from the tiny Dept. of Government Agencies I'd Like To Invent Rather Than Abolish

I neglected to post anything about the Blagojkevachgq scandal. It was interesting to read Fitzgerald's complaint. Kind of like the enjoyment I used to get from watching Cops. You know, here's a really dumb criminal, let's stick a camera in his face while he's being arrested and listen to all of the moronic things he has to say.

Funny? Yes. But on the scale of nefariousness, Blagokjavqghic & Co. is dwarfed by the ongoing crime spree over at the Bush Administration. In other words, nothing to get too worked up over.

The most interesting angle in the story to me was the suspicion that there are hundreds or thousands of Blakogadvaiqchs out there at all levels of government who happen to be not quite so ambitious as he, nor as blazingly stupid, and therefore continue their petty-to-middling public corruption without coming to the attention of law enforcement or running afoul of the handful of prosecutors, like Fitzgerald, who actually care that a sizable portion our publicly elected officials are liars, thieves, and crooks.

Because, after all, our law enforcement personnel have far better things to do with their time and resources. Like conduct military-style raids on the homes of terminal cancer patients who smoke weed to make themselves feel marginally better prior to their deaths.

So my humble suggestion is that we disband the DEA. Just send pink slips to all the agents and their executives and their middle managers and their secretaries and send them to alternative job training. Preferably something involving shovels, or mattocks, or possibly pool skimmers. Something where they can perform a service of actual value to society. Do the same with all of the multi-agency drug task forces that infest our cities and towns.

Granted, this will result in a tough problem for our federal, state, and local governments. Two, actually. First: what to do with all the money we will save as a result of these massive budget cuts? Second: how will we keep our prisons filled and avoid the nation's prison industry -- having enjoyed such a profitable run during the drug war -- from suffering the same fate as the auto industry?

These are certainly grave challences for us to overcome. Luckily for us, I have a solution. In place of the DEA and its various clones at the state and local level, we can create a similar infrastructure under the auspices of the newly formed Public Integrity Enforcement Agency (PIEA). The PIEA will be funded from our savings in closing down the failed War On Drugs, and will wage a new War On Public Corruption, using all the same tactics (surveillance, informants, entrapment, civil forfeiture, military-style raids, perp walks, and the like, though hopefully eschewing such tried and true drug war mainstays such as planting of evidence and subornation of perjury), but targeting greedy politicians, power-hungry appointees, and hypocritical bureaucrats. We should have a strict mandatory minimum sentencing regime and ruthlessly enforced No Tolerance policies.

This is one government program somebody like me could really get behind. I might even pay extra taxes to support it. The only hitch is that, before long, and in stark contrast to the drug war itself, this war might begin to show results, and with all the corrupt politicians occupying prison cells instead of government offices, people like me might actually have to run for office to fill the void. Then, my fellow Americans, we are in for some serious trouble.