NIGHTLINE is doing Charity Hospital and FEMA.

[aquart]

The doctors are testifying how badly they have been used by FEMA. FEMA has a 60 page application for a volunteering doctor to fill out...including a W-4. SIXTY PAGES.

FEMA wouldn't let splints and crayons to go from one state to the next without TWO permits. Two days passed and the permits didn't come. They piled the stuff into a Baptist van.

Churches and civic organizations got thru without permits. But FEMA blocked help constantly. People died because FEMA wanted a SIXTY PAGE APPLICATION in an emergency. Unfuckingbelievable.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. no pattern

pattern to make this fail... they were very efficient, from what I am seeing, but not efficient in the way any of us would call it efficient

[I_Make_Mistakes]

2. The sad/bad news just keeps coming out.

Our government is a total dysfunctional entity that needs to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up.

I fear that will not happen.

[aquart]

20. Actually, that sounds like BushCo.

Personally, I don't think we need to destroy government. We do need to hire competent people.

[Carla in Ca]

3. This is the same hospital where devoted

doctors and nurses kept patients on ventilators alive by working them manually! They existed in deplorable conditions completely ignored, unlike the university hospital nearby.
Like I said earlier, whoever the Dem nominee is for '08, the first promise is to install James Lee Witt as FEMA director.
And Chertoff must be forced to resign...now!

[aquart]

8. What interests me is that they evacuated w/ "private help"

and nobody named Gore. It was Charity he hired those planes for, right?

[spuddonna]

11. yup... n/t

[Carla in Ca]

18. Read this article

Gore personally knows Dr. Kline. That is why he went.

[txindy]

4. Well, the repubs ARE all about smaller gov't.

But this certainly isn't it!

Sixty pages?!

[GetTheRightVote]

5. I went to NO to find out over the radio & at the check points

It was a very very hurtful day in my life. I still struggle to understand the cruelty of it all. Fema kept everyone out even the locals who were trying to get in. It was horrible and I still have the nightmares that came home with me from that war zone. NO was and probably still is very much a war zone. But why oh why did the federal govt ignore these poor people. How they suffered while waiting for some compassion. This adminstration should have all its members