Want to nuke America - rent a shipping container.

Damn, I was ahead of the curve again!

Follow the Port Security Money
February 28, 2005, New York Times Editorial

Defending the United States from terrorist attack requires an enormous budget, skillfully spent. So why is the federal government spending money to protect Martha's Vineyard while underfinancing New York and Los Angeles?

A new audit of spending on port security - often called the nation's "soft underbelly" - reveals a disturbing trifecta: far too little money appropriated; much of the appropriated money not spent; and much of the money that was spent going for the wrong things. This is all part of a larger problem of misplaced priorities in the homeland security budget.

If terrorists try to bring in a weapon of mass destruction, there is a good chance it will be by placing it in one of the six million shipping containers that arrive every year from overseas. The Coast Guard has estimated that the inspectors, scanning equipment and other measures needed to secure the ports would cost $5.4 billion over the next 10 years. But the federal port security grant program has allocated less than $600 million since 2002, far less than is needed, and only a small fraction of what is being spent on airport security.

Now, the Homeland Security Department's inspector general has found serious problems in how port security funds distributed between June 2002 and December 2003 were spent - or not spent. An audit said that just $107 million of the $515 million allocated - about 20 percent - had been spent by last September, an inexcusably slow pace. … The ports facing the greatest threat are ones like New York and Los Angeles, located in population-dense areas. But New York, which handles 12 percent of the nation's cargo traffic, received just 7 percent of the grants, and Los Angeles was similarly shortchanged. At the same time, security money was found for ports in St. Croix in the Virgin Islands and Martha's Vineyard, Mass. …

Port security is symptomatic of a larger problem. Security spending of all kinds is being distorted by bad choices and pork barrel politics. Wyoming received $38 per person last year, compared with New York's $5.50. The formula was improved late last year, but not enough. As Michael Chertoff, the new secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, takes up his new responsibilities, one of his highest priorities should be making sure scarce funds go where they are most needed.

I ranted about this back on February 21st. That rant is here. The gist was that nine or ten million (my research and the Times’ differ) of those shipping containers pass through our ports each year. BushCo is spending $10 billion/year on missile defense when the easiest and most likely way that a nuke is going to enter this country is in one of those containers. To fully fund the Coast Guard’s program will cost something like $600 million/year or about 6% of the cost of the so far non-working missile defense system.

So we’re spending $10 billion a year for missile defense - which has yet to work and probably never will, and $80 billion plus per year in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet we can’t spend enough to do something to really protect the “homeland.”

Where do you think we should be putting our money?