National Security Used as Excuse for Wasteful Federal Spending on Local Law Enforcement

This is horrible. We Americans wonder why we are staring down a fiscal cliff in our country. I tell you why we have too many entitlements (a rant for another time) and wasteful governement spending. This article really opened my eyes on what the governement has been doing with my tax dollars.

At a time when our $16 trillion national debt is our greatest national security threat, we must make sure that all programs, especially those meant to prevent terrorism, are achieving their mission,” Coburn said in a prepared statement. “This report shows that too often so-called security spending is making our nation less secure by directing scarce dollars to low-priority projects and low-risk areas.”

Case in point: Zombie apocalypse training.

DHS grant funds were used to pay the $1,000 fee for a week-long conference at Paradise Point Resort and Spa in San Diego, where a tactical training firm put on a show pretending to gun down 40 actors dressed as zombies.

Another example: A submarine for a landlocked Midwestern town.

In Columbus, Ohio, city officials convinced DHS to give it $98,000 to purchase an underwater robot—a purchase deemed an emergency because time was running out on a federal grant deadline.

Keene, New Hampshire (population: 23,000), which has experienced three homicides in the last thirteen years, used $285,933 in federal funds to buy a Lenco BearCat armored vehicle, which it took possession of on November 20. Keene Police Captain Brian Costa defended the acquisition by saying, “It’s an armored vehicle, not an armed vehicle and there's a big difference.”

Officials in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, spent $2,700 for a teleprompter, while those in Plaquemines Parish forked out $2,400 for a lapel microphone.

source: www.allgov.com...