Posted by Allen Lewis
One of the great failures of the George W. Bush administration - and there are many to choose from - was the wild expansion in the size, scope and power of the state. The Department of Homeland Security is a prime example. This agency (the third largest Cabinet department by headcount) has been a cesspool of waste, ineffectiveness and fraud since the day it was created. And now we find out that US "intelligence" agencies which fall under the purvey of DHS knew that Major Nidal Hasan was in electronic contact with al Queda in the months before his rampage at Fort Hood.
Like all government agencies, DHS is not subject to market forces. In a market system, when a firm fails to provide goods or services of adequate quality, it goes out of business. The incentive to succeed (with success defined by the customer) is clear, and the cost of failure is the immediate and complete withdrawal of resources to the firm by the market.
In the realm of government, failure is rewarded with additional resources, which are always stolen from the people through theft, legal plunder, and/or inflation. This is because a lot of politicians and moneyed special interests have a lot to lose if a government entity were to fail. Further, I categorically reject the idea that Americans have to give up their liberty to the state in order to secure liberty. DHS should be abolished immediately.
(Interesting bit of trivia: what was the last government agency to be abolished, and when did it happen. The answer is surprising, if not disheartening.)
