Cannibalizing New York

Referring to the DHS’s cut to NY city’s anti-terrorism funding, DHS head Michael Chertoff said:
"There was no suggestion about anything we did that New York is not the No. 1 terror target. But I do think it's fair to ask this question: After a city gets $500 million, more than twice as much as the next-largest city, is it correct to assume they should continue to get the same amount of money year after year after year after year with everybody else dividing up what remains?"

And the answer is: Why not?  Assuming that the city needed the $500 million the first year, why not assume that they need it the following years too?  Of course, they didn’t get $500 million last year, they got $207.5 million; and that’s the amount that got cut by 40%.  But who’s to say how much they deserve, outside of the process that was created for such purposes?  A process which the DHS has apparently gutted in order to deny New York the funds they probably need.

And the truth lies in his “with everybody else dividing up what remains.”  And that explains everything.  He doesn’t get it.  This isn’t about protecting the homeland.  This is about divvying out the dough.  And he apparently doesn’t like the fact that NY is getting so much of the divvy.  Even his “is it correct to assume” line would be better translated as “is it fair for them to continue to get more than everyone else.”  As if this is an issue of fairness, rather than an issue of security.  As if numbers alone trump the process created for determining how those numbers are allocated.  

So they’re spreading the wealth, even if it means they have to destroy the process used to determine such things.  Conservatives always see process as “redtape” anyway, so it just makes sense that they’d rig the process to get the results that they wanted to get.  Because this isn’t about securing the homeland.  This is about milking the system for their own purposes.  And why not?  Conservatives aren’t actually interested in fighting terrorism, and take their duties so lightly that politics will always take precedence over terrorism.  So it just makes sense that they’d completely rig the system for their own benefit.

And because conservatives already believe that that’s how everyone else does it, they see nothing wrong with doing it that way themselves.  To conservatives, it’s a dog eat dog world out there; and they still haven’t understood how that amounts to cannibalism.