Police Support John Kerry

[AbelM...@webtv.net]

I'm glad that the Police Officers' Union has come to their senses and
endorsed the Democratic nominee this time around. It is absolutely
insane of ANY Union to support the Republican party, because the
Republican party is completely anti-Union, anti-worker, anti-American,
to the core.

When Clinton was President, the crime rate thru out the country went
down, and it went down every single year, faster and steeper than ever
before in our nation's history; because Clinton properly funded our
Police Departments, and he improved the nation's overall economy. Bush
immediately cut funding for Police Departments, and he destroyed the
nation's overall economy, as a result the crime rate has now gone back
up again.

The Bush campaign managed to find someone to lie for them (article
below), a former Policeman said that Bush is indeed funding Homeland
Security and that the Patriot Act is a good thing. Note that he's not
even a current Policeman, but a former Policeman. They couldn't even
find a single employed Policeman to lie for them.

And let's expose his lies about First Responders and the Patriot Act.
Homeland Security funding for the First Responders is not based on need,
the funding is dispersed to politically connected regions, it's not
based on need, and it's not even adequately funding at that. And our
Police, the best trained in the world, do not need to be given the green
light to violate our Constitution via the Patriot Act (that is not the
way to protect our country), what they need is to be properly funded (to
pay for more personnel, equipment, training, e.t.c.) and then they'll do
their job properly, to the best of their abilities as they always do.
Abel Malcolm

______

Police union rejects Bush, backs Kerry

WASHINGTON (AP) - Presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry on Friday
collected the endorsement of the International Brotherhood of Police
Officers, a police union that backed President Bush in the 2000
election.

"After three and a half years of disappointing leadership under George
Bush, we need to change course in November and elect a president with a
real record of supporting police officers and a lifetime of standing
with law enforcement," IBPO President David Holway said in a statement
provided by the Kerry campaign.

The union endorsed Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. Kerry scheduled a
round-table discussion with members of the group on Friday to talk about
law enforcement issues.

In a statement provided by the Bush campaign, a former New York City
police commissioner said Bush has provided unprecedented support for
first responders, including $13 billion to state and local governments
to prepare for terrorism.

"The president has given law enforcement the tools to do their job in
the Patriot Act, while John Kerry attacks the law on the campaign
trail," former commissioner Bernard Kerik said.

Earlier Friday, Kerry laid two wreaths at the National Law Enforcement
Officers Memorial, which honors 16,666 officers killed in the line of
duty. One of the wreaths was for the national memorial but the other,
in a Massachusetts section, honored a Middlesex County officer killed on
this date in 1961. Kerry, a former Middlesex County prosecutor, chatted
with officers and family members during the 15-minute visit.

In an unexpected visit Thursday night to the Capitol, Kerry viewed
photographs depicting abuse of Iraqi prisoners in U.S. custody. He made
a last-minute decision to travel to the Senate and then spent 45 minutes
viewing the photographs in a secure location, spokesman David Wade said.

Lawmakers who saw the photographs earlier in the day reacted with
revulsion. Wade said Kerry had no comment.
Kerry said in a television interview Thursday he welcomed Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's trip to Baghdad but had not changed his
view that Rumsfeld should resign.

"I'm glad the secretary of defense went there. The troop morale needs, I
think, that kind of visit," Kerry said on Fox News Channel's Hannity &
Colmes. "I don't think it changes the dynamics of what America still
needs to do to get to the bottom of this."

The Massachusetts senator has warned that the reports of abuse in the
Iraqi prison threaten to undermine the effort to combat terrorism in the
Middle East by infuriating Arabs suspicious about U.S. intentions in the
region.

Republicans have accused Kerry of politicizing the war on terrorism.
Viewing the photos was an effort to gather all the facts before weighing
in on the issue any further, Wade said.

Kerry planned to fly to his home in Boston for a day off on Saturday.
He resumes his campaign on Sunday with a trip to Las Vegas before
visiting Kansas to mark the anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court
decision ending segregated schools.

From:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-05-14-kerry-police-union_x.htm?POE=NEWISVA&POE=click-refer

[tmurph2]

AbelM...@webtv.net wrote in message news:<18516-40A...@storefull-3136.bay.webtv.net>...

I thought it was crazy for the FOP to back bush last time after cheney
voted in congress NOT to ban cop killer bullets. It is good to see
them act like a union for a change.

[kstahl]

I think the greatest assistance for a Democratic win in November
is going to come from the Republican party. They are doing
everything in their power to alienate the American people and
they are succeeding quite well. I have to wonder whether Bush
isn't tired of being president and is actively attempting to
sabotage his own re-election while at the same time putting up a
front to convince his supporters that he is campaigning.

