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 htj wrote:
Why would you need a president at a disaster? What's he going to do, run the country at it?

Its Bush's fault!!!

 Grey Templar wrote:
Katrina was caused by poor maintainance on levees by the state, and further complicated by communication failures between FEMA and state agencies.

Not really. While poor upgrading & maintenance of the levees certainly led to much of the flooding, the end result of that was flooding and that's well within FEMA's core tasks. Unfortunately FEMA's response to that was, well, woeful at best.

Perhaps what's most disappointing is that in the wake of such terrible failure of basic governance the Republican party didn't learn their lesson, recognise the importance of having good people in key roles and change their tack slightly to put some priority on good governance. Instead they just invented every excuse they possibly could for why FEMA's screw ups weren't their fault.

 SickSix wrote:
First of all, anyone who uses the red cross as the barometer is severely misinformed. The Red Cross is a perfect example of bloated bureaucracy and government corruption. They are a FOR PROFIT money grubbing corporation.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of good people that volunteer and do good work, but you start looking above their ground level workers and it gets disgusting real fast.

Agreed and it has been so for a long long time. My grandfather hated them back in WWII for some of their antics. Give to the Salvation Army they actually help people. The Red Cross just shows its flag three days late after sucking up as much money as possible.

 azazel the cat wrote:
Well, I formally apologize to you, Ouze. It seems you have taught me two things today:
1) the American Red Cross appears to be a pretty good organization, and
2) American charity disbursement quotas are disgustingly low. Seriously, 5%? What the Hell?


In Canada, the minimum is 80% of the previous year's donation intake which cannot be spent on administrative labour, and thus the 80% mark is where they operate. But that does force me to ask one legitimate question: does that 92% disbursement quota you cited include indirect payments (such as administrative salaries, ie. CEO, management fees, etc)? Or is it like the Canadian requirement of only direct service and donations?

As much as people love the image of fat cat bureaucrats taking all the funds as administration salaries, that's only true for a tiny, tiny portion of charities. The bigger issue, and the one you see with charities between, say, 40 and 80% of funds given to cause, is fundraising.

For a lot of charities, who don't have the profile of the Red Cross and other similar charities, they have to do a lot to bring in money, up to and including hiring people to go door knocking. And the sad fact is that many of these charities it can often cost $1 or more to raise $2.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Frazzled wrote:
Agreed and it has been so for a long long time. My grandfather hated them back in WWII for some of their antics. Give to the Salvation Army they actually help people. The Red Cross just shows its flag three days late after sucking up as much money as possible.

Nonsense, and nonsense that's already been shown to be such in this thread.

But please, do carry on with your beliefs in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

 Frazzled wrote:

 SickSix wrote:
First of all, anyone who uses the red cross as the barometer is severely misinformed. The Red Cross is a perfect example of bloated bureaucracy and government corruption. They are a FOR PROFIT money grubbing corporation.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of good people that volunteer and do good work, but you start looking above their ground level workers and it gets disgusting real fast.

Agreed and it has been so for a long long time. My grandfather hated them back in WWII for some of their antics. Give to the Salvation Army they actually help people. The Red Cross just shows its flag three days late after sucking up as much money as possible.

We get it, you like to troll.

 whitedragon wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 SickSix wrote:
First of all, anyone who uses the red cross as the barometer is severely misinformed. The Red Cross is a perfect example of bloated bureaucracy and government corruption. They are a FOR PROFIT money grubbing corporation.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of good people that volunteer and do good work, but you start looking above their ground level workers and it gets disgusting real fast.

Agreed and it has been so for a long long time. My grandfather hated them back in WWII for some of their antics. Give to the Salvation Army they actually help people. The Red Cross just shows its flag three days late after sucking up as much money as possible.

We get it, you like to troll.

Yes I troll for the Salvation Army. Does that make me a Holy Troller?

 Frazzled wrote:

 whitedragon wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 SickSix wrote:
First of all, anyone who uses the red cross as the barometer is severely misinformed. The Red Cross is a perfect example of bloated bureaucracy and government corruption. They are a FOR PROFIT money grubbing corporation.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of good people that volunteer and do good work, but you start looking above their ground level workers and it gets disgusting real fast.

Agreed and it has been so for a long long time. My grandfather hated them back in WWII for some of their antics. Give to the Salvation Army they actually help people. The Red Cross just shows its flag three days late after sucking up as much money as possible.

We get it, you like to troll.

Yes I troll for the Salvation Army. Does that make me a Holy Troller?

In my experience the Salvation Army aren't particularly nice, they run hostels for the homeless over here and run them at a major profit while treating the occupants like scum.

I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories but I think there has got to be something going on with Christies praise. He could have said the federal response was excellent without going as far as he did and looked statesman-like (as much as is possible for him, anyway). He really threw Romney under the bus IMO and I don't know why. Maybe he just thinks Obama's re-election is likely and wants to use that goodwill later.

malfred wrote:Just don't want the thread to turn into a US v. Canada thing.

Talking about emergency response comparisons would work...

I sign all my messages to Azazel the same way. It lets him know he is appreciated.

 Ouze wrote:
I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories but I think there has got to be something going on with Christies praise. He could have said the federal response was excellent without going as far as he did and looked statesman-like (as much as is possible for him, anyway). He really threw Romney under the bus IMO and I don't know why. Maybe he just thinks Obama's re-election is likely and wants to use that goodwill later.

Three theories:
1) Romney did something to piss him off, maybe by trying to use the storm as a political football, and Christie didn't like it.
2) Christie really wants to run for President in 2016, which he couldn't do if Romney was the incumbent.
3) He just really did think that Obama handled the situation well, and was unafraid to put aside partisan feelings to say so.

I may be cynical, but I'd still say option 3 is the most likely, though I wouldn't count out other theories.

Ouze wrote:I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories but I think there has got to be something going on with Christies praise. He could have said the federal response was excellent without going as far as he did and looked statesman-like (as much as is possible for him, anyway). He really threw Romney under the bus IMO and I don't know why. Maybe he just thinks Obama's re-election is likely and wants to use that goodwill later.

This is my hypothesis:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/30/486583.page#4944714


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malfred wrote:Just don't want the thread to turn into a US v. Canada thing.

Talking about emergency response comparisons would work...

I think you've just stumbled across the in-joke between AustonT & myself. Won't affect the thread. Nothing to see here, move along...