Friday, October 14, 2005

How to NOT win friends and influence enemies

Let’s see. What should NOT be done in the time of a disaster recovery to endear yourself to the people most affected and those constantly watching.
Let me count the ways.
First, be asleep at the governmental wheel, go play air guitar 2,000 miles away while people are shell-shocked and looking for someone to help.
Second, have idiots running important agencies that are charged with the relief effort. Have these idiots sit on their collective hands while people go without food, water and shelter.
Next, give no-bid contracts to the usual suspects (Halliburton, Brown and Root, etc.), suspend the immigration rules so these people can hire illegal aliens instead of displaced U.S. citizens, pay these people lower-than-legal minimum wage (because the rules have been suspended) and let them operate without any kind of environmental rules (also suspended).
Then, have you lead agency, FEMA, promise the moon but deliver nothing, as long as two months AFTER the disaster passed. Promise $2,000 checks to everyone affected and then don’t give them out.
Order 91,000 TONS of ice to cool food, medicine and those storm victims, sitting and sweltering in near 100-degree heat, at a price of … $100 million, and constantly divert those truck drivers with the goods to places unaffected by the storms.
Have the Small Business Administration accept more than 7,000 applications for loans, and only process 20 of them!
Ignore local and state businesses and order items from as far away as Alaska when the same things could have been purchased locally.
Initiate no contract to collect the remains of those who died in the storms and flooding because of stupid rulings.
Ignore all fraud or calls for local intervention. Make sure your pals pocket million upon billions of government taxpayer dollars.
And in the end, what do you have?
The George W. Bush Administration.
All above are facts! Hence, the conclusion is factual. And shameful.

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