DHS Has Spent $148 Million On Furniture & Decorating Since Obama Took Office

Obama’s DHS Spent Nearly $150M On Office Furniture And Makeovers

 

 

 

 

” Funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—which is due to expire at the end of this week unless an agreement in Washington is reached—has continued to rise under President Barack Obama. His administration claims the agency’s increased funding is necessary to protect the homeland, but records show that the DHS has continued to increase its spending on furniture and office makeovers as its budget has been increased.

  A review of records on the official government spending website by the Washington Free Beacon shows the agency has spent nearly $150 million on office furniture and makeovers since Obama took office. Those fiscal years for which he has been responsible and whose budgets have been enacted are FY2010 through 2014.

“ The FY 2015 Budget reflects the Administration’s strong commitment to protecting the homeland and the American people through the effective and efficient use of DHS resources, continuing the focus on preserving frontline priorities across the Department by cutting costs, sharing resources across Components, and streamlining operations wherever possible,” the administration’s request states.

  Each year under Obama the administration, DHS funding has increased. The FY 2015 budget request is $60.9 billion, compared with FY 2014’s budget of $60.7 billion. In fiscal year 2013, the DHS budget was $59.2 billion. By contrast, President George W. Bush’s last budget for DHS for FY 2009 was $52.5 billion.

  Records show that the DHS spent $147.7 million on furniture for FY 2010 through 2014.”

 

Much more on the obscene spending at DHS from the Free Beacon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Saturday Steyn

O Beautiful, For Specious Guys…

 

 

 

 

 

 

” The US media have had a fit of the vapors over Rudy Giuliani’s suggestion that Barack Obama does not love America. As the Instapundit says, their reaction suggests that Giuliani hit a nerve.

  For my own part, I am way beyond that. By the way, I’m growing rather weary of the cheap comparisons of Obama with Neville Chamberlain. The British Prime Minister got the biggest issue of the day wrong. But no one ever doubted that he loved his country. That’s why, after his eviction from Downing Street, Churchill kept him on in his ministry as Lord President of the Council, and indeed made Chamberlain part of the five-man war cabinet and had him chair it during his frequent absences. When he died of cancer in October 1940, Churchill wept over his coffin.

  So please don’t insult Neville Chamberlain by comparing him to Obama. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, because conspiracies are generally a comforting illusion: the real problem with Obama is that the citizens of the global superpower twice elected him to office. Yet one way to look at the current “leader of the free world” is this: If he were working for the other side, what exactly would he be doing differently?

  For example, he has spent most of this week hosting an international conference on something called “violent extremism”. Whatever may be said of Munich, Chamberlain never hosted a three-day summit on “rearmament” in general whose entire purpose was to deny that “rearmament” and “Germany” were in any way connected. Yet that is exactly the message the United States government has just offered to the world – in between such eccentric side spectacles as Marie Harf, star of the hilarious new comedy Geopolitically Blonde, explaining her jobs-for-jihadis program, and the new hombre in charge of the planet’s mightiest military machine having his woman felt up on camera by Joe Biden. Now there’s a message to send to the misogynists of Burqastan about what happens when you let the missuses out of their body bags.”

 

 

Mr Steyn continues …

 

 

” But hey, what’s so odd about that? “Islam has been woven into the fabric of our country since its founding,” says the President. You might think that Islam has been entirely irrelevant to “the fabric of our country” for its first two centuries, and you might further think that Islam, being self-segregating, tends not to weave itself into anybody’s fabric but instead tends to unravel it – as it’s doing in, say, Copenhagen, where 500 mourners turned up for the funeral of an ISIS-supporting Jew-hating anti-free-speech murderer.

  But President Obama knows better than you. So he organized a summit dedicated to creating and promoting a self-invented phantom enemy. Conveniently enough, the main problem with “violent extremists” is that its principal victims are Muslims. No, no, I don’t mean the thousands of Muslims being slaughtered, beheaded, burned alive, raped, sold into sex slavery, etc, etc, in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, and so on. The Muslims most at risk are right here in America. Just ask Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson:

  We in the administration and the government should give voice to the plight of Muslims living in this country and the discrimination that they face. And so I personally have committed to speak out about the situation that very often people in the Muslim community in this country face. The fact that there are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world and the Islamic faith is one about peace and brotherhood.”

