Text 12208, 53 rader
Skriven 2007-02-13 22:35:19 av Josh Hill (15649.babylon5)
  Kommentar till text 12118 av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated (15559.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Cath0licism and Creati=nism
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On Mon, 12 Feb 2007 09:39:55 -0800, Charlie Edmondson
<edmondson@ieee.org> wrote:

>Now, the usual and accepted way of dealing with disasters in the country 
>and universe that I live in, is for immediate help to be purely a local 
>concern, with rapid help to be a state/regional concern and LONG TERM 
>help to be a national concern.  Now, those that for whatever political 
>axe or wish for a nanny state, seen to think it is the federal 
>governments job to step in and supercede this natural flow of 
>responsibilty.  Where I come from, the line "Hi, I'm from the 
>Government, and I'm here to help you!" is a line from a horror picture, 
>not a moment for relief!

FEMA pre-positioned supplies for Katrina, and the DOD pre-positioned
troops for Katrina. The problem is that they were crassly inadequate.
And in any case, /after/ the disaster did hit, the Federal response
was an awful joke.

It wasn't the first time. The same thing happened under Bush I during
Hurricane Andrew, and the people of Florida weren't, as I recall,
happy about it. Small government ideology has a way of going out the
window when your house is flattened.

It may be romantic to suppose that localities can cope with disasters
of this magnitude, but they can't: the devastation is too widespread.

Here's an account of FEMA's failure in Andrew, and the changes Clinton
made:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0509.franklin.html

The thing about San Francisco isn't that it took everyone by surprise,
although of course it did, or that it wasn't just the poor who stayed
behind -- I think the "blame the poor" argument is more than a little
shoddy -- but that nobody ever looked back. The local government did
what it could -- as, for the most part, it did in New Orleans --
locally-stationed Federal troops moved in, aid and troops poured in
from around the country via railroad. Katrina should have elicited a
response of that sort, but it didn't. The President and his
incompetent political appointees didn't even know what was going on,
what the entire world was seeing on their /TV sets/ -- and when Bush
finally did catch on, he got everything wrong. The Feds devoted more
effort to blocking aid than to helping.

-- 
Josh

[Truly] I say to you, [...] angel [...] power will be able to see that [...]
these to whom [...] holy generations [...]. After Jesus said this, he departed.

- The Gospel of Judas
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