The Blue State

Not to Worry, It's Only 42 Thousand Gallons of Crude Oil

In my opinion here is another fine example of government officials BS'ing thepublic. Forty Two thousand gallons of crude oil is happily cruising down a rivertowards a lake that supplies drinking water. The officials say "they're notsure of the extent of contamination" and a spokeswoman for the Dept. of EnvironmentalQuality says "the spill isn't expected tohave an impact on the water-supply intakes located below the surface at thesouth end of the lake. She says oil tends to float on the surface of the water,so the quality of water taken from below the surface of the lake should not beaffected." Personally I don't think you can put forty two thousand gallonsOF water in a river and it not have an impact of some sort.

COFFEYVILLE, Kan. (AP) - Forty-two thousandsgallons of thick crude oil are nearing an Oklahoma lake that supplies water fordrinking and recreation.

The oil spilled from the Coffeyville Resourcesrefinery in Kansas on Sunday into the Verdigris River. It has been floatingdownstream toward Oologah (OO'-luh-gah) Lake, about 30 miles northeast of Tulsa

Officials say a lot of the oil slick remainson the surface and is visible. They're not sure of the extent of contamination.

A spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Department ofEnvironmental Quality says the spill isn't expected to have an impact on thewater-supply intakes located below the surface at the south end of the lake. Shesays oil tends to float on the surface of the water, so the quality of watertaken from below the surface of the lake should not be affected. Thestory is here... (but this is all there is at this link.)

Then we can go down the list of all the things NOT to worry about:

 
• None of the oil reached Oklahoma's Lake Oologah, a source of drinking    water for Tulsa and other communities, Oklahoma environmental officials said    Wednesday.
 
• Some workers at the refinery and the fertilizer facility already are    returning to work. Others have been told to remain at home until contacted    by their supervisors to return.
 
• Lipinski says the company is working closely with city, state and federal    agencies engaged in mitigating the environmental impact of the loss and is    actively reaching out to those people affected.
 
• On Tuesday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, was helping the    Coffeyville Police Department to conduct air quality tests for potential    hazards
 
• At least 1,000 people have been displaced from their homes throughout    southeast Kansas, says the Kansas adjutant general's department
 
• The Kansas Department of Health and Environment, KDHE, is distributing    tetanus vaccine to prevent the illness in people who have come in contact    with the floodwaters
 
• Health officials are warning residents to stay out of the flood waters due    to sewage, hazardous materials, and other contaminants. Individuals should    contact their nearest health department for a tetanus vaccine if they have    had a recent, significant injury or if they have entered the water and have    not had a tetanus vaccination in the past 10 years.
 
• The EPA advises people returning to property that may be contaminated with    oil and other contaminants to wear work boots, open doors and windows for    ventilation, and avoid taking oil-contaminated items to non-contaminated    locations. Read    this complete article here...

We all know accidents can happen, but when you look at the list of all the"agencies" working on this one, it is similar to Katrina's crack teamsof crack heads. And when fish, birds and other wildlife start popping up dead,or with more eyes and legs then they really need, then they will create afew more committees to investigate the new situation.

A few more emergencies like this and "we're in big troublemister"...ya see, all our federal funds are a little tied up right nowhelping democratize the world.

And besides, what's the worse that could happen? I ain't no tree hugger!

Katrina, FEMA & The Banks...oh, and the people

Living hundreds of miles away, and never seeing any stories on the news aboutit, it's almost as if all is ok in New Orleans. I mean this great government ofours wouldn't let it's citizens get screwed because of bureaucracy, greedy banksand do nothing politicians...would they? Yes, yes they would.

Reuters: "AidFlap is New Threat to New Orleans Rebuilding"

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - As homes in New Orleans' flood-stricken zones inchtoward habitability, a bureaucratic storm is brewing between state and federalrelief agencies that could derail the city's recovery from Hurricane Katrina.

Officials from the state of Louisiana contend that a new federal requirementthat aid checks be issued jointly to homeowners and their mortgage lenders couldmean that money bypasses the owners -- many of whom lost their jobs as a resultof Katrina -- and goes straight to paying their defaulted mortgage payments.

So the banks are getting theirs, now you get your's. But FEMA (Federal EmergencyManagement Agency) must be watching out for the people right?, that's their job right,well...that's a "NO"

Johnson has been waiting for funds from the Federal Emergency ManagementAgency and the state-run, federally funded and roundly criticized Road Homeprogram since being rescued from her attic days after Katrina hit the U.S. GulfCoast.

The Road Home program has received more than 121,000 applications and has60,000 still to process, and has closed on fewer than 6,100 of them. Of $7.5billion in funding, some $4.7 billion has been allocated, but not necessarilypaid out.

"It doesn't make sense. Everywhere we been, we build other people's(countries) but when it come to ourselves it's completely different,"said Vernon Lawrence, 75, pointing to the cost of the Iraq war andreconstruction. "Here we are in this country suffering like hell."

