Less common than stories to choose from, however, are accounts of those stories that are at once as moving and incisive as today’s Huffington Post piece by Erin Brockovich and Robin Greenwald about the TVA disaster.  Here’s the cost of bureaucratic incompetence, or bureaucratic indifference, and certainly lack of bureaucratic oversight, shown in sharp relief.  It’s today’s Katrina, or the Minnesota bridge collapse, or Crandall Canyon mining disaster.  The destruction is as thorough and avoidable as in all those other cases, however much the scale differs from one headline to the next.

Here’s to the people affected in Tennessee receiving the attention and help Brockovich and Greenwald advocate for.  And here’s to the leaders who can make the changes in bureaucracies to prevent such things taking the initiative to make those changes.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

Officials from the Mississippi Development Authority paint a picture of vital Hurricane Katrina-relief projects still snared in federal bureaucracy almost three years after the storm.

But members of the MDA Disaster Recovery Division met with the Sun Herald on Thursday and they said much progress has been made in recent months.

The story goes on to report that each project must meet with the approval of up to fifteen (15) different agencies–and many of those agencies require several appointments each.

I wonder if anyone has crunched the numbers on what the cost is of all the time that goes into those multiple approval processes? And what about looking at how much duplication there is in all those processes and consolidating them across bureaucracies? How many more housing units could be built with the money saved by eliminating duplications?

Oh, I know–that’s hoping for a lot of reasoning power to be brought to bear on the situation, but I have faith in the human capacity for change. And also the wisdom to not hold my breath waiting.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

The plaintiffs in the class-action suit dismissed by the judge were many of the hundreds of thousands of people who filed claims here against the corps last year because of the levee breaches that flooded the city. They lined up in cars and on foot and jammed the streets around the agency’s district headquarters, acting out what has been a loudly spoken article of faith since the days in 2005 when water covered 80 percent of New Orleans and ruined the homes of thousands: the corps — not nature, not a record-breaking storm surge and not local politics or local negligence — was to blame.

The judge, Stanwood R. Duval Jr. of the Federal District Court here, a son of South Louisiana, heartily seconded that notion on Wednesday, suggesting that the corps was guilty of “gross incompetence.” But Judge Duval said he was powerless to rule favorably on the lawsuit because the Flood Control Act of 1928 granted legal immunity to the government in the event of failure of flood control projects like levees.

“Gross incompetence.”  That, and malice, inevitably take root in any system where accountability is lacking.  Granted that governments can’t set themselves up to be sued out of existence in on fell swoop (or even one swell foop, as my mama used to say), but we are in desperate need of increased accountability in this country. 

An interesting research project to get to someday would be to look at the prevailing ethos of the lawmakers at the times when such legislation, as the law that gives the Corps immunity from prosecution,  was passed.   My somewhat educated guesstimate is that things like honor and integrity ranked higher then than they do now, and cutting corners and expense rank higher now than they did then.  I think there was likely a time when people and organizations took more pride in the quality of their work than they have in recent history, and lawmakers might have had some belief, or even unconscious assumption, that of course the Army Corps of Engineers wouldn’t do shoddy work (or, considering the case closer to home, that professionals on boards wouldn’t act with malice). I think that the lawmakers who gave immunity from prosecution to the Army Corps of Engineers in 1928 never thought that they were extending protection to people doing shoddy work.

I wonder when the adage, “Close enough for government work,”  was coined.  The only information I’ve found is a cached Wikipedia page that says it originated in WWII and originally meant top notch work—that it was good enough for troops overseas.  But over time it came to signify sloppy work, poorly and hastily done work, second rate.  (Indeed, in our current days it’s accurate in its current meaning for what’s provided for troops overseas—like the cheap, inadequate body armor given to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (who were not even allowed to buy their own good body armor).

In any case, I think there has been a shift in what one could reasonably expect between the time when blanket immunity was legislated for government entities and now.  But whether I right about that or so off base as to get a close look at the back side of the moon, we need new legislation that will create accountability.  We have way more proof than we need to know that we can’t count on honor, integrity, or pride of work to keep us safe from the gross incompetence and malice of those who draw their pay from the people whom they victimize.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen

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