Here’s a good piece on the continuing clusterfuck that is the federal government’s handling of the rebuilding of New Orleans, featuring Agitator friend Dan Rothschild:

A school superintendent moved heaven and Earth to reopen schools in her district, he says. She wanted to use one of the ubiquitous FEMA trailers as a temporary classroom. Alas, some government regulation prevented that; the door supposedly was not wide enough. So she got FEMA’s OK to use it as a laundry room for teachers who were living in other FEMA trailers.

But when a new FEMA boss came to town and saw the laundry, he informed her there will be a federal investigation about the supposed misappropriation of FEMA property.

She learned a hard lesson about government agencies: They are there to enforce their rules, Rothschild said. “It’s hard to get back to your life when government still is treating it as a disaster area,” he says.

Sheesh. Talk about soul-sucking bureaucracy.

Rothschild does inject a welcome bit of optimism into the discussion, but it’s due to the spirit of the people in the area. And it thrives in spite of the federal government’s presence down there, not because of it.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 10th, 2007 at 4:48 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.