'Homeland Insecurity:' Olbermann probes 'Grand Old Profiteering' Mike Aivaz and Muriel Kane

Published: Thursday December 6, 2007



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Print This Email This "So who got the money?" was what Keith Olbermann wanted to know after describing a new report that slams the Department of Homeland Security for its waste, cronyism, and failure to protect the American people. Olbermann was particularly incensed over the appointment of "party favorites with no relevant experience" to top positions in FEMA, the outsourcing of billions of dollars on security projects that are yet to materialize, and the revolving door policy that goes all the way up to former DHS Secretary Tom Ridge. Olbermann's guest, Rachel Maddow of Air America Radio, pointed out that things like port security, border security, and emergency preparedness are not newly invented mandates but have always been "the basic functions of government," and that they were being carried out more efficiently before DHS was superimposed on the existing agencies. "The worse off the agency, the easier it is to screw the taxpayer by pulling money out of that agency," Maddow suggested. Olbermann asked if Maddow thought the problem was simple incompetence or if, as Naomi Klein suggests, DHS was designed from the start "to funnel taxpayer money away from the federal government into the hands of friendly corporations." "We don't know," Maddow admitted, but she added that "there's a compelling case to make for the way Naomi Klein sees it." Maddow noted that the "mantra of the Republican Party" since Reagan has been that government is the problem, not the solution. "If you think government's the problem and you've just made it really big, if you as a conservative think that government can't help the American people, but you've hugely enlarged the size of the government, who'd you do it for? It's not us." "By process of elimination it has to be for somebody else," Olbermann commented. "It's just a question of which of the many somebody elses it could be." "Philosophically, close this out for me," he continued. "Why does the right care so much about listening to my conversations, reading your emails ... prioritizing that over inspecting cargo, which actually could blow up." "Eavesdropping ... gives the government power," Maddow replied. "It's all a nice convenient excuse to do what they wanted to do anyway," Olbermann concluded. The following video is from MSNBCs COUNTDOWN with Keith Olbermann, broadcast on December 05, 2007



