norma156 member for 31 weeks 1 day Send a message

Some things are so disgraceful they should be noted. We have just lived through Hurricane Ike. No one, not one person in the Houston area has been unaffected by the storm. The lucky ones just have fences down and shrubs uprooted. The unlucky ones have lost their homes and quite possibly their jobs. Fortunately, the death toll isn't as high as people anticipated, although it's certain to climb as search and recovery teams comb through Galveston.

Everyone in the city, the fourth largest city in the nation, lost power and water. City officials repaired the pumps in about twenty four hours. The electric company has gotten power back on for about million people, but more than a million people remain without power. According to the electric company, some will do without until October.

Fortunately for us, the last week has been unseasonably cool. Doing without power during a cool snap was inconvenient and nerve wracking, but not dangerous. Temperatures are set to rise this week.

Learning from its performance in Katrina, FEMA arrived on the scene promptly. And promptly offered to set up PODs (Point of Distribution) centers to provide people with ice and MREs. However, the agency delayed setting up the PODs for twenty four hours while they hashed through the political issue of where to site them. The agency was concerned about siting a POD in an affluent area of town where I suppose they thought ice machines were still working. This unforgivable delay meant that no one, rich or poor, got any relief in a period when it was most needed.

Now, we learn that FEMA is decreasing the number of PODs to a tiny handful. The reason: grocery stores are re-opening and people can buy their own ice.

However, many areas of town, including low income areas, are still without power. Low income people, paycheck-to-paycheck people are having to buy supplies on a daily basis, a budget killer. And many of them are day laborers, currently without jobs. They're running out of money, food and water, but told FEMA wants to "wean" victims off government dependency. This is disgraceful.

FEMA offers various forms of relief. During the last week we were repeatedly told to go to their website to sign up for relief. It didn't appear to occur to anyone at the august agency that a city without power is a city without access to the internet.

Compounding this performance, the Department of Labor is issuing emergency foodstamps. However, to get them, people are standing in line for ten or more hours to register and it takes up to five days to process applications. Helpfully, bureaucrats suggest people register by telephone, although it will take days longer to process requests.

As some of you may know, I take a conservative approach to government. However, there are times when we must depend on government for support and relief. This is one of them. In their concern that they not be perceived as helping the wealthy, they denied relief to an entire city. In their concern that they not appear to offer handouts, they're denying essential assistance to an entire population here.

Disgraceful.