 

 

Read it all

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Lou Dobbs Calls Out Our “Homeland Security” Chief’s Statement That His Job Is To Protect Muslims From Discrimination

Lou Dobbs Calls It

 

 

” Secretary Johnson’s words weren’t only insulting, but carefully crafted propaganda that supports the radical Islamists who seek to radicalize some in our Muslim communities… Propaganda, but for the benefit of whom, certainly not Americans… Johnson and his boss belittle America in the name of multiculturalism, as if he somehow is required to run down this great country to communicate some affinity with Muslims broadly, perhaps radical Islamists more specifically.”

 

   Johnson was speaking at the White House summit on violent extremism that just happened to open with a muslim prayer , no other worship allowed .

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the above graph shows Jews are far and away the most likely targets of “hate crimes” in America and Christians suffer attacks nearly as frequently as do the Muslims , but we do not hear any exhortations from this administration to treat either of those religions with respect and we are willing to bet that a great deal of the “hate crimes” aimed at Christians and Jews find their origins in the “moderate” Muslim community .

 

 

Illustration By Rick McKee

 

 

 

 The video below from Britain First should dispel the notion , oft repeated by our “leaders” , that the vast majority of Muslims are “moderate” and peaceful . They demonstrate exactly what they themselves consider “moderation” and to the infidels of the world there is nothing “moderate” about it . See for yourself …

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Their stated goal is to rule the world and while that goal is put forth by the alleged vocal “minority” , the fact that the vast majority of so-called “moderate” Muslims would choose to live under Sharia law puts the lie to the Muslim apologists in our current administration and those of the other Dhimmie governments of the West .

 

 

 

 

 

 

One is forced to ask; just who does our current leadership actually work for ? Americans ? Nothing in the past six years has made that seem likely and we would have to agree with Mayor Giuliani that Obama hates America .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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DHS Blackmails Local Law Enforcement To “Support Amnesty Or Else”

Law Enforcement Officials Warned By DHS To Support Amnesty Or Lose Funding

 

 

” According to a Facebook post by one Colorado sheriff, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson (pictured above) is taking a personal interest in making sure authorities across the nation fall in line with the Obama administration’s immigration policy. Scroll down to see the full post.

  Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith reported receiving a “very interesting veiled threat” from Johnson, which he said was addressed to “all police chiefs and sheriffs around the country.”

  Within the correspondence, Smith explained, was a promise that “local and state public safety agencies would not receive federal grants they were counting on” if legislators do not endorse the DHS funding bill Obama supports.

 
Here is the text of the letter from Sheriff Smith’s Facebook page:

 

” Press Office
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Press Release
Feb. 3, 2015
Contact: DHS Press Office, (202) 282-8010

  STATEMENT BY SECRETARY JEH C. JOHNSON ON THE CONSEQUENCES OF OUR HOMELAND SECURITY GRANT-MAKING WITHOUT A DHS APPRORPIATIONS BILL

  In recent days I have repeatedly stressed the need for a DHS appropriations bill for FY 2015, unburdened by politically charged amendments that attempt to defund our executive actions on immigration reform. The President has made plain that he will veto a bill that includes such language.

  As long as this Department — which interfaces with the public more than any other — is funded by a continuing resolution, there are a whole series of activities vital to homeland security and public safety that cannot be undertaken.

  One of the many consequences of operating on a continuing resolution is our inability to fund new non-disaster grants to state, local and tribal governments, law enforcement, emergency response officials and fire departments. Every governor, mayor, police chief, county sheriff, emergency manager and fire chief should care about this. These officials know that the grants we provide help them protect their communities. For example, last week when I visited the multi-agency coordinating center in Phoenix responsible for the security of the Super Bowl, officials pointed out to me that almost all the surveillance and communications equipment there was funded by the Department of Homeland Security.