The economy, crime, the situation in Iraq/Afghanistan, our poor
relations with many countries in the world, abuse of power, abuse
of the tax money paid by citizens are all forming the basis for a
rejection of Bush in November. I wish him a happy retirement come
January.

[AbelM...@webtv.net]

Here's an excellent article from the March 29th issue of Time Magazine.
It's just one of many examples of how Republicans shortchange the big
States, because big States (such as California, New York & Illinois)
tend to vote Democratic. The big States, however, are the most at risk
from terrorist attacks, yet it is the big States that are the least
funded.

Abel Malcolm

From:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040329-603192,00.html

Monday, Mar. 29, 2004

How We Got Homeland Security Wrong

The fortification of Wyoming, and other strange tales from the new front
line

By AMANDA RIPLEY/CHEYENNE

When researcher Karen Clark developed the first probability-based model
for measuring the threat of natural disasters in the U.S. in 1987,
almost no one cared. Clark, then 30, started her own company in Boston
and used tens of thousands of data points - from the wind speeds of
hurricanes to the lengths of fault lines - to help insurance firms
estimate how often a disaster might strike and how much harm it might
do. Then, in 1992, Hurricane Andrew struck, wreaking more havoc than
anyone - except Clark and her small team at AIR Worldwide Corp. - had
ever imagined possible. As the toll climbed past $15 billion, AIR's
phones began ringing.

Today probabilistic modeling technology is so well accepted that after
the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, AIR's clients immediately called for a
new model that would capture the risks of terrorism. The model,
completed in 2002, assesses the likelihood and cost, in human life and
dollars, of different kinds of attacks in every part of the country.
It's not perfect, but it's smart. "The risk of terrorism is everywhere,"
says Clark. "The question is, How much risk?" This time the insurance
industry quickly accepted modeling as the basis for figuring out how
much terrorism coverage should cost.

International terrorism, as most experts will tell you, is not as
unpredictable as it feels. Terrorists follow patterns. And while we
can't read the minds of zealots, we can get a good idea of what kind of
damage they could do in any given location. We can estimate the cost of
an attack on a port in Los Angeles vs. an attack on a port in Prince
William Sound. We can calculate where a nuclear blast of a given force
would kill 500,000 people as opposed to 50,000. These are the logical
estimates that insurers and investment banks are seeking as they try to
quantify the risk they face.

But while all this strategic thinking is going on in the private sector,
the government has responded to terrorism in a less rational way. Since
the Sept. 11 attacks, about $13.1 billion has surged into state coffers
from the Federal Government - sorely needed money that has gone for
police, fire and emergency services to help finance equipment and
training to prevent and respond to terrorist attacks.

That is a 990% increase over the $1.2 billion spent by the Federal
Government for similar programs in the preceding three years. But the
vast majority of the $13.1 billion was distributed with no regard for
the threats, vulnerabilities and potential consequences faced by each
region. Of the top 10 states and districts receiving the most money per
capita last year, only the District of Columbia also appeared on a list
of the top 10 most at-risk places, as calculated by AIR for TIME. In
fact, funding appears to be almost inversely proportional to risk. If
all the federal homeland-security grants from last year are added
together, Wyoming received $61 a person while California got just $14,
according to data gathered at TIME's request by the Public Policy
Institute of California, an independent, nonprofit research
organization. Alaska received an impressive $58 a resident, while New
York got less than $25. On and on goes the upside-down math of the new
homeland-security funding.

How all this happened - and the bitter battle to rationalize the system
- shows how far America has yet to go in establishing something called
homeland security. With no clear direction from the feds, state
officials have been engaged in a perverse competition for antiterrorism
dollars. The Bush Administration recently proposed a far more
risk-based approach for 2005 funding, but rural-state Senators are
balking now that they have had three years to get accustomed to their
cash. In some ways, it is a familiar story: of state officials
understandably guarding their piece of the pie, of rural localities
getting disproportionate help from the government.

But this money is not for roads; it is the first demonstration of how
America will protect its citizens in a new kind of war. Bogged down in
emotion and opportunism, the debate is leading to dangerous gaps in the
preparedness of our most vulnerable communities. Says Stephen E. Flynn,
a former U.S. Coast Guard commander and director of a homeland-security
task force chaired by Gary Hart and Warren Rudman: "At the end of the
day, blowing off New York and L.A. so that you can make sure Wyoming is
safe just makes no sense."

