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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (455231)	2/9/2009 12:27:57 PM
From: combjelly	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1573123

"They enabled my team and me right out of the Red Cross clinics..." That's the problem. Under Smirk, nothing was too small or too important to politicize.

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (455231)	2/9/2009 12:28:07 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573123

This is a liberal Bush bash. Just the snide remarks (e.g., Iraq) are a dead giveaway. The reality is that FEMA DID keep some people out of the area, which was an essential function for FEMA to have carried out. There were tons of people wanting into the region who wanted to help. But you cannot just turn them loose on a flooded region without some communication and organization. The reasons these people were blocked were several -- but mostly made good sense. FEMA has been criticized for restricting access to the area and some of the criticism could be warranted. But mainly, you don't want to just have people swarming into a region that is flooded, no matter how good their intentions, in an unorganized, unmanaged effort. When you cannot even get basic supplies like food and water into an area, the last thing you need is more people moving into the area in an uncontrolled, unorganized effort. Had the events at the Convention Center and the Superdome not occurred, the perception of FEMA would have been totally different. Yet, these are not FEMA failures -- they are LOCAL failures. If you want to blame someone blame Nagin. It wasn't FEMA's job to insure that there was food and water stockpiled at these areas. This was 100% the responsibility of Ray Nagin and the NOLA disaster personnel. It was not FEMA's responsibility to have satellite phones available for city personnel. It was the City's responsibility. The City's own disaster facility was essentially cut off from communications. There were no "political" problems that I know of with FEMA -- if someone has accounts of "political" issues perhaps they could list them here. I'll agree that there was an inappropriate attitude on Michael Brown's part, which did not reflect the intensity of the situation. But there are very specific requirements that have to met in the process of requesting and delivering federal assistance and Blano, totally clueless, did not have the gumption to follow the stipulated procedures. There is plenty of blame to go around, and FEMA had some failings. But largely, it was a state and local failing that caused the suffering in NOLA.