Continued from the previous post.

It's funny how some topics can get people all up-in-arms excited, indignant, and ready to buy just about anything that's chopped up finely enough for immediate digestion upon swallowing.

What's not funny is what this costs.

This report in the Washington Post does a great job of illustrating just how political maneuvering, posturing, media spin and the like that present a Kilimanjaro of nefariousness ... heck, a whole Kilimanjaro range of slimy and iniquitous wrongdoing that rings the world! ... can, in the bright light of day, be shown to be nothing more than NOTHING.

Take human trafficking, for example, as that is what the WaPo story is about ...

The setting: The Rayburn House Office Building

The year: 1999

The topic: Human Trafficking

The numbers: 50,000 slaves coming into the US every year.

The conclusion: Congress must act

The cost: $150 million

The crew: 42 Justice Department task forces

The result: Not a lot

Although there have been several estimates over the years, the number that helped fuel the congressional response -- 50,000 victims a year -- was an unscientific estimate by a CIA analyst who relied mainly on clippings from foreign newspapers, according to government sources who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the agency's methods. Former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales told Congress last year that a much lower estimate in 2004 -- 14,500 to 17,500 a year -- might also have been overstated.

Yet the government spent $28.5 million in 2006 to fight human trafficking in the United States, a 13 percent increase over the previous year.

YeeHaw! Rollin' rollin' rollin', get them dogie's rollin', keep that bandwagon rollin', no matter what!

With money falling off the over-branching trees in every new-agency-neighborhood, new jobs, campaigns, grabby and emotive buzzwords that make for no-brainer press releases, and lobbyists, lobbyist, lobbyists seeing easy pickin's for clients is there any question that folks are going to be just a bit slow to point out that there's not really much of a problem and that the whole shebang is pretty much smoke-and-mirrors?

Is the CIA going to step back and say, "Sorry, but we got it wrong"?

Is the White House going to take any angle other than, "Well, we don't care what it costs because even ONE case of trafficking is horrible"?

Is the guy in charge of the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons going to admit that there's not much work in the US for his large and expensive organization to do?

Color me I-don't-think-so.

Spending money for trafficking in other countries where thousands of lives are stolen away for slavery does get some attention ... $175,000 went to training women in Vietnam and $3.4 million was sent to fight child labor in El Salvador.

In the US, however, the trafficking that isn't is getting more time, money and energy than domestic violence, a truth that should bring home the reality.

Ask most people about human trafficking in America today and what will you hear? I'm guessing most will knee-jerk up a response based on what they've been fed having never given a second thought to its accuracy or the consequences of jumping to action on wrong information.

So, from Casa Quivira to Cambodia to the three trafficking victims found in Texas last year ... what is the connection?


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