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http://www.dhs.gov

created by the Bush (43) presidency.......

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With more than 200,000 employees, DHS is the third largest Cabinet department, after the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs






The Homeland Security thing wasn't new a bureaucracy. It was an amalgamation of already-existing, smaller departments. Many of which were considered to be poorly run. Amalgamating them in the belief that they could share information and centralize management to make them more efficient. I believe DHS has been mostly well-received, but it's been awhile since I've seen news coverage on DHS's performance.

However, FEMA was a casualty of that effort. It was small and well-run by career cilvillians (i.e., not political appointees). But, then they threw them in with the political hoopla of Homeland Security, morale plummeted, attrition rose, Katrina happened, and they all looked like jackasses.

These last two paragraphs don't fit the rhetoric I'm spewing because I don't know enough about them to know if they fit or not. I just know that it wasn't a matter of Bush trying to control new bits of our economy with government. But, trying to make existing government work better.

Bush wasn't as anti-government as I, and most fiscal conservatives, are. Fred Barnes coined a term, "Big Government Conservative", whose definition fit Bush. He later said it was a shitty term and changed it to "Strong Government Conservative". The idea is that govt spends oodles of money, but doesn't create bureaucracies to spend it. Just writes checks to people.

Note how the money was spent post-Katrina. He was writing checks to anyone and everyone thinking pouring money into it was enough to fix it. And, see how the money was given to the big banks after the financial services meltdown. There were no real stipulations on how the money was to be spent. Banks started buying banks which decreased competition and didn't get the money flowing in the credit markets. (Note how financial services have starting doing better but it hasn't helped the economy?) Same thing for the post-invasion reconstruction of Iraq. Just money flying everywhere and nothing got done. If Bush proved one thing to me, it was you can't just start writing checks. If government is going to write checks to achieve a goal, there have to be stipulations on how that money is spent.

Good lord, I'm having fun typing in this thread. I've gone so far as to hijack a thread I was very interested in...