 Dangerous band of Insurgents |
In Vermont, the federal government plans to seize a farmer’s land to build a $5 million border post on a quiet country road. The community is fiercely opposed, and the Department of Homeland Security is under fire for planning expensive projects that some say isn’t needed.
The hamlet of Morses Line is just a dot on the Canadian border in the small northern Vermont town of Franklin. A quiet country road leads to the existing brick border station at the edge of a hayfield.
In about two hours on a recent afternoon, one truck and two cars go by. One was a Customs officer arriving for his shift.
“Last night was a little busier because you had bingo at the church in the neighboring town,” says Brian Rainville. The land the U.S. government wants is part of his family’s dairy farm. Rainville goes through a box full of documents and pulls out the architectural drawings for the new border post.
“So we’re looking at putting in a storm water pond, a traffic turnaround, covered parking, three designated traffic lanes, two stages of radiation detectors, a two-story building with a fitness center on the second floor. It all strikes me as a little much for Morses Line,” he says.
“I’m not quite sure how Morses Line, with a traffic rate of 2 1/2 cars an hour, is a matter of national security and utmost budgetary importance…”
Similar controversies are playing out across the 3,000-mile border with Canada, where the Department of Homeland Security plans to spend $355 million to fortify 22 border stations.
Federal money is hard to turn down, but the Vermont congressional delegation opposes the Morses Line project.
The government says the projects are needed to meet the challenges of a post-Sept. 11 world. “Our homeland security is only as strong as each individual port of entry,” says Marco Lopez, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection. “That is why we are committed to making sure that we are able to provide the technology and the infrastructure requirements that this new threat environment demands of us.”
Officials say the existing Morses Line customs building has a leaky roof and not enough space to inspect vehicles or hold prisoners.
RTFA. This is what I would expect from most Washington bureaucrats. Enhanced by the fear and unfettered lust for power of the Bush/Cheney years, the Department of Homeland Security was destined to become a juggernaut of federal careerists.
No matter that they duplicate functions. No matter that they perform functions counter to real needs. No matter that they waste millions of taxpayers dollars in the endless cycle of budget, fund and spend because the budget exists.
Here is a political issue ripe for legitimate grassroots opposition. It’s not one of the papier-mâché devils conjured up for Tea Party rallies. It’s not an “excess” of spending aimed at the needs of the unemployed and unemployable – rejected by the Party of NO. It’s simply a discrete, useless, waste of American taxpayer dollars.
It is, however, one of the greedy excesses of Washington that needs to be decommissioned by those elected to bring real change to America.
#1 fulanoche said:
“From dairy farm to pork farm…”
Good, but slightly off the mark, should have said:
“From dairy farm to pork project…”
#20
All comments to every blog should be filtered through your response. You can add there, they’re and their; your and you’re; hear and here; etc.
Funny how they think of ways to waste cash.
Find yourself a copy of “Yes Minister” and “Yes Prime Minister” for a better understanding of this kind of thing.
They can do this along the US/Canada, no problem…
But if they do anything along the US/Mexico border, it’s looked upon as Racist…
I’m willing to bet that the officers manning the post know 95% of all the travelers by sight. If they only inspect those unfamiliar to them, wouldn’t a car port and a handheld radiation detector work. Total cost maybe $25k if bought thru government contract. Less than $5k if bought on the open market.
I seriously doubt that “hardening” America as a target is worth the money — or even possible.
Better would be to take that same money and spend it identifying, tracking and infiltrating (real!) terrorist groups.
… and, of course, start minding our own business so that the rest of the world has less reason to hate our guts.
If anything, this is preparation against future draft dodging. Come the next “unpopular” war, that isn’t sufficiently manned by a volunteer system. But I suspect that it more about hiding rich kids there, in case of said draft. Not all of them want to swelter on the Mexican-American border, to avoid a war in some slightly worse place. So a northern Fortress of Solitude is called for. With a health spa, no less.
They just do it because they can.
This should be seen as a failure by those elected to protect the public against excesses by public officials.
Of course, once the election is over, like most politicians, the elected member will have no interest in you until the next election.
There is a noticable increase in ‘rule by default’ as public ‘servants’ increase their hold over matters which they were never intended to rule in this way. Again, just as crime increase because of police neglect, so public bodies increase their excesses because of neglect by the elected ones.
Happening all over the ‘democratic world’. No idea how the great unwashed masses produce a change in this situation. In the UK for example, we have a case this very day where dustbin men have refused to take and empty a bin because it had a slice of bread in it. Thus was ‘contaminated’. You nad I know that everything in a bin is contaminated, for these anti-social idiots its a chance to bully.
Believe the French guillotined such persons in the past, not a bad idea in my book.
You got to spend more money on fear and paranoia. It won’t make the fear and paranoia go away, it’ll just make it worse, but I think that’s just the effect ‘they’ are looking for.
Its funny how if you do this along the southern border its racist, but the northern, its totally cool. hysterical!
#4
“When you cross into Canada by car, it is sometimes hard see the difference between the two countries.”
Same thing with Mexico. In fact it pretty much is the same thing with all landed borders.
WHY?
Because it is all the same world we live in. Only the monkeys in charge think borders are real.
Cursor_
“This is what I would expect from most Washington bureaucrats. Enhanced by the fear and unfettered lust for power of the Bush/Cheney years, the Department of Homeland Security was destined to become a juggernaut of federal careerists.”
I agree with most of what you said but you do need to get your head out of the hole you stuck it in years ago long enough to at least figure out that we are post Bush/Cheney idiocy.
The last I heard Bush was taking his dogs for walks and picking up their poop himself. Airforce I is no longer his personal toy and he doesn’t live in the White House nor has he done so for some time. I doubt if they’d even let him near the door.
We are now in the era of Obama/Biden idiocy. I know this is hard for Dems to do when they see so much stupidity coming out of Washington but please try to remember. You won the election. This is your guys in action. If you don’t like what you see coming out of Washington you are going to have to learn to live with it and love it or vote your guys out of office.
I know these are hard choices but that is why they gave you the vote.
>> Washington DC Web Design said, on June 1st, 2010 at 3:43 am
>> Its funny how if you do this along the southern border its racist, but the northern, its totally cool. hysterical!
Who thinks this is “totally cool”?
But now that you bring racism up — how come the tea baggers aren’t demanding a big trillion-dollar wall on the Canadian border to keep our white brothers from the north out?
If the US Government spends money, we assume it’s shaking down American citizens for that. In fact the money and property of the state, is the private property of the government. Which derives a large part of it’s income selling services to Americans and foreign countries, not just by taxation. I’m an ex-civil servant and constantly need to remind family that the government has the same rights and privileges to private ownership as everyone else.
“government has the same rights and privileges to private ownership as everyone else.”
REALLY? Does this clause look familiar to you”
“and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;”
“how come the tea baggers aren’t demanding a big trillion-dollar wall on the Canadian border to keep our white brothers from the north out?”
Guys in S.F. are concerned about the Northern border? Hundreds of thousands of Canadians are streaming across the border illegally? Really?