incensed

I'd like to focus on two statements I've been hearing that incense me to no end.

1. They should have evacuated when they were told...
I've heard this sentiment by a number of people in person and in the press, including by Michael Brown, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the agency in charge of federal disasters. On Thursday 1 September, he gave an interview on CNN and not only did he say, "Things are going relatively well, " but he started to take out his frustration on the people who he is in charge of helping:

Unfortunately, that's going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings... I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans... And to find people still there is just heart-wrenching to me because, you know, the mayor did everything he could to get them out of there... So, we've got to figure out some way to convince people that whenever warnings go out it's for their own good...

This statement is a testament to ignorance, self-centeredness, not to mention just asinine. In a national disaster like this one, the reasons for why people stayed are not important. What's important is that fellow citizens, regardless of factors they can and cannot help, shouldn't be suffering like this in an American city. We aren't animals who leave the weak behind to die, we are human. I think David Brooks put it best on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer last night.

I mean, first of all, [the government] violated the social fabric, which is in the moments of crisis you take care of the poor first. That didn't happen; it's like leaving wounded on the battlefield... In 9/11 you had a great surge of public confidence. Now I think we are going to see a great decline in public confidence in our institutions. And so I just think this is sort of the anti-9/11 as one of the bloggers wrote... We've been hit again in a different way; people feel lousy; people feel ashamed... In part that is because of the failure of Bush to understand immediately the shame people felt...

I'm not sure why Michael Brown is in charge of FEMA (ok, so I have a couple of ideas why...) -- he's obviously in way over his head and he has no disaster management experience. But more on FEMA to come later.

2. If we don't spend the money by the end of the year, we'll lose it...
I live and work in the national capital region and I've heard this statement more times than I can count, and I know a number of people who get just as angry as I do when they hear it. Government exists for its citizens, not to fund some government or government contractor's spending spree or pork project. If there's extra money at the end of the year, give it back to the taxpayers! Or at the very minimum, give it back to spend on other priorities. I'm guessing this is the reason why the levy project was never funded in New Orleans, because so much waste and pork barrel spending diverted resources away. People are blaming the government for not funding the levy project in New Orleans. Granted, this is where I'm willing to cut a break -- we can't fund every project in the US, and I know there are many critical infrastructure projects we need to work on. But there's absolutely no excuse to have a delayed reaction to a disaster. If we know our infrastructure has holes and we can't patch them right away, the very least we can do as a government is to be prepared for the inevitable disaster. This brings me to my overarching point of frustration, that government and institutions seem to have forgotten their purpose (and the citizens have stood by idly to let it happen).

Government, especially the one we have today, has a lot of responsibilities, many of them important. However, it's fundamental purpose is clear as day, it opens our Constitution:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Put in the context of recent events, Tom Oliphant, also on the News Hour, had this to say:

But deeper than that, I think, is the anger that is going to come from the realization that virtually all public policy -- state, local, federal, where this area is concerned, has been against the public interests for decades. And the realization that government is one of the reasons we have government has been violated by virtually everything government has done for decades.

And at this point I don't think there is any question that Bush is emblematic of this larger, deeper failure of government. I don't think he's any worse than government in general has been. I don't think he's any better.

And as a result, I see him more as a symbol of what has gone on for years, again, and it's not one party or the other party or one ideology or another ideology; government has failed here. And what Bush didn't do before the hurricane or didn't do right away after the hurricane is only emblematic of that failure.

I totally agree with Oliphant -- this isn't about political parties, but rather a failure of the entire institution. This doesn't just affect the poor, people who have means should realize, if they haven't already, that if the government can't help those who need it the most, it's going to get pretty scary when tragedy strikes those who do have the resources. Clarence Page, also from last night's News Hour:

A number of shocks happened here... What we used to call the underclass really, the lower class of New Orleans, the folks with the most disenfranchised -- those who are left out of the master emergency plan because the master plan was centered on evacuation.

And some how somebody forgot that one hundred to - one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand people would not have cars, would not have easy access to transportation, would be sick, elderly, infirm, a variety of problems, and then all these other backup problems involving the Superdome, involving people getting the word that there would be food and water over at the convention center. They got there, there was nothing, not even somebody with a clipboard and a megaphone.

Everything just broke down for the folks who needed help the most. And when government cannot provide for those who need help the most, it makes everybody else feel less secure. And then what about the folks on the highway, you had to go 50 miles away just to get some gasoline, to get food, water, no matter what class you were. Things just didn't work as well as they were supposed to at a time when we are supposed to have a new Homeland Security Department, post 9/11, this is more than a decade after Hurricane Andrew shook up Bush 1 right before the '92 election, and folks complained about the response of FEMA and Washington then. Have we learned anything?

And then finally, a lot of folks are looking at TV and saying 'is this America?' I was looking, I was reminded of Haiti, which I have been to twice in the last five years and I was reminded of a citie soleil, the worst slum in the poorest island country in this had this hemisphere as I was looking.

Have we learned anything? Let's take a look at FEMA and how it's changed between Hurricane Andrew (1992) to today. FEMA was established by Jimmy Carter in 1979 by Executive Order and was put in charge of handling national disasters. As you've probably read and heard, FEMA was strongly criticized for its slow response to Hurricane Andrew. As a result, FEMA was strengthened and given a cabinet-level position and won accolades from both left and right for being a well-run organization and a model for the rest of the government. Then came the behemoth, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). FEMA was absorbed into DHS and stripped of its responsibility to prepare for disasters, which was supposed to become the responsibility of a new directorate, one that still is yet to be established. I'm not an expert in disaster management, so my judgement of what happened to FEMA can only be taken with a grain of salt. However, Eric Holdeman, director of King County, Washington's Office of Emergency Management (where earthquakes, tsunamis, and Mount Rainier erupting are the major risks), is qualified to explain what happened to FEMA and he does so in an op-ed piece in the Washington Post.

David Brooks's thesis in his New York Times editorial piece is that political change tends to follow natural disasters. The Johnstown (PA) Flood of 1889 precipitated the progressive era. The Mississippi Flood of 1927 (New Orleans) contributed in part to the New Deal. (Both continue to influence our politics today, for better or for worse.) I can only hope what we've witnessed this past week will energize a new movement to reform government and reenable citizens to take responsibility for how its government will serve them.

what the hell?

I'm writing today out of frustration, outrage, and utter disappointment about how poorly our government (from the local level all the way up to the federal level) is handling the situation down in the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina, especially in New Orleans. After 11 September 2001, we (the people, and the government that we elect to represent us) put so much focus, so many resources, so much money, and all our attention on being ready for a disaster. This is a disasterous situation in New Orleans and we can clearly see how our government is, or rather is incapable, of responding.

In a matter of under a week, a major American city has fallen into third-world conditions. At the shelters that the government told people to go to, there's no water, no food, no medicine (not even insulin), no sanitation. All the toilets are full to the brim and overflowing and people are relieving themselves wherever they can find a place. People have already been dying and they will continue to die once cholera starts spreading. Meanwhile, our effort to evacuate the Superdome is being hampered by gunshots. Our government has so little control over the anarchy that gunfire from thugs have intimidated our military into slowing the operation down.

The mayor of New Orleans is so helpless that he pleaded on national televsion last night, asking for a "desperate SOS," as he is out of options. The governor of Louisiana has been on TV several times and it's pretty obvious that she has no plan or idea of what to do. The President himself has done little to comfort those hurt in the coastal cities and has not called for any organized effort to help, other than donating money to relief organizations. This is better than nothing, but the relief organizations don't have the resources or power that the Government has to airlift and helicopter supplies, to maintain order, to repair critical infrastructure (like the levees themselves to start with) to allow relief to happen. This is the government's job!

We've spent all this money on disaster/terrorism preparedness but what did it all go to? Where are the contingency plans? Whether the disaster is natural or man-made, I'm rattled at the thought of how poorly the Government is responding, even after we put so many resources into being "ready". The President said that nobody could have expected the levees in New Orleans to burst. With all due respect Mr. President, yes they did. Even I, an average citizen sitting here down the street from you in Washington knew long before the storm that New Orleans was vulnerable to Category 3+ hurricane storm surges. When the last hurricane struck that area, the media showed animations on their evening news reports as to what could happen. It was no secret -- I even saw a special on it on the Discovery Channel of all places, not to mention there's something out there called the Internet.

I really hope we as a people learn a lot from this disaster. Government (especially freely elected republics like ours) is a reflection of its people, and the reflection that I'm seeing is disturbing. We as a people need to reform Government in so many ways so that they can better serve us than they can right now. There is no excuse for us to sit here helpless and complain when we directly are responsible for what the Government is doing and not doing. Yes, we the citizenry, freely elected our Government, and as a result, we are responsible for how the people of New Orleans are being left to die.

I'm making a vow today to renew my first aid training and CPR certification and stay certified for life. I hope everyone can take a minute today to think about doing one thing to be ready for any disaster that strikes, not just for yourself, but to be able to help your neighbors in need too. If we know the Government can't handle the situation, we're going to have to take care of ourselves.

refugee relief

I'd like to ask all of my loyal readers and friends to please contribute, if you can, to the American Red Cross to help the refugees right here in America. I'm sure you've read of the conditions (Washington Post, Wikipedia) down in the Gulf Coast -- it's frightening just to read about it, let alone be there in it. My family owes its existence to the American Red Cross as my parents were once refugees from another country, arriving here with nothing more than two empty hands, not so unlike the families along the Gulf Coast who find themselves without a home today.