Money Well Spent
Tom Schatz from Citizens Against Government Waste thinks that spending Homeland Security money on clowns and gyms is a waste. I couldn’t disagree more. If the goal of the DHS is to prevent a terrorist attack then we should disband it and focus on reforming the CIA and FBI to better do their jobs. On the other hand, if the goal of the DHS is to save lives, I couldn’t think of a better way to spend money then on fitness and fire safety education. “Why is that?” you may ask. Recent statistics claim that nearly 80% of Americans are not physically active enough to stay healthy. While fire is not as large a danger as poor health, the same number of Americans died from fires in 2004 as did due to terrorist attacks in 2001 (and significantly more every other year) while there were over 17,000 fire related injuries. If we’re going to be spending money on the homeland it should be for health and personal safety as well as emergency response.