And I thought I’d remind y’all, courtesy of Greg Palast’s column, how much “security” the “homeland” can count on in the face of the next hurricane. Here I thought maybe it would be prudent to point out, too, that Houston, in 2001, had its own inundation and a scant four summers later was ’good as new’, despite scenes like this:
and these, and this:
… so, in June 2001, before “9-11 changed everything!!”, we still knew how to fix things like this:
.
What changed in the interval between George W Bush’s first Imperial summer and his fourth (2005, when Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast packing a wallop that, two years later, continues to claim victims)?
More importantly, how do we change it back?
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A merit-based civil service
In Bush’s first Imperial summer, Michael D. Brown was not the head of FEMA. Political appointees did not have the “flexibility” to hire, fire, promote, and demote employees so dear to the cockles of worker-bashing Republican hearts. Those entrenched bureaucrats did a good job. Let’s entrench us some more of those bureaucrats.
Not just heckuva job
I have to believe that the conservative mindset comes into play as well. Houston worships Money, the true God of the neo-con. New Orleans worshipped fun, a neo-con no-no. Houston is perceived as primarily white, while New Orleans was percieved as primarily black. Houston is in Texas, a Rethuglican bulwark and (claimed) home of His Georgeness, while New Orleans is in Louisiana, which has *gasp* Democrats.
Mismangagement played a huge role, of course, but intentional neglect had a big part as well.