,” as well, especially for lower- and middle-class families whose purchasing power keeps shrinking in the current economic climate. If anything, the glamour of gaming masks this reality. Maybe, just maybe, the hope goes, I’ll escape my condition. Friends have warned against the inclination to expect something for nothing or at someone else’s expense. I’m just as concerned about the quest for “fun” replacing a work ethic, or the way the entertainment media are shaping the everyday theology of the masses. Look closer, then, at the Foxwoods or Tri-State Lottery Commission commercials. Fantasy and reality diverge sharply.
Yes, it’s tempting. As in “temptation.” Even so, we believe in speaking Truth to Power. Need I say more?
Jnana's Red Barn 