Quote of the Day: On Incompetence

“The incompetent with nothing to do can still make a mess of it.”
– Laurence J. Peters

Tags: incompetence, Quote of the Day

Seems Like Only A Year Ago FEMA Knew What It Was Doing…But That Was In An Election Year, Wasn’t It?

This just pisses me off. Apparently, natural disasters are only important in Presidential election years. God, this makes the whole fuck-up look less like incompetance and more like a general lack of caring and compassion. It just gets worse and worse, doesn’t it?

Imagine if, in advance of Hurricane Katrina, thousands of trucks had been waiting with water and ice and medicine and other supplies. Imagine if 4,000 National Guardsmen and an equal number of emergency aid workers from around the country had been moved into place, and five million meals had been ready to serve. Imagine if scores of mobile satellite-communications stations had been prepared to move in instantly, ensuring that rescuers could talk to one another. Imagine if all this had been managed by a federal-and-state task force that not only directed the government response but also helped coordinate the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and other outside groups.

Actually, this requires no imagination: it is exactly what the Bush administration did a year ago when Florida braced for Hurricane Frances. Of course the circumstances then were very special: it was two months before the presidential election, and Florida’s twenty-seven electoral votes were hanging in the balance. It is hardly surprising that Washington ensured the success of “the largest response to a natural disaster we’ve ever had in this country.” The president himself passed out water bottles to Floridians driven from their homes. [“Things Left Undone”]

I hope the displacement of thousands of voting populace completely skews elections for the next four years.

Hat tip to The Nitpicker.

Tags: politics, FEMA, Hurricane Katrina, incompetence

IceGate Continues…

An article in Michigan’s The Gloucester Daily Times today tells more about FEMA’s confusing ice issues. The article breaks down the costs indicating that in the end, the government will pay more than $4 for each of the thousands of five-pound bags of ice that would have cost us $1.50 each at the gas station or convenience store; plus, it will cost close to $1 billion in trucking for the $2 million worth of ice.

The initial problem was that too much ice was ordered by FEMA for areas that had been evacuated. As a result, some truckers have driven over 3,000 miles in journeys that, if mapped out, might look like one of Billy’s wanderings in Family Circus.

The money being spent to move the ice around the country is much larger than the cost of simply making more, said Scott Memhard, president of Cape Pond Ice on Commercial Street.

“The worst part is that there are people on the Gulf Coast that still need this ice, but FEMA is apparently not set up to distribute it to them,” he said in an e-mail yesterday. [“Ice Bill Getting Higher (The Gloucester Daily Times)”]

Here’s what the truckloads of ice shipped to Gloucester are costing taxpayers. The Army Corps of Engineers ordered 169.4 million pounds of ice for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts:

$900 — Some truckers’ pay per day

$2 — Some truckers’ pay per mile traveled

26 cents — Cost per pound of ice

$12,480 — Highest estimate of a truckload of ice

$44,044,000 — Total cost just for ice for relief efforts [“Ice Bill Getting Higher (The Gloucester Daily Times)”]

And some of the hired truckers are confused and angry with the situation. They feel as though they’ve been given the run-around, not to mention that many of them wanted to help the areas that were affected.

Tags: FEMA, incompetence

American Quicksand

I’ve been telling myself that one of the reasons I haven’t been writing about Hurricane Katrina is that I’ve been on vacation, but I did find time to post photos daily from my trip. I also haven’t kept up on my blog reads but I’ve seen the devestation of the Gulf Coast in color on television almost every waking moment I was in the hotel room or the airport. It all makes me sad and depressed. When I think of what has been lost, of what could have been prevented, of what a nightmarish mess this has all become, I feel brain dead. I keep waiting for someone to wake me up from all of this — if I feel this way, how must those who are knee and neck deep in it feeling?

And my feelings of dispair are all mixed in with my disappointment in the government in general. It just seems like we’re spiralling into some sort of dictatorship or similar. I feel like our two party system is failing us. I feel like there’s no real checks and balances. I feel like this administration is the very image of the worst kind of American government where lies and mistruths are the rule and people just follow blindly. I’m not saying that the Democrats are much better either.

Anyway, Richard Cranium at the All Spin Zone put how I’m feeling quite well.

I’ve been struggling for days with writing a comprehensive post on the Katrina debacle, and the failure of government at all levels to do its most basic function - protect its citizens - and particularly, those who are least able to fend for themselves. There are no excuses for the deaths and destruction in New Orleans. None. Federal, state, and local governments all have an equal share of the blame for this disaster of preventable proportions.

I wish I could bind my anger, but I can’t right now. I wish I could bind my despair right now, but I can’t. I wish, I just wish, that I could feel better about anything in this country, the country my kids are going to inherit.

…I want to write (and I’ve written and backspaced over it 5 times now) that there are better days ahead. Being in the frame of mind I’m in right now, I’m not so sure. Honestly, I don’t think I’ll see those days in my own lifetime.

…The war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina both drive home the point that the government which is chartered to protect us no longer does so. The three independent branches of our government (and the fourth estate) have become wholy owned subsidiaries of corporate America. A coup d’tat was held, and not a shot was fired.

Because not enough people cared to be inconvenienced.

I’ve talked about this before, and I actually spent some time over this past weekend thinking about it. Given what’s happened on the Gulf Coast this past week, and the morbid turn in Iraq prior to that (hey, who doesn’t love a good U.S. government-sponsored Islamic theocracy after $300 billion and thousands of lives?), you would have thought there would be pitchforks and torches at the gates of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. And you would be wrong. [“Makin’ the Nut” (All Spin Zone)]

Tags: Hurricane Katrina, politics, incompetence, hopeless, Iraq