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Categories - Shopping - Free Online Business Help - Telecommunications Services Articles: Government - Lessons of Katina The memory of Katrina is fading from the public’s mind unless you happen to live in New Orleans and the devastation is still all around you. Even New Orleans residents are beginning to accept the devastation as part of life and move around it as they conduct their daily business. Those who had their lives destroyed and were displaced still remember and think about it everyday. Whether or not their lives are better now, families were separated and they still long for life the way it was. They maintain a bitterness that they were abandoned by a nation in their time of need. There are many lessons that should have been learned from this disaster that could have made things better and the entire country better as a nation of American neighbors instead of a country of democrats, republicans, Californians, Wisconsin’s, or New Yorkers. We are, after all, a nation of people free to take up residence in the state of our choice and then to move if we don’t like our location. The one thing that ties us together is that we are Americans wherever we go.
You may recall the political maneuvering as the then Governor Blanco starred in a power struggle with the then President Bush and delayed the activation of the National Guard, which cost many their lives. You may also recall the FEMA bungling that did nothing to bring relief to those in need in the wake of the disaster. In fact, things did not begin to get better until the National Guard was put in charge. Within a couple of hours after the National Guard was put in charge the Superdome was stabilized and safe and rescue raft were in the water pulling people out of flooded houses. Support, supplies, and logistics for a rescue force of 58,000 was quickly gathered and organized from all states in the union. This was accomplished in spite of the fact that National Guard supplies, equipment, and manpower had been stripped for the war in Iraq. The National Guard did this one handed. In the end, order was restored, over 17,000 people were rescued and 75,000 were evacuated.
Next, as Congress started hearings to determine who was the blame, the Army Corps of Engineers came in and repaired the dikes and pumped out the water from the 9th Ward. The military has 200 years of experience moving manpower and supplies and their experience triumphed once again.
The point of all of this is that we don’t need FEMA and we never did need FEMA. FEMA just got in the way. The agency was developed in the wake of another now forgotten disaster so that Congress could show the American people that it was doing something. It has now transitioned into a bottomless pit that we throw money into and an organization that plots to further control our lives. No government created bureaucracy is ever going to equal or replace the military in situations like this.
The next lesson to be learned is that most of the money that was supposed to go to New Orleans to help with repairs has still not arrived. The devastation that is still present should have long ago vanished. The Port of New Orleans provides domestic and international access for shipping for the entire middle section of the country all the way to the Canadian border. Shipments to and from New Orleans end up in or originate from North Dakota, Ohio, Chicago, Des Moines, St. Louis, and every other state in that part of the country. Their economies depend on, in a large part, the Port of New Orleans being healthy and adequately served and maintained by the surrounding population. If the money to repair New Orleans was in the states’ hands instead of the federal government’s hands, the aftermath of Katrina would not still be present in New Orleans.
The federal government has taken too much onto its self and, as a result, is no longer competent to handle the needs of the nation especially in the event of an emergency. We need to abolish some of our federal bureaucracies and return the money and power to the states where it can do some good.
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