Tuesday, September 06, 2005

On second thought

When I'd first heard that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) stopped three truckloads of water sent to New Orleans by Wal-Mart I was fit to be tied.

Details here...

"How could people be so stupid as to render vocabulary merciless to describe it?", I raged.

"How could anybody be so incompetent as to send away the needs of great despair?", I stormed.

"What kind of an idiot does it take to be so monstrously ineffective?", I howled.

But on second thought a deeper disgust dawned.

For years the President has been a promoter of privatization, and of smaller government (in words alone, not deeds). Here, unbidden, was an opportunity to score from third base on a solid single. A PR paradise ready for the plucking!

Wal-Mart, the best company in the world at getting goods to people efficiently, generously (it must be said) decided to respond to the Katrina disaster by sending desperately needed water. They were, in effect, a sterling example of a corporation taking the lead and filling holes left by receeding government services. "See?", the President could have said, "it is possible to privatize and to down-size government without pain!"

Instead, stupidly, Wal-Mart's generosity was turned away.

It seems this President can't even recognize a good idea when it pulls up in three trucks and honks its horn!

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Foot Quotes

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"

Charles Darwin