No Strings Attached

I posted this at DownsizeDC.org. Excerpt:

State, county, and municipal governments were not intended to be administrative districts of a powerful national government. They are supposed to be self-governing and accountable to the people.

We don't see that today. Where the federal government does not have direct control, it provides grants to state and local governments. And the grants come with strings attached. To receive the money, governments must comply with federal requirements.

Two recent episodes of the crime drama "The Closer" illustrate this. In the first, a Los Angeles Police Department homicide unit must undergo WMD training, spending the entire day in HazMat suits while they're trying to investigate a murder. They had to do this in order for the Department to receive federal funds. In the second, a Homeland Security auditor was murdered. One LADP accountant did not mourn her death, saying that he spent most of his time complying with federal requirements even though federal dollars funded just a tiny portion of their budget. Federal funding = more bureaucracy.