Ludicrous Speed

When I read the headline, "NY mob task force spends 6 MONTHS probing 50-cent sausage heist", I thought it must just be a sensational take on a truck full of 50-cent sausages getting robbed.  But no, this is an actual on-going investigation by the "Waterfront Commission in Bayonne, NJ of a robbery worth $2.50 (there was some iced tea involved as well).

The commission was blasted in August 2009 - one year before the sausage investigation was launched - as home to corrupt execs barely better than the waterfront's notorious mobsters. Officials were accused in a damning 60-page report of misusing Homeland Security money, keeping a convicted crook in business and surfing the Internet for porn. The iced-tea-and-sausage probe - which has yet to wrap up - is considered an embarrassment among investigators and dock workers. "They snicker about it," one of the sources said. So ...  someone (or more likely, some commission) commissioned an investigation into the commission tasked with policing and investigating crime at the port, the commission investigating the commission then issued a 60-page report and the investigation into the missing sausage and iced tea has yet to wrap up?  Absurd. What's the root of the problem here?  How did this happen to us?  How do we allow such absurdity, and more importantly, why do we pay for it?