A Simple Plan

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.