There’s been a lot of buzz about the recently-announced cuts in anti-terror funding for New York, culminating with a rant from Jon Stewart on the Daily Show tonight. Comments typically include a fair amount of Omaha-bashing, since Omaha received a 38.2% increase in funds while New York received a 40% cut.
Now, I think the cut in New York’s funds is a travesty (even though, after the changes, New York is still receiving 15x as much as Omaha). The points many commentators are making are valid – especially the notion that New York does, in fact, have national monuments. But I’m not sure that Omaha-bashing is helping to prove your point – really, it’s just illustrating your ignorance about Omaha. Not that it’s my decision, but if Omaha were to give it’s entire increase to New York, they would still suffer a 38.5% cut.
There are plenty of legitimate points to be made in this argument to support New York. I’m even fine with people thinking funding increases for less-likely targets is out of line. Just quit the Omaha bashing. It’s not helping.
Right, it’s not like Omaha is really taking money away from anywhere else. I mean, these people give us tax cuts and increased medicare benefits all while spending hundreds of billions of dollars the Iraq war. Meanwhile these cities are fighting over less than a billion dollars in anti-terror funding. I believe I’ve heard some important government types recently touting protection of our homeland as one of the government’s top priorities, so why is it unreasonable to finance both New York’s and Omaha’s programs?
I missed the Daily Show Omaha-Bashing, but saw some NY morning news Omaha-bashing. One thing I think people forget about when they incredulously list off Omaha features such as corn, the world series, and the zoo is OFFUTT. Hi hello, giant Air Force Base? Yeah, that’s my guess as to why Omaha gained funds, but that’s also a fact that was conveniently left out of the morning news Omaha bashing. Did Jon Stewart mention Omaha/Offutt?