Berlin, New Hampshire has approved the filing of a grant application for $277,534 ish dollars of someone else’s money. The plunder is for a Bearcat armored assault vehicle.
They have not approved the purchase yet but oh yeah, the ‘boys’ want their own Batmobile.
But what will the tourists think?
Remember when we had to take down the “arms” on the toll booths that wouldn’t go up until you paid the toll? Those were unfriendly, sent the wrong message. Now everyone (in one of the safest states in the nation) wants an armored assault vehicle. I guess the new definition of a quaint New England town will be that of a snow-covered Common with kids playing, dogs barking, a steepled white church, and a cheerily-lit festive holiday tree…next to the town tank.
When do we start filming the sequel to Red Dawn?
There’s been a lot of talk, naturally, about the Batmobile for Berlin, most of it regarding the fact that they can make other people pay for it. It’s free money! And yes, I believe the irony of the government militarizing the police force in quaint rural America with money they took (using the implied threat of force) from someone else IS lost on most of them.
But the Department of Homeland Security is offering up piles of other people’s money (they sterilize that relationship by calling them grants) to towns like Mayberry Berlin, if by chance Andy and Barney want themselves a tank to transport Otis back to his jail cell.
The manufacturer — Lenco Armored Vehicles– has a page on its web site specifically for the purpose of showing Mayor Pike how to file the grant application with DHS so they can sell a Bearcat to Andy and Barney, paid for with other people’s money, soon to be Lenco’s money.
It’s all on the up an up, someone is certain of that.
So what about Berlin? They’ve got prisons up there. But they’ve had prisons and they also have what people who talk about such things call a low crime rate. It is less than half the national average. They have a low crime rate in a low crime rate county, in a low crime rate state. Crime has been low in Berlin for a long time, sans the “intimidation” potential of having a Batmobile.
You could safely say they’ll have just as much impact on crime if they spent $277,000.00 thousand dollars to employ one-legged leprechauns to chase unicorns – without the long term upkeep.
So this is not about crime. It is not about preparing for an invasion from Canada; private NH gun owners could easily repel an invasion from Canada. It is about Berlin having its very own Batmobile without regard to what the Feds might want out of the deal.
The government has rules for funding bike paths, and everything has strings, so what are the unwritten rules or small print obligations? They aren’t giving over a quarter million dollars just so the local boys can have their own Batmobile.
Berlin is being set up as a rural-American placeholder for a quarter million dollar piece of military grade equipment paid for by the Federal government. Why?
It’s not crime. We know what lowers crime. Self-funded, law-abiding gun owners lower crime rates. But if, some day, you wanted to try to disarm those folks you might want to have a Bearcat.
Just saying.
