KATRENA AND HILLARY
By Ted Baiamonte Comments: bje1000@aol.com (09/08/05)
Speaking for the freedom loving Republican, Thomas Jefferson, who said, "the gov't which governs best, governs least," was Bill O'Reilly who himself said, after Katrena, in his less artful way, "the gov't is never going to help you." And, speaking for the gov't loving Federalists was Hillary Clinton who said to Charles Gibson, "this is a time for massive public works spending." Of course she did not mention in her brain dead, numbingly liberal Democratic way, that this then was also a time for massive new taxes that would massively hamstring the economy.
Katrena did indeed highlight a massive failure of gov't but to Republicans this is more or less was what you'd expect from gov't, even a gov't in which they have a razor thin majority. For Hillary and the Democrats the massive failure is a yet another excuse to make the gov't bigger and more powerful, and, in theory, better. To Republicans this is like trying making a car bigger to get better gas mileage. After all, four years after 9/11 the gov't homeland security bureaucracy is 100 times bigger than ever, and chock full of wonderful, caring, sensitive bureaucrats too; yet it was perfectly paralyzed by Katrena? Do we need to get rid of it or do we need to have Democrats manage an even bigger version of it? Hillary's standard Democratic answer seems preposterous given that it has just been tried here and now, and incidentally by every country on earth prior to Jefferson, who with the opposite theory, managed to create the greatest country on earth with, if you can believe it, the greatest freedom from bureaucracy on earth.
So why is it that even well intentioned gov't is so purely incompetent? Why can a businessman make a super computer, plasma TV, or PET scan machine from scratch, while a gov't bureaucrat can't drop food and water from a plane on starving people? It's simple really, the super computer that exists today was actually created by 1000s of people all over the world competing with each other over 100s of years to gradually develop the technologies used in the super computer that exists today. A bureaucrat never had to compete with any body, anywhere on earth, at any time in order to earn a living by being competent at dropping food and water from a plan on starving people. Moreover, he never even had to practice doing it, not once. When the time came to do his job, he was no more qualified to do it than a kindergarden teacher would be to make a jet engine.
So what is the solution? Local gov't is inherently less bureaucratic and more accountable to the people it serves than the Federal gov't. The Feds can't have a specific disaster plan for every town in America, nor can the practice it. What they can do is order every town to have a plan and to practice it as if it was really important to plan for a disaster. The New Orleans Mayor was screaming and yelling at the Feds as if his city was their responsibility because, unbelievably, he had no working plan of his own even though the canals always could have always been blow up by terrorists at any second; with ease. The levees were constricted on dirt, 66% of homeowners had no insurance, few if any had boats, life rafts, food and water stocks, buses and trains were not organized to help, and the Super Dome and Convention Center had no back up electricity, or plumbing. When you ask about why there was no plan they say they had one but the disaster prevented them from implementing their disaster plan? Only a bureaucrat would offer that up as legitimate excuse.
One 4000 square building (the size of a modern home) filled with bottled water would have been enough to sustain the city for two days but it did not exist. Another similarly sized building stocked with food and basic medicines would have been enough too. All the locals could do when a disaster finally did strike was to cry to a distant Federal Govts 1000s of miles away; manned by incompetent bureaucrats most of whom had never been to New Orleans, let alone had the qualifications and experience to get there and rescue them. As of last night (a full seven days after the hurricane) Joe Scarborough was all over the TV screaming at the top of his lungs that all over Mississippi he saw only small private charities on the scene but no sign of Local, State or Federal gov't.
In the end you had complacent, incompetent locals lazily abdicating their responsibility to a tiny incompetent Federal bureaucracy 1000s of miles away. In the future it must be every man for himself and his neighbor with no expectation of much if any help from anywhere. That way more rather than less people are involved in the rescue, and the people who have the most to lose and are the most accountable have the most incentive to take care of themselves and their neighbors. In the end, freedom and individual liberty is the answer while Hillary threatens only to make matters worse with her proposals to make the distant Federal bureaucracy even bigger. Happily, Katrena is gone, but tragically, Hillary and the Democrats remain.
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