Tuesday, July 02, 2013
Parkinson again 3
Savile Broadcasting did a 'location piece' from the American southwest, emphasizing two stories: (1) Colorado legalizing marijuana; (2) the Arizona wildfire that killed 19 firemen.
In the interviews on both stories, one theme emerged repeatedly, but SBC didn't make the connection explicitly.
(1) On marijuana, SBC interviewed a former DEA executive who stoutly defended the actions of DEA in catching lots of drug merchants, and stoutly rejected the idea of legalizing anything. Then interviewed a Colo legislator who pointed out the plain fact that DEA's budget has gone up steadily while overall drug use has gone up or remained unchanged.
(2) On the wildfire, SBC interviewed a fire expert who pointed out that this particular area has been unburned for 40 years, thanks to careful 'Smokey Bear' policies.
Hmm. We have two federal agencies that pursued policies designed to increase their own budget, but carefully avoided doing anything that would decrease the problem they're nominally supposed to solve.
Parkinson again. Bureaucracies exist SOLELY to increase their budgets and powers. Bureaucracies will NEVER move in any direction that leads toward eliminating their mission.
Admittedly the wildfire situation is complicated by a separate (non-Parkinson) government failure. Governments at all levels have encouraged new houses in the middle of forests, because that's where rich people wanted to build. Sane gov'ts should have realized that their resources were unequal to the task of protecting those houses, and should have prohibited the development.
¶ 3:15 AM 
