More Government Failures

Can anything decent come out of this Administration? Anything not half-assed and put together with spit and tape?

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco lashed out at the Army Corps of Engineers on Wednesday for installing defective pumps at three major drainage canals just before the start of last summer's hurricane season.

"This could put a lot of our people in jeopardy," Blanco said. "It begs the question: Are we really safe?"

She called for a congressional investigation into how the Corps allowed it to happen.

Citing internal documents, The Associated Press reported Tuesday that the Corps installed the 34 pumps last year in a rush to fix the city's flood defenses, despite warnings from one of its experts that the machinery was defective and likely to fail in a storm.

At the same time, the Corps, the White House and state officials were telling residents that it was safe to come back to New Orleans, which was devastated in August 2005 when Hurricane Katrina breached the city's floodwalls.

But wait, look at the flooded school buses!

I often hear people say that the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina made them ashamed to be an American. But in truth it was only the most visceral of what has been a common circumstance in this Bush era. The functions of government are not seen as worthy of competence. Government is an enemy and not a tool. So why would anyone be surprised that the Army Corps of Engineers did a crappy job installing pumps in New Orleans, putting lives at potential risk? What's important to this White House is not that anything is done well, it's that it APPEARS like they're doing something.

This DKos diarist traces the failure of the pumps back to, you guessed it, privatization, and it's completely obvious because when there's no accountability for the work there's no incentive to do it properly. You get paid either way.

The company contracted to supply 34 new pumps was Moving Water Industries Corp. of Florida. The contract, for 26.6 million, was awarded after competitive bidding, according to the USACE.

But they weren't without connections.

MWI is owned by J. David Eller and his sons. Eller was once a business partner of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in a venture called Bush-El that marketed MWI pumps. Eller has donated about $128,000 to politicians, the vast majority of it to the Republican Party, since 1996, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Government is only implemented to reward rich friends rather than to help people. It's a signature of this Administration. And it won't change until the leadership changes.