Some food for thought

An article that looks at the rebuilding of New Orleans with a different perspective:

http://www.slate.com/id/2126715/

A Random Blend of Thoughts

Work has been very busy for the last couple of months. Judging from the number of "priority one" items on my project list, I anticipate that things will continue to be busy for a while. Plus, I'll be spending the next several weeks in DC during the week. Thankfully, I've still managed to find some time to have some fun. Last weekend, I drove up to Pennsylvania to visit one of my cousins who attends the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, which is a cute little campus that looks almost like a ski resort nestled in the mountains. I had a fun day out there with my cousin and her boyfriend, and then drove back to DC for another week inside the beltway.

On the technical side, I'm playing with
Camino, which is an open-source browser for the Mac made by the Mozilla project. So far, I have found it to be much faster than either Safari or Firefox.

I'm flying back to Michigan this weekend, which I am looking forward to. I love Ann Arbor in the Fall.

Budget Time Again

Politicians and media figures like to "spin" world events to emphasize their own agenda. Sometimes the "spin" results in a message that directly contradicts the actual events or data. The United States Federal Government budget numbers are a prime example of how people can twist numbers to meet their message. With the end of the Federal fiscal year fast approaching (September 30), I thought it would be a great time to introduce the work that a friend of mine has been doing over the last several years. Each year, my friend takes the raw budget numbers and provides an excellent analysis of the data to show you exactly where your taxpayer dollars go. I recommend that you check out his page if you have some free time.

Race and Class in America

USA Today had a story today that discussed the perceptions of the New Orleans crisis from both the black and white perspectives. According to the poll, 6 in 10 blacks believe that the disaster response was slow because the victims were poor and black. On the other hand, 9 in 10 whites disagree.

It is pretty obvious that poor people were affected more in New Orleans than those with more money. If someone like Donald Trump had been caught in New Orleans, he could have paid for a private helicopter to take him elsewhere. He could also afford to hire someone to guard his property while he was away. Most middle class people could afford to drive out of town and get a hotel room somewhere. But poor people had less options. Some options were unavailable due to their lack of financial resources. And some options were disregarded because the poor didn't want to abandon what little they had after the storm destroyed most of their possessions.

But the issue in the poll was whether the federal government delayed helping New Orleans because the residents were poor. True, the government might have overestimated the capability of New Orleans to help itself. But the concept that it would deliberately allow people to die because they were poor is just ridiculous.

And for the race issue, I offer the following: Southern Mississippi was devastated by Katrina along with New Orleans. While Mississippi didn't face the flooding of New Orleans, in many areas the initial hurricaine damage was far more severe. Just as people are homeless and suffering in New Orleans, there are people in the same situation in Mississippi. The financial condition of the people in the rural Mississippi counties is similar to that of people in New Orleans. According to the United States Census, approximately 36.3% of the population of Mississippi is black. For an urban comparison, Biloxi, Mississippi has a population that is 19.0% black. Orleans Parish has a population that is 67.3% black. Yet Mississippi has received less attention, less money, and less assistance than New Orleans. A quick survey of major media outlets shows almost no references to the situation in Mississippi. New Orleans is only starting to become a secondary news story on the front page.

Obviously, the situations in Mississippi and New Orleans are not identical, so the comparisons should be taken with a grain of salt. But I think that these facts can be useful in allowing the reader to make his (or her) own conclusions on whether race really was an issue.

So let me pose the questions: Would the race of the people in New Orleans prevent you from helping them? Would the fact that many of them are poor prevent you from helping them? For most people, I think the answers to these questions would be "no." I hope that America rises up and showers its generosity on all of the people affected by this disaster, and shows the world that deep down we are neither black, white, rich, nor poor, but that we are all Americans.

True Leadership

Recently, political operatives on both the left and the right have been jousting about who to blame for the mess in New Orleans. People have been blaming FEMA, President Bush, the Mayor of New Orleans, and the Governor of Louisiana. Certainly, there were failings at all levels of government. September 11, 2001 provides us a valuable lesson about the proper response to a crisis. The single major element that has been missing from the Katrina disaster is a leader of the caliber of former New York Mayor Guiliani.

Immediately after the World Trade Center attacks, and in the days following, Guiliani was the most effective leader responding to the situation. Over the years prior to 9/11, he had built an effective leadership team around him. When the attacks occurred, he had the framework in place to allow him to direct the response to the attacks. He facilitated action, he stayed out of the way of the people getting the job done, and he arranged to find resources for those under him. He also provided reassurance to the city of New York, as well as to the country as a whole. If you pause to consider the actions of all the significant political figures on that day, none comes even close to matching him. And it is also important to consider what Guiliani did not do. Despite all of the media attention that he received during that time period, he didn't spend his time politically grandstanding or blaming the US Government.

None of the political leaders in the Katrina situation has shown any leadership skills comparable to Guiliani. The most effective leader on the ground right now in New Orleans is Army Lt. Gen. Honore, who is managing to effectively direct the National Guard despite the daunting tasks facing him. Instead of acting, all of the political figures have been pointing fingers and not getting the job done.

