ProfessorBainbridge.com: Outsourcing Disaster Relief: Take 2
Blogger Thoughts: My first reaction was that I needed to study the the post at TCS, and examine the points. As I was imagining, after such effort, realizing that I would take issue with what was being presented as reality was highly suspect, the thought was that the evidence and conclusions would require a slog of writing to detail how flawed the proposal is.
With just a tad more reflection, it occurred to me that "Outsourcing Disaster Relief" doesn't have to resemble the scam that is being attempted with the Social Security privatization. If there's a way to make disaster relief more efficient and less subject to corruption, why shouldn't all of us be for it?
Friday, September 09, 2005
Hey, Brownie, what happened to Pat Robertson?
Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics: "Hey, Brownie, what happened to Pat Robertson?
Pat Robertson says John Roberts should be "thankful" for Hurricane Katrina because, in the storm's aftermath, the country won't have much tolerance for "inflamed rhetoric" at his confirmation hearings.
Robertson can be thankful for Katrina, too. In the first days of the hurricane, FEMA told visitors to its Web site that there were three good places to send money to help hurricane victims: the American Red Cross, Second Harvest and Robertson's own Operation Blessing. "How in the heck did that happen?" Richard Walden, president of the disaster-relief group Operation USA, asks in the Nation. "That gives Pat Robertson millions of extra dollars."
Well, yes it does, and FEMA Director Michael Brown was asked about it yesterday. How did the little known, highly questionable charity of a TV evangelist and assassination advocate make FEMA's shortlist? "We're not turning away help from anybody," Brown said.
FEMA may not be turning away Robertson's help, but the agency has apparently decided to take the spotlight off it. The FEMA Web page that listed the Red Cross, Second Harvest and Operation Blessing has disappeared, replaced by a redirect to a USA Freedom Corps page that lists a number of charities to which one might contribute. Operation Blessing isn't among them.
But that doesn't mean the Bush administration is abandoning its faith-based friends in this time of opportunity. Before the USA Freedom Corps page gets around to the American Red Cross, it offers up a link for the Network for Good, which in turn provides a link to dozens of charitable organizations -- including Operation Blessing.
-- T.G.
Pat Robertson says John Roberts should be 'thankful' for Hurricane Katrina because, in the storm's aftermath, the country won't have much tolerance for 'inflamed rhetoric' at his confirmation hearings.
Robertson can be thankful for Katrina, too. In the first days of the hurricane, FEMA told visitors to its Web site that there were three good places to send money to help hurricane victims: the American Red Cross, Second Harvest and Robertson's own Operation Blessing. 'How in the heck did that happen?' Richard Walden, president of the disaster-relief group Operation USA, asks in the Nation. 'That gives Pat Robertson millions of extra dollars.'
Well, yes it does, and FEMA Director Michael Brown was asked about it yesterday. How did the little known, highly questionable charity of a TV evangelist and assassination advocate make FEMA's shortlist? 'We're not turning away help from anybody,' Brown said.
FEMA may not be turning away Robertson's help, but the agency has apparently decided to take the spotlight off it. The FEMA Web page that listed the Red Cross, Second Harvest and Operation Blessing has disappeared, replaced by a redirect to a USA Freedom Corps page that lists a number of charities to which one might contribute. Operation Blessing isn't among them.
But that doesn't mean the Bush administration is abandoning its faith-based friends in this time of opportunity. Before the USA Freedom Corps page gets around to the American Red Cross, it offers up a link for the Network for Good, which in turn provides a link to dozens of charitable organizations -- including Operation Blessing.
-- T.G."
Pat Robertson says John Roberts should be "thankful" for Hurricane Katrina because, in the storm's aftermath, the country won't have much tolerance for "inflamed rhetoric" at his confirmation hearings.
Robertson can be thankful for Katrina, too. In the first days of the hurricane, FEMA told visitors to its Web site that there were three good places to send money to help hurricane victims: the American Red Cross, Second Harvest and Robertson's own Operation Blessing. "How in the heck did that happen?" Richard Walden, president of the disaster-relief group Operation USA, asks in the Nation. "That gives Pat Robertson millions of extra dollars."
Well, yes it does, and FEMA Director Michael Brown was asked about it yesterday. How did the little known, highly questionable charity of a TV evangelist and assassination advocate make FEMA's shortlist? "We're not turning away help from anybody," Brown said.
FEMA may not be turning away Robertson's help, but the agency has apparently decided to take the spotlight off it. The FEMA Web page that listed the Red Cross, Second Harvest and Operation Blessing has disappeared, replaced by a redirect to a USA Freedom Corps page that lists a number of charities to which one might contribute. Operation Blessing isn't among them.
But that doesn't mean the Bush administration is abandoning its faith-based friends in this time of opportunity. Before the USA Freedom Corps page gets around to the American Red Cross, it offers up a link for the Network for Good, which in turn provides a link to dozens of charitable organizations -- including Operation Blessing.
-- T.G.
Pat Robertson says John Roberts should be 'thankful' for Hurricane Katrina because, in the storm's aftermath, the country won't have much tolerance for 'inflamed rhetoric' at his confirmation hearings.
Robertson can be thankful for Katrina, too. In the first days of the hurricane, FEMA told visitors to its Web site that there were three good places to send money to help hurricane victims: the American Red Cross, Second Harvest and Robertson's own Operation Blessing. 'How in the heck did that happen?' Richard Walden, president of the disaster-relief group Operation USA, asks in the Nation. 'That gives Pat Robertson millions of extra dollars.'
Well, yes it does, and FEMA Director Michael Brown was asked about it yesterday. How did the little known, highly questionable charity of a TV evangelist and assassination advocate make FEMA's shortlist? 'We're not turning away help from anybody,' Brown said.
FEMA may not be turning away Robertson's help, but the agency has apparently decided to take the spotlight off it. The FEMA Web page that listed the Red Cross, Second Harvest and Operation Blessing has disappeared, replaced by a redirect to a USA Freedom Corps page that lists a number of charities to which one might contribute. Operation Blessing isn't among them.
But that doesn't mean the Bush administration is abandoning its faith-based friends in this time of opportunity. Before the USA Freedom Corps page gets around to the American Red Cross, it offers up a link for the Network for Good, which in turn provides a link to dozens of charitable organizations -- including Operation Blessing.
-- T.G."
Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union Street - New York Times
Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union Street - New York Times: "
September 8, 2005
Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union Street
By DAN BARRY
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 7 - In the downtown business district here, on a dry stretch of Union Street, past the Omni Bank automated teller machine, across from a parking garage offering 'early bird' rates: a corpse. Its feet jut from a damp blue tarp. Its knees rise in rigor mortis.
Six National Guardsmen walked up to it on Tuesday afternoon and two blessed themselves with the sign of the cross. One soldier took a parting snapshot like some visiting conventioneer, and they walked away. New Orleans, September 2005.
Hours passed, the dusk of curfew crept, the body remained. A Louisiana state trooper around the corner knew all about it: murder victim, bludgeoned, one of several in that area. The police marked it with traffic cones maybe four days ago, he said, and then he joked that if you wanted to kill someone here, this was a good time.
Night came, then this morning, then noon, and another sun beat down on a dead son of the Crescent City.
That a corpse lies on Union Street may not shock; in the wake of last week's hurricane, there are surely hundreds, probably thousands. What is remarkable is that on a downtown street in a major American city, a corpse can decompose for days, like carrion, and that is acceptable.
Welcome to New Orleans in the post-apocalypse, half baked and half deluged: pestilent, eerie, unnaturally quiet.
Scraggly residents emerge from waterlogged wood to say strange things, and then return into the rot. Cars drive the wrong way on the Interstate and no one cares. Fires burn,"
September 8, 2005
Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union Street
By DAN BARRY
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 7 - In the downtown business district here, on a dry stretch of Union Street, past the Omni Bank automated teller machine, across from a parking garage offering 'early bird' rates: a corpse. Its feet jut from a damp blue tarp. Its knees rise in rigor mortis.
Six National Guardsmen walked up to it on Tuesday afternoon and two blessed themselves with the sign of the cross. One soldier took a parting snapshot like some visiting conventioneer, and they walked away. New Orleans, September 2005.
Hours passed, the dusk of curfew crept, the body remained. A Louisiana state trooper around the corner knew all about it: murder victim, bludgeoned, one of several in that area. The police marked it with traffic cones maybe four days ago, he said, and then he joked that if you wanted to kill someone here, this was a good time.
Night came, then this morning, then noon, and another sun beat down on a dead son of the Crescent City.
That a corpse lies on Union Street may not shock; in the wake of last week's hurricane, there are surely hundreds, probably thousands. What is remarkable is that on a downtown street in a major American city, a corpse can decompose for days, like carrion, and that is acceptable.
Welcome to New Orleans in the post-apocalypse, half baked and half deluged: pestilent, eerie, unnaturally quiet.
Scraggly residents emerge from waterlogged wood to say strange things, and then return into the rot. Cars drive the wrong way on the Interstate and no one cares. Fires burn,"
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