Emergency
In which Rats run out of financing
Good time of day, humans!
Sometimes, unexpected happens.
Politically, it’s quite convenient to manage as much as possible as an «emergency» or «unexpected occurrence»:
you get more media coverage and photo opportunities;
for the same money, you’re likely to receive more gratitude from the recipients;
and last but not least, you often get to bypass normal procurement procedures and spend money with less oversight.
Once politicians get away with handling some seasonal or otherwise common occurrence as an emergency, it’s only going to get worse. For example, in our little Eastern European backwoods, funds for «unforeseen occasions» have been used to give teachers a raise — and more than once. Perhaps most of us know similar stories.
It’s not surprising at all that, once a real emergency arrives, emergency funds turn out to be already spent on something else.
Bonus off-topic to restore good mood
A man comes to a psychiatrist and says confusedly:
— Doc, I have a strange problem… every night when I go to sleep, I dream of rats playing soccer.
— This is easily treatable, here’s a pill for you.
— Thanks doc, but can I take it tomorrow?
— ???
— You see, they have the final game tonight.
I recall well how, at the start of the Covidian Dispensation, what were *comparatively* minor budget follies turned into a massive firehose of exigent circumstances/state of exception corruption. Literal trillions went into soothing the anxieties of troubled oligarchs, parasitic institutions, and rent-seeking, laptop class PMCs. Some people grumbled, but normalcy bias is hard to break through. If the system more or less works for most people, it's impossible to gain traction against even real dangers. Put another way, if you don't see the fnord, it can't eat you... Now the fnords are dining well and the money for real emergencies won't be allocated. Maybe it could be, in theory, maybe not. But whatever the case, opportunistic ghouls are lining up for a feast.
Bonus points; during an 'emergency', all those pesky constitutional limits on government power are swept away leaving behind a nice minty freshness as they will now do anything they damned well please, including, but not limited to, stealing more money and property to cover said emergency and jail anyone that disagrees.