Hemorrhaging Money for Homeland Security (billions wasted on unless gagets

[Shallah Kali]

ANTI-TERROR ABSURDITY IN AMERICA
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,360394,00.html

Fear can be a lucrative business. That, at least, is what American companies selling security gadgets are finding out as the US government continues to spend billions of dollars on a variety of different Homeland Security programs. The only problem? Most of them are useless.

Clark Kent Ervin, 46, is one of those people on whom the US president likes to depend. The staunch Republican is an old friend from Texas who once worked for George W. Bush in the governor's mansion and who, on Bush Junior's recommendation, managed to get a job in Bush Senior's administration. Ervin is an amiable man who is usually quick to smile. The exception? When you mention his last employer -- the two-and-a-half-year-old US Department of Homeland Security.

The problems at the bureaucratic behemoth -- with its 180,000 employees -- are myriad, says Ervin, a graduate of Harvard. "I've never experienced anything like it before," he says.

And now Ervin, appointed by his friend Bush to the position of highest-ranking internal auditor on the homeland security front, is suddenly without a job. His reports on the chaos, corruption and wastefulness at the department were so thorough and full-throated that he became a liability to the president. Since Ervin was forced out of the department, the gold rush-like mood in the American security industry, whose excesses were at the center of Ervin's complaints, has continued unabated.

They don't have enough $ for things like SS, medicare, medicaid, the VA but they can find $ to waste on crap that former gov. workers lobby 'em to buy. :puke:

[necso]

1. Lootocracy.

You simply can't afford to have any scruples (or concern for the nation, the future, your children, etc) when you run with the neocons. Their game is all about money and power -- grabbing it now -- and laying the groundwork for grabbing more in the future -- realworld consequences be damned.

[salin]

2. old DU saying around the time of the great Enron implosion:

Socialize the costs (taxpayer monies) and Privatize the profits.

Good old Enronomics.

Love the term lootocracy - maybe a revamping of the old sayings:

"Good old Enronomics - supporting the new Bush Lootocracy."

[necso]

3. I like "smash-and-grab" economics, myself...

and "lootocracy", which conveys the notion of the "smash and grab" types being in control of government... not just the economy. Both terms also imply that those who are robbed not only bear the cost of the (immediate) losses, but have to clean up after what is essentially vandalism wrapped around theft -- if not outright violence to persons.

"Trickle down" is also good; it easily conjures up some graphic imagery.

[wallwriter]

4. I believe the phrase is

"Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining..."