You Won't Stop a Storm Surge With a Bucket


Scout Prime puts into words something I've thus far been unable to express:

George Bush has stressed the role of volunteers in rebuilding New Orleans. He visited volunteers at various rebuilding sites in New Orleans on April 27 as part of promoting National Volunteer Week. At the time he stated, "If you are interested in helping the victims of Katrina, interested in helping them get back on their feet, come on down here."

Don’t pack your bags though. FEMA has announced that on June 1 it will be closing the last 4 camps that house and feed volunteers coming to Louisiana to aid in recovery. The move will likely shut down the volunteer work Bush was promoting...

The fact that the camps were originally to be closed April 10 but then extended to June 1 makes Bush’s call for volunteers to come to New Orleans at best questionable and at worst quite disingenuous. Beyond that, was volunteerism ever a practical plan for rebuilding the Gulf Coast anyway? I applaud the work done by volunteers and I know the people of New Orleans are grateful for their contribution. However given the enormity of the destruction and thus the task at hand wouldn’t it have been better to have a president stand in New Orleans wielding a Marshall Plan for reconstruction rather than a volunteer’s hammer? Just what IS the Plan for rebuilding?

I've asked that for months and at the end of February I went to New Orleans seeking answers. It took all of 3 hours to realize that if I was looking for answers, New Orleans was the last place to be. At that time, the sheer uncertainty of living there was overwhelming. Three months later it is no better.

I can't agree more with Scout's statement about the volunteers. People down here are forever grateful, and humbled, by folks traveling down--and continuing to come to the Gulf Coast--foregoing vacations, or indeed, basic things like indoor plumbing--to help in any way they can.

Unfortunately, it seems as if the administration in Washington thinks this alone will suffice. They make this claim on supposedly ideological grounds; however, the (pun intended) hurricane of dollar bills they're throwing at THEIR pet projects belies that claim. And they're hoping--or expecting--no one to notice.

By the way, I don't think the Gulf Coast is the ONLY area this country should invest in. Yes, it's the most pressing need right now...but an administration--or entire government--that didn't behave like a gang of kleptomaniacal teenagers might well be able to work out a prudent plan for the revitalization of the entire country...the Gulf Coast could well be a model. It'd certainly work out a HELL of a lot better than their present experiments in nation building.