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[Nut Case, Sensitive]

Originally posted by Bad_Rich_Chic
Blanco was shouting through Monday that the Bush admin was trying to wrest "control" away from her, thus asserting that she was, supposedly, in control up to that point. Certainly you aren't suggesting that last week evidenced planning & coordination of any sort? That the situation was completely out of anyone's control seemed to be exactly the problem. Perhaps it was an inevitable one given the scale of the disaster, but I don't think the level of chaos & breakdown broadcast 24/7 on TV was inevitable.

It's one of the beauties, or anachronistic inefficiencies, as you please, of our federal system. The Feds can't respond until requested to do so by the state authorities, and even then, unless and until the Feds take over, the State is in charge of coordinating and deploying the requested resources. The Nat. Guard, police, troops, trucks, etc. were supposed to be under Blanco's direction. If she couldn't hack it, or if her command infrastructure was too damaged to permit her to coordinate, she needed to turn it over to someone who (in theory) could do it. She didn't, and fought the issue when the Feds tried to put things under military command - probably, frankly, the only institution with a strong enough command & organizational system to keep it together in such a situation.

For a week people have been complaining mostly about the red tape, lack of communication, lack of direction, etc. I've been hearing a lot more about the failure to get troops, vehicles & resources anywhere near the people they are supposed to help than in there being no resources available - as others have noted, trucks of water & food, flotilas of drs, etc., were trying to get to the area but couldn't get in. The local military bases were (per CNN yesterday) put on alert the weekend before the storm hit, and were reportedly pissed as hell that no one deployed them while chaos errupted on TV (because that would be the equivalent of martial law, per Blanco, who's alternative to martial law was to issue "any means necessary" shoot-to-kill orders to the police to establish order).

I am certainly not saying that, had FEMA/the Feds been properly in charge things would have gone much better, but at least it would have been centralized, which might have helped even in the face of rampant incompetence.

Here's an article that's not bad: AP, Saturday, Sept. 3

Read this article and see if you can identify any competant player. Blanco is accepting National Guard help from New Mexico before the Hurricane hits, but not getting back to Michigan until days after the storm. Washington isn't getting the paperwork out to process Blanco's requests until Thursday after the storm. Bush isn't taking steps he took after 9/11 to bring in military, national guard, and civilian airline assistance.

Enough. It's all NUTS. I'm back to my nuts.