Stop finger pointing

Yesterday I heard Ira Glass of This American Life say that since Washington agreed to the state of emergency declaration for Louisiana on Saturday, August 27, two days before Katrina made landfall, the feds at that point had all the authority they needed to take any steps needed to protect people. He added that the new laws and regulations empowering the Department of Homeland Security gave the feds the power to do what they needed, regardless of the state of emergency. To me, this means that certainly by the point of the declaration being accepted, the feds owned the disaster. Period. So let's not engage in post-disaster finger pointing. We don't need to. All responsibility for mismanagement accrues to George W. Bush.

Remember August 6!