prophetnoise

Originally sent to me from my friend Jock on myspace. For those of you who don't know my good freind Jock, he's the politcal reporter for a major NYC daily newspaper. They pay him to live in Albany and cover the NY State government.

While your daily conversations are with your friends about where to go drinking tonight, how pretty your new tattoo is, and who's fucking whom, his daily conversations are with Governer George Pataki, Senator Hillary Clinton, and a lot of people who determine what go on in New York, and America.

This isn't the mindless rantings of a conspiracy theorist. This is taken straight from the horses mouth:

If you have any feelings left over the nearly 3,000 people killed on 9/11, please read this.

I don't know if you're been reading the news, but Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff has seen fit to slash New York City's federal terrorism funding from $207 million to $124 million. That's a cut of 40 percent.

Part of the logic of the panel that devised this funding stream - which is classified so no one has any idea who they are - is that New York City doesn't have any icons or national monuments worth protecting. No Empire State Building, Brooklyn Bridge, Stock Exchange, Wall Street or Statue of Liberty. Funny, other states had their sports venues included, but Shea Stadium, Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Garden didn't make the cut. New York has zero (0) icons worth protecting. On top of this, they only count eight banks worth more than $8 billion, which are worth funding. The mayor's office counts 20. Because of this funding slash, the police commissioner has gone on record to say that some of the projects planned to protect the city from terrorism will have to be abandoned.

Meanwhile, states like Nebraska and Kentucky are getting record increases, to protect breweries, sports venues and cornfields.

If you'll allow me to get political for a second (because you know I'm a liberal prick), a lot of the increases just happen to coincide with areas where Republicans facing re-election in a few months lay claim to their districts and are facing stiff challenges from Democrats.
So, basically, the money set aside for terrorism funding is being turned into pork barrell spending to curry favor with voters, with no regard for the cities that really need it.

So let's recap: New York City - and Washington, D.C. - the only two cities that have been attacked and continue to be targeted by terrorists, will not recieve enough money to protect themselves next year. But the money's there - it just got reassigned by a shadowy panel without public identities to places that are going to spend it on things they don't really need.

I'm asking you to do two things:

1. Repost this. I'll reach the 80 or so friends on my list, now it's up to my friends to reach out to the people on their lists, and so on. If you repost this, more people are going to pick up on it. That's the empirical nature of this beast.

2. Visit the following address: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/action/postcard/

From this Web site, you can send Mike Chertoff a postcard voicing your disatisfaction with how this has all turned out. It's on Hillary Clinton's Web site... she's the only politician to offer a very easy way to get this done.

I don't give a damn if you agree with Hillary's politics or not. I don't care if you're a Republican or a Democrat, or if you even live within the bounds of these two cities. This should piss you off. With all due respect to the people who live in rural, Midwest areas - Osama is not going to bomb your cornfield or your Wal-Mart. These bastards are going to go after the big icons, the Brooklyn Bridges and the Shea Stadiums, to kill as many people as they can in as public as a place as they can.

edited by Prophetnoise to add number 3 in italics.

3. Write your state senators and your district's congressperson. People don't realize how much letters are actually considered in policy making. They assume that 1 letter represents 1000 people who probably feel the same way and were too lazy to write.

Your 1 letter is worth the voice of 1000 people!

I, personally, am sick over this. Most of you know that I had to deal with 9/11 on a deeply personal level (although not as personal as some, bless them), but I think this is a subject that will piss off just about anybody.

Do this. Let's use MySpace for something other than pointless surveys for five minutes. I already typed this bastard up, the work is done. Just repost and send a postcard. It may not seem like a lot but let's flood this d-bag Chertoff with as many of these as we can, until stacked together they reach the height of the Statue of Liberty and maybe he'll be reminded that the world's number one terror target is worthy of protection.