  Here are some other examples of the types of state, local and tribal government activities vital to homeland security and public safety that are funded by grants from this Department:

• salaries for state and local emergency managers in all 50 states, U.S. territories and the District of Columbia;

• new communications equipment for over 80 public safety agencies in the Los Angeles area to replace aging and incompatible radio systems;

• surveillance cameras and environmental sensors used by the New York City Police Department to detect in real time potential terrorist activity;

• increased security for the MTA, PATH trains and tunnels in the New York City area;

• improved campus security at K-12 public schools, colleges and universities in the state of Florida;

• K-9 units to detect explosive ordinance in the state of Massachusetts;

• upgraded oxygen masks and tanks for over 30 firefighter and law enforcement agencies in the Denver metropolitan area;

• the Arizona Counterterrorism Fusion Center, which provides intelligence and information from this Department to state and local law enforcement there;

• fifteen mobile command centers for possible catastrophic incidents in the state of Kentucky;

• 150 firefighter jobs in the city of Detroit; and

• bomb squads in the state of Idaho.

  On behalf of the men and women of this Department who work every day to keep the homeland safe, I urge that Congress pass an appropriations bill for this Department, free of politically charged amendments to defund our executive actions. Time is running short.”

 

Story continues

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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“Dysfunctional Work Environment, Abysmal Morale” Putting DHS Leadership To Flight

Top-Level Turnover Makes It Harder For DHS To Stay On Top Of Evolving Threats

 

 

 

 

” An exodus of top-level officials from the Department of Homeland Security is undercutting the agency’s ability to stay ahead of a range of emerging threats, including potential terrorist strikes and cyberattacks, according to interviews with current and former officials.

  Over the past four years, employees have left DHS at a rate nearly twice as fast as in the federal government overall, and the trend is accelerating, according to a review of a federal database.

  The departures are a result of what employees widely describe as a dysfunctional work environment, abysmal morale, and the lure of private security companies paying top dollar that have proliferated in Washington since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

  The department’s terrorism intelligence arm, for example, has cycled through six directors during the Obama administration, decimating morale and contributing to months-long delays in releasing intelligence reports, according to interviews and government reports.”

 

Washington Post

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Under Congressional Pressure DHS Admits 4 Terrorists Were Caught At Border On Sept 10th

DHS Forced To Admit To Terrorists Caught At Texas Border

 

 

 

 

 

 

” During the House Homeland Security Committee hearing yesterday, Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) caught Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Jeh Johnson off-guard when he began questioning Johnson about the situation at our southern border.

  That’s when Congressman Chaffetz dropped the bomb.  Not only did he explain to the Secretary of DHS that there were in fact reports of FOUR individuals with ties to terrorist organizations that were apprehended at two separate locations on the Texas border, but he also had information from an internal DHS document containing statistics on immigration activities.

  According to that document, during the 351 days of fiscal year 2014, there were 466,000 apprehensions of illegals, also 157,012 illegals that “got away,” and 142,630 individuals that were reported “turn backs”. The compilation of apprehensions represented people from 143 different countries. Additionally, the sensors that are placed in locations primarily in the southwest, recorded a jump of over 1,000,000 hits from fiscal year 2013 until now.”

 

Read on

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Why Does The IRS Need License Plate Tracking Technology ?

IRS Among Agencies Using License Plate-Tracking Vendor

 

 

 

 

 

” The Internal Revenue Service and other U.S. agencies awarded about $415,000 in contracts to a license plate-tracking company before Homeland Security leaders dropped a plan for similar work amid privacy complaints.

  Federal offices such as the Forest Service and the U.S. Air Force’s Air Combat Command chose Livermore, California-based Vigilant Solutions to provide access to license plate databases or tools used to collect plate information, according to government procurement records compiled by Bloomberg.

  Vigilant, a closely held company, has received such work since 2009. In February, Jeh Johnson, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, ordered the cancelation of an immigration agency plan to buy access to national license plate data. While the technology can help solve crimes, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have said the mass collection of data infringes the privacy of innocent people.

