NYT's David Brooks: "The Best Laid Plan: Too Bad It Flopped"

[babylonsister]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/opinion/11brooks.html

snip

The New Orleans emergency preparedness plan offers a precise communications strategy, so all city residents will know exactly where to go in times of crisis. It recommends that two traffic control officers be placed at each key intersection. It recommends busing the thousands of residents unable to evacuate themselves to staging areas prestocked with food.

In short, the plan was so beautiful, it's too bad reality destroyed it. The plan's authors were not stupid or venal. They are doubtless good public servants who worked in agencies set up to prepare for this storm. And yet their elaborate plan crumbled under the weight of the actual disaster.

But of course this illustrates the paradox at the heart of the Katrina disaster, which is that we really need government in times like this, but government is extremely limited in what it can effectively do.

Katrina was the most anticipated natural disaster in American history, and still government managed to fail at every level.

For the brutal fact is, government tends toward bureaucracy, which means elaborate paper flow but ineffective action. Government depends on planning, but planners can never really anticipate the inevitable complexity of events. And American government is inevitably divided and power is inevitably devolved.

snip

[90-percent]

1. Government

The words "Bush Administration" should be substituted for "government". The two are mutually exclusive.

The solution here is simply: "good government". That woulda done the job!

-85%

[natrat]

2. whatever

a good leader could have taken charge and expedited the process and at least utilized resources

[opihimoimoi]

4. BushCo lacks Leadrship Top Down....they are all suck ups...Bush is too

[Zynx]

3. The federal government was the only one with the resources to deal with

this calamity. Therefore, the blame logically goes to them more than to the state and local governments.

[KharmaTrain]

5. They're Coming Back To The Reservation

Just like those "poor black folks" needed those welfare checks on the 29th, these political hacks need to please their corporate and political masters before they get their next fat paycheck. Looks like Brooks got the memo.

This asshole makes it sound like Katrina was a local matter and that they ALONE should hold the bag here...that the federal's role come in and clean up the mess.

Looks like Brooks is laying out the next Repugnican/RNC game plan here. It's distorting race and class in this issue...saying Democrats are playing the "race card" when we're pointing out the class disperity. It's the bloated city, run by Democrats (always implied) that was the failure. It's local corruption rather than federal that led to the loss of life here.

Yep...more of the blame game...just in more stealthy words. I knew it was too good to think Brooks had any true humanity or credibility.

[Catchawave]

6. I think Nagin should be credited with how many were saved

he's getting too much of a negative rap in this mess.

[IndyOp]

7. This article sucks!

He is letting * off the hook AND reinforcing the conservative message: government is bad, let's drown it in a bathtub.

[babylonsister]

14. I know; I went looking for Frank Rich

and all I found was this nut job. x(

[Bob3]

8. Plans work when people who know what they are doing

are the ones in charge - not political hacks who get the job because they are loyal to a self impressed jerk who along with his gang of creeps have been saying government can't do anything right for so long they don't even bother to try.

RW gibberish - suddenly it's the government's fault again. Not the people in charge.

[DoYouEverWonder]

9. At least Brooks got the FLOP part right

[AnnInLa]

10. Local

"The New Orleans emergency preparedness plan offers a precise communications strategy, so all city residents will know exactly where to go in times of crisis. It recommends that two traffic control officers be placed at each key intersection. It recommends busing the thousands of residents unable to evacuate themselves to staging areas prestocked with food."

Nagin, just on Meet the Press: The plan to bus the citizens out of N.O. fell apart because there were not enough drivers. They barely had enough to bus them to the Superdome. To make police and the local Guard drive the busses would obviously deplete the local law-enforcement to nothing. Also, he has said in the past week that there was no place to take that many people, and because of the Contra-Flo, busses couldn't take people to Baton Rouge, just drop them off anywhere, for example, and turn around and come back for more people. Today on MTP, he said the Superdome DID have food, water, working toilet facilities...but, it was assumed that after a few days, federal help would arrive...it didn't, and those resources were used up.

[Straight Shooter]

11. Now who's playing the blame game?

Jeebers, it's like they have some weird brain wiring that makes them refuse to acknowledge accountability. :banghead:

[Darranar]

12. David Brooks does not understand the issues at hand...

Government intervention in the economy is one way in which the curtailment of the capitalist class system is put into effect, but it is by no means the only way, nor necessarily the most favored way. And government intervention in the economy is a regular thing, used by reactionaries and progressives alike - by reactionaries to secure the status quo, by progressives to change it.

Governemnt failed at every level because those in charge of government are not only incompetent, but they are apathetic. It is this issue that Brooks misses. Government institutions today are run by the ruling class, and care little for the welfare of poor blacks drowning in New Orleans. The injustices of the current system were laid bare in the aftermath of the hurricane, and it is those injustices that progressives oppose. It is the exposing of such injustices that, it is hoped, will launch a progressive revival.

[mbee]

13. Correction - Government gives ineffective action under the Shrub,

because he busy on vacation!

[Cocoa]

15. silly liberals and their dreamland "planning"

if Brooks were mayor, he would have saved the taxpayers millions and done no planning at all! Brilliant! No columnist would be able to come along and mock his plans, because he would have had none!

And if Brooks were president, he would have sent 100% of the LA National Guard to Iraq where they're really needed, not the ridiculous 30% that were actually sent. What a waste! Look at the Katrina disaster, what good did it do to have that 70% stay back from the action and twiddle their thumbs when they could have been off driving around the streets of Iraq.