Trent Lott’s complaints sound oddly familiar:
Lott said he has been trying to get FEMA to send 20,000 trailers “sitting in Atlanta” to the Mississippi coast, and he urged President Bush during a meeting Monday to intervene. He said FEMA has refused to ship the trailers until contracts are secured.
“FEMA and MEMA need to be saying, ‘Yes’ to Mississippi’s needs, not, ‘No.,” the former majority leader said in a written statement.
“Mississippians are homeless, hungry and hurting.”
Similar stories of governmental red tape have been reported elsewhere, including a case of 100 surgeons and paramedics hindered from caring for hurricane victims in rural Mississippi.
But Mississippi isn’t having any problems with the Feds….
Of course, it is a little bit easier for federal aid to get to places like Biloxi and Gulfport, Mississippi, which are above sea level and where the waters of the storm surge and rain have had a means of heading back into the Gulf of Mexico (as opposed to the below-sea level neighborhoods of New Orleans).
While it is tragic that Senator Trent Lott’s home got levelled in the storm, ironically it might prove to be a political blessing for him. It may mean that when he comes up for re-election he might survive as having been a fellow victim of the storm. The other Republician office-holders in Mississippi (and particularly in Louisiana) might end up seeing the lethal ineptitude of the Bush administration causing the death of their politcal careers.
RANDALL SHERMAN
Secretary/Treasurer, Illinois Committee for Honest Government
Chicago