How Do You Sell Relief? D-R-O-U-G-H-T-A-I-D!

A front-page article in yesterday's Washington Post provides a fascinating short history of mission creep in federal agricultural disaster relief programs, which should be required reading in courses on public choice. While the whole thing's worth reading, you really get the essence of what you need to know in the headline: "No Drought Required For Federal Drought Aid."

Comments

[Umbriel]

There was an old ('70s) National Lampoon organizational chart for the Federal Government that listed a "Department of Self-Serve Funding Bins" -- Apparently now officially no longer a satire.

[John]

You guys think this is bad, you should see hurricane relief. There are still FEMA offices on the gulf coast doing reconstruction from the 2004 hurricane season. That is right, two years and the worst hurricane season in a decade later and we are still conducting cleanup from the hurricanes from the year before. I sympathyze with people who loose their homes, but isn't living in a FEMA trailer for two years feeding off of the government tit a bit much? Once you start handing out money, whether it be drought aid, hurricane aid, whatever, bureaucrats will start to make a living off of the program and people will get dependent on the money and the program will never end.

[Kevin]

while agri-pork is some prok we need to fry..I think there are some bigger pork programs we need to tackle.

[Sandy]

I love that this is reported in the Post, not the Times. O, how times have changed.