The USA has earmaked billions for "Homeland Security" but the money is being allocated by capricious, idiotic bureaucrats who take funding away from Democrat-leaning coastal cities like New York and shower it on "heartland" towns, with bizarre stipulations. A tiny Massachusetts hamlet was given the largest grant in Mass, but with the stipulation that the money not be spent on useful equipment like fire-engines.
When the fire department in the tiny Berkshire hamlet of Cheshire needed a new fire truck, it asked Uncle Sam for a little help.
The response last month was stunning: a $665,962 homeland security grant.
The award was nearly 26 times the annual budget of the volunteer fire department in the town of 3,500. And the rub: The department is not allowed to spend it on a fire truck…The town does have the Cheshire Cheese Monument, a sizable concrete sculpture of a cheese press commemorating a 1,450-pound cheese hunk given by town elders to Thomas Jefferson in 1801. But its value as a terrorist target is not readily apparent…
"We really needed the truck," he said.
(via Schneier)
