Katrina Sidenotes
I’m going to hit some side issues to the hurricane/flood disaster down on the Gulf Coast, because I’m not sure my thoughts on the direct situation will be helpful to anyone involved. I’ll just suggest heading over to UMCOR or the American Red Cross, breaking out the plastic and skipping a few meals out this month.
One of the key points of conflict on the governmental response has been the functionality of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Questions have especially been raised over whether its capabilities were reduced as a result of its post-9/11 alignment as a component of the Department of Homeland Security. Some people are suggesting that FEMA be returned to its Clinton-era status as an independent Cabinet-level agency.
That may be a good idea. But if moving FEMA under DHS was a mistake (which I’m beginning to believe), why did it happen? Because the Bush administration was making a major governmental-structural decision under the emotional load of a national crisis, when it didn’t have to; that realignment wasn’t going to affect the immediate national response to 9/11. Splitting FEMA back out now would repeat the same general mistake without helping the situation on the Gulf Coast, so let’s wait until the immediate crisis is past. Bureaucracies don’t react well to change in the best of times. Large-scale realignments need to wait until we can reduce the effects of emotion on the decision.
ESPN’s Colin Cowherd said this morning what I’ve been thinking since last Tuesday: the New Orleans Saints will now have to be permanently moved, whether during or after the 2005 season. A reconstructed New Orleans will be smaller and unable to support an NFL franchise; the pre-hurricane city was becoming a borderline market in the modern NFL anyway. This decision will become even easier if, as some are speculating, the Superdome has to be torn down due to structural damage or cost/inability to decontaminate the building; there is no way to rationalize spending several hundred million dollars in reconstruction money on a football stadium. Saints owner Tom Benson will be reviled like no NFL owner since Bob Irsay, but it will have to be done.
Gas price caps? Sen. Levin, are you smoking crack? Yes, there’s some gross profiteering going on, both at the oil company level and at the individual station level. A drive from Reston to the Winchester area yesterday showed regular prices ranging from $3.059 to $3.469 and diesel prices from $2.799 all the way to $3.499 at one egregious violator. (This station had gas running at $3.199/$3.299/$3.399 and diesel immediately below premium on the signboard, so it didn’t look out of place — unless you noticed that diesel everywhere else was at least 7 to 8 cents below the cost of regular unleaded.) But price caps create shortages. From everything I’ve heard, driving in 1979 kind of sucked. I don’t care to reprise that scene.
6 September 2005 / 2 Comments / Tags: politics