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| When Pointing Fingers... | | Date Created: Sep 14, 2005, 09:27 PM |
 In addition to congratulating themselves and getting everyone to do some reflections on ten years of The Weekly Standard, there's an essay by John J. DiIulio Jr. that starts some reflection on the Katrina/New Orleans debacle. The article is entitled, "When Pointing Fingers... Don't forget Congress" (only available to subscribers).
I think the mainstream media should be faulted as well. I note that they've gone back to putting the low-on-the-totempole reporter back out on the beach to report while getting beat up by the weather for Hurricane Ophelia.
"...Lesson one is that the only thing worse than having big government in the first place is relying on it to achieve big goals that it cannot, in fact, achieve without additional funding and far-reaching administrative reforms; the only thing worse than spending over two trillion tax dollars annually is having to watch as your big government at each and every level (federal, state, and local) moves too slow and comes up too small in performing such fundamental tasks as maintaining public order, guarding public health, and protecting private property.
Lesson two is that what passes for big government in this country belongs to Congress. Federal agencies report to the president but are Congress's fiscal and administrative creatures. For almost a half-century now, the nation's legislative branch has made federal bureaucracies into a bloody mess. At times such as these, there is, alas, precious little that even a determined president, his White House staff, or his political appointees in the agencies can do to clean up the mess, change how things work, or improve government performance."
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