To: i-node who wrote (250782 ) 9/10/2005 3:01:37 PM From: tejek Respond to Absurd? Its been the policy of the US for nearly a hundred years. It dates from frontier times when your neighbor helped you in a time of need. And its been in the bible for at least two millennia. Obviously, government does what it can do. But some natural disasters are so big, and of a nature such that government simply cannot swoop in and solve the problem. The best we can hope for is that people will be responsible (which includes local government officials) in evacuating and providing for their on survival until such time as government can mount a reasonable rescue effort. Sometimes that may be in hours, and in more devastating situations, days or even weeks. It is impressive that, in the biggest natural disaster in US history, that government was able to evacuate the entire city so quickly, etc. While we shouldn't gloss over the failures, we certainly should give credit where it is due. Look, if Mike Brown was truly a problem in not cutting red tape, then Chertoff has taken the appropriate action. Nobody has said it is a perfect process; perhaps Brown was unable to balance the need for "red tape" (i.e., accountability) vs. the need for immediacy. But I've yet to see any evidence that the federal government reacted inappropriately.
