Comments | unixronin: Not too many surprises here

unixronin

Not too many surprises here

Mar 01, 2011 13:57

The U.S. government has 15 different agencies overseeing food-safety laws, more than 20 separate programs to help the homeless and 80 programs for economic development.

These are a few of the findings in a massive study of overlapping and duplicative programs that cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year, according to the Government ( Read more... )

economy

Comments 5

mr_spock March 1 2011, 20:07:40 UTC

That thunderous silence you hear is the informed, skeptical minority refusing to be shocked by the revelations of this report. Those people are simply counting in their head to see how long it will be before Washington Liberals realize that the easy gravy train is running out of coal.

It could be worse... milktree March 1 2011, 23:55:51 UTC

I gotta say, as much as government waste and separate organizations working at confusing cross purposes bugs me, wouldn't it be *far* worse to have exactly one, huge, monolithic Federal organization that did any of those things?

You can't get rid of the FBI, or CIA, or BATF (as much as I'd like to) or FEMA, or any of the other national TLAs, but you can easily weed out the under performing regional or local functions.

Which is to say, yea, it sucks and all, but I'd hate to have any of those functions done by a single national "too big to fail" department. (that's just as bad as any of the small ones.)

Re: It could be worse... unixronin March 2 2011, 00:11:24 UTC

Trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea: Spent to death, or governed to death...

(Though personally I would get rid of BATF and FEMA. Both are competent mainly at exceeding - and abusing - their authority, while failing - often spectacularly - spectacularly at their actual jobs. It's merely that most of FEMA's failures are more visible than most of BATF's.)

Re: It could be worse... lonewolf545 March 2 2011, 14:46:32 UTC

Another article today about how the gun used to kill a DEA agent in Mexico came from a guy who was already under supervision for selling illegal guns, in fact he'd been provided forty guns by government agents to transport, which were intercepted before crossing the border (allegedly). That makes TWO Federal agents killed by guns provided by individuals already under investigation for gunrunning and who were allowed or assisted in obtaining guns by the US government in the past few months.

Re: It could be worse... lonewolf545 March 2 2011, 14:51:09 UTC

You can easily get rid of the BATFE. Give their alcohol and tobacco functions (which should be scaled back to those permissible under the Constitution) to the FDA, move the LEGITIMATE investigative powers to the FBI (which already operates other crime labs), and eliminate the unConstitutional taxes on firearms and manufacturers (since it is established case law that a tax that targets a Constitutionally protected right is unConstitutional, firearm manufacturers should only have the same taxes any other business has).