It may take a few days, perhaps more than a week, but the problems in Kentucky will be solved soon, essentially by local government, private businesses such as the power company, and individual heroes doing great things. If the destruction in Kentucky were as permanent and devastating as Katrina, however, the federal government would not be able to respond any more effectively than it did to the Katrina disaster – no matter who is President. It’s a scarry thought – there are some disasters so huge that they cannot be adequately planned for, unless we want to commit half of our GDP to anticipation of the disasters instead of trying to respond to them as they occur.
I guess that’s one of the big problems big government has – as soon as it intervenes in any facet of our lives, we expect it to be completely responsible for everything. Bush got pilloried for the federal response to Katrina, but apparently nobody in the mainstream media is bothering to take Obama to task for the federal response to Kentucky.
Of course, the local government and local resources should be our first and best responders, but any large federal agency has to justify itself by plunging into things like this – and typically, as with all large bureaucratic organizations, the plunge is poorly planned, timed and executed. So since we have FEMA, we blame FEMA. Maybe if we didn’t have anything like it, we’d just have spontaneous support efforts naturally occur – but it could be just as likely that the entire country wouldn’t be concerned if just one state was burning.
It may take a few days, perhaps more than a week, but the problems in Kentucky will be solved soon, essentially by local government, private businesses such as the power company, and individual heroes doing great things. If the destruction in Kentucky were as permanent and devastating as Katrina, however, the federal government would not be able to respond any more effectively than it did to the Katrina disaster – no matter who is President. It’s a scarry thought – there are some disasters so huge that they cannot be adequately planned for, unless we want to commit half of our GDP to anticipation of the disasters instead of trying to respond to them as they occur.
I guess that’s one of the big problems big government has – as soon as it intervenes in any facet of our lives, we expect it to be completely responsible for everything. Bush got pilloried for the federal response to Katrina, but apparently nobody in the mainstream media is bothering to take Obama to task for the federal response to Kentucky.
Of course, the local government and local resources should be our first and best responders, but any large federal agency has to justify itself by plunging into things like this – and typically, as with all large bureaucratic organizations, the plunge is poorly planned, timed and executed. So since we have FEMA, we blame FEMA. Maybe if we didn’t have anything like it, we’d just have spontaneous support efforts naturally occur – but it could be just as likely that the entire country wouldn’t be concerned if just one state was burning.