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I've been pretty quiet for quite a while now, but after hearing some comments at work, I can't avoid commenting on the Katrina situation.

theferrett said it best: "In politics, you don't get to say, 'Don't play the blame game.'" In the linked article, he presents an excellent case for why now is the time to point fingers, figure out who's responsible for the tragedy going as awry as it has, and do what we can to prevent the next Katrina.

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From:

jrduncans.livejournal.com

I disagree. To properly assess what went wrong and how to fix it will take time that can't currently be spent, because ongoing recovery, aid, and rebuilding are more important. Add in the fact that red-hot emotions tend to lead to faulty reasoning, and therefore less valuable conclusions, and it's clear that the time to "point fingers" is a few months from now. It's silly to find out who did what wrong at a time when emotions mean that we can't even all agree on the extent to which things went right or wrong.

From:

diedee.livejournal.com

Furthermore, If we point fingers now we can trip up the people who are trying to make a difference. We give them reason to spend time trying to cover their asses, instead of focusing on the rescue as it needs to be done.

Imagine trying to run a marathon. Imagine trying to run a marathon while people on the sidelines are pelting you with shit. Your natural reflex is to duck, and spend time trying to clean it off. Even if you don’t duck and keep running, you waste energy trying to ignore. This is energy that could better be spent running. You’d be faster and more effective if others would leave you alone, let you do your job, and *Then* when the damn marathon is over pelt you with shit.

People are dying. I think Foamy the Squirrel said it best: Shut up, and let the rescue workers do their jobs! People are dying. Instead of sitting on our thumbs and whining, hows about we donate money and time to help these poor bastards?

http://www.illwillpress.com/kat.html

So, in summery
1. We can’t get an accurate accounting of everything that went wrong until the rescue effort is over
2. We are too emotional now to do it rationally even if we had all of the nessesary information.
3. In rushing to find scapegoats so that we can “Feel important” we might prosecute someone who doesn’t deserve it. This is even worse than not prosecuting someone who does deserve it.
4. We are forcing people to expend energy defending themselves that could better be spent trying to help others.

From:

jasonlove.livejournal.com

I agree that sending a fleet of lawyers to lay siege to Homeland Security's headquarters isn't going to be productive, and would actually be counterproductive at this stage. But then, that's not really what I had in mind: I just wanted to say that the way the administration had been handling the crisis was unacceptable. I've given you one half of the reason I was compelled to write already; the following datasheet (composed by Arc) was the other half of my inspiration. I'll let you judge it for yourself.

"And now, for a quick look at history and some selected numbers crunched over on Yahoo & kos...

The federal government is the last line of defense, and as such, is the most critical.
It is supposed to be in palce in case all other defenses fail.

In August of 1969 when Cat-5 Hurricane Camille hit roughly the same area as
Katrina, President Nixon had already readied the National Guard and ordered
all Gulf rescue vessels and equipment from Tampa and Houston to follow the
Hurricane in. There were over 1,000 regular military with two dozen
helicopters to assist the Coast Guard and National Guard within hours after
the skies cleared.

President Bush (41) -- August, 1992 -- was in the midst of a brutal campaign
for re-election. Yet, he cut off his campaigning the day before and went to
Washington where he martialed the largest military operation on US soil in
history. He sent in 7,000 National Guard and 22,000 regular military
personnel, and all the gear to begin the clean up within hours after Andrew
passed through Florida.

In September 1999, Hurricane Floyd -- a category 3 -- was bearing down the
Carolinas and Virginia. President Clinton was in Christchurch, New Zealand -
meeting with President Jiang of China. He made the proclamation that
only Presidents can make and declared the areas affected by Floyd "Federal
Disaster Areas" so the National Guard and Military can begin to mobilize. Then
he cut short his meetings overseas and flew home to coordinate the
rescue efforts. This all one day before a Cat-3 hit the coast.

