McCain said
"We must also prepare, far better than we have, to respond quickly and effectively to a natural calamity. When Americans confront a catastrophe they have a right to expect basic competence from their government. Firemen and policemen should be able to communicate with each other in an emergency. We should be able to deliver bottled water to
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The Mississippi Gulf Coast, which took the burnt of Katrina, responded well (or at least much much better) than the complete ineptitude shown by the City of New Orleans and State of Louisiana.
Apples and oranges. Much smaller population base affected (ie no big cities) and a different kind of damage (as in mostly wind, not flood).
Ultimiately, the question is of government efficacy, not necessarily political philosophyPrecisely. But which party's political philosophy, since the start of the first Reagan administration, has been that government is by it's very nature the enemy? It's the perfect Gingrichian strategy, insist that government is innefficient then, when elected, cut programs and appoint clueless bumblers to positions of authority until this becomes a self-fullfilling proficy ( ... )
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Interesting. When I moved from British Columbia to Ontario in Canada in 1988, replacing my B.C. licence with an Ontario one required one trip the the DMV involving standing in line for 20 minutes and a fee of $30 dollars.
Secondly, the big government, welfare state approach has worked so well in Europe that both France and Germany now possess center-right governments committed to reforming and partially dismantling it. Gordon Brown is still hanging on, but by his fingernails, and "New Labor" isn't exactly Harold Wilson, if you know that I mean.Sure. Governments that are so 'center-right' that all three countries continue to provide state-subsidized, universal healthcare, massively subsidized, universally available daycare, and affordible public housing options ( ... )
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I'm not an advocate for 'big government.' I'm an advocate for government that works. And I'm not willing to buy into catch-phrases like 'government isn't the solution, it's the problem,' or the idea that less government is always better unless I can see some kind of evidence they're not just empty slogans peddled by people who want to hand out tax cuts to their pals.
Certainly there are plenty of examples of bureaucracies, both public and private, that don't work. But there are also ones that do. I'm interested in finding out why that is and exploiting it, rather than engaging in the typical American passtime of repeating groundless platitudes and maintaining that there is nothing, ever, to be gained from looking into why some of these things work better in other countries than they do here. If that makes me 'close minded' then I plead guilty.
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Who was left out of the loop, then? Cheney?
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Perhaps downsizing the pentagon is the answer.
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"Only the US government could have built Cabrini Green."
Absolutely. But I agree for probably different reasons than you do. You doubtless feel public housing "doesn't work" whereas it does work in other parts of the western world. At least it works a hell of a lot better than Cabrini Green. You have to go to the third world to find that kind of squalor.
What doesn't work is the way we do some of these things. The world is bigger than America.
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Excellent analysis of the phenomenon well said. Kudos.
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