Mayor Nagin of New Orleans stands out in stark contrast to Guiliani. It is clear that he didn't have an effective, trusted leadership team in place prior to the disaster. He failed to follow his city's own disaster plan. And rather than spending his time getting the job done, he spent his time in front of the media blaming the state of Louisiana and the federal government. It is true that the situation in New Orleans clearly outpaced the city's resources. But he could have spent his time obtaining the resources he needed. If he had made an appeal on TV asking for every available bus in a five state radius to converge outside the city limits, it probably would have happened. But from his perspective, obtaining resources was the state's job, or the federal government's job -- but not his job.

Solving problems starts as a local issue. Who is more likely to know the layout of New Orleans? The Mayor of New Orleans? Or a bureaucrat in Washington? Who knows what percentage of the city doesn't have power? Or what levees haven't had as much maintenance as they should have?

On the other hand, it's clear that neither FEMA nor President Bush is blameless either. Both should have recognized the shortcomings (incompetence?) of the local government and have been prepared with a massive response once the state gave its approval for them to proceed. The way the US government works, the federal government can't step in until the state permits it. However, a media appearance in front of a convoy of supplies, and an appeal that said, "we want to help, but the Governor won't let us start work" would have changed the situation very quickly. The President could have also requested volunteers from federal law enforcement personnel across the country and sent them all down to New Orleans right away.

So let's hope and pray that the United States finds more individuals with the leadership talents of Mr. Guiliani, and elects them to public office. Because we certainly need more people like him.

Productive After a Holiday?

I was able to work from home today, and I managed to stay productive. I spent the day alternating between providing some technical support over the phone to a customer, and working on building a new server for my company. The new server is a Sun V120 to replace my aging Ultra 5 that has been faithfully running since 1999. The transition to the new server was fairly seamless, and this leaves the Ultra 5 open for other tasks.

I managed to get a break in the middle of the day to go running. The hot blazing noon sun was a reminder that despite the calendar reading "September", it's still not really fall. My plan is to get some running in every day this week, and also hit the gym. I have to take advantage of being in Ann Arbor while I'm here.

Tomorrow, the HVAC people are coming to install a new furnace and air conditioning system at my house. So it will be an interesting day.

The Swan Song of Summer

I used to go running on a pretty regular basis, but this summer I've let my busy work schedule get in the way. Today I went running for the first time in a while. Usually I go running on the Gallup Park trail that runs next to the Huron River. On a bright sunny day, with the light shimmering off the water, it's very beautiful. But today I decided to try something new and run up Nixon Road north of US-23. It doesn't take very long (less than a mile, in fact) to cross out of suburbia and into farmland. The setting sun was beautiful over the fields. I ran up to Pontiac Trail and headed back for a round-trip of four and a half miles. A little light on the mileage, but it was good anyways.

Here's a satellite image (a few years out of date) of the north part of Ann Arbor:



Tomorrow I am hosting a BBQ for some friends in honor of Labor Day. It's hard to believe that summer has already come to an end. So anyways, it's off to bed so that I can finish the preparations for tomorrow.

Hopes Washed Away

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the situation in New Orleans has quickly devolved into chaos. Armed thugs are roaming the streets, looters are stealing everything in sight, and people are being assaulted in the Superdome. What makes this remarkably sad is that people are dying, and because this situation is happening here in the United States, not some Third World country. Despite all of the technology and resources this country has, the underlying infrastructure is so fragile.

One of the things that suprised me was how many people stayed despite the recommended evacuation warnings prior to Katrina. And many people stayed afterwards (and continue to stay) despite having lost everything. There were people who were in their homes with water several feet high, and yet they refused to leave when they were offered the opportunity. At first, this completely suprised me. My own personal response would have been to swim, walk, or crawl (whatever I was capable of) and made my way as far away from New Orleans as possible. But as I thought about it more, I realized that the reaction of these people was not that unusual. Many of these people are poor, and they cling to what little they still have.

Many political figures have been saying that disaster aid was delayed to New Orleans because most of the population is poor. In some cases, there are insinuations that race played a role. But I think that neither poverty nor race was a contributing factor. Instead, I think that the breadth of the problems in New Orleans was so enormous that people were either shocked, or didn't know where to begin. After all, how does one start fixing a city that is effectively now part of the Gulf of Mexico? Even FEMA's "worst case" scenarios didn't envision the levees breaking and the city being under water. The rapid breakdown in social order didn't help either. It's hard for rescuers to perform effectively if they are worried about losing their lives to gun-toting thugs.

Once all of the people have been rescued and evacuated, people will start discussing how to rebuild New Orleans. The question I have is whether New Orleans should be rebuilt in it's current location. The location of New Orleans is under sea level. The same levees that protect New Orleans from the sea also prevent the Mississippi from filling the area with silt. As a result, New Orleans is slowly sinking further. No matter how well we rebuild it, if we rebuild the city in its current location, it will always be susceptible to the same kind of damage that we are seeing now. Do we really want to chance the same toll on human lives in the future just to preserve the historic character of New Orleans?

My heart goes out to all of the people in New Orleans, from the people who have lost their homes to the rescuers working dilligently to save peoples lives. So many people have lost so much. It will take a monumental effort in order to bring some level of "normal" life back to New Orleans. It has been heartening to see so many people offering aid to the victims of this tragedy.