Looters-- that’s a pretty insensitive term. Those people are “materialistically-challanged”.
Hey people, let’s not let one disaster wipe out a decade of political correctness.
Do you still stand by this post?
“Boston Barrister,” people like you caused this catastrophe. Your hostility toward using government to solve social problems, the same hostility shared by the current President and millions of other so-called “conservatives” like yourself, led to this.
Once being elected, George Bush appointed his close buddy Joe Allbaugh to head FEMA. ALLBAUGH HAD NO PRIOR EXPERIENCE IN EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT. Allbaugh’s job was to immediately began slashing FEMA’s budget and programs. After all, what did FEMA really need with all that dough that we know they can’t efficiently manage anyway, right?
Allbaugh was replaced by his college roommate and PRESENT FEMA HEAD MIKE BROWN, WHO ALSO LACKED ANY EXPERIENCE IN EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT. In fact, Mike Brown’s prior job experience was in holding international horse shows.
That’s right. People died in N.O., not because “big government is inherently inefficient” but because the guy Bush put in charge of FEMA only had experience shiny-brushing steeds and shoveling horseshit - not experience in saving people’s lives during an emergency.
People hostile to the idea of “big government” seem to forget that only “big government” has the responsibility and supposedly the means to solve the “big problems” like this, while ordinary people have no such responsibility. Private businesses and businesspeople do sometimes step in to help, but it’s not like they’re accountable to anyone, even if their job is to provide that service in lieu of the government. Just look at the “consultants” of the CACI, Int’l Corp in those Abu Ghraib jails. Although they are acting for our government, they are not government officers, and thus accountable only to the courts, in the event someone sues.
To expect a private businessman, like me, to give up hard earned cash to save people instead of having the authorized government agency be able to - or to let me create a company to more efficiently do a job “where the government failed” is bullshit.
Just admit it BB - you’re no “conservative.” A “conservative” is interested in preserving tradition and protecting the country.
You’re not even a capitalist. You’re one steroid above those anti-government anarchist militia nuts. You are one of these people who think they personally should leach every freaking dime they can get out of the government, on the premise that the welfare moms who run all the agencies are bleeding cash everywhere, until there is no more government to take from.
Will you only be satisfied, when there is only one person, exactly one, running each agency? I guess then you’re “emergency management company” will have all the power, and you’ll basically be the government, right?
In saying the “inefficient” agencies should shut down so that “efficient” private companies can take over their Congressionally authorized responsibilities, don’t you really just mean that you lack sufficient brains and ability to start a profitable company on your own, without the attendant death and destruction of others and the destruction of our own government - you talentless loser?
Were the measly “tax cuts” we have all received since 2000 worth the cost of the President emasculating FEMA and any number of other agencies, and thereby leaving people to drown, starve, murder, loot, rape and pillage down there in the wake of a Class 4 hurricane?
Congratulations. You have helped to give “barristers” an even lower reputation.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
John K wrote:
This is a politically motivated article, not an objective analysis. Honestly, it seems disrespectful to me to turn these victims’ suffering into a case for privitization.
BostonBarrister wrote:
This article is interesting, and touches on some of the more interesting comparisons and questions that have come up with respect to the “why” of our seeming lack of preparedness.
It’s not disrespectful to look at what happened and discern what systematic flaws, if any, are contributing to our lack of ability to deal with the problem.
The question is, whether the article puts forth a plausible analysis.
Your attitude, the one shared by the President, is what led to all of this.
And it didn’t argue for complete privatization. The argument is that bureaucracies are bad at implementing high-level plans for action in these cases. I believe the article specifically said that government would play a necessary role in implemenation.
I don’t find the premises flawed. I think there’s a lot to be said for utilizing private-sector resources in this area, though by no means do I have an overall implementation strategy in mind.[/quote]
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
This article is interesting, and touches on some of the more interesting comparisons and questions that have come up with respect to the “why” of our seeming lack of preparedness.
To Understand
Katrina’s Problems
Read 9/11 Report
September 2, 2005; Page A14
Imagination is not a gift usually associated with bureaucracies.
–The 9/11 Commission Report
The response to Hurricane Katrina suggests we are not very good at it. The stark images of bereft people in New Orleans and Mississippi are said to reveal inadequate preparation by the agents of government – from elected officials to bureaucracies – whose duties include commanding the vast resources and authority of government to provide help when it is most needed.
To be sure, the scale of Katrina’s force and devastation overwhelms the notion of a rationally organized response. The grim fact remains that disasters are relatively commonplace in the world. Swiss Re, the big reinsurance group, annually publishes a compendium called “Natural catastrophes and man-made disasters” listing the human and economic toll. In 2004, it recorded 116 natural catastrophes, with the Dec. 26 Asian tsunami leaving more than 280,000 dead or missing. Less well-remembered, often the case with Third World disaster, a June monsoon killed 1,845 in Bangladesh and Hurricane Jeanne in September left some 3,000 dead in Haiti, whose flooded city of Gonaives looked like New Orleans.