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

Why didn't risk figure into the formula written after 9/11 to bolster
homeland security? In facing al-Qaeda, we knew we were dealing with an
organization that sought mass casualties and headlines. In the confused
days after 9/11, when Capitol Hill offices were closed after several
were contaminated by letters containing anthrax, a small group of House
and Senate leaders got together with Bush Administration staff members
in a corner of the Capitol to write the homeland-security funding
portion of the USA Patriot Act?a massive and sweeping bill that was
propelled into law just six weeks after Sept. 11. Under the direction
of Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, then chairman of the
Senate Judiciary Committee, they decided to adopt a formula that had
been used in years past for distributing terrorism-preparedness funds, a
formula that had never been written into law before and that was
designed for a sum of money that was incomparably smaller. This unusual
formula mandated that each state receive a minimum of three-quarters of
1% of the total pot of money, with smaller shares going to territories
like Puerto Rico. That meant that 40% of the funds had to be divided up
equally among the states, regardless of size or population.

There wasn't much debate about the decision, says a Democratic Senate
aide who was involved in the negotiation. "Frankly, it wasn't as high a
priority as FBI wiretaps and some of the other things being debated."
The formula first appeared in the Patriot Act bill on Oct. 23. One day
later, it was passed by the House. "Nobody even noticed it until five
months later," remembers a House aide.

But Congress alone isn't to blame for the skewed funding. The Executive
Branch was left with exceptional leeway to spend the remaining 60% of
the funds any which way - including according to risk. But first in
2002 and then again in 2003 and 2004, under the newly created Department
of Homeland Security, the Executive Branch just split the money
according to each state's population.

THE LITTLE VS. THE BIG

Small-state politicians argue that every state, no matter how
underpopulated, needs a boost of money to achieve a minimal level of
security after Sept. 11. "Whether it's a state of half a million or 4
million, you've got to do certain basic things," Senator Leahy told
Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge during a February hearing. Says
Doug Friez, the top homeland-security official in North Dakota (pop.
642,200), which received $52 a person in federal funds last year, the
fourth highest per-capita allocation by state: "We realize North Dakota
may not be first on Osama bin Laden's list. But we have some
significant infrastructure, we have big buildings you can put a lot of
people in at one time, we have the border. We have all the things that
can make a terrorist stay." New Hampshire, the No. 9 state recipient of
funds per capita, is not easily outdone. "Yes, New York City is more
target rich," says Bruce Cheney, director of New Hampshire's bureau of
emergency management. "But there's been a lot of added security there.
If you're a terrorist, you may say, Why waste your time in New York City
when you can make a hell of a mess in Maryland or Delaware or, God
forbid, Portsmouth, New Hampshire?" Says Flynn: "Everybody's become Tom
Clancy."

It would be ideal if every American town had a basic level of readiness,
but the total pot of money is too small, says Tim Ransdell. He authored
one of the few comprehensive assessments of homeland-security money on
behalf of the Public Policy Institute of California. "Wyoming and South
Dakota are important states, but it's a bit counterintuitive to say an
individual in those states is manyfold more important than someone
living in a state that has a border with a foreign nation, some of the
nation's icons and almost half of the nation's containerized cargo."
Says Al O'Leary of the New York City Patrolmen's Benevolent Association:
"It goes against every fundamental precept of fighting crime. If you're
having a robbery pattern in a particular community, you put detectives
there. It's actually a no-brainer, but there's apparently no brain in
Washington, D.C."

WYOMING: A CASE STUDY

To its credit, Wyoming, the least populous state in the U.S., does not
feel like an ideal place for a terrorist attack. The 493,800 people who
live here have a well-deserved affection for the state's yawning prairie
land, framed by mountains and speckled with elk, antelope and mule deer.
Wyoming's biggest city is Cheyenne, the capital, which is still not
serviced by jet liners. "It's very hard to hide in Wyoming," says Joe
Moore, head of Wyoming's office of homeland security, on my first
morning in town. "By the end of the day, everyone will know you're
here."

