Most. Useless. Government Agency. Ever.
Let's see what do they do?
They regulate chemicals which could be used as weapons. Yes we all know that private industries never ever self regulate and are so willing to fork over their valuable products to terrorists who would kill them using said products for free. Everyone working in this industry has every incentive to sell chemical weapons to foreigners and terrorists, and the government is much more efficient and effective at regulating industries it knows nothing about than are people in that industry.
They also regulate infrastructure. Please. My late father was in the utility business. Before 9/11, he personally had built and engineered new power substations for the company he worked for. These new facilities had gates which could withstand a truck ramming them, they had security systems with infrared cameras with which the power company could monitor the station visually 24/7, and motion sensors which were sensitive enough to detect coyotes who wandered too close. They have sophisticated electronic security systems which will detect any abnormal activity the INSTANT anything happens.
Why? Because the utility company has a vested interest in protecting its valuable equipment from vandals, theives, idiots, and even terrorists. Duh.
They do studies and they do initiatives and they do "collaborations" with other three letter agencies which are almost as useless.
The Safe Schools Initiative? Their baby. Make the schools safer. See any serious federal support for CCW training for teachers yet?
National Small Vessel Security Summit, one of their brainchilds. It's real simple. Let people have letters of marquee and reprisal. It's right there in the Constituition. Let people buy artillery, machineguns etc. to mount on their boats, costs taxpayers nothing, solves the problem handedly.
They regulate railroads and power plants and tons of things that no agency, even if we funded it like we do the military, could realistically have enough expertise on to really make good decisions. They make regulations about things they probably have never done professionally and call it "security".
The people who can secure the things we're worried about being vulnerable to terrorists are the people who own and operate those things already. Let people who operate power plants figure out how to protect power plants, for example. Government interference wastes money and is inefficient. We get inferior results and "feel good" studies, initiatives, and collaborations which accomplish nothing.
Studies, initiatives, summits, awareness months, and collaborations are all they spit out for the money we spend on them. They produce nothing but so many useless buzz words. There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution which says the government has the authority to belch out "studies, initiatives, summits, awareness months, and collaborations" on my dime especially when the "research" they produce is simply recycled from within the government.
The Container Security Initiative - The Border Patrol was already handling it.
The Safe Schools Initiative, Insider threat study - Secret Service does all the work.
There are other examples.
Homeland Security is comparable to the prop conduits used on the set of the space ship interior on the Star Trek television show. All these conduits were labeled "GNDN" by the show's production crew.
"GNDN" stands for Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing. Just there for show, to make people think the set is a space ship, to help them suspend their disbelief more easily.
The DHS is very much the same. Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing, and helps the government fool people into thinking something is actually being done.
