My emotions after reading this story about how some communities have spent (or mis-spent) money intended for "Homeland Security". Some examples:

• In Virginia, a small volunteer fire department spent $350,000 on a custom-made fire boat.
• Another Williams supporter, former District mayor Sharon Pratt, was awarded a no-bid bioterrorism consulting contract worth $236,000. Pratt successfully lobbied the city to give another no-bid contract worth $15,880 to a company on whose board she sat.
• As Leslie Hotaling, director of the District's Department of Public Works, said: "If we can tie it to 9/11 and build capacity in our core functions, let's do it!" Her agency spent more than $55,000 on basic employee training courses such as "map reading" and "handling problem employees."
• In October, D.C. Council members questioned the use of homeland security dollars to pay for sanitation supervisors to attend a "Dale Carnegie" management course with no disaster preparedness instruction. City officials later relabeled the course on their documents by removing the management guru's name. The routine training helps employees better handle an emergency, Hotaling said.

  Her agency used an additional $300,000 to help pay for a computerized car towing system that the mayor had promised for three years to help combat fraud by private towing companies.

  The rationale: The city could use the new system to more efficiently clear streets during a terrorist attack and aid with "recovery efforts" by locating towed cars in the aftermath.

Forty low-income young adults were trained in first aid and other emergency skills, then paid to rap and dance about emergency preparedness as part of outreach efforts. The program was nationally recognized and a "brilliant" use of money, said Deputy Mayor Margret Nedelkoff Kellems, who oversaw spending.