Hurricane Katrina lives on
I heard on the radio today that President Obama was in New Orleans, which has still not recovered from Hurricane Katrina. (CNN article here .) I wouldn't expect it to be 100% recovered, but apparently a lot of it is still a disaster area. One of the questions that Obama fielded was, naturally, "Why hasn't the government done more?" Obama's responded by saying that he was working on improving things: "My expectation is that by the time that my term is over, you guys are going to look back and you're going to say, 'This was a responsive administration on health care, on housing, on education, that actually made sure the money flowed and that things got done the way they were supposed to get done." I doubt whether any president can introduce drastic changes into any organization as large as FEMA. Because of the civil service system, 99% of its employees cannot be changed by the new administration. (I don't like to toss around percentages ...