“ Especially with the IRS, I don’t know why these agencies are getting access to this kind of information,” said Jennifer Lynch, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based privacy-rights group. “These systems treat every single person in an area as if they’re under investigation for a crime — that is not the way our criminal justice system was set up or the way things work in a democratic society.” “

Read more at Bloomberg

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Local Police And Their SWAT Mentality Are Robbing Us Of Our Liberty

Why Does The Environmental Protection Agency Need Its Own SWAT Team?

 

 
” Nestled in the tranquil Connecticut River watershed of southwest New Hampshire, the city of Keene has largely avoided the violent unrest common to many other urban areas. With a population of only 23,409 people, Keene’s violent crime index is about half the national average.

  Despite the calm, however, local authorities didn’t think twice about requesting a BearCat armored counterattack vehicle from the Department of Homeland Security.

“ Our application talked about the danger of domestic terrorism, but that’s just something you put in the grant application to get the money,” said a Keene City Council member. “What red-blooded American cop isn’t going to be excited about getting a toy like this?”

 

 

And if they have it , what “red-blooded American cop” isn’t going to get excited about USING it ?

 

 

” While the possession of an armored vehicle by such a peaceful city may seem strange, the militarization of the Keene police force isn’t an isolated case. Over the past decade, thousands of local police departments nationwide have been amassing stockpiles of military-grade equipment in the name of homeland security. Local police now have the sort of equipment soldiers use to fight wars.”

 

 

   This hard hitting article should be read by all that have an abiding love of liberty and civil rights . This is the type of wisdom to be found as one reads deeper into the article …

 

 

” Why the Founders Didn’t Create a Federal Police Force

  America’s founders were deeply wary of standing armies in peacetime. They could have given the federal government a well-armed federal police agency to “contain and reverse violent threats to domestic tranquility”—but they deliberately didn’t. Instead, they limited the power of the government, the federal government in particular. They wanted to reduce threats to individual liberty.

  The founders realized the danger posed to the American people by police forces that think and act like they are at war. Above all else, the Constitution’s framers believed that government power should be decentralized so that no one person or branch of government could emerge as a force of tyranny. As James Madison said at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive, will not long be safe companions to liberty.” “

 

 

   Please . Read the whole piece and pass it on . This paragraph gives the reader a chilling example of the mindset existent in today’s police hierarchy and this from the “Live Free Or Die” state …

 

 

” In the summer of 2013, a police chief in Concord, New Hampshire, asked Homeland Security for more than $250,000 to purchase an armored vehicle that he could use to protect the city from the Occupy New Hampshire movement and the Free State Project, a civil libertarian group. “The State of New Hampshire’s experience with terrorism slants primarily toward the domestic type,” he said in his filing. “We are fortunate that our state has not been victimized from a mass casualty event from an international terrorism strike; however, on the domestic front, the threat is real and here. Groups such as the Sovereign Citizens, Free Staters and Occupy New Hampshire are active and present daily challenges.”

 

 

    We’ll leave you with this final example from the article to mull over and consider if the reader believes this country is being turned into a Statist haven or not .

 

 

” Racing Toward a National Catastrophe

  Discarding the laws of the land has become a theme of the current administration. If constitutional separations between federal and local law no longer apply, then the only law that does apply is the law of the jungle. If a federalized police force has more firepower than local police or private citizens, then might makes right.

  If federal agents want to swoop in and confiscate a company’s financial statements, then the executive branch of government “can do what they want, when they want, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” If a city mayor wants an MRAP to stop protests by civil libertarians, then you better hope he wakes up in a benevolent mood, because that’s the only remaining guarantee of public safety.

  Here is what Judge Andrew Napolitano wrote in the Washington Times: “Mr. Obama has argued that he can kill Americans whose deaths he believes will keep us all safer, without any due process whatsoever. No law authorizes that. His attorney general has argued that the president’s careful consideration of each target and the narrow use of deadly force are an adequate and constitutional substitute for due process. No court has ever approved that” (Feb. 7, 2013).”

 

 

    It’s all being done in the name of “public safety” but who is really being made safer ? The public ? Or the State ? For everyone’s sake READ THE ENTIRE PIECE .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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