Who’d think the US Department of Health and Human Services would make for such interesting fodder? While its not near so glamorous as the resignation of, say, John Ashcroft or Tom Ridge, the closing comments of the outgoing Tommy Thompson raise some compelling questions of their own. Here’s what I found interesting:
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson resigned Friday, warning of a potential global outbreak of the flu and health-related terror attacks. “For the life of me, I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do,” he said.
That’s not surprising in and of itself, since there’s a dire prediction of impending doom coming out of DC approximately once every 30 seconds. But when we combine that with the interesting fact that
The former Wisconsin governor has warned about food safety issues since before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and pushed for more money for safeguards. Spending on food security has increased from $800,000 to $150 million during Thompson’s tenure, and there are eight times as many food inspections now as in 2001, according to HHS figures.
So we start with a problem that doesn’t exist, namely, terror attacks against the food supply. They literally pour money into the program, an almost 200-fold increase in funds and an eightfold increase in manpower to prevent future attacks, even though past attacks have never happened. And now what?
Now we’re warned, by seemingly the only man who even considered this a problem in the first place, the same man who fought tooth and nail to get this incredible increase in funding that now he “cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do”.
Is it just me or did Tommy just get away with admitting he wasted hundreds of millions of dollars without even a hint of an apology?
