DHS Flushes Away Almost Half a Billion on Unused Radios

The amount of our money wasted by the government is so vast, the numbers numb us instead of shocking us. For example:


The Department of Homeland Security spent $430 million over nine years on inter-agency radios for use in national emergencies, but agents don’t know how to utilize them.

After 9/11, government agencies needed a better way to communicate with each other during wide-scale disasters. To that end, the DHS distributed radios, all tuned to a common, secure channel, to 123,000 employees across the country.

A recent report from the Inspector General found most employees didn’t know how to use the radios or [didn't know] about the secure channel.

The IG surveyed 479 employees and only one person was able to use the channel; 79% did not know the common channel even existed. Of those employees who knew about the secure channel, 25% did not know how to access it.

When tested, only 20% of the radios had all the correct settings to use the new channel.

In short, bureaucrats flushed another $430 million down the drain. That’s almost as much as the $535 million Obama stole from taxpayers to pay off his fundraisers at Solyndra. Yet no one is screaming for the conspicuously incompetent Janet Napolitano to be fired; hardly anyone even seems to care.

The DHS, like most everything federal, is primarily a gigantic boondoggle, the purpose of which is to spread our money around, because according to the personification of Big Government, when you do that, it’s good for everybody.

No one could be more useless.

On a tip from Henry B.