The Department of Creating Departments

Doug Wilson nails it today regarding the slow federal response to Katrina:

Political observers should recall the debate over the creation of Homeland Security, along with moving a bunch of agencies under the new department, creating a whole new layer of bureaucracy. "There! That should do it." This is the liberal's idea of streamlining -- make something big and bloated. The liberal thinks that if something is streamlined on paper, then it must be ready to leap into action being all streamlined like it is. The old Soviet plans would streamline things so that there was only one gas station at an intersection, which made much better sense, and looked so much more streamlined on paper. The only problem was that there wasn't any gas. In a market economy, there are three to five gas stations at an intersection -- looking quite messy on paper -- but at least there was lots of gas. Now, is the point streamlining the flow chart on your agency wall, or streamlining the flow of gas into the tank?

Someday we'll be saying the same thing about the TSA and other federal "fixes" that will result in future miasmas.