Impending Shutdown of DHS

[wolfie]

Expired hand sanitizer? WTF? My understanding is that the active ingredient in the stuff is ethyl alcohol (minimum 60% by volume), and that's something that doesn't go bad. The only mode I can see where hand sanitizer deteriorates over time would be evaporation of the alcohol through a vapour-permeable bottle, but that would be obvious at a glance (sides of the bottle would have collapsed inward).

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

Budgets are tight in government. Their books are open.

The waste in government is that no one watches the budget past a cycle. The waste is that every time a new ruling party shows up, projects with large sunk costs get shifted to the side or abandoned. You find warehouses of capital equipment because Politico X didn't like the way polito Y assigned the priorities. Or, bureaucrat Z gets power and redoes everything former boss bureaucrat A did her way.

In accounting, sunk costs are just that, sunk. But in a real company, if you constantly operate by abandoning projects that way you generally go out of business because too many of your costs aren't generating revenue. In government it works just fine because citizens cheer when they do what you elected them to.

It's an odd quirk where what the public wants is what's wasteful. They want what they want now and they'll shut down an about to be successful project to prove a point.

[Greenday]

The DHS was a hands-flail reaction to an event that is, statistically, an anomaly.

Are they a statistical anomaly because they are rare or are they an anomaly because a lot of them keep getting stopped?

[protege]

I believe the term for what they do is "security theater."

Yep, it's to provide the *illusion* of security.

I flew to Albany, NY, the week after 9/11. Long lines, pissed-off travelers, guard dogs, guys with rifles, all over the airport. I spent 3 hours in line, got to answer the famous "did someone place anything in your luggage without your knowledge" question, get patted down (both here, and after I got off the plane in Albany), go through multiple checkpoints in the airports. Hell, I remember not even being able to get a *plastic* knife to spread mayo on my sandwich in one of the airport's restaurants.

I get the fear after 9/11. I totally do. Remember, the 4th plane was seen circling Pittsburgh before it crashed in Somerset County. I understand the fear--there's a huge port here (2nd busiest inland port behind Chicago, IIRC)...and it could have been a target.

Even so, many of things that the DHS/TSA are doing...are nothing more than power trips. There's NO REASON for the agency to be playing "touchy-feely" at the airport. There's no reason for our government to cataloging huge numbers of communications between law-abiding citizens. Nor is there a reason for law-enforcement agencies to be compiling databases of license plate numbers.

[Andara Bledin]

The DHS was a hands-flail reaction to an event that is, statistically, an anomaly.

Is it any surprise that it's a massive clusterfuck?

[Greenday]

and that was just last October mind you. To date they've wasted billions and billions of dollars. Plus I'm sure millions more just since October. >.>

I honestly am blown away by numbers like that. The budget where I work is really tight on the government side. They are extremely strict about what we can and can't spend money on. The company I work for is pretty strict too. We have our own internal auditors that are constantly checking everything. Hell, if I don't have my hours for today entered by 8am tomorrow, I'll have an angry email telling me to get it done.

Maybe it's just because I'm lucky and I'm doing research that I believe is vital to the defense of the country (and allies). I see plenty of great work getting done and while there are inefficiencies, I don't think it'd take much to right the ship.

A lot of the problems on the federal side (in general, not my office) is complacency. It's really hard to get fired from a federal position. You pretty much have to either murder someone or be a drug dealer or a spy.

[Gravekeeper]

To be fair, you could describe MANY government agencies this way.

Actually, you really can't. >.>

Inefficient sure, but not pissing away billions while its employees spend tax money on iPods and beer brewing kits inefficient. Never mind all the clandestine shit. Most recently they shit away millions of dollars for Teh Ebola:

The audit found, for example, that DHS has a stockpile of about 350,000 white coverall suits and 16 million surgical masks but hasn’t been been able to demonstrate how either fits into its pandemic preparedness plans.

And while the agency has a significant quantity of antiviral drugs, Roth said that “without a full understanding of the department’s needs in the event of a pandemic, we have no assurance that the quantity of drugs will be appropriate.”

The inspector general also found that drugs stored at multiple DHS sites weren’t being kept in a temperature-controlled environment. Because of this, the agency is recalling a “significant quantity” over concerns that the drugs' safety and effectiveness may have been compromised.

“Drugs and equipment have gone missing, and conversely, our audit has found drugs in the DHS inventory that the department thought been destroyed,” Roth said.

