A Simple Plan

Julian Sanchez | September 7, 2005

Get people to higher ground and have the feds and the state airlift supplies to them -- that was the plan, man.
—New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin

Oy. Was anyone, at any level of this operation, not inept? I still think what I said a few days ago is right: We ought to expect that when a major catastrophe renders a locality incapable of providing the basic civil order that is supposed to be government's primary task, it may be necessary for the feds to temporarily step into the vacuum. But I hope there's some way to do that without increasing (quite so much) the likelihood of a vacuum in the first place.