The State of the Nanny State - AnalogKid

Bobby Jindal eviscerates the corruption and waste that characterizes the Katrina clean up effort ...

That type of waste is the result of government paying $175 per square for tarps to cover broken roofs, while the contractor repairing the roof is paid $5 a square for the work — $170 dollars per square lost in the layers of subcontracting for “management� fees. Even more telling, other local companies have told the government that they could replace the damaged roofs permanently for the same price we are spending on band-aid fixes.

Has anyone else noticed this? When I was a boy (and I'm in my thirties), you'd see three guys getting the road fixed, the roof repaired, etc. Now it takes three people to fix the hole, and 23 to make sure they're safe. Oh yeah, you too. They keep the civilians safe too.

I've noticed that any rebar sticking up at work sites now has to be capped with bright orange or yellow plastic things. This is just in case you or your buddy should feel the urge to throw themselves from the half-demolished retaining wall into the forest of steel that is seducing you like Scylla and Charibdis.

Child safety seats are now strongly recommended for children under 4'10. First infant seats, then toddler seats, then three levels of booster seats. My wife is 5'2 - I'm getting her the booster seat for 12 year olds.

The government even spent $17 million on a permanent morgue for disaster victims that closed three months after it opened.

Rounding off the total deaths to 1,000, that's $17,000 per body. That doesn't even inter them, buy a coffin, or anything. It stored the bodies. You could have rented refrigerated storage for far less, and gotten the u-pack-it box kit for free.

Some enterprising fellow needs to open up a pit Bar-B-Que in the ex-permanent morgue and call it Morgue's - where everything is fresh.

In contrast, the private sector and faith-based organizations have stepped up where government has failed and have begun the process of demolishing and clearing neighborhoods of homes and debris that remain almost a year later. A national faith-based construction group uses volunteers to offer free demolition of homes in areas affected by the hurricanes. This group, that claims to be able to clear more than 100 homes a day, even includes removing the concrete slab, a service not provided by FEMA.

Reading between the html lines leads me to the conclusion that even after all of the money spent, the job(s) still aren't done, leaving the real work to volunteer organizations.

THE U.S. - Not just a Nanny State; A really crappy Nanny State.

posted by Ace at 01:03 AM

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