View from the Mountain

The amazing Katrina dialogue

As I watched the sun come up this morning,  I couldn't shake the feeling that Katrina will be a defining moment for our country. I don't think we're going to find easy answers, but I do hope we find the courage to act.

I certainly didn't think any of us who have watched the drama unfold on television could be untouched by the disaster, the poor planning, and the inadequate response.  I thought this was an event above politics where even the most callous could see that government at many levels could have done better.

I was absolutely floored when I read the results of the Washington Post-ABC News poll which showed that we're even farther apart than I could have possibly imagined.

Just 17 percent of Democrats said they approved of the way Bush was handling the Katrina crisis while 74 percent of Republicans said they approved. About two in three Republicans rated the federal government's response as good or excellent, while two in three Democrats rated it not so good or poor.

I don't care if you're a Republican or Democrat, but how can anyone approve of the bungling response to this natural disaster.  You can analyze this to death, but officials at all levels were unprepared, unaware, clueless in the face of a storm which was no surprise, and President Bush was no exception.

I found this information in the Toronto Star very disturbing.

Elite rescuers from Vancouver who saved 119 lives in St. Bernard near New Orleans were that community's first real sign of relief, days before U.S. rescuers moved in.

So how can Canadians be there before US rescuers?  Have we let our disaster response capability deteriorate so badly that we cannot  take care of our own countrymen?  Even the Wall Street Journal seems to think this has happened. Many had warned FEMA would become lost in Homeland Security, and it did.   

The mistakes are so bad that I can't understand people thinking the government has done well.  This is from an enlightening September 6, WSJ article entitled " Behind Katrina Response, Weak Links. 

FEMA itself seemed to frequently have bad information. At a Tuesday press conference Bill Lokey, federal coordinating officer for FEMA and the agency representative on site, downplayed the severity of the flooding caused by the breaches in New Orleans, saying the water wasn't rising in most areas. "I don't want to alarm everybody that, you know, New Orleans is filling up like a bowl," he said. "That's just not happening."

Within hours, much of the city was under water, and Mr. Lokey was calling Katrina "the most significant natural disaster to hit the United States."

It is pretty obvious that people watching television knew more than FEMA. On top of that, because of the bureaucracy that was created with Homeland Security, foreign countries were able to get people in place faster than our own government.  At least that happened when we didn't turn their aid away.  According to the Washington Post this morning much aid is just not getting through.

Since Hurricane Katrina, more than 90 countries and international organizations offered to assist in recovery efforts for the flood-stricken region, but nearly all endeavors remained mired yesterday in bureaucratic entanglements, in most cases, at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

When I was thinking about the government's stellar disaster planning, it dawned on me that our infrastructure in the Valley hasn't exactly been through major updates lately.

Somehow the government's theory of everyone getting in a car and fleeing a disaster scene makes me hope we never have one in the Roanoke, especially in these days of gas shortages.  Can you image Interstate 81 or Route 220 as evacuation routes?  Interstate 81 can barely handle Thanksgiving.  Perhaps we can get part of the traffic over to Route 58 which seems to be perpetually empty while Interstate 81 continues to be in danger of sinking from the weight of truck traffic.

Just maybe if we ignore our problems, they'll go away.  Then again there will be some haunting images of a dying New Orleans to remind us that poor planning and even worse execution can geometrically increase the pain of a disaster.

 

Ignoring the obvious

Many of us have been lucky enough to walk along the shores of the oceans that touch several states here in our country.  Few who have done so could have gone away without being impressed by the power of mother nature.  It's easy to come away from a walk on the beach feeling very small and perhaps even powerless against the never ending power of the waves that crash against the shores.

Given the number of hurricanes and the power exhibited by those that hit our coasts over the last few years, one would think that even the most callous politicians might think that we've been living on borrowed time with all the development that has taken place in high risk places.

Yet we've focused our fears not on mother nature but on the threat of terrorism.  It's obvious that another  terrorist attack will happen some day. Even if we gave away all of our freedoms, a big brother government probably couldn't stop it.  Through relentless fear mongering, politicians have sought to be re-elected to protect us from something that is probably impossible to stop anyway.  We've gone to war against a country that had nothing to do with terrorism. In so doing, we have created more terrorists, and in fact the number of terrorists attacks have increased since our Iraqi war on terrorism began.

While we have diverted billions of dollars of resources to this war on terrorism, we have ignored the infrastructure of our own country.  Even worse we have taken resources which should be dedicated to our own country, the National Guard, and sent them off to fight a foreign war.

In the Boston Globe, James Carroll's article, "Katrina's truths," hits the nail on the head.

Here was Katrina's second main epiphany -- what it means that the United States, after a generation of tax-cutting and downsizing, has eviscerated the public sector's capacity for supporting the common good. The neglect of civic infrastructure, the destruction of social services, the abandonment of the safety net, the myth of privatization," the perverse idea, dating to the Reagan era, that government is the enemy: It all adds up to what we saw last week -- government not as the enemy, but as the incompetent, impotent bystander. The bystander-in-chief, of course, is George W. Bush, whose whining self-obsession perfectly embodies what America has done to itself.

As we move into the next season, we can only hope that politicians will finally wake up and start spending money where it does the most public good instead of the where it provides the most votes for re-election.  Is it too much to ask that the people we elect as leaders act like leaders instead of self interested politicians? As the New York Times reported, pork barrel politics are evident in this Congress.

Even by the standards of Alaska, the land where schemes and dreams come for new life, two bridges approved under the national highway bill passed by the House last week are monuments to the imagination.

