Nearly two years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States remains "dangerously unprepared" to handle another catastrophic attack, according to a study by the Council on Foreign Relations.
...
The report said the main problem is that emergency responders on the front lines — police, fire, public health and other officials — are drastically underfinanced and lack the equipment or training they need.
The council, a New York-based private world affairs advocacy organization, recommended spending $98 billion beyond the $27 billion it said the federal government planned to spend on first responders over the next five years.
Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said Sunday that the conclusion that an additional $98 billion is needed for first responders is "grossly inflated."
Mind you that'll be less then we spend in Iraq this year, but don't mind me.
Taxes have been raised. Services have been cut. And the rainy day funds accumulated in the 1990's have been consumed. If help does not materialize soon — in the form of assistance from the federal government or a sharp turnaround in the economy — some states will fall into a fiscal abyss.
That already seems to be happening in places like California, which has been driven to its knees by a two-year $38.8 billion budget gap, and Oregon, which has seen drastic cuts in public school services and the withholding of potentially life-saving medicine from seriously ill patients.
Most states have been unable to protect even the most fundamental services from damaging budget cuts.
Washington refuses to admit that securing costs money at hame, rather than tossed into the wind in desserts far away. Soon you'll be hearing about cut backs with your local police force, and you'll be thinking "ha, that's for my speeding ticket," and then you'll wonder how someone snuck that bomb in there.... It is scary isn't it. I'm thinking we should sell Orange Alert pillow cases to help us sleep at night.
This is a "team" blog. We are a bunch of
Americans, whose rising distress
in our leader's decisions brought us together to make this site.
As Bush said, he's a "uniter." Many of us have never even met.
That's the internet for you.
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the
president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is
not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the
American people."
- Teddy Roosevelt
"Government has a final responsibility for the well-being of
its citizenship. If private cooperative endeavor fails to provide work
for willing hands and relief for the unfortunate, those suffering
hardship from no fault of their own have a right to call upon the
Government for aid; and a government worthy of its name must make
fitting response."
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions, but laws must and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
- Thomas Jefferson
"The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."
"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain
degree."
- James Madison
"I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves." - John F. Kennedy
"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
More Sites we often
like:
more coming...
"There's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what's right with America." - Bill Clinton.
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