The Bureaucratic Menace

Why do we have to fear the bureaucrats, the government ‘officials,’ the people in charge?

It’s because they aren’t like us. Their priorities are different and even when they cast themselves in the role of rescuers or emergency managers their real priorities are to themselves and their status in the hive they have created. Let me give you an example.

The person occupying the slot of Regional Public Information Officer in FEMA’s Region IV is entitled to an ‘executive’ office chair. It says so right there in the General Services Administration catalog. It’s a perk – an $800 office chair.

In our little example the occupant of the PIO slot is one Mary Hudak. Her office is in Atlanta and she has such a chair.

The scene shifts to a Disaster Field Office set up in a former supermarket in Raleigh, N.C. The disaster is a hurricane – Betsy I believe. All of the worker bees are toiling in their folding chairs and folding tables, set up in a PIO ‘pod.’

Mary arrives. She says she’s there to help, but in fact her agenda is to exercise her authority. Translation: throw her weight around. But first things first.

Upon arrival, she gets on the phone and begins to browbeat a GSA employee for her executive chair. Yes, her perk, her chair. Remember, this is in the middle of a disaster, but Mary will have her chair, she’s entitled to it, the regs. say so.

And, yes, the chair was delivered and Mary sat in it for the next two months, threatening to fire folks who displeased her and basically taking over and disrupting what had been a smooth operation. Also on hand was the Lead PIO, a person she’d appointed. His role during this fiasco was, at full pay, to sit quietly and do nothing. Mary, after all, outranked him.

What did this do for the hurricane victims? It caused them to be fed conflicting and sometimes inaccurate information.

Now, look at the Katrina situation.

In Louisiana the governor’s press secretary is quoted in The New York Times as saying, "We wanted soldiers, helicopters, food and water, they wanted to negotiate an organizational chart."

It’s not just governmental incompetence we’re talking about here. It’s criminal incompetency. For example:

When Wal-Mart sent three trailer trucks loaded with water, FEMA officials turned them away. Agency workers prevented the Coast Guard from delivering 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel, and on Saturday they cut the parish's emergency communications line, leading the sheriff to restore it and post armed guards to protect it from FEMA.

Let’s look at that assertion again, “on Saturday they cut the parish's emergency communications line, leading the sheriff to restore it and post armed guards to protect it from FEMA.”

What’s sad is that it’s not surprising. It’s simply the lion protecting its turf.

If you’re not a government insider it makes no sense, but to one who has been there it’s perfectly logical, and that’s what we have to fear in Zephyrhills or just about anywhere else when the ‘rescuers’ ride into town.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Arjay