According to the Department of Homeland Security, New York City and Washington, DC, will receive less money this year than last for counterterrorism efforts. The initial reactions to this news are pretty much what you’d expect.

From Peter David:

New York didn’t vote for Bush. Not only that, but one of the major Dem challengers for 2008, Senator Clinton, represents New York. Nothing like trying to slap a black eye on NY’s representation (“Our funding got cut! Why weren’t you watching out for us?”) Florida, meantime, is Jeb Bush’s backyard. Missouri voted for Bush. Kentucky went for Bush. Nebraska went for Bush. Wisconsin went for Kerry, but only by 49.8 as opposed to Bush’s 49.4. Close enough to flip in 2008.

I have no idea how anyone can think that this administration, which outs its own CIA operatives in order to exact vengeance, would have done any different.

If one assumes (as Peter tends to do) that Bush is willing to completely disregard anything and everything to help those in his “good ol’ boys network”, then I can completely understand how one would reach the conclusions that Peter did.

I’m not a blind Bush follower, but I’m also not particularly convinced that he’s either evil or completely incompetent, but my initial reaction was one of disbelief, too. Cutting spending in New York City, which houses some of the nation’s most iconic landmarks (I’m not sure where Peter got the “no national icons” quote from earlier in his post — I can’t find it on any of the news articles I’ve found on this topic, but assuming it’s real, whoever said it was apparently not thinking at the time.) seems rather idiotic.

After giving it some more thought, I’m not sure it is as bad as it sounds. Suppose I was rich, and I decided I needed to spend a lot of money to protect, say, my comic book collection from theft or fire. The first few years, I’d probably put a lot of money into putting together a nice fire-proof building, with lots of comic-book-safe fire extinguishers. I’d slap a few security cameras on it, hire some security experts to analyze everything, a few guards to keep an eye on things 24/7… and eventually, I’d get done building stuff. Instead of the huge initial outlay, my annual “Comic Book Security” budget would drop down to maintenance costs and guard salaries.

The cut in spending wouldn’t mean I was any less secure than I had been the previous year, it would just mean that my initial costs had been paid for. And now that I had the free money, I might look into securing something else, like my DVD collection.

I’m not sure that the same thing is going on here, but it seems like a logical guess, doesn’t it? Maybe some of the initial costs in NYC and the nation’s capital have been paid, and they’re shifting costs to some secondary areas that they’d like to defend. At the very least, that seems to me to be more likely as contributing reason for the drop in spending than “Bush is EEEEEVIL!”

That’s just my $0.02, though.