http://www.startribune.com/stories/561/4048688.html
As states and cities run out of operating funds, the Bush administration “has pretty much stiffed them on homeland security,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune editorializes.
Making its case that Washington has devoted too little attention to domestic defense, the newspaper endorses the new Council on Foreign Relations task force report concluding that emergency responders are “drastically underfunded, dangerously unprepared.” Noting that the World Markets Research Center has forecast as a “highly likely” a catastrophic attack, within the next year, the Star Tribune pointed to several findings of the report, including that fire departments “have only enough radios to equip half the firefighters on a shift…” and many police departments don’t have “the protective gear to safely secure a site following an attack with weapons of mass destruction.” If Americans really love police and fire departments, they “will ask Washington for money to … help them respond effectively to the next, highly likely, attack,” says the Star Tribune.