Who Watches The Watchmen

Some hilarity was pointed out over a Bruce Schneier’s blog. Apparently the number of Federal Air Marshals that have been arrested is greater than the number of arrests made by Federal Air Marshals (the link goes to a Tennessee congressman’s website, I don’t know who he is nor should this be taken as my promoting him):

And listen to this paragraph from a front-page story in the USA Today last November: “Since 9/11, more than three dozen Federal air marshals have been charged with crimes, and hundreds more have been accused of misconduct. Cases range from drunken driving and domestic violence to aiding a human-trafficking ring and trying to smuggle explosives from Afghanistan.”

Actually, there have been many more arrests of Federal air marshals than that story reported, quite a few for felony offenses. In fact, more air marshals have been arrested than the number of people arrested by air marshals.

We now have approximately 4,000 in the Federal Air Marshals Service, yet they have made an average of just 4.2 arrests a year since 2001. This comes out to an average of about one arrest a year per 1,000 employees.

That’s just funny. This on the other hand isn’t:

Now, let me make that clear. Their thousands of employees are not making one arrest per year each. They are averaging slightly over four arrests each year by the entire agency. In other words, we are spending approximately $200 million per arrest. Let me repeat that: we are spending approximately $200 million per arrest.

That’s your tax money at work ladies and gentlemen. The scariest part about government is the fact that there is no accountability. If they’re spending far more money than they take in that’s just too bad. If their agents who are tasked with upholding the law are corrupt that’s just too bad. We either have to wait for the government to take care of their own corrupt personnel or… never mind there is no or here.