An industry of experts has emerged, dedicated to mitigating disasters, both their imminence and aftermath. Science magazine just dedicated its cover to “Dealing with Disasters.” We know quite a lot.
Specialists in disaster mitigation hold annual conferences to share knowledge. In January in Japan, the U.N. held the five-day World Conference on Disaster Reduction, with numerous representatives from member states. A week earlier in Mauritius, Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for “a global warning system” for tsunamis and “all other threats.” Specialized disaster Web sites exist, such as the Pan American Health Organization’s site on Disasters and Humanitarian Assistance. The U.S. oceanographic administration has created the Center for Tsunami Inundation Mapping Efforts, a sophisticated modeling program to help vulnerable nations in the Pacific.
So if we’re so smart, why are Louisiana and Mississippi sinking beneath water and red tape?
It has been reported in past days how the relief agencies, such as the Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA are struggling; basics such as food distribution are in disarray. On paper anyway, many of these problems had already been addressed. By law, FEMA requires all states, if they are to receive grant money, to file both pre- and post-catastrophe mitigation plans. Experts in Louisiana, and indeed New Orleans, have been drafting one for several years.
We know what to do. We have many specialists in the arcane disciplines relevant to understanding natural and man-made disasters. We know what to do, but we are not good at using what we know. Why not?
We fail to use well what we know because we rely too much on large public bureaucracies. This was the primary lesson of the 9/11 Commission Report. Large public bureaucracies, whether the FBI and the CIA or FEMA and the Corps of Engineers, don’t talk to each other much. They are poorly incentivized, if at all. Budgets, the oxygen of the acronymic planets, make bureaucracy’s managers first responders to constant political whim. Real-world problems, as the 9/11 report noted, inevitably seem distant and minor: “Once the danger has fully materialized, evident to all, mobilizing action is easier – but it then may be too late.”
Homeland Security, a new big bureaucracy, has struggled since 2001 to assemble a feasible plan to respond to another major terror event inside the U.S. The possibility, or likelihood, of a bird-borne flu pandemic is beginning to reach public awareness, but the government is at pains to create a sufficient supply of vaccine or a distribution system for anti-viral medicines. Any bets on which will come first – the flu or the distribution system?
Big public bureaucracies are going to get us killed. They already have. One may argue that this is an inevitable result of living in an advanced and complex democracy. Yes, up to a point. An open political system indeed breeds inefficiencies (though possibly the Jeb Bush administration that dealt with Hurricane Andrew is more competent than Gov. Blanco’s team in Louisiana). And perhaps low-lying, self-indulgent New Orleans understood its losing bargain with a devil’s fate.
But we ought to at least recognize that our increasingly tough First World problems – terrorism, viruses, the rising incidence of powerful natural disasters – are being addressed by a public sector that too often is coming to resemble a Third World that can’t execute.
I’ll go further. We should consider outsourcing some of these functions, for profit, to the private sector. In recent days, offers of help have come from such companies as Anheuser-Busch and Culligan (water), Lilly, Merck and Wyeth (pharmaceuticals), Nissan and GM (cars and trucks), Sprint, Nextel and Qwest (communications gear and phone cards), Johnson & Johnson (toiletries and first aid), Home Depot and Lowe’s (manpower). Give contract authority to organize these resources to a project-management firm like Bechtel. Use the bureaucracies as infantry.
A public role is unavoidable and political leadership is necessary. But if we’re going to live with First World threats, such as the destruction of a major port city, let’s deploy the most imaginative First World brains – in the private sector and academia – to mitigate those threats. Laughably implausible? Look at your TV screen. The status quo isn’t funny.
[/quote]
Based on what you just said, the government needs to pull out the National Guard and send in the 82nd Airborne or at least someone better equipped to handle urban combat. This is what they should have done in Liberia, and if they had anyone trained for that, they could send them in there NOW. There should still be enough special forces troops in the U.S. to handle that and keep an eye out for terrorists.
[quote]BIGRAGOO wrote:
Most of the looting is well planned complex operations. The gangs and such have been waiting on this. That’s why there’s been shots fired at the rescuers and police. They want to stall help as long as they can to move the goods to dry land and have them shipped away. Sounds ludicrous, but it’s true. There’s millions of dollars in banks and depositories that are up for grabs. This is more organized than people think. It isn’t all random looting. Why do you think there are people toting automatic weapons and seen ready to fight?[/quote]
bla di bla di bla bla di bla
grow up and smell the roses you lot.Life sucks and then you die.
the fifties were a quirk, a blip in millenia of human ‘civilisation’ and this is what humans are like if push comes to shove.
Ok, now that the dust has settled (ok, poor choice of words), how many killings and rapes were officially reported during the disaster in N.0?
Surely this is reported in the US right? But somehow it never gets to Europe.
wow, i started this about 2 months ago. was it neccasary to start it up again?