December 2, 2007, Election Year Budgetary Priorities
Once again, c/o Bruce the Veep, we get this story of the 2008-9 Bush Administration budget proposals that put forth gigantic 50% funding cuts to key components of homeland security programs. Quoth the story:
The plan calls for outright elimination of programs for port security, transit security, and local emergency management operations in the next budget year. This is President Bush’s last budget, and the new administration would have to live with the funding decisions between Jan. 20 and Sept. 30, 2009."The Homeland Security department and the White House Office of Management and Budget, which is in charge of the administration’s spending plans, would not provide details about the funding cuts because nothing has been finalized."
It's a damned good thing that Iraq is the "central front" in the "War on TerrorTM" and that things are going so swimmingly there (unless, somehow, you ask members of the press itself, of course, about whether they want to go there.) Because we'd hate to think about what would happen if things in Pakistan, or Afghanistan, or in the United States, actually mattered with respect to counter-terrorism.
I know bloody well that the standard canard is "All you liberals ever say about problems is 'throw money at them.'" Well, guilty as charged, I suppose. Still and all, the most fundamental purpose of any government, let alone the current American government (whose sole raison d'etre has been a corrupt and cooperative press allowing it to repeat its misrepresentations of its own competence to "protect" us), is, in fact, to... protect us. Specifically, that is to say, to protect us from enemies foreign and domestic with armed forces, protect us from the aggressions of each other with police and courts. At a minimum, these functions have to be paid for. At least, somewhat.
But, as Bruce the Veep vouchsafes to us, to quote Joe Biden of all people, trying to guess the next move of the Bush II Administration is like being an FBI profiler trying to guess the next move of a serial killer.
This has been... "Election Year Budgetary Priorities".