• A stock of pandemic protective equipment for use by Transportation Security Agency includes about 200,000 respirators that are beyond the five-year usability date guaranteed by the manufacturer.

• Eighty-four percent of hand sanitizer bottles stockpiled by DHS for pandemic purposes have expired — some by up to four years.

• The antiviral drugs DHS purchased are nearing the end of their effective life. While the agency is attempting to extend that shelf life of these drugs through an FDA testing program, Roth says the “results of that are not guaranteed.”

and that was just last October mind you. To date they've wasted billions and billions of dollars. Plus I'm sure millions more just since October. >.>

[MadMike]

I'd say that these three people are VERY unaware of what DHS does.

I believe the term for what they do is "security theater."

[Crazedclerkthe2nd]

Well, to be brutally honest what it does is piss away billions of dollars, violate Constitutional rights, break the law and grossly mismanage itself to the detriment of its own employee morale.

To be fair, you could describe MANY government agencies this way.

[Gravekeeper]

I'd say that these three people are VERY unaware of what DHS does. There's quite a lot of work and research DHS does that's not within the scope of other groups.

Well, to be brutally honest what it does is piss away billions of dollars, violate Constitutional rights, break the law and grossly mismanage itself to the detriment of its own employee morale. That said, they've consolidated too many other government agencies under the DHS at this point to shut it down without creating a massive cluster fuck.

Like most of what came out of the Iraq war, all it ultimately did was piss off Americans, oppress brown people and shovel money to defence contractors ( no offence. Well, unless you work for Haliburton. -.- ).

[Greenday]

I would argue that the roles of the CIA, FBI, and NSA fulfill that responsibility already. You could even have an individual department within those agencies that deal solely with domestic and international terrorism without it being its own contribution to the federal alphabet soup.

I would be thrilled if we could get rid of TSA and Homeland Security - I can not see where they have done anything beneficial in the past decade.

I'm not so sure that Homeland Insecurity shutting down would be such a bad thing.

I'd say that these three people are VERY unaware of what DHS does. There's quite a lot of work and research DHS does that's not within the scope of other groups.

[s_stabeler]

my point is that the DHS does have a function in fighting against terrorism- does the DHS need reform? yes. Should it be scrapped entirely? probably not.

as for splitting the functions between the CIA, FBI and NSA, there's a basic problem there. Namely, your average terrorist plot crosses the borders of all the agencies. It's not even necessarily those agencies' fault that information isn't passed on- the FBI, for example, might notice someone's communicating with someone in ( say) Syria- the CIA on the other hand, might know that person is part of IS, but don't know that they are in charge of recruiting people to commit terrorist attacks abroad- therefore, they aren't monitoring who'se contacting said individual. THAT is why having an organisation that can (attempt) to see both sides is important- since in such an organisation, they can more easily see that something looks suspicious.

[lordlundar]

can I just point out that if anti-terrorist police are doing their job properly, they should, in fact, seem to be useless? ( I'm not referring to checks at airports here, but stopping attacks before they even get that far)

There's a fallacy with that. the Anti-terrorist sub groups of existing organizations were already in existence prior to the DHS being formed but they were never coordinated and kept tripping over themselves. The DHS was supposed to be a coordination system to make the groups work together more efficiently.

"Supposed to" being the key phrase here. There were some notable successes but those would have had the same results if the organizations would work together in the first place. For the most part the DHS ended up being another bureaucratic hurdle to vault instead of the streamlining effort it was meant to be.

[TheHuckster]

I would argue that the roles of the CIA, FBI, and NSA fulfill that responsibility already. You could even have an individual department within those agencies that deal solely with domestic and international terrorism without it being its own contribution to the federal alphabet soup.

[s_stabeler]

can I just point out that if anti-terrorist police are doing their job properly, they should, in fact, seem to be useless? ( I'm not referring to checks at airports here, but stopping attacks before they even get that far)

it's similar, incidentally, to why it's fairly common for there to be a high false positive rate for people being stopped by security at airports- the vast majority of attacks are stopped before they ever get that far.

Oh, I'm not saying that Homeland Security is perfect, but they're not completely useless. (it's why I don't believe the government needs any more powers to combat terrorism- the primary issue is that information isn't passed on quickly enough. ( the underwear bomber could have been stopped from boarding the pane had a warning given to the US government been passed on))