Subj : Re: Um...no comment? To : Angus McLeod From : Frank Reid Date : Wed Sep 07 2005 09:57:00 Re: Re: Um...no comment? By: Angus McLeod to richardw on Tue Sep 06 2005 21:39:00 > *EVERY* government is a bent as a dog's hind leg! Do you think that there > is a government funded project *anywhere* that doesn't have serious fat > skimmed off the top for Haliburton ^W somebody? > > If 50% of the funding is vanishing down some politician's relative's back > pocket and you cut the funding by 50%, do you really believe that the > remaining 50% will get where it is supposed to? The opposite is more > likely: With less to steal from, the swine will probably steal an even > *greater* proportion of what is made available. First, I want to apologize publicly to Daemon for getting overly animated this past week. It's neither my personal style nor my online persona to resort to personal attacks. As always, his points were well-researched and presented. My issue was that they were presented only from a narrow focus (his) of the much larger topic, and I suppose the "stress" of the ongoing disaster got the better of me. Bear in mind that I never used "fraud" or "abuse" in my discussions on levee fund appropriations, because I do not believe any individual action could be classified as illegal or even unethical. The "Katrina Commission" (or whatever it is to be called) will bear out the facts on levee funds disbursements by state and local officials. In the aggregate, mismanagement and misdirection will probably be labeled as negligent, but hindsight is always 20/20, as they say. Here's a probable taste of what they'll find: http://tinyurl.com/bmoxd It may be an eye-opener for some of the public, but it will be downplayed by government officials and by the commission itself. The reason is quite simple. That's how our economy works! Challenging how these funds were used is to challenge the fundamental mechanisms by which the federal government returns tax revenue from our wealthy to our poor. After all, not every LA resident is a Caterpiller distributor or quarryman, but many could be gainfully employed as groundskeepers at a local golf course! Frankly, the alternative would be to place half the state on a federal welfare anyway. Why *not* distribute the funds to generate work for as many of our citizens as possible? Why do you think there's such uproar when the Base Realignment and Closure Commission starts dropping axes on military bases near small towns in these less-wealthy states? I will wager that one of the first new construstion efforts that takes place along the Gulf Coast is re-establishment of military bases -- even those that were slated for closure and realignment before Katrina ever formed! I believe the discussion on "pork barrel" politics here is misguided in it's use of the word "derogatory": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_barrel_politics The issue I took was simply that certain political quarters are challenging federal government budgeting decisions over the decades, and that's completely disingenuous. Why do you think you've heard this accusation only from the likes of Sidney Blumenthal, and not from Mayor Ray Nagin or Governor Kathleen Blanco? The "facts" of levee funding as they relate to this disaster are: - Not all available federal funding directed towards levee improvements was actually applied to those efforts. In some cases, the funds were never even expended. - The section of levee that actually breached to flood the city had already been upgraded, and no future construction was even planned. - By design, the levee systems were incapable of withstanding a hurricane of Katrina's magnitude. - A plan to institute a levee system that could withstand such a storm was presented only in the recent years (in response to studies concluding the vulnerability of the city). Initial funding just to conduct the study was in the tens of millions, and actual construction was estimated to take several decades. Now, do I believe FEMA should be dismantled and rebuilt as an independent, streamlined federal agency? Yep, as should DHS itself, too! A behemoth like this simply cannot respond effectively to disasters. We would have seen the same results had bin-Laden himself given us a week to prepare for this disaster, and not Katrina! We tried the concept, and it failed miserably. It's time to cut our losses and look at Plan B before another catastrophe occurs. Should heads roll at the local, state and federal levels? Yep. Nagin should be run out of town by the locals themselves for his lack of even the slightest semblance of an evacuation or catastrophic recovery plan. Blanco should be drummed out for her completely ineffective leadership during the crisis. FEMA's Brown should be fired for having his head up his ass. And Chertoff should be disassembled along with his entire agency. Let's hope the "commission" focuses on these things soon, so something like this doesn't happen again. --- þ Synchronet þ BBS Doors (www.bbsdoors.com) .