Time to point fingers yet?
TIME TO POINT FINGERS YET?
As Coach Paul Brown told the New York bus driver who couldn’t find Yankee Stadium to deliver us, the Browns to play the game against the Giants, “I don’t blame you I blame the guy that hired you.” Don’t blame Mike Brown, Fema Director, or Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security Director for the fiasco of a hurricane Katrina rescue effort, blame whoever hired them.
As a general contractor I built the Tremont House Hotel on the
My construction company (I was the CEO) repaired those two hotels and several other buildings after the storm about $5,000,000 worth of hurricane repair work. The Tremont Hotel is an historical renovation and the work was closely monitored by the National Historical Society. It is a beautiful luxury hotel in downtown
Immediately after Alicia the owners of the Holiday Inn, Sam Albaral and Vic Fertitta and I made a trip to the eastern coastal cities of Mexico to see the innovative ways and materials that they were using to make repairs after their frequent hurricanes. While there we contracted with one innovative stucco/plaster contractor who had come up with a trowel-on textured finish material that incorporates quartz and a chemical used in ladies facial make-up that kills mildew and mold. In different ways we used as a major repair component on both hotels. In 2003, I visited the two projects and that quartzoplast finish is still holding up like new.
One of the first things a contractor notices working in
Brown and Chertoff answers to simple questions are bureaucratic babble. Instead of answering “When is help going to arrive?” Brown and Chertoff tell us in sickening minutiae how their bureaucratic processes work, if it were to work, and never answer the question. Even more disgusting the reporters or persons asking the questions let them get away with it.
The emotional fellow who described how one of many storm victims died while awaiting for a promised rescue that never arrived was most poignant. He cried, “Quit having news conferences and get the help here now!” It makes you want to grab Brown, and Chertoff, and the La Governor, the Mississippi Lt Governor, the mayor and the police commissioner by the throat to choke a straight answer out of them. Where were each of you when Katrina hit, what exactly were you doing, where were you sitting for the following 8 to 24 hours?
Do the evacuees and those who are refusing to leave trust the Mayor and
Katrina was a category 4 & 5 storm two days before it made landfall and yet Brown and Chertoff claim neither they nor their experts (could have) anticipated the catastrophic impact of this category 4 or 5 storm. The fact is they both knew the levees could not stand up to a category 3 storm let alone the 4 or 5 storm staring them in the face. Pres. Bush declared a state of emergency at least 24 hours before the storm hit. What process, that didn’t work, did that start. The press says that Fema’s leader Brown went home and turned off his TV set, how long was it before he turned it back on?
It is a very suspicious coincidence that those who the Federal Government ignored and left in fatal chaos for 3 to 6 days were basically black Democrats waiting for a white Republican administration to respond to its plight. Other publications have said that Bush fiddled while
Our fate, if we are attacked by terrorist or
“You are fired, and so is the guy who hired you.” is the phrase.
President Bush told us, the TV audience, with the wealthy black Dallas preaching Bishop T.D. Jakes nodding approval at his side that, “…as long as people’s lives are in danger the governments work is not finished.” T.D. Jakes used to be one of my favorite people. When did the federal government’s work (responsibility) begin how many hours before or after the hurricane hit? Was it when Bush declared the state of emergency? To President Bush’s credit he declared a state of emergency well before the hurricane hit. Who was supposed to move and do when the President gave the order? Chertoff? Brown? General Honore? Congress? Nobody? Why do it if it isn’t an order to initiate action at the site of the impending emergency?
The unpatriotic card is already on the table. Criticizing the hours and days of callous disregard for the lives of poor blacks in
As with 9-11 communications were a disaster. How could it happen again? In a world so full of cell phones sticking out of the ears of SUV driving women that you have to fend for your life every minute you drive. How could emergency communications fall apart? Why aren’t emergency services using satellite communications systems? Were satellite communications knocked out? How could they be knocked out?
Having built housing at numerous military bases and bid on many others around the country including
The networks and CNN are now providing platforms for the Police Commissioner and the Mayor allowing them to portray them selves as heroic rather than incompetent further polluting the mess.
The Republicans are covering ass with damage control their top priority. Democrates are taking advantage of the opening. The Red Cross didn’t even make it into New Orleans and the early claim on the TV crawl that 356,000 evacuees are in 46 Red Cross shelters “give cash” was later contradicted by the Head of the Red Cross who admitted they didn’t make it into the Super Dome and other New Orleans disaster shelters and that they had only 126,000 in some what distant shelters around the region “give more cash.” Watching the TV coverage on CNN and Fox I kept looking for the Red Cross emblem on people or vehicles in
I haven’t done nearly as much as I should have myself. Yes, I remain in a clean dry place in
I have always believed that government exists for the purpose of protecting the lives and health of a nation’s people. That government must be pledged to protect and care for the least able of those people.
On his FOX radio program this evening
O’Rielly is riding a huge wave of popularity maybe he is right and I am wrong about government? Should I be buying a gun too?
<< Home