The last few weeks have been a truly interesting adventure. First, I discovered that the nameless and faceless bureaucrats at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) want to zero out our dear fire service. They proposed actions that made it look as though they wanted us to disappear from the face of the governmental earth. I next received word that the Homeland Security gang wanted to shanghai our United States Fire Administrator. To use the words and thoughts of Alice in Wonderland to portray my true feelings, things then began to get curiouser and curiouser.
Then comes the topper. Someone in OMB wanted to combine the FIRE Act monies into a broader homeland security grant initiative. As my friends down south are quite fond of saying, "them
