All Posts Tagged With: "disaster relief"
Bureaucracy Can’t Be Run Like a Business
John Tierney is an excellent columnist, by far the best on the New York Times op-ed page. He showed it last September when he contrasted Wal-Mart’s superlative emergency preparedness with the government’s horrible performance during Hurricane Katrina. As he wrote, Wal-Mart is “one of the few institutions to improve its image here after Katrina sent [...]
1Dec2005 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedHurricane Katrina Shows that Government Is Too Small?
By now everyone is aware of the almost inconceivable
incompetence of the Federal Emergency Management Agencys (FEMA) response to Hurricane Katrina.Those who cherish liberty might think this episode would bolster their cause.However, as usual the states intellectual bodyguards have attempted to use this disaster to justify ever higher budgets and even more dictatorial powers.
Mitigating Disaster: Abolish FEMA and Let Gas Prices Rise
The waste, delays, and incompetence that characterize FEMA are the result of a free-rider problem inherent in all federal spending programs.
1Dec2005 | Dwight R. Lee | 0 comments | ContinuedHurricane Katrina: Government versus the Private Sector
If the “American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn’t be in this crisis.” Louisiana’s Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard, paraphrasing Sheriff Harry Lee during an interview on “Meet the Press,” got to the root of all that went wrong in the buildup to and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina last August. “It’s [...]
1Oct2005 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedLessons of History: The Great Irish Famine
History is a subject that often arouses strong emotions. What seems to some people to be a topic of limited academic interest is for others the source of deeply held and passionate feelings. The task of the historian is to try to establish, as dispassionately as possible, what actually happened in a given time and [...]
1Sep2001 | Stephen Davies | 1 comment | ContinuedDisaster Relief Then and Now
Janet Sharp Hermann is an American historian and author living in Berkeley, California. The earthquake of October 17, 1989, had no sooner struck the San Francisco Bay Area than politicians began vying for television time to offer government assistance. Within a few hours, as reports of the damage were still coming in, the Lieutenant Governor [...]
1May2000 | Janet Sharp Hermann | 3 comments | ContinuedLessons from the Chicago Fire
Daniel Oliver is a research associate at the Washington, D.C.-based Capital Research Center and a freelance writer. A version of this article appeared in the Center’s newsletter, Alternatives in Philanthropy. Imagine hearing on the news that one of America’s largest cities had just been virtually destroyed by a manmade or natural disaster. What steps would [...]
1Feb2000 | Daniel T. Oliver | 0 comments | ContinuedGovernment Versus the Environment
When the subject is the environment, the public perception is that a resource of such importance can only be adequately safeguarded by the benevolent, all-encompassing hands of the government. Whether that protection comes in the guise of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Forest Service, the Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, or any of [...]
1Feb1998 | Russell Madden | 18 comments | ContinuedGovernment and Disaster Relief
The North Dakota flood this past spring was a heartbreaker. The scenes of devastation gripped the nation and brought tears to the eyes of millions.
Back here in Michigan, my historian friend Burt Folsom used the occasion to acquaint me with an event about which I knew nothing: the terrible Michigan fire of 1881. Folsom noted a couple of differences between these two natural disasters, and gave me an earful of information that readers of this column may find interesting.
1Sep1997 | Lawrence W. Reed | 1 comment | Continued-
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