Joe Levi:
a cross-discipline, multi-dimensional problem solver who thinks outside the box – but within reality™

Should We Abolish the Department of Homeland Security?

Should we abolish the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)?

I highlight [a few reasons why we should] in my letter to Congress:

When the DHS was created the year after 9/11, it lumped in 22 agencies from other departments to improve efficiency and coordination. It has FAILED…

  • The budget jumped from $19.5 billion in 2002 to $44.1 billion in 2010.
  • In fact, it’s a new avenue for pork-barrel spending. Only 25% of DHS anti-terrorism “grants” to local governments goes to actual terrorism prevention and response.
  • Many of the agencies have only minor or tangential roles in possible terrorist attacks or response, and the DHS overseas far-flung responsbilities from anti-counterfeiting to flu epidemics.
  • It hasn’t protected us from terrorism; most foiled “terror plots” were really sting operations of the FBI.

Moreover…

  • Neither the CIA nor even the FBI (a domestic agency) has been placed under the DHS umbrella.
  • Which makes a coordinated, DHS-led antiterrorism strategy impossible; leaving the FBI and CIA out defeats the very purpose of the DHS.

Even worse…

  • It is funding pernicious, totalitarian Minority Report-style “pre-crime” experiments.
  • The DHS funds “fusion centers,” which create reports about possible breeding grounds of terrorism. They include everything from third parties, Tea Party AND anti-Tea Party groups, and even student groups at historically black colleges.

In other words, ANYONE who dissents or is dissatisfied with the status quo might be a terrorist. Such assessments reflect the paranoid minds of Statist bureaucrats and their political bosses, rather than reality.

And don’t get me started on the abuses and humiliations inflicted by the TSA!

One last point, the word “homeland” is offensive t o many Americans. It evokes the “blood and soil” patriotism of European-style nationalism or totalitarianism rather than the American patriotism traditionally understood as devotion to republican liberty. (http://reason.com/blog/2007/07/19/what-does-homeland-mean-to-you)

One has to wonder, was the initial use of the word “homeland” intentional? …is it conditioning us for tyrannical rule?

I know that you don’t want to be perceived as “against security.” But that doesn’t justify the continued waste, fraud, and abuse of the DHS. The DHS was has no real reason for existence. Some of its agencies should go back to the Departments they belonged to before 2002. Others should be abolished together, as should the DHS itself.

Once upon a time, a small boy declared the truth no one dared utter — “The emperor has no clothes.” I’m looking for similar courage in an elected official. The DHS is exposed. Will you have the courage to put an end to the waste, fraud, and abuse of this agency?

You can send your letter using DownsizeDC.org’s Educate the Powerful System.

Do your friends know about the massive waste and outright harm the Department of Homeland Security is doing to all of us? Please share this Dispatch with them.

Jim Babka
President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

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