A Stitch in Haste

…you can always fall back on mocking the Department of Homeland Security:

When the fire department in the tiny Berkshire hamlet of Cheshire [Massachusetts] needed a new fire truck, it asked Uncle Sam for a little help.

The response last month was stunning: a $665,962 homeland security grant. The award was nearly 26 times the annual budget of the volunteer fire department in the town of 3,500.

And the rub: The department is not allowed to spend it on a fire truck.

Actually, I concur that federal money should not be spent on local needs like firefighting equipment. Federal taxes should pay for federal public goods and local taxes should pay for local public goods. A fire truck is clearly the latter, the War on Terror notwithstanding.

It is no secret, meanwhile, that the DHS budget has become infested with the Politics of Pull — and mundane bureaucratic incompetence — with money diverted from decidedly “Blue” targets such as the Brooklyn Bridge to decidedly “Red” targets such as a petting zoo in Alabama. Indiana, which might have one bona fide terrorist target (the Indianapolis Speedway) had 8,591 political (i.e., grant-warranting) terrorist targets in 2006, while New York, a/k/a Ground Zero, had only 5,687 politically approved targets. And the process is getting worse.

Madness. Sheer Madness.

(Via Boing Boing.)

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Meanwhile, Safenow provides some pictographic humor at the DHS’ expense. It’s not new — unless you’ve never seen it before. (Via Gay Knight.)

Similar Posts:

• Homeland Security and the Politics of Pull
• Follow the Money
• Homeland Security’s Next “Heckuva Job” Patronage Appointee…
• What Does Homeland Security Money Buy?
• Socialized Medicine: Lessons from Homeland Security

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