THE DAILY BLADE: Secret Service, Immigration Officers And Airport Screeners Dropping Other Duties To Protect Presidential Candidates
Holding early primaries may give more people in more states more say about who their party’s standard bearer will be, but an unusually long campaign season with 19 presidential candidates crisscrossing the nation giving stump speeches and attending fundraisers will likely add up to the costliest election for taxpayers in our nation’s history.
As the 2008 campaign progress, U.S. Secret Service personnel are going to be stretched so thin that 250 agents will be pulled off financial fraud and cybercrime investigations – the federal law enforcement agency’s main mission – to work security details, along with 2,000 “borrowed” immigration officers and federal airport security screeners, reports The Washington Post:
Candidate protection is expensive. Flight, lodging and per diem expenses are sizable, exceeding the $100 million that the Secret Service normally spends on travel per year. Security details require three shifts of agents that rotate every three weeks, bomb-sniffing dogs, sophisticated communications equipment, hundreds of vehicles, and even, at times, specialized gear such as detection and jamming devices. …
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration has doubled the number of officials granted Secret Service protection, from 26 to 54, including top White House aides such as the chief of staff and national and homeland security advisers. …
By law, the agency guards presidents, vice presidents, candidates, their families and visiting heads of state. The president can also extend protection by executive memorandum.
But the service has taken on added homeland security jobs in recent years, such as screening White House mail and coordinating security at national events such as presidential conventions and Super Bowls.
Among the Dem frontrunners, former First Lady Hillary Clinton already has a protective detail; the Department of Homeland Security ordered security for Barack Obama as of May 3 because of threatening or racist letters and Internet posts (none included specific threats); and John Edwards has not requested protection.
According to spokespersons for Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney, none of the Republican frontrunners have asked for a security detail.
The Secret Service had set aside roughly $110 million of its budget for protection, but will likely revise this figure upwards to cover expenses the agency had not planned to take on until January. For instance, the agency will be providing security to Obama for a total of 540 days, at a rate of about $44,360 a day, according to the WaPo. That comes to $23.9 million for his campaign alone.
Trademarking Town’s Name Not A Good Thing
When Martha Stewart moved to trademark the name of the town 40 miles north of New York City in which she lives for use on home furnishings, paints and other products sold under her name, her neighbors in Katonah took exception. And they are now being joined by Native American tribes and advocacy groups because “Katonah” is the name of a Ramapough Lenape chief in the 17th century.
Suzan Harjo, president of Morning Star Institute, a national advocacy group that seeks to protect Native American’s cultural and spiritual rights, tells The Associated Press: “If I wanted to trademark 'Martha Stewart' and put out a line of tea towels, she would have me in court very quickly. She'd be saying, 'You can't use my name, that's valuable, that belongs to me.’”
AP reports that other Native American leaders are calling Stewart's trademark application “offensive”:
Clint Halftown, the federally recognized representative for the Cayuga Nation, said, “If it's being done for profit, then of course it's offensive. Of all the names in the world and all the words, why can't she pick something out that's not offensive?”
Stewart’s spokeswoman, Diana Pearson, claims the intent is “to honor the town and the hamlet.”'
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