heck, you could just about buy the whole city of detroit for that.
not a bad idea, stimulate mi, sell detroit!
Posted on 02/11/2009 11:57:25 AM PST by mnehring
George Orwell, call your office !
If prostitution is the world’s oldest profession, then city mayors follow a very close second. In fact, it occurs to me they may be the spiritual offspring of the aforementioned liaisons. Whenever there is loose change or unclaimed dollar bills laying around, mayors can smell them a mile away and if a Sugar Daddy offers free cash, they never stop to question what the vigorish might be. The urban emperors, suburban commissars, the hack and the highbrow, the Republican and Democrat, the apolitical and amoral, the exurban apparatchiks all assemble to line dance down Pennsylvania Avenue like ladies of the evening on the way to a golden score with Big Daddy.
The United States Conference of Mayors has assembled the most ridiculous and repulsive example of government excess I think I have ever seen. Here is a PDF file of the document which stretches to 344 pages. One of the most alarming features of this civic gluttony is the gift list request for funds to buy military SWAT assault equipment for police forces like the examples offered here by Texas blogger and Reason.com contributor, Trey Garrison:
- Frisco wants $125,000 for an armored vehicle and $200,000 for a mobile command vehicle. You know, for all that gang tank warfare going on up in Frisco.
- McKinney wants $5 million for SWAT toys and stuff.
- North Richland Hills wants $51,000 for volunteer patrol volunteers. Let’s throw in $10 for a dictionary so they can look up the word “volunteer.”
- Irving wants $5 million for biometric scanners, digital cameras, RFID scanners — nothing Big Brother there.
- Grand Prairie wants $1.25 million for nicer landscaping around the public safety building.
- And finally, Arlington is really gearing up for urban warfare. Arlington wants $1.6 million for SWAT toys including more equipment for those deadly but camera-friendly no-knock raids, $56,000 for military grade carbines, $625,000 for unmanned aerial surveillance drones, and $130,000 for “covert ops.”
Here is the “Public Safety” wish list from the US Conference of Mayors.
Radley Balko, of The Agitator and contributing editor of Reason, offers these galling examples of cops gone Rambo:
• Sparks, Nevada wants $600,000 to purchase a “live fire” house its SWAT team can shoot up, and another $420,000 for a SWAT armored vehicle.
• Pleasanton, California wants $250,000 to buy a vehicle for its SWAT team.
• Gary, Indiana wants $750,000 for a host of “modernization” upgrades to its police department, including “sub-automatic machine guns” and an “armored vehicl” [sic].
• Hampton, Virginia wants a whopping $3.5 million for “Air Tactical Unit Support and Equipment,” which I’m pretty sure means they want a sweet helicopter for the SWAT team.
• Ottawa, Illinois (population: 18,307) wants $60,000 to purchase, among other things, five “tactical entry rifles.”
• Glendale Heights, Illinois wants $96,000 to purchase red light cameras, and another $67,000 to hire someone to monitor them.
• Toward a more Orwellian America! The following cities requested stimulus funds to supplement, initiate, or upgrade public surveillance camera systems: Brockton, Massachusetts; Buffalo, New York; Burnsville, Minnesota; Caguas, Puerto Rico; Cerritos, California; Columbia, South Carolina; Compton, California; Homestead, Florida; Hormigueros, Puerto Rico; Indianapolis, Indiana; Inglewood, California; Lewiston, Maine; Lorain, Ohio; Lynn, Massachusetts; Marion, Ohio; Merced, California; New Rochelle, New York; North Richland Hills, Texas; Oakland, California; Orange, New Jersey; Orem, Utah; Orlando, Florida; Pembroke Pines, Florida; Ponce, Puerto Rico; Riverdale, Illinois; Shreveport, Louisiana; Silver City, New Mexico; Sumter, South Carolina; Tallahassee, Florida; Warren, Ohio; and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
Winston-Salem, North Carolina requested just under $85 million in security-related stimulation. But top prize goes to Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is asking the rest of the country to stimulte its economy with a whopping $135 million in public safety-related requests.
All in all, America’s mayors asking for a little over $5.5 billion in public safety “stimulus.”
The city of La Porte, Texas has applied for $700,000 to build a “Lifestyle Center” while the city of Houston wants a whopping $175,000,000 to build the “Metro Houston Intermodal Terminal” in downtown Houston. I could go on, but I am nauseated by reading these documents. Readers will have to carry on in my absence while I try to recover.
Support your local police and keep them independent.
They have to have protection for when they try to take everyone’s guns...
At the rate things are going, they'll be able to buy a whole neighborhood for that much if they wait a couple of years.
If they are funded by local citizens (as police should be), they are dependent on them, and thus, their first priority is to them.. however, if they are funded by feds.... well, you get the point..
Looks like the cops wanna play soldier
That’s numero uno on the list...
Interesting. Here’s something I posted a couple weeks ago to a different thread:
In other words, I welcome enforcing laws against theft, assault, vandalism, murder, and so on. Who doesn’t?
But the future is a police force that enforces laws against eating the wrong stuff, burning the wrong stuff (or too much of the “accepted” stuff), thinking the wrong thoughts about protected classes of people, gathering where you shouldn’t and speaking out, owning the wrong kind of ammo, etc. etc.
Especially as an economy deteriorates, there will arise a divide between the “haves” (increasingly, those employed by the government, including police) and the “have-nots” (private sector, earning reduced wages if they can even stay employed). This will strengthen ties between the police and the politicians that feed them.
Kind of scary, if you ask me.
As far as arming our police, I think an excellent rule of thumb would be, any weapon the police can have, a law-abiding citizen can also own.
Want to give the police automatic weapons, armored cars, RPGs, and bazookas? Fine. Then a law-abiding citizen can also own these weapons for their own use.
No one wants to pay for public service; that’s the gummint’s job. Of course, these same people forget that gummint only has the money it steals from private citizens and companies.
Bingo! Laws no longer match the natural moral laws of God. They are fetters that benefit special interests or funnel cash to government for the same purpose.
Too late. The next town over got new toys from the Feds and the local guys will want them too. What’s worse, if they are denied the cool swat toys, they will instantly whine that the city doesn’t care about officer safety or some such crapola.
Of course the city is afraid of what their “loyal” police officers will do once they start grousing. Heck, it’s not like they would ever delay response because they feel like they’re underfunded (unloved?) right? Best case is the city will start losing “valuable veteran officers” to other municipalities and we just can’t have that can we? Locals lose either way if they don’t give the little piggies their toys.
It’s not like I’m saying anything that isn’t true. This is reason #1 for why I dislike cops.
I have insisted for some time that the idea of “funding for our first responders” was nothing more than a ploy to nationalize local law enforcement.
bump
For example, at Columbine the SWAT’ys deployed and then hung outside until everyone who eventually died did die.
No knock drug warrants don't count.
$1.25 million for landscaping?!?
The feds actually took over the LAPD for awhile, you know. It was called the “consent decree.”
Scary.
...of course the Imperial Storm Troopers are gearing up....they know that in the coming Civil War urban areas will be the centers of the fighting.
Better be some nice shrubs...
I remember Bill Clinton gave the LAPD full auto M-16 rifles and later also gave them ...Bayonets!
Watch this request for toys carefully. That travesty the 1968 Gun Control act became law when the lawmakers sweetened the pot for “crime conrol” with cash and toys.
The 1993 assault rifle ban got passed the same way with the promise of money and toys for “crime control”.
I am cursed with a long memory of stabs in the back by the anti-gunners.
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