The Case For Abolishing The Department Of Homeland Security

July 16, 2013



By Charles Kenny

The problem with DHS is bigger than a bloated budget misspent. An overweight DHS gets a free pass to infringe civil liberties without a shred of economic justification. John Mueller, a political science professor at Ohio State University, notes that the agency has routinely refused to carry out cost-benefit analyses on expensive and burdensome new procedures, including scanning every inbound shipping container or installing full-body scanners in airports—despite being specifically asked to do so by the GAO. Again, it’s unsurprising that the result of a free hand in enforcement has been excessive and counterproductive security measures, as I’ve argued before: like TSA agents taking away a GI Joe doll’s four-inch plastic gun because it was “a replica,” and deterring so many passengers from airline travel that more than 100 people have died on the roads because they substituted a dangerous means of transportation (driving) for a safe one (flying).
Not all of the department’s activities are similarly high-cost, low benefit. About a quarter of its budget goes to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, for example. FEMA has apparently done a better job after Hurricane Sandy than it did after Katrina flooded swaths of New Orleans. But both events occurred when FEMA was under the department’s umbrella, and neither had anything to do with terrorism—so the benefit of lumping its operations in with the Secret Service under one cabinet secretary is unclear.



The Case For Abolishing The Department Of Homeland Security [continued]

http://libertycrier.com/the-case-for...4cfc-284711521