Like most rural states, Wyoming does not have a lot of money from
property taxes to outfit its police, fire and emergency-services
personnel. On top of that, the legislature has never been too generous.
Until recently, it wasn't unusual for a fire station to hold a bake sale
to raise money. Last summer, after a vintage World War II-era German
bomber crashed into a building in Cheyenne, fire, ambulance and airport
personnel could not talk to one another over their radios because they
use different equipment. "We eventually ended up sending runners?like
the Greeks," says Brian Grimm, communications officer for the state
office of homeland security. Now that Wyoming is the nation's No. 1
state recipient of homeland-security money per capita, Cheyenne has
access to a mobile radio system that allows different agencies to talk
to one another, thanks to $52,000 in federal money. Federal money has
also brought Wyoming four command vehicles; enough protective haz-mat
suits for every police officer, sheriff's deputy and coroner in the
state; and a robot named Miss Daisy that can help dismantle bombs and
dispose of toxic chemicals. All these items will more than likely save
lives. Haz-mat suits can be used for highway oil spills and police
raids of crystal-meth labs. As the fire fighters will tell you, they
should have had this equipment years ago. Mark Young, chief of the
Casper fire department, says of federal authorities, "They've done us
all a favor in this state. We're not gonna waste their money."

But a strange thing has happened since Sept. 11. Moore and some of his
counterparts in other rural and small states have become convinced that
their turf is just as threatened as Washington, New York and Chicago.
One recent morning, Moore rattled off his doomsday scenarios: "We have
two major interstate highways, and a significant proportion of the
traffic is hazardous materials. We have two major railroads. Also,
Wyoming has major mining, major electrical generating plants and
coal-bed methane. Any one of those becomes a vulnerability for a
terrorist." A former FBI agent, Moore works in an office decorated with
a sketch of a longhorn sheep and a picture of the burning Twin Towers
with the phrase constant vigilance. When I ask him how he would
prioritize limited federal money, he declines to answer. "We don't have
crystal balls. We just believe that we're as important as anyone else."

Over and over again, when I ask Wyoming officials about relative risk,
they talk about relative worth. "Our citizens deserve the same kind of
protection that they're afforded in other places in the country," says
Lori Emmert, chief of police in Douglas (pop. 5,288), which has just
received a new $50,000 silver RV that serves as an emergency-operations
command center, paid for with federal dollars. When I ask a group of 22
fire fighters in Casper whether they feel insulted by suggestions that
they should get less homeland-security money, they all nod in agreement.
"No one can say Casper can't be a terrorist target," says fire fighter
Roy Buck. Taking the point further, Peter Beering,
terrorism-preparedness chief in Indianapolis, Ind., writes in First to
Arrive, a Harvard collection of essays on emergency preparedness, "In an
era of satellite television ... attacking a rural target may actually
instill more fear by delivering the message that no one is safe."

While that is a valid point, certain kinds of attacks would kill far
fewer people in Casper than they would in Boston, owing to population
density. And as it stands, the funding system is vulnerable to
opportunism. While money for homeland security has grown, regular state
and federal funding for police and fire operations continues to be cut
as both state legislatures and the Bush Administration try to control
growing budget deficits. In order to get the homeland-security money,
states and localities must frame their needs in terms of terrorism.
Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal defends his state's allotment but
admits there is an incentive to see terrorism all around. "If you're
trying to pick up an ambulance, you may know that ambulance will be used
for natural disasters, but the paperwork will have to reflect terrorism.
That's the problem. Money distorts objectivity."

WHERE THE PINCH IS FELT

New York City has been the target of six separate plots by Islamist
terrorists in the past decade, police commissioner Ray Kelly told
Congress at a hearing last fall. Yet budget cutbacks have left 5,000
fewer police in the city than there were in 1999. And Kelly has pulled
1,000 of the remaining cops off normal duty to work on terrorism
prevention. "We're doing more with less in many ways. There's an
opportunity cost," Kelly says. "People who were doing homicide are now
doing terrorism." New York City estimates its counter-terrorism needs
at $900 million, he says. To date, it has been awarded about $206
million. "We are grateful for the help, but it does not come anywhere
near the needs that we have," Kelly testified. "Far and away, the people
and city of New York are bearing the cost of defending the homeland in
New York."

The same can be said of Los Angeles. Since 9/11, California has spent
more than $185 million in state funds on homeland security. Still, the
L.A. County sheriff's department, which protects 10 million people,
recently announced it may have to lay off 1,300 officers under Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed budget plan. Meanwhile, Wyoming is in
a position to pay a greater share of the cost of protecting itself, yet
refuses to do so. Thanks to high energy prices, Wyoming's plentiful oil
and coal resources have helped produce a rare $1.2 billion state
surplus, the largest in the nation as a percentage of budget, according
to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Recently, the state's
office of homeland security asked the Wyoming legislature for $532,000
over and above the $105,000 it already pays for Wyoming security chief
Moore's salary. But the Governor and the office of homeland security
removed the request before the measure came up for a vote because, says
Governor Freudenthal, "they were going to kill the bill" otherwise.
Since Sept. 11, California has spent roughly $5 a person of its own
money on homeland security; Wyoming has spent about $1.

