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Time to Cut the Coast Guard’s Budget

news > Mondo Washington by James Ridgeway” href=”http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0536,ridgewayweb,67412,2.html”>village voice > news > Mondo Washington by James Ridgeway

In this hurricane, the one government agency on the ball is the Coast Guard, a highly decentralized agency now stuck within the Homeland Security maze. With only 40 aircraft, it pulled off over 1,000 rescues yesterday. …

Diverted from its original function of maritime safety to such tasks as the war on drugs and lately the war on terror, the Coast Guard has shined. Remember, it was the Coast Guard commander in New York who organized one of the most extraordinary operations maritime rescues since Dunkirk on 9-11, pulling together ferries,tugs, yachts, and all sorts of other boats to evacuate half a million people from downtown New York. ?I have long thought the Coast Guard was a good model of how you can have devolution within the federal government,? said Sam Smith, editor of the online daily Progressive Review and himself a former operations officer on a cutter. ?The National Park Service has something of the same quality. Interestingly, they are two of the best regarded federal agencies.?

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