-
I heard my name. :p
I have not had any personal experience with FEMA. We rent, therefore, we don't have any reason to deal with them...they deal with home/property owners. However, they are, as was mentioned before, another example of government bloating and (to use what is probably a politically incorrect saying) "too many chiefs, not enough Indians". They announced, in the hubbub caused by Katrina's second landfall on the Gulf Coast, that victims of the first landfall, in South Florida, were not going to be able to make any claims. Their reasoning? That there were too many fraudulent claims last year. Well, excuse me, but isn't that why we pay them? To filter out the real from the fraudulent? And now, because they were unable to successfully do that, people who actually need their help are not going to get it? I'd be willing to bet that those same people don't get any tax cuts, even though they're clearly not getting what they paid for.
I know that it's hard for people who aren't directly affected to really take this seriously. I understand that, cause I've been the one looking at it going "Gee, that's sad, but it doesn't really affect me" in other situations. Not that Katrina directly affected me, but it could have done so easily. What I'd like is to see people look at it from their personal perspectives. This is the FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT for our country. What that means is that if some clown detonates a dirty bomb in your local train station, or supermarket, or shopping mall, these same idiots are going to be in charge of your food, water, transportation, and personal safety. How safe do you feel?
It's been brought up that the people who were in New Orleans somehow deserved what they got, because they are welfare recipients, and that the problem is with the government, but that it started 40 years ago, by instituting the welfare program which has led to the kind of living conditions that led to the Superdome, and the Convention Center. Yes, I will agree that welfare is a crutch, not a helping hand. And that it prolongs a sense of lassitude and irresponsibility. However...these are still people. Ask yourself, if you hadn't had the good fortune to have been born into a family that could take care of you, into a family that had a good chance of giving you a start into the kind of life that you wanted, would you want to be written off as a "welfare case" and your family and your needs somehow less important than others? The fact of the matter is that regardless of what your personal situation is, you're no less important than anyone else. And I don't think it was neccesarily an issue of color, but one of "caste". These were not important people. So the measures neccesary for their safety weren't there.
As for the government responsibility...pfffft. There's so much blame to be spread around it's stupid. The mayor...I honest to god feel for this man. He's passionate, he cares about his peole, he cares about his city. Is he qualified for his job? I'm thinking probably not. The governor should have called for National Guard intervention long before she did. She's not too bright, apparently. And the federal government...yes, there's blame, yes, there should have been money to strengthen the levees. But there was an enormous amount of money going into the state of Louisiana, and maybe someone should have been looking at how much and how it was being spent, instead of just handing over money.
It's a sad, shitty, horrible situation. And as usual, it's the people who have the least amount of power, and the least amount of situational responsibility who are paying for it.
-
All this **** about Brown is total crap. Accusations are flying everywhere,
and he is the scapegoat. He didn't make the statement about going home
and walking the dog until after he was sacked and told to go back
to washington. Read the whole article.
Fema is not the fire department. They provide help after the emergency
For God's sake this was a natural disaster. You may as well blame god!
We could fire thousands of bureaucrats(and maybe we should), but it would
be better to wait until dispassionate experts report on this two or three years
from now and make practical reccomendations.
:cool:
-
as long as there is enough blame to go around:
If Sen. Mary Landrieu were as good at busing black people to safety as she was at busing them to the polls to vote, none of them would have died.
---------------------------------------
In the wake of Hurricane Betsy 40 years ago, Congress approved a massive hurricane barrier to protect New Orleans from storm surges that could inundate the city.
The project was stopped in its tracks when an environmental lawsuit won a federal injunction on the grounds that the Army's environmental impact statement was flawed. By the mid-1980s, the Corps of Engineers abandoned the project.
Source