CAN THIS BE FIXED?

In early 2003, Congress announced a plan that sounded as if it might
rectify the distortions in federal outlays - a new $100 million grant
for "high threat" urban areas only. In April, Secretary Ridge said
seven cities had made the "high threat" list because of population
density, the presence of important infrastructure and credible threats -
which is to say, because of risk. The roster of cities - New York,
Washington, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco and Houston -
matched up perfectly with AIR's list of most at-risk cities. Democratic
Congressman Anthony Weiner of New York, which received 25% of the new
grant, says, "I was thinking, finally it seems we have a program based
on merit, and clearly not based on politics - because a lot of these
cities are not exactly Republican bastions."

Soon, however, the list of qualifying cities started mysteriously
growing. Ridge's office and Congress had received calls from irate city
officials who had been left out. In May the roster grew to 30 cities.
But the pool of money also expanded by $700 million, so it didn't seem
like a problem. "We're thinking, O.K., we're getting 18% of the pot.
That's reasonable," remembers an aide for a New York member of Congress.
Then, for 2004 money, the Department of Homeland Security announced an
even longer list of 50 cities, including Columbus, Ohio, and Fresno,
Calif. And the dollars shrank to $675 million. At that point, Weiner
says, he lost heart. "We found a solution, and we're even screwing that
up. We have some cities on there that don't even have minor-league
baseball teams," he says. "Homeland security is just as much a pork
barrel as every other program in Congress." New York City now receives
7% of the money.

Some Democrats from high-population states claim the funding scheme
reflects the Bush Administration's political interests. "The political
reality is that they don't have a constituency in big cities," says New
York Senator Hillary Clinton. "They have been very resistant to doing
the kind of national planning that would rationalize [the spending].
Nobody can deny we've made progress. But we've failed to take seriously
the challenge of homeland security - because the Administration does not
want to assume those responsibilities and does not want to spend the
resources."

Homeland Security officials insist their approach makes sense, and point
out that it has become more risk-based. "We're in the risk-management
business here. We know the potential for a mass-casualty attack is not
evenly divided," says Josh Filler, the department's director for state
and local coordination. "We still believe everybody needs that baseline
level of funding, but beyond that, we want to focus." Instead of
implementing a risk-based model itself for the 60% of its budget that is
discretionary, however, the department is waiting for Congress to do it.
Explains a senior department official:

"We wanted to engage with Congress before we messed around with that."
Says an aide to a House Democrat:

"Essentially, they just punted. It was outrageous."

The House Homeland Security Committee last week approved a bill to make
the funding formula smarter. The measure, sponsored by chairman
Christopher Cox, a Republican from California, would eliminate the state
minimum from most grants and distribute much of the money according to
risk. "It can't be true that fighting terror is entirely in the eye of
the beholder. There has to be some discipline," he says. In its 2005
budget, the White House has also requested that more money be shifted
over to the grants for "high risk" cities.

But the Senate is not going to make reform easy. On Feb. 10, Leahy, a
member of the powerful Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee and
whose home state, Vermont, gets $54 per capita in federal funds, curtly
reminded Ridge of the leverage that small states wield. "I have to say,
I was really disappointed that the President's proposed budget ... drops
the all-state minimum formula," he said. "That would affect all but, I
think, one or two in this subcommittee. So it may be of more than
passing interest." He then added, "I believe ... the Administration
wants to shortchange rural states." Behind closed doors, the opposition
is even more formidable. "World War III has broken out at meetings if
we even talk about changing the formula," says a staff member in the
Senate. Another Senate aide says the Cox bill is "going nowhere." on
the one-year anniversary this month of the creation of the Department of
Homeland Security, Ridge addressed a Washington ballroom full of county
executives. "The attacks of 9/11 required a whole new philosophy of how
we secure the country," he said. So far, though, pork-barrel tradition
is winning out in Washington. Change will require more people like
Senator Judd Gregg, a Republican from New Hampshire, who has spoken out
in favor of risk-based funding, even though it would almost certainly
mean less money for his own state. "We know certain facts about the
enemy. There are certain logical places where you're going to use
weapons of mass destruction," he says, as if it's obvious. "This is a
question of national security. Politics is irrelevant."

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Educate yourself & go to these links:

http://www.moveon.org & http://www.salon.com & http://www.buzzflash.com
& http://www.democrats.org & http://www.democrats.com &
http://www.glocom.org/opinions/essays/20040301 tsurumi president/