IMO there'd be a lot less lawlessness if there were any signs of progress or promise of restoring order on the part of FEMA officials and the federal government. I'm pretty much outraged at this point that we're pouring billions of dollars into FEMA and homeland security so that they can hand out Keynesian pork-barrel construction contracts hand over fist, and then they react this impotently when a catastrophe actually does occur (let alone that a hurricane to NO has long been one of the worst-case scenarios of the south, and that they were supposed to be preparing for such an event years ago).
To add insult to injury, FEMA director Mike Brown did an interview last night where IMO he came across as an uncaring elitist jerk (and also echoed the ridiculous 'unpredictably adding flooding to a hurricane made it a double' excuse):
link
The part where he blames the victims:
And on top of that, even though there were mandatory evacuations and voluntary evacuations called for, literally hundreds of thousands of people for whatever reasons-- I'm not going to second guess - but for whatever reasons --chose or could not evacuate.
The part where he admits that the victims were ignored beforehand:
The second part of my answer, Jim, which, I think, again, the American people understand how fascinating and unusual this is -- is that we're seeing people that we didn't know exist that suddenly are showing up on bridges or showing up on overpasses or parts of the interstate that aren't inundated, and that now we're trying to get to them by Coast Guard helicopter to at least get them some immediate relief so we can start airlifting them out.
From those two, I take away that:
A) In its wisdom, a massive emergency agency never considered the fact that any major city would require concerted, large-scale, pre-emptive evacuation efforts for its poor.
B) FEMA, in watching billions of dollars change hands, never allocated even .01% of that for even reasonably accurate population estimates of major population centers.
IMO, given A and B, FEMA is either grossly incompetent or downright unconcerned with those without the means to help themselves.
