LONG LIVE BIG BROTHER
Posted on 11/25/2002 9:12:06 AM PST by Sparta
WASHINGTON — On his first working day after a four-nation tour of eastern Europe, President Bush planned to sign the new Department of Homeland Security into law Monday, marking the biggest overhaul in the federal government in more than 50 years.
The president was expected to "thank Congress for its bold and historic action in creating a new department largely along the lines of his proposal," said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, who was to be named the new secretary of the department and newest member of the Cabinet.
Navy Secretary Gordon England was also expected to be named Ridge's deputy.
The department will have "one primary mission — protecting the American people, and it will allow 170,000 people to work more efficiently and effectively than ever before," Johndroe said.
Not since the creation of the Defense Department in 1947 has the government had so large an overhaul. The new department will employ 170,000 workers and encompass all or parts of 22 federal agencies. It has a $38 billion budget, estimated from the allocations of the existing units being incorporated.
Though the president originally wanted homeland security directed by the White House, Bush relented last June and proposed a new agency that could coordinate all the disparate bureaus and provide a cohesive front against terrorist threats.
Bush's proposal came after reviews of intelligence agencies revealed that a lack of coordination hampered efforts to foresee and prevent the Sept. 11 attacks.
After the bill was introduced by Senate Democrats, partisan wrangling slowed down progress as Democrats demanded worker protections that Bush said were too strict for an agency that would need the highest quality of workers and flexible staffing to confront fast-changing threats.
The sides finally agreed to limited collective-bargaining arrangements after Democrats lost the majority in the Senate on Election Day.
The agency has 90 days to get its leadership structure in place, but was expected to take more than a year before it would be operating at full speed.
Senate Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi has already said that he wants some changes to be applied to the agency next year, and has gotten a pledge from House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., to revise certain provisions in the next Congress.
One provision permits federal business with American companies that have moved their operations abroad to sidestep U.S. taxes.
Another measure legally shields drug companies already sued over ingredients used in vaccines. Democrats said this includes existing claims that mercury-based preservatives have caused autism in children.
Also re-examined will be a section that helps Texas A&M University win homeland-security research money, a priority of incoming House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas.
LONG LIVE BIG BROTHER
Hello? Homeland Security? I want to report another one carrying on about those old *Constitutional Rights*...You'll send a team for him right away? Fine.
Hitler is smiling.
See, if they search you and follow you to prove that you're not a terrorist, you've already lost your Constitutional rights. This will be an era marked by future generations.
Just so. If, and it's a BIG if, our foreign enemies are thwarted by the new and improved internal security forces, then they'll have no place to turn to maintain their budgets and staffing figures but on domestic targets. And they will, just as Hoover's FBI began with the immigrants and labour movement targets of the *Palmer raids* and then grew into the omnivorous beast it is today.
And of course, as they drive Americans further and further from the promise of what America was to be, fewer and fewer Americans will care whether the enemies of the country prevail or not. Watch too, as the US military becomes as staffed by foreigners as the ranks of the airport screeners are.
-archy-/-
Ummmm....the biggest fight over the Homeland Security bill was about union control over the employees. Bush wants an agency that is a step removed from union control...and he got it. This is an important first step. In effect, he took a myriad of government agencies, all union controlled, and put them under a new roof...without the union muscle. More will follw.
Why am I the only one on this thread to see this??
Anyway, Bush's actions are my "evidence"....
I have high hopes that those problems are in the rear view mirror.
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