[Dean's World] Aziz P: breaking news: NYC no longer a terrorist target

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Aziz P:
breaking news: NYC no longer a terrorist target
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1149187026.shtml


   The New York dailies are abuzz with the news: New York will have its
   [1]funding for homeland security cut by 40%.

     The city was stunned yesterday to find that its share of federal
     anti-terror funds was slashed nearly in half by bureaucrats who
     said it has no national icons to protect and lousy defense plans.

     Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff determined, however,
     that cities that have never been targeted by Al Qaeda â like
     Louisville, Atlanta and Omaha â deserve whopping increases. [...]
     The city will get $125 million from the feds' high-threat bank
     account, a 40% cut from the $207 million it received last year. The
     Homeland money pot was smaller overall this year, but the rest of
     the country is being trimmed just 14%. [...] A Homeland Security
     spokesman insisted New York's cut was based on a powerful new
     matrix that crunches millions of bits of data to figure out where
     money is most needed.

     "We're quite frankly getting highly sophisticated in our ability to
     analyze threat," said Russ Knocke.

     Knocke would not address specifically why a threat-based assessment
     cut funds for a city that has been attacked twice and targeted
     repeatedly by Islamic terrorists.

     "It's not so much fighting the last war, it's taking in the threat
     picture today," he said. "We've got to apply dollars where they
     will have the greatest impact."

     But a document obtained by the Daily News that explains what
     Homeland Security reviewers were looking at in their analysis
     suggests key data were missing.

     For instance, in the category "national monuments and icons," the
     feds list none. For banking and finance businesses, they could find
     only four worth more than $8 billion, when the Bloomberg
     administration estimates there are at least 20.

   I'm at a complete loss for words. I suppose we should start sewing
   that burka for Lady Liberty, eh?

References

   1. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/422635p-356751c.html