One, here in Ketchikan, would be among the biggest in the United States: a mile long, with a top clearance of 200 feet from the water - 80 feet higher than the Brooklyn Bridge and just 20 feet short of the Golden Gate Bridge. It would connect this economically depressed, rain-soaked town of 7,845 people to an island that has about 50 residents and the area/’s airport, which offers six flights a day (a few more in summer). It could cost about $200 million.

Yet while Congress can fund "bridges to nowhere", it couldn't find the funds to protect New Orleans. As reported by the LA Times, "Despite Warnings, Washington Failed to Fund Levee Projects," the government has focused on short term political goals at the expense of what is really important.

What happened this year was typical: Local levee and flood prevention officials, along with Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.), asked for $78 million in project funds. President Bush offered them less than half that — $30 million. Congress ended up authorizing $36.5 million.

Since Bush took office in 2001, local experts and Landrieu have asked for just short of $500 million. Altogether, Bush in his yearly budgets asked for $166 million, and Congress approved about $250 million.

These budget decisions reflect a reality in Washington: to act with an eye toward short-term political rewards instead of making long-term investments to deal with problems.

As we look at the election map from last year's presidential election, we have to wonder if this might be a wake up call for people who have believed the rhetoric that the government is always their enemy.  The reality is that there will continue to be natural disasters which are well beyond the resources of local communities and states.  One of the reasons we form governments and pay taxes is to have resources to help in situations such as hurricane Katrina. 

My hope is that Katrina will be a turning point for our country and lead us to a much needed re-evaluation of our government and how it can be a positive force for good.

It's time for much more than politics as usual.  Perhaps it's time for the people to take back the government from the politicians.  I don't think we need much more proof that all those in power  have failed completely to protect and serve their country.

The inevitable organizational failure

Just as the sun always sets in the west, an organization built on cronyism will fail.  We've seen more than enough examples in the last week through the inability of FEMA to handle the hurricane Katrina disaster.

We seem to be running short on leaders.  I suspect they have all been replaced by managers who spend most of their time worrying about how big their empire is rather than dealing with tough situations.

This is from  Paul Krugman's article, "Killed by Contempt." in today's New York Times. (free registration required)

For one thing, the undermining of FEMA began as soon as President Bush took office. Instead of choosing a professional with expertise in responses to disaster to head the agency, Mr. Bush appointed Joseph Allbaugh, a close political confidant. Mr. Allbaugh quickly began trying to scale back some of FEMA's preparedness programs...

But the downgrading of FEMA continued, with the appointment of Michael Brown as Mr. Allbaugh's successor.

Mr. Brown had no obvious qualifications, other than having been Mr. Allbaugh's college roommate. But Mr. Brown was made deputy director of FEMA; The Boston Herald reports that he was forced out of his previous job, overseeing horse shows. And when Mr. Allbaugh left, Mr. Brown became the agency's director. The raw cronyism of that appointment showed the contempt the administration felt for the agency; one can only imagine the effects on staff morale.

I think a lot of my friends and former college roommates.  In fact if I have a question on boats or fishing, I ask a childhood friend whom is something of an expert in these areas. If I have a question that requires delving into genealogy or obscure German texts, one of my college roommates is the perfect choice.

This is not to say that college roommates never fit in a business situation.  However, the challenge of evaluating skills and competency can be greatly complicated with the inclusion of people who have a personal connection to you.  It makes being a manager or a leader that much harder.  It's usually not worth the risk.

As we've seen with the FEMA failures, putting someone in a position just because they know someone is often a recipe for failure. In the case of an important federal agency it borders on criminal.  When you see someone whose only qualification is that they're someone's buddy put in a position like the director of FEMA, you often hear that they are a "good manager" and "good managers" can handle anything.  Unfortunately most of these guys by nature come from a world of  "who you know" is more  important than "what you know."  The last thing most of them want is someone who really knows what is happening . That one well informed  employee can demonstrate to the world  how ineffective the well-connected new managers are.

I coined a term for this style of management in my post, "Cult of the Buddies."

Recently in government, other institutions, and business, a new form of pseudo leadership seems to be coming into vogue.  My terminology for this is the "cult of the buddy."

The "cult of the buddy" is best identified when you see the same small group of people over and over make all the key decisions without input from others who are often much more qualified to make the decisions. Many of the decisions often appear to not be the best decisions.  Because the basis for the decision is a limited group of people, the risk and reality is that they often do not have the right information on which to base the decisions.

...The buddy group is almost a comfort blanket. Connections and sometimes false respect for abilities are the currency of the buddy group.  It is insulated from the real world and takes only limited input from outside the group.

While the buddy management might only slow sales in a typical company, it has proved to be deadly in government.

We've often heard that the current administration is one with roots in business.  Yet it is my assertion that their business world is one that has been governed by the laws of the cult of the buddies.

It's the only explanation for  the complete failure of the FEMA leadership.

The real business world operates under far different principles as I detailed in this post, "Rotten From Within."

One of the cardinal rules of business management is to hire good people and let them do their jobs.

Many good managers take it a few steps further.  They make sure to run interference for the good people they have hired, they never ask them to do something they cannot do themselves, and certainly they never create work for their people  just because they are too lazy to understand their own business unit.

Until we demand some accountability from our government leaders, we're going to stay in a mess.  There are too many buddies in jobs where their skills if they have any are wasted.

They're also spending too much time worrying about their empires and interfering with others who are trying to solve some serious problems.   These cronies should be removing roadblocks instead of creating them.