Posted on Tuesday 20 September 2005
For the five Americans that woke up today and thought that too many resources were being devoted to Osama Bin Laden instead of focusing on larger threats like Hugh Hefner, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez feels the same way:
Early last month, the bureau’s Washington Field Office began recruiting for a new anti-obscenity squad. Attached to the job posting was a July 29 Electronic Communication from FBI headquarters to all 56 field offices, describing the initiative as “one of the top priorities” of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and, by extension, of “the Director.” That would be FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.
…
The new squad will divert eight agents, a supervisor and assorted support staff to gather evidence against “manufacturers and purveyors” of pornography — not the kind exploiting children, but the kind that depicts, and is marketed to, consenting adults.
Evidently, having so thoroughly decimated problems like terrorism and child pornography so as to remove all threat, the FBI has now found the resources to monitor the adult porn industry for violating obscenity charges.
Maybe it’s just me, but I’m not convinced that having FBI agents stake out the local porn store while there’s people that want to fly jets into our skyscrapers is the optimal allocation of resources. Seems to indicate that the Attorney General isn’t that great at prioritizing threats.
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If they’re only putting 8 people on the case, it doesn’t seem like it will take all that much away from anti-terrorism efforts. I don’t know how many agents the FBI has, but if the notice went out to 56 separate offices, then this is the tiniest of drops in the bucket.
Personally, I’d like to see them assign 8 agents to investigate why there’s no more research funding, but that’s just me.
This is not an either / or proposition. The FBI has resources for both.
DC, we could also assign eight agents to the jaywalking brigade and argue that it doesn’t take away from more important things like terrorism. My fundamental problem is that I would consider this less than optimal allocation of a finite resource.
Maybe a better use for the eight agents with respect to research funding would be to fire them and then use what would have been their salaries to fund research
FOB, I forgot…under President Bush there are not such things as tradeoffs when it comes to managing finite resources. We can increase spending by 30% per year while decreasing tax revenue. If this causes our grandkids to face a 70% marginal tax rate to pay off our debts…who cares, we’ll be dead by the time this happens.
By definition, allocating finite resources is always an either/or proposition.
Well, that is certainly a good point. If the only thing they assign 8 agents to that doesn’t seem very useful is this one issue then I would still argue that it isn’t a big deal, but if we investigated, we’d surely find many such projects underway. I guess the question is really how many resources are worth “wasting” to make things work smoothly (as in, appease some person in power so they aren’t always wasting your time trying to convince you to do so). Let’s just run for office. You can be president and I’ll be vice president (or secretary of the interior, whichever you prefer).
I’m sure there are many such wastes, but this is one can be evaluate within the current law enforcement environmwnt and be deemed, IMHO, pretty silly. I was actually suprised to learn on day that the federal government actually has an active Nazi-hunting unit in the Dept. of Justice. Obviously, this is a noble goal, but at this point in time, it seems like there might be more dangerous enemies we should be hunting.
With regards to running for office, how about you be president and I’ll be the Secretary of Veteran Affairs because that pretty much ought to guarantee that I’ll never accidentally become president. Or, maybe I’d prefer the Secretary of Health and Human Services so that I can actually learn what a “Human Service” is