Posted on 09/09/2005 6:23:52 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Among all the perils facing survivors in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina — drowning, starvation, toxic waters, poisonous snakes — sexual harassment had to be far down the list. But days after the disaster, the Federal Emergency Management Agency had 1,400 firefighters from around the country who had volunteered to help in New Orleans sitting in a conference room in Atlanta undergoing eight hours of training that included a sexual-harassment class. All this before they were allowed even to go to the Gulf Coast area to give out fliers and FEMA’s phone number.
Hurricane Katrina has laid bare the peculiar perversities of the bureaucratic mind: its utter commitment to niggling rules, its inability to take risks, its failure to the think on the fly. Leadership matters, and in the disaster’s initial days, it was hard to tell when FEMA head Michael Brown was doing more harm — when he tried to do his job, or when he tried to explain on TV how he was doing his job. But at the end of the day, FEMA is a close cousin to your local DMV, which you would never want to trust with your life.
In so much of the Katrina response, senselessness ruled the day. Post-9/11 regulations meant that FEMA couldn’t put evacuees on flights at the New Orleans airport without security screening and federal air marshals on the flights. Apparently, the fear was that terrorists had positioned themselves in New Orleans prior to Katrina so they could pose as bedraggled evacuees, on the off chance an opportunity would arise for them to hijack a rescue plane. Since the power was down, the X-ray machines and metal detectors didn’t work, and it was decided that manual searches would have to suffice. Don’t forget to pat down the children!
The president of Jefferson Parish, south of New Orleans, has complained that FEMA turned away three Wal-Mart trailer trucks with water and kept the Coast Guard from delivering 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel. Republican Sen. Trent Lott criticized FEMA for blocking thousands of trailers sitting in Atlanta ready to head to the Mississippi coast. Surely, there were carefully crafted rules and procedures that accounted for these and other decisions to turn away aid. The only eventuality that such rules and procedures can’t be written for is when someone should say, “to hell with all these rules and procedures.” Louisiana Rep. Bobby Jindal, a Republican, writes: “My office became so frustrated with the bureaucracy that we often turned to private companies. They responded more quickly and flexibly.”
Of course, the only thing Washington politicians love more than beating up on bureaucracy is creating it. It’s one of the few things Washington can do — make new offices and hire bureaucrats to fill them. So, after 9/11, all of Washington supported stapling together as many agencies as possible, including FEMA, in the Department of Homeland Security — such a sprawling bureaucratic monstrosity that it will take a generation to make it work, if ever. But everyone from the president on down pretended he had protected homeland security through the mere act of naming a department after it.
Unfortunately, there is not much that can be done to make bureaucracy less bureaucratic. It makes sense to keep as much authority at the state and local levels as possible, since there officials will at least be more aware of local circumstances (although they can also be scandalously incompetent, as we’ve seen in New Orleans). Political leaders must constantly ride herd on the bureaucracy to keep it from giving in entirely to its inbred, irrational tendencies. This is where the Bush administration really fell down. Finally, there is no substitute for old-fashioned individual initiative. A great hero of New Orleans is the 20-year-old who commandeered a school bus and drove evacuees all the way to Houston, arriving before any of the official convoys. The key to his success? He acted without bureaucratic approval.
— Rich Lowry is author of Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years.
Oh,oh. That's going to be draw the attention of some hare-brained liberal.
How does that saying go?
It's easier to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission.
And the Conservative Establishment wonders why they continually lose the PR wars? How about getting the FACTS out about how the Disaster Response system works instead of joining with the Dems PR spin game?
That's a niggardly point you are trying to make.
It's obvious you're not a hare-brained liberal.
Eating your own.
In the Eye of the Storm
By Jay D. Homnick
Thank God for the Coast Guard. Those boys were in New Orleans in no time, sun-up the first Monday morning, following the eye of the hurricane with an eye to saving people's lives. Those fellows did not blink.
Oh, you can knock Chertoff, but you can't knock the Coast Guard, who were giving the shirts off their backs to help folks. You can knock Landrieu, but you can't knock the Coast Guard, who were landing on roofs to pick people up. You can knock Nagin, but you can't knock the Coast Guard, who were busting their noggins to help in any way possible. You can knock the Parish leaders, but you can't knock the Coast Guard, who were ensuring that survivors did not perish. You can knock Bush, but you can't knock the Coast Guard, who worked every waking moment to help, even when they were bushed. And you can knock FEMA, but you can't knock the Coast Guard, who gave from their heart, seeking neither FAME nor fortune.......***
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8716
It's funny how we notice words like that now. At my office once, the head of the division walked by and asked me about my boss (who was a friend of hers). I said something like "Yeah, he's a real slave driver". Of course the division head who I was speaking with was a black female. About one tenth of a second after the words came out of my mouth I realized what I had said. Oops.
Sorry. I really got to break myself of the bad habit of using the generic YOU in my posts. Was not directing it at YOU for posting, I was commenting on LOWRY for writing. There is SO much that could be written about but instead "Establishement" Conservatives seem more intrested in joining the Dem spin machine then helping get the TRUTH out there.
Yeah. I guess like most Senate Republicans, being popular with the cocktail circuit is more important the being right for a growing segment of the "conservative" establishment.
George H.W. Bush did it, and it cost him the '92 election when his FEMA screwed up badly in Florida during hurricaine Andrew.
If they had been even moderately competent, he would have carried Florida and beaten Bill Clinton.
I thought Clinton's appointment of James Lee Witt was more of the same, a political payoff to keep his mouth shut about Arkansas, and maybe it was, but Witt turned the agency around and made it very effective
Clinton understood that FEMA failure will destroy a President.
George W. Bush has followed in his father's footsteps, using FEMA as a dumping ground for poitical clowns.
FEMA director Brown seems to be a lying incompetent.
Story Here
Yes, the Mayor and Governor are primarily at fault, but that wouldn't matter if we still had a competent FEMA.
So9
That TIme story has already been discredited. Try to keep up with the board!
That TIme story has already been discredited. Try to keep up with the board!
He is still an incompetent hack.
So9
Why? Because he was ready to go in and the the LA director of Homeland Security said no? Why wasn't Mississippi or Alabama a FEMA disaster?
His incompetence at FEMA resulted in most volunteer workers being turned away or sent on a Chinese Firedrill when they could have been saving people.
There are still aircraft waiting loaded with supplies all over the world for FEMA to decide where they should deliver the goods.
There are hundreds of loaded trucks all over the SouthEast waiting for numbnuts to decide what to do with them.
FEMA is supposed to be a coordinating agency.
There is no excuse for these people not getting an immediate rational answer as to where to go.
Nor is there any excuse for local authorities having to spend 2 to 4 hours on the phone to get answers to the simplest questions (per Tom DeLay).
Managing this kind of thing isn't strange unknown territory.
The Pentagon is full of Logistical Planners and software that should serve as a model.
Any decent coordinator could have gotten the debit cards for refugees all handed out properly in one day, instead of damned near causing a riot with their icompetence 2 days ago and still not having the cards handed out.
SO9
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