The Washington Post: also reported on the current situation: "KatrinaAftermath Still Undercuts Special-Needs Housing"

And for anyone that thinks it was a big task and the governmenthas been working on this situation all along, On August 28, 2006 Amanda of ThinkProgress kept us posted with this story OneYear Later: The Real State Of New Orleans. There are great links in thisstory which are important, because there was some talk about how "greatthings were going" with the rebuilding. The rebuilding was being focused on thetourist areas.

I've been through a few hurricanes in my life, and when I think of how muchof a "disaster" and "inconvenience" it was to be withoutelectric for 2-3 days, I feel ashamed now. After these current stories, maybewe'll see McCain walk around the French Quarter and say how wonderful everythingis going.

FEMA still can't manage itself

More than one year after the relief effort on the Gulf Coast began, FEMA is still misappropriating money to people that don't need it:

The GAO audit found that numerous aid applicants received duplicaterental aid, with FEMA in one case providing free apartments to 10people in Plano, Texas, while sending them $46,000 to coverout-of-pocket housing expenses.

Another $20 million was wasted on thousands of individuals whoclaimed the same property damage from both Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.FEMA also paid at least $3 million to more than 500 ineligible foreignstudents in the stricken Gulf Coast, the report said.

"Ineffective preventive controls have resulted in substantialfraudulent and improper payments," GAO investigator Gregory Kutz told aSenate hearing. "The additional examples of potentially fraudulent andimproper payments in our testimony today show that our estimate of $1billion in improper and/or fraudulent payments is likely understated."

Where has Congress been on this?  These are our tax-dollars.

Conservatives got into power in November of 1980 by bashing the very idea of government intervention -- so it shouldn't shock people when they fail at managing disaster response efforts that require strong federal leadership.  The 1980 Reagan revolution was successful because of the rhetoric that government was everyone's enemy and it simply needed to get cut.  But when you downsize to the point where you are unable to respond efficiently and effectively to disasters, then maybe your rhetoric was more of an ideology than a practical and workable idea.

Why does it seem like we always have to choose between "big government" and "small government"?  What is wrong with "smart government", "efficient government" or "transparent government"?

Most Americans want FEMA fixed, not abolished like what Bush wants

Most Americans completely reject the idea fronted by Senators Susan Collins and Joseph Lieberman to abolish the agency of FEMA, according to the latest FNC Poll:

"Thinking about FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, do you think it would be more effective and efficient to abolish FEMA and replace it with a new agency, or do you think it would be more effective and efficient to fix FEMA?"

Replace - 31%
Fix - 58%
Unsure - 11%

The problem with FEMA is not its workers, but rather its incompetent micro-managers at the very top.  Hard-working FEMA employees, many of whom worked 20-hour shifts during Katrina without the resources they needed, should not be the scapegoats.  By doing away with FEMA, as opposed to firing people like Chertoff like they should, the Senate is going to put hundreds of dedicated employees out of a job and do nothing to address the over-arching reality: Americans will be safer with FEMA as its own cabinet-level agency with the power to independently lobby Congress for money without being under the the restraining blanket of Homeland Security.

Thursday Editorial: The buck stops with incompetent micro-managers, not FEMA employees

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill want the agency of FEMA to be eliminated because it represents a "symbol of a bumbling bureaucracy," said a Senate panel today.

Conservative Democratic Senator from Connecticut Joseph Lieberman provided what many progressives would consider a once in a lifetime criticism of the Administration:

"For Hurricane Katrina, the president failed to provide criticalleadership when it was most needed, and that contributed to a grosslyineffective federal response."

But if that is true, why is the agency itself at fault?  If the President, Michael Chertoff, Michael Brown and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin fumbled the response, why should the burden fall on all of FEMA?  Most Americans agree that the poor response was a result of the incompetent individuals at the top, not the hard-working relief workers at FEMA that weren't given the resources to do their job.  That is like not giving our military soldiers body armor and deflecting blame away from the people at the very top.

If anything, the poor hurricane Katrina response actually proves that giving your bureaucracy proper resources, as opposed to relying on a bunch of micro-managers that don't know what they are doing, is the most effective system to get the job done.  Remember that FEMA was under the umbrella of Michael Chertoff's Department of Homeland Security.  Had FEMA been its own agency and able to directly lobby Congress for money without the oversight of Chertoff's abroad-first budgetary mentality, then maybe the rescue effort would have been more organized. 

The whole notion that dissolving FEMA is the answer to the problem is preposterous, at best.  Why should a small handful of inept, egotistical micro-managers get the pleasure of knowing that their actions caused Congress to bring down an entire agency and temporarily cost thousands of government workers their jobs?  The buck should never stop with the workers, because they don't make the bureaucratic decisions that impact millions of Americans.  But the buck should stop with the President, and result in the firing of Michael Chertoff.