Relief Effort Rant

I am angry. Livid. Ticked off.

I do not suffer fools lightly. That is one of my biggest failings. I have such little patience with stupidity and with people who don't at least put forth an effort. Today I have stumbled across a nest of fools.

The comedian Gallagher (the one who smashed watermelons) had a bit where he discussed a dam (I think it was the Hoover Dam). He recounted how, on a tour, you could see the button they did not push that would have prevented a spillover that had occurred. He would point out they sat and watched the water rise as they debated about what to do. They could have prevented the spill but did not and then he would look out at the audience and ask, "Do you know why?" Here, he would begin slapping his hands together for effect as he gave the answer, "Because WATER CAN MAKE A DECISION."

This year, I reneged on my promise to my wife and again got involved with the PTSO at our son's school. I went through three years of fighting with bureaucracy and idiots as first the secretary, then vice-president and finally president of a PTA a few years ago. After that, my wife said we had done our part and we could volunteer to do things but no more getting sucked into being on any boards. Until this year, we had kept to the deal.

So, in talking to the PTSO president, I said we really need to do something for the Katrina victims. We were on the fringe of the affected area but got off easy compared to MS and LA. Seeing as how we in this area have gone through a lot of storms, including Camille, Frederic, Ivan and now Katrina, we have a lot of empathy for those who are suffering. I thought we could collect money at the school by setting up collection jars or buckets in various locations. She said we had to run it by the principal. Okay, no problem.

When school re-opened today, I went to one of the vice principals and explained our idea. I was given a brush off of an answer along the lines of, "I'll have to speak to the principal when I get a chance, he wants to coordinate the various collections." Okay, again no problem. After finding the PTSO president, who had heard from some of the other board members, and hearing their ideas, I agreed that it would be best to not collect money. Rather, we would collect school supplies and school clothing for those who had relocated to our area and would begin attending school here. Now this was a superb idea. I volunteered to head the effort, to get it published in the local paper, even try to get a mention on the local TV channel asking for donations.

When we re-approached the vice principal, the stone wall was again put up. She still had not spoken with the principal but would do so soon. I reiterated that I needed to know by lunchtime, as I was under a deadline crunch for publication in the paper. She assured me it would be no problem.

As the lunch hour approached, I returned to the vice principal's office to get an update. Had she spoken with the principal yet? Of course not. She was too busy working on the plans to make up the football game that had been postponed. Yep, there are priorities, you know. She said while she had not yet mentioned it to him, she knew that he did not want to do anything until he had studied some ideas, and gotten together with the school board, and coordinated, blah blah blah. Besides, several local churches have already collected a lot of things. Translation from Bureaucratese to English: We are not going to do anything, unless we can assure we can take full credit for it, and we don't know why you won't take the hint and quit bothering us with trivialities.

I was about twenty seconds from throttling someone, so I simply left. I went back to the PTSO president and informed her that I can't do this. I'll volunteer at some church or agency that will actually do something useful.

This brings up another point. My wife heard a local center, although small, was being used to house some of those who were left homeless by Katrina and had found their way to our city. She went there to volunteer, only to find an empty center except for the two ladies wearing their best "look at me I'm volunteering" outfits who she overheard discussing how nasty those refugees are. After speaking with the person running the center, my wife discovered that some locals in that upscale neighborhood had complained that these refugees dared walk around at night, and you know how that reflects on our neighborhood. So, the people in the center were relocated to another larger shelter in a nearby town.

You want to blame someone for what has happened since the hurricane? Don't blame Bush, or those in his cabinet, or even the governors of LA and MS. The fault lies at the feet of those career bureaucrats, most of who are appointed not elected. It's these middle management types who mess everything up because they are actually the ones responsible for making a decision (remember the dam button?) but won't do so. Bush doesn't micromanage everything, he delegates to subordinates who delegate who...and so on and so on. Somewhere down the chain, a weak link middle manager will find a way to screw up. It happens in large companies, it happens in the military (I have ten years personal experience on that count), it happens in all walks of life. The larger the network, the more levels of middle management, and the more chance someone will mess it all up.