Bush 43 - August 2005 - Cat-5 Hurricane Katrina bears down on New Orleans
and the Mississippi gulf. Both states are down nearly 8,000 National Guard
troops because of the Iraqi War -- with most of the rescue gear needed. Bush
is on vacation. On sunday, the day before Katrina makes landfall, Bush rides his bike
for two hours. On Monday, the day she hits, he goes to Sen. McCain's birthday party in Arizona;
and attends two closed Medicare reform speeches to senior citizens.
People are dying, the largest port of entry in the United States (and fifth largest in the World)
is under attack. Troops and supplies are desperately needed. The levees are cracking and
the emergency 1.5 ton sandbags are ready, but there aren't enough helicopters or pilots
to set them before the levees fail. The mayor of New Orleans begs for
Federal coordination, but there is none, and the sandbagging never gets done.

On Tuesday, Bush goes to San Diego to play guitar with country
singer Mark Wills, and to give a speech about how Iraq is just like WWII. The
levees give way, filling New Orleans with water, sewage, oil and chemicals.
Ten percent of all US exports, and 50% of all agricultural exports ordinarly
go through this port. It is totally destroyed. Bush decides to end his
vacation a couple of days early on Wednesday, but not on Tuesday night.
He had tickets to a Padres game for that night. He goes back to Crawford,
with every intention of doing something on Wednesday. Bush arrives on
Friday saying of the rescue effort 'Results are not acceptable'. (More)"

From:

jrduncans.livejournal.com

What a load of drivel. The President is, in this case, a figurehead for the Executive branch. What exactly should he as an individual have been doing personally in Louisiana to make things better?

Let's please at least be intelligent enough to discuss whether the people for disaster recovery did their jobs properly or not, not what George Bush was personally doing. Good grief.

From:

jasonlove.livejournal.com

I agree with you that now isn't a great time to address the accountability issue, but in a few months, the media focus will be gone. People will yawn. "Were we prepared for Katrina? God, are we talking about this again?" And they'll change the channel.

Compare this to 9/11: the biggest changes to our national structure came while we were still in panic mode, and we can't even bring ourselves to get rid of them now that it's become obvious that those changes were for the worse. When we as a nation are thinking rationally, we're locked in partisanship and apathy. When we as a nation are hyperventilating with terror or outrage or [b]something[/b], then we make changes.

Presidential approval is down to some 40% right now. Would you rather wait for it to come back up before questioning whether his administration delivered on his promises of security?

Don't think that I'm advocating this at the expense of recovery, however. We should be doing everything we can to recover from Katrina. Our elected officials should have been leading the way, though, and they haven't been doing a very good job of it--isn't a little bit of negative feedback in order?

From:

jrduncans.livejournal.com

I think I've linked to enough on my blog to indicate that it's not perfectly clear to what extent things could have been done better. Certainly the expectations of all the rediculously angry complainers are out of whack with reality. So most "negative feedback" is just your typical case of misplaced anger: you can't get angry at a storm, so get angry at the government.

I don't care if people will yawn later. Good. The people don't know anything about disaster recovery operations. That can't competently judge who did what wrong. An independent commission of experts, like the 9/11 commission, should look into this later and determine what could have been done better, who screwed up, and what we can do to fix things later. Like with 9/11, most of the problems are institutional, rather the fault of any particular individual or government organization. I think it's clear that the relationship of various level of government and their line of command, cooperation, etc. need to better defined, changed, etc.

What the hell does presidential approval have to do with anything? He's can't be re-elected, so who cares? The focus shouldn't be on the President, it should be on how we can improve our emergency systems in the future, be it from natural disasters or terrorist attacks.

Not sure where you were going with the 9/11 thing. Seems like an argument in favor of my point of view: things done immediately afterwards were mostly mistakes. Things done much later to study things helped lead to institutional changes that will hopefully make us safer in the future.

From:

jasonlove.livejournal.com

Now I see why I've been so confused: Stephen, where IS your blog? The domain listed in your userinfo doesn't resolve for me, nor does screamingspheres.com. I thought you'd just been.... really, really quiet, for a very long time, or something.