Why: EPA, FDA stocking up on body armor during President Obama’s watch

by
Skip

fed-govt-logoIt isn’t just those agencies but others that made my head hurt.  After all, Obama has made it a defining pillar of his foreign policy to make changes here in the US to impress other countries (e.g., “other countries WILL follow our lead at decarbonizing ourselves to save the planet from global cooling warming change chaos”).  Yet, notice the dichotomy – even as he’s aching to disarm civilians (and the Libs are full throated about doing it now by calling for severe restrictions, higher taxes on guns and ammo, and outright calls for total confiscation), look at how these Fed agencies are arming up.  I can see law enforcement, but the Smithsonian??

Since FY 2006, 44 traditionally administrative agencies have spent over $71 million on items like body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition, according to federal spending data from watchdog group OpenTheBooks.com.  This comes in addition to the $330 million spent on such equipment in that period by traditional law enforcement agencies like the FBI, Secret Service and Drug Enforcement Administration.

Nearly $2 million spent by the Department of Veterans Affairs on riot helmets, defender shields, body armor, a “milo return fire cannon system,” armored mobile shields, Kevlar blankets, tactical gear and equipment for crowd control.

Tell me, when is the last time that we heard about a riot at a VA hospital (although, with the abysmal and uncaring outlook on all the vets that didn’t get the care they deserved so that administrators could get bonuses, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of such)???

And the news gets stupider:

Over $300,000 spent by the Food and Drug Administration on “ballistic vests and carriers” in fiscal 2014.

Over $200,000 on body armor spent by the Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama administration years, versus just $30,000 in the three previous fiscal years.

More than $28,000 by the Smithsonian Institution on body armor for its “zoo police and security officers” in fiscal 2012.

Spending watchdogs say these examples, highlighted in an upcoming oversight report by OpenTheBooks.com titled “Arming of the Federal Agencies,” point to a trend of duplicitous federal law enforcement agencies run amok.  “Spending $71.1 million on body armor outside of traditional law enforcement agencies raises troubling questions. It’s no surprise Gallup found that nearly 50 percent of Americans believe the federal government is a threat to their liberty,” said Adam Andrzejewski, founder of OpenTheBooks.com and author of the oversight report.

“Living in D.C., one gets a sense of the growing police power of the federal government when you increasingly see official cars emblazoned with ‘fill-in-the-blank-agency Police Service’ for obscure bureaucracies you’ve hardly even heard of,” said Chris Edwards, a budget analyst at the Cato Institute.  “When agencies like the Bureau of Public Debt and Small Business Administration are spending money on body armor and bulletproof vests, it is an indicator of bloat in those agencies’ budgets and the wasteful incentive to spend every dime before the fiscal year-end,” Mr. Edwards said.

This is government scared of its citizenry combined with agency bloat and bureaucratic overreach combined with a cowboy outlook of coming out blazing (hey, the Obama Administration owns this after 8 years so why not shovel some of that which they threw at Bush II?)

Who in the Administration is greenlighting all this stuff and the idea that the puniest of agencies should be dressing up like SpecOps?  And where is Congress (and the Repubs that have been in control for a while now – oh yeah, caving in year after year on yearly omnibus bills with their panties in bunches that Govt would shut down if Obama didn’t get everything he wanted)?

And the basic, most common sense question is “Why aren’t these agencies, if conditions warrant, calling on the real law enforcement agencies for law enforcement instead of creating their own Barney Fifedoms”?

Author

  • Skip

    Co-founder of GraniteGrok, my concern is around Individual Liberty and Freedom and how the Government is taking that away. As an evangelical Christian and Conservative with small "L" libertarian leanings, my fight is with Progressives forcing a collectivized, secular humanistic future upon us. As a TEA Party activist, citizen journalist, and pundit!, my goal is to use the New Media to advance the radical notions of America's Founders back into our culture.

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