Friday, September 16, 2005

Why is anyone surprised?

This piece, in the Washington Post, reports on misspending of funds by the Army Corps of Engineers on non-flood-related projects in Louisiana. It's one of thousands of similar pieces that decry the failure of the federal government to do whatever in the wake of or in preparation for an event such as hurricane Katrina.

Yet nearly every single piece that I've read, rather than suggesting that we stop putting the federal government in charge of saving us from the disaster of the day, all call for MORE government involvement, greater funding, or more oversight by some lot of boobs from amongst the lot of boobs that boobed it all up in the first place!

I don't get it! Why is it that when the fed fails at something the automatic response is to give them more stuff to screw up? Or to give so-and-so more money to continue screwing it up in more expensive ways? Haven't we figured out yet that trusting the federal government to accomplish anything is like using a billy club for brain surgery? Make the club bigger or plate it with gold, and you'll still only succeed in making guacamole of the patient.

In our daily lives, when an attempt to solve a problem fails, we typically try something new. Yet when government fails, the response is to do more of the same thing. It defies logic. Which is probably why it continues to be so popular.

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