9/13 Finger pointing/FEMA thread below reminds me of the following line from
Plan 9 From Outer Space:
LT HARPER: "Your guess is as good as mine, Larry. But one thing's sure.
Inspector Clay is dead...murdered...and somebody's responsible!"
\_ I don't think there's any evidence of competence in any of the
governmental parties involved. But I am also not comfortable
due to the lack of evidence to say that any one governmental party
is less competent than any other. I suspect any such claim at
this point would be ideological rather than factual.
\_ I think it's safe to say that all parties in all sectors south
of the Mason/Dixon line are less than competent. I used to
feel bad about this "predjudice", but the older I get, the more
evidence I see of it. This clusterfuck would not have happened
in Boston or Seattle not becuase there's a FEMA conspiracy
to fuck New Orleans, but because the police and other emergency
service workers in those places see themselves as public servants
and not as the biggest gang in the jungle. Ask yourself why
the NYPD didn't act like the NOPD on 9/11. Because of the
leadership of New York? Maybe a little, but mostly because
northern culture is simply, objectively better. Every single
NYPD cop had to make a personal choice to put their city before
their own life, and every single NOPD cop had to make a choice
to turn into a fucking barbarian the day order started to
collapse. The fucking southern trash are right that the schism
in American culture is about values, they just got it wrong who
has the values.
\_ 9/11 NYC was a much different event than Katrina/NO. Using
the response of *some* NOPD in a wide spread disaster as a
sign of all southerners being trash vs. NYC in a devastating
but physically localised disaster as a sign of the superiority
of northerns is, at best, simply inappropriate. You really
think people in NYC are going to "come together and help their
fellow man" when the shit hits the fan on a wide scale? Most
of them watched it on TV from home the same as the rest of us.
When you start tossing phrases like "southern trash" around
as generally applicable to a hundred million people, you only
diminish the rest of your points. Same thing with phrases
like "every single NOPD cop had to make a choice to turn into
a fucking barbarian". So every single NOPD cop was looting,
raping, and murdering people? I think not and no reasonable
person is claiming that anywhere. I know people who were
there at the superdome as first responders with food, water,
medicine, etc. It wasn't the NOPD shooting at them. It
wasn't NOPD raping children and shooting random innocents.
It was "their fellow man". The same "fellow man" you'd find
in any wide spread disaster because that's what some people
really are when there's no legal structure to hold them back.
\_ This is cool. -John
\_ I wouldn't judge the entire South by New Orleans. For
instance, Florida seems to be able to handle these
calamities. The truth is that Louisiana is an extremely
poor state and that the people living in and running New
Orleans in particular are corrupt and incompetent. I know
someone who lived nearby on the Mississippi coast whose
house was flooded and the situation there never deteriorated
like it did in New Orleans. Of course, those were mostly
law-abiding white folks with at least enough money to
get the hell out of there - but even the people who
stayed came together as a community to help each other.
New Orleans is many times larger than those towns, much
poorer, and the people are far less educated. Even so, the
people who stayed do not represent the entire city. Most
people got the hell out of there. The poor, elderly, and
criminally-minded are what remained.
\_ I don't think any reasonable person is heaving blame exclusively
at any one person - the fact is that the whole system failed.
My hope is that this failure will lead to a larger conversation
about how to make government work better and more efficiently -
but my fear is that politics as usual will guarantee lots of
expensive pork for the few, lots of opportunistic politics,
and very little change for the better. It's also quite alarming
that in the four years after 9/11, the government (at all levels)
seems to have become *less* competent at handling disaster and
catastrophe. Contrast the four years after 9/11, the amount
of money spent, and what was accomplished, with the four years
after Pearl Harbor.
\_ Look at the finger pointing discussion. There was clearly
a desire to exonerate the LA governor and place the blame
at FEMA's feet.
\_ I think all levels of the government, both federal and state,
failed. Like I said, I don't see any sign of competence
anywhere. But the finger pointing discussion below is a
clear example of an attempt to exonerate the LA governor and
to place the blame at the feet of FEMA.
\_ Yeah, but it's the motd. I said *reasonable people*. ;)
I also believe that the failure is systemic, a failure of
the current approach to government at state and federal
levels - but that's a discussion for another time.
\_ You know, there is a difference between the culpability of
state and local authorities and FEMA, because FEMA has
*no other reason for existence* other than disaster
planning and recovery. The governor of Louisiana
was not elected on the basis of her ability to
prepare for and recover from disasters, while everyone
involved with FEMA *should* be in their positions
because of their abilities in this specific area. -tom
\- by making the "clusterfuck" sound really bad, the
region will get a lot of fast tracked money.
spreading around "10,000 dead" is probably worth
a couple of billion. that moron brownie will cost
teh federal govt a couple of more billion. it's
too bad he didnt commit suicide like the JAL supervisor
after a JAL crash. of course given a lot of this will
flow to halliburton, it's not like some of the executive
branch people will care ... $2000 for a displaced
person, $200,000 to Halliburton Carpet Cleaning Service. |