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Jewish World Review
Sept. 21, 2005
/ 17 Elul, 5765
Time to play blame game
By
Dan Abrams
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
For the two weeks after Hurricane Katrina, I agreed that it was not productive to focus on the so-called blame game. With so many people in need of immediate help and support, I felt assessing blame was a nice political exercise but was not the most productive use of the limited time and resources.
Well the time has come. Not just so we can learn lessons but in order to help solve problems that exist down there today. We need to figure out exactly who is supposed to be doing what after this type of event.
The mayor of New Orleans exchanged jabs Monday on national television with the Coastguard vice admiral running the federal relief effort about whether some residents should be returning to the city now. Vice Admiral Allen said no. But the mayor said yes for parts of the city until when tropical storm Rita approached the area.
The back-and-forth doesn't help. But if we had a sense of who exactly was supposed to do what and when, it might help the residents better assess what to do now.
For example, who is responsible for assessing whether the water is drinkable for the people returning? Who is best suited to determine which neighborhoods will be rebuilt versus which are beyond repair. And who will make the all-important decisions about the levees?
Do we really want to trust some of the people who made such bad decisions three weeks ago to be in charge now? We need to assess blame to clean house, especially as millions of dollars funnel into the region, accountability will be crucial in assuring the right people get what they need.
The Florida Sun-Sentinel this week examined 20 natural disasters over the past five years and found that FEMA awarded more than $330 million to areas that weren't even impacted by storms. A lot of that money was either irresponsibly allocated or taken by fraud. The paper reports FEMA ended up footing the bill for funerals of people not even killed by hurricanes or for brand new home appliances for some who hadn't lost anything in storms, that sort of information may help determine where the precious resources go this time around. We need answers.
Look, blame game is a loaded term. But, I'm ready to play it if it means that we can better allocate money and resources today, supervised by people we can count on. It may also help prevent this mess from ever happening again.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Dan Abrams anchors The Abrams Report, Monday through Friday from 6-7 p.m. ET on MSNBC TV. He also covers legal stories for NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, Today and Dateline NBC. To visit his website, click here. Comment by clicking here.
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