[My previous article about Katrina’s effect on our economy is echoed in today’s New York Times, “Katrina’s Shock To The System”.]
Welcome to this edition of What I Think You Shouldn’t Miss in Sunday’s Papers.
I’m not enamored with most of the WP and NYT Katrina coverage, finding it either heart-rending stories of tragedy, boring and pointless analysis of the politics of hurricane relief, or updates on the relief effort that were went out of date within the time it took to print the paper. My cynicism at the politics around disaster relief are centered around the belief that no matter how badly the relief is bungled, the President will not feel any serious political damage, and therefore nobody from his cabinet will lose their jobs. The Bush’ are fiendishly loyal. In the rare case of complete incompetence, such as in the case of George Tenet’s al-Qaeda-ignorant CIA, the perpetrators are given medals of Freedom instead of held accountable. I admit that I am cynical, but my cynicism has been beaten into me by five years of no accountability, not affected out of laziness. If Bush’s Cabinet worked for Mindshare, I would have fired them all a long time ago. (And I hate firing people.)