Posted on 09/19/2005 8:16:27 AM PDT by Irontank
If a private-sector employee performed as badly as the federal, state, and local governments performed before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina, he would be summarily fired. But the governments will claim their budgets were too small and proceed to extract more money from the taxpayers. That’s how the political world works. And it’s part of the reason that governments perform as miserably as they do.
Hurricane Katrina should finally disabuse people of the idea that government exists to take care of them, especially the most vulnerable. That self-serving promise was never credible. Do we need more evidence that it was a fraud? With guardians like these, who needs enemies?
Government at one level or another dominated every hurricane-related service on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, and in New Orleans. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for decades has managed the levees and other forms of flood protection. Governments continually gave assurances that it had plans to deal with a major storm before and after it made landfall. Doubts were often voiced by the newspapers and weather experts, who warned that the agencies were not prepared, that the levees would not contain the water, and that many casualties would result. But the politicians told the residents otherwise, and the residents believed them, having been taught to trust their “leaders.” When the emergency systems failed under the force of Katrina and thousands of people were abandoned, we all got a rude awakening.
This time the self-aggrandizing politicians and bureaucrats must not get away with their lame excuses. They are responsible for many needless deaths and much property destruction. We all should be outraged.
A private company that had built those levees and made those assurances would have hell to pay. It would be facing bankruptcy and its officers lawsuits for gross negligence or even criminal indictments. The prospect of such consequences tends to deter private harmful conduct. But government personnel are effectively immune from such consequences. They don’t risk their own capital. Accountability is nonexistent. There are likely to be no dismissals, much less indictments.
The problem is not only the people who run the agencies. It is in the nature of bureaucracy, which gets its money through coercive taxation, does not receive market feedback from consumers and insurance companies, and never faces bankruptcy. Cynics love to denigrate private businesses as putting profits before people, but it was Wal-Mart and Home Depot that were getting the goods to desperate people (when government agents weren’t impeding them) while FEMA was still recovering from the shock that the levees failed.
The words “Army Corps” and “boondoggle” have long gone together naturally. The Washington Post reported that “over the five years of President Bush’s administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion.... But hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state’s congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate.” It quoted Pam Dashiell, president of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association in New Orleans: “Our politicians never cared half as much about protecting us as they cared about pork.” As the Post emphasized, “In fact, more than any other federal agency, the Corps is controlled by Congress; its $4.7 billion civil works budget consists almost entirely of ‘earmarks’ inserted by individual legislators.”
But it is not only the Corps that failed. It’s FEMA and that monstrosity the Department of Homeland Security. It’s President Bush and his outrageous war in Iraq, which has diverted precious resources for a fool’s errand. It’s also the state and local governments. All can be condemned for the same offense: They took on solemn tasks, made people dependent on them, precluded private alternatives — and then failed miserably. That is government in all its glory.
I, for one, am not outraged.
This one line blew any credibility the author hoped to have.
The author ruined his article with a cheap-shot at the Iraq war.
No accuracy in these statements whatsoever. DNC talking points maybe, accurate - not even.
DU commentary typed by tinfoil hatters. No government has ever prepared for a Category 5 hurricane obliterating 3 major cities and 90,000 square miles of area. FEMA did a whole lot more than you will ever know and they were there BEFORE the hurricane hit.
Then I guess you've never bought a car that was a lemon, been charged for repairs that were not completed, had an appointment with a contractor that never showed, had a contractor who did not meet deadlines or attempted to substitute lower quality products for those specified, had a bank attempt to tack extra charges on a loan, had a problem with a credit card company, needed to hire a lawyer to get an insurance company to do its job, worked for a corporation seemingly bent on self-destruction, etc. Those are just off the top of my head, I'm sure you can think of more examples of incompetence, malfeasance, and just plain laziness in the private sector.
Does it bother you when tax-payers are called upon to bear the burden for private sector blundering; airline bailouts, S&L bailouts are two examples that come to mind. What about private sector pension plans? Enron anyone?
Isn't it the "more capable" private enterprise that pays lobbyists millions to bend government to its collective will?
While bad employees may eventually be fired and bad companies go out of business, bad politicians need not be re-elected, but that requires us to be informed and active. The problem with government is the same problem with the private sector - people. Stupid, lazy, corrupt people occupy both worlds just as industrious, intelligent, competent, honest people do.
Like Enron?
Yea, I read that, but his actions ($200 Billion dollars worth) make him look like he taking all the blame. In many ways it doesn't matter if something is true or not, the perception is all that matters. I just think it was a mistake. He could have made more of an effort to pin blame on state and local officials and then take credit for bailing them out.
Your post seems to be addressed to somebody else: I never addressed the issue of criticizing FEMA. What I did do was suggest that the federal government shouldn't be spending enough money to buy Belgium to rebuild the gulf coast.
Exactly like Enron. The market destroyed Enron long before the SEC stepped in. The US government's own accounting practices are more corrupt than Enron's--for example they conceal debt by counting savings bonds in the SS fund as if they were cash--but instead of going to prison, or even getting fired, they get to continue spending trillions of dollars per year.
President Bush made a smart move this morning by coming out publically against bringing those people back to NO. Mayer Nagin is on record (in his haste to recover his disentegrating voting base)as trying to get the people back as soon as possible, after insisting they be forcably removed not too long ago. Now if disaster strikes again there is no way they can blame the president. Its going to be very clear who didn't care about the welfare of the people.
I agree with you on that. But the government is nevertheless worthless.
You need to do some research. Enron had been fiddling with its books for years to create the illusion of profitability before either the government or the market caught on, in fact, Enron may well have never been profitable - they were a house of cards. If anything, it was the California energy crisis, and the state's lawsuits and investigations that precipitated a closer examination and brought the empty energy giant down.
Your point? The market did catch on, and quicker than the SEC did. Meanwhile, the Enron debacle cost millions--while the fraud being committed in Washington is costing hundreds of billions. Which should we go after first--the muggers, or the mass murderers?
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