The Federal Bureaucracy, Once Again Moving At the Speed of Smell

Thank God we put the federal government in charge of cleaning up oil spills. At least we haven't entrusted the feds with decisions that could actually affect life and health. Oops, too late.

Why, several years after Katrina, do we still have the same dilemma and issues. A monumental disaster occurs and the federal government is shown to be impotent and incompetent. It did not even follow its own rapid response plan because it lacked the necessary equipment called for in the plan. The rapid response plan at the Department of Homeland Security called for quickly surrounding the slick with booms and setting it on fire. The DHS owned no fire booms to implement the plan and valuable time was lost. Now it is trying to hold up Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's plan to use sand barriers to protect wildlife out of fear that the sand barriers might harm wildlife. More than the slick itself?

Here's the problem. Government does not work well. The more massive the governmental entity, the less effective and efficient it is. When will we learn that the federal government is not capable of doing anything well because that is the nature of government. It makes political decisions on every field of endeavor that it gets involved in. The federal government for over a decade thought that the Humvee could be an urban warfare vehicle despite the fact that Somalia proved that idea wrong. Katrina proved that major disasters expose the government at its worst.

State governments with energetic leadership respond much better. Governors know the "ground" and understand best where resources can be used effectively. Arch Moore in 1985 after the floods did what needed done. He angered and annoyed federal officials, but Moore understood the role of sovereign state governors. The job is not being nice to the feds, but doing whatever you can for the people. Bringing in the private sector on different types of disaster response would help. I don't mean trusting British Petroleum to clean up its own mess and remain honest about it. I mean bidding out to a company or consortium of companies the job of quick response. If they have a plan and lack the equipment after signing the contract, they, unlike the federal government, can be held accountable. Yes, the payout would be expensive and the company would be accused of profiting off of disaster, but what we are doing now is not working and will be much more expensive.