Homeland Security -- a roundtable review

[theHandpuppet]

Homeland Security -- do you feel it? A review....

So our "Dept of Homeland Security" has been in place for some time now, gobbling up the tax dollars and creating new jobs, such as making spanky new stationery with the HS logo, but as individual citizens do you feel any safer courtesy of the OHS?

Has anyone here received information on how to deal with any impending emergency, been told where to find the nearest shelter, evacuation route, that kind of practical information? Have cadres of volunteers been organized to transport the elderly and disabled? Do you now know how to deal with a chemical, biological or nuclear attack? What radio station to turn to in case of an emergency? Do you know how to deal with a hijacker should you be unfortunate enough to encounter one and no "sky marshal" is available?

I'm seriously curious -- as far as I can tell the individual American citizen has sacrificed sacred rights for not much of anything at all. Putting all OHS resources into "first responder" units is an after-the-fact approach whilst the public at large is unprepared.

Maybe I'm wrong and the information is getting out there. Perhaps its because I live in rural WV (an unlikely target for terrorism, to be sure) that I cannot see the OHS has been worth a whit. Perhaps only Americans in major metropolitan areas like NY, Seattle or San Fran need such practical information. <sarcasm alert!> But are we concentrating too much on the obvious? Yeah, maybe I'm paranoid, but every time I drive up to Charleston (WV) along a Kanawa River literally lined with chemical plants, a river not only near the state capitol but one that flows into the Ohio and beyond, I have to say that I feel as if there is NO WAY we can protect ourselves from a determined terrorist. There are thousands of such targets across the country in areas largely unprotected and unprepared. So to me the OHS seems little more than a big PR machine, much ado about very little at all.

So am I wrong? Is the OHS actually doing anything worth the investment and do you, as an individual citizen, feel any safer for anything they've done? Isn't it time for a review?