[GCFL-discuss] Oooops!

[Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List]

On Sat, 10 Sep 2005 23:55:12 -0400 "Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies
List" <gcfl-discuss at gcfl.net> writes:
> Isn't what Frank ment is that a least  Guliani  did something instead 
> of waiting around for somebody to act ???
> 
> Dave

I'm sure that is exactly what Frank meant. (And now I see that he has
SAID that is exactly what he meant.) My response was simply, Giuliani had
forces at his disposal to give direction to, and citizens who were NOT
directly harmed to call on. Giuliani had dry sidewalks to walk around on,
getting good photo ops just for being there. 

The Mayor of New Orleans had none of the above. The entire city was under
several feet of water. All public functions disintegrated. At this time,
he has virtually no tax base to fund any city government with either. The
cops may wonder if they are ever going to be paid again. (Probably there
are FEMA funds for this contingency, and most likely they will be made
available in half the amount needed, about a year too late. That is
FEMA's track record with homeowners in rural northern California, why
should a city in Louisiana be any different?)

As to whether he was on the phone to the governor, or the governor to
FEMA, I wouldn't expect that detail to be highlighted in news articles.
It is a pretty routine thing to do, but not a demonstration of
exceptional leadership. The least thing Giuliani was praised for was
getting on the phone to the White House.

I would have been impressed if the Mayor of New Orleans had called on the
handful of city workers still available around his office, set up ad hoc
teams to establish control of a perimeter, called on citizens able to
volunteer to report to that radio station he was broadcasting from,
painted drop zones visible from the air, and called everyone in the
country to airlift food to those drop zones, with or without FEMA's
permission. But that would have been extraordinary, not the minimum call
of duty. It probably exceeded his legal authority. It would have been at
cross purposes with the centralized way disaster planning runs these days
-- intended to make sure everyone is "coordinated," get maximum impact to
the most people, and avoid "duplication of services" -- as if there could
be too much at a time like this. How do you paint drop zones on several
feet of flood water? How many people could even have considered moving
from one part of town to another for any purpose?

Siarlys