I’m sure we’ve all read, by this time, about the cuts in the Bush budgets for completing hurricane protection projects. Now it will cost BILLIONS for clean-up and THOUSANDS are DEAD. Shouldn’t fiscal responsibility include spending a little on insurance?
But we should have gotten those people the FUCK out of the city.
Levees be damned. We can’t guarantee that they would have held anyway (please don’t mistake that for me being an apologist. I am furious about that as well.).
But we SHOULD have gotten those people out of there on as soon as the evacuation was ordered. There is no reason, no excuse for leaving people in the path of an oncoming disaster like that.
Hey, I’m with you. Who would’ve thought to put together a hurricane evacuation plan in a city that gets hit by hurricanes on a regular basis.
I was talking with a conservative friend of mine (not a wing-nut, someone who’s opinion I actually trust), and he agreed that this was a total failure, but thought that the federal government is taking too much heat right now.
I’m not ready to cut them any slack, but he did bring up a good point : There is a lot that should have been done before the feds ever got (or more appropriately, should have gotten) involved.
aren’t the feds involved even as something like this is about to happen? shouldn’t there have been coordination on Saturday and Sunday to find a way to get people who could not afford it on their own out of the city? you can’t order people out of somewhere and not give them a way out.
Bush did just what his MBA taught him to —
Completing the hostile takeover of Corporation USA, he began its systematic looting. Simple things like favorable contracts to his buddies, complex things like hostile takeover attempts that drag on and on…
And to keep the books looking good enough to attract new investors, he hollowed out the funding of the boring divisions that aren’t easily seen from the outside — support, infrastructure, and emergency capabilities.
With the loss of funding, the shorted divisions became less important — and the positions of leadership perfect for handing out as “honorary” executive positions.
Anyone who’s worked for a typical US multinational can recognize this sort of leadership. The kind that looks spectacular in the short term, and hollows out its very future.
But then, that’s what the market rewards.
FEMA is just one of the many casualities in this CEO Presidency.