US Border Patrol spent ONE MILLION DOLLARS on NASCAR

[elehhhhna]

Border patrol races to sign up thousands
But observers inside and outside warn against hastily hiring, training


By JAMES PINKERTON
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

The U.S. Border Patrol has spent a cool $1 million to advertise on a hot NASCAR racer, part of the biggest recruitment campaign in the agency's history. But many wonder if it can win an unprecedented race to hire 6,000 agents by fiscal 2009.

Agency officials insist they're ''on track" to make the hires, a 48 percent increase in the border protection force since 2006. It's a key component of the Bush administration's renewed efforts to broker a pending immigration-reform law by ramping up security at the border.

Last month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner W. Ralph Basham announced the $950,000 deal to advertise the recruitment drive by sponsoring a Chevy NASCAR racer for 25 events. ''This partnership is exactly what we needed to rev our recruiting and hiring into high gear," Basham said, according to an agency release.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4916743.html

[Norquist Nemesis]

1. Finally, someone's bringing up the issue of taxpayer dollars

going for marketing expenses like this. I've been waiting for an expose on Army $$$ as sponsorships. They're not cheap by any means!

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[datadiva]

8. White Trash?

:crazy: You know, I'm sure your not talking about me. Right? There are some nascar fans on this site. Grouping all of us into a group and calling them white trash won't make you many friends.

[old guy]

3. This is something I have wondered about for some time.

A friend of mine is a NASCAR fan and on occasion has watched races at my house. I noticed that some cars have military sponsors on them. Is this taxpayer money going out to fund these cars? If so is this a wise use of tax money? Anyone know about this? IMO it would be a waste of tax money.

[underpants]

5. NASCAR is actually good marketing

there is something like a 85% brand loyalty according to who your driver is. This means that as long as it is only OUR military advertising on those cars those fine young men and women will only sign up for OUR military.

[Squatch]

4. Don't ask how much the National Guard spent

on Casey Meers' car...

(I can assure you that it wasn't some piddly $1M)

[LiberalEsto]

6. Just outsource the jobs!

Maybe some nice H1-B workers from India or someplace will come do them.

[Johonny]

7. It's called waste, fraud and abuse

And yes it is not suppose to be tolerated. I imagine if the national labs spent 1 million to recruit on a NASCAR the republicans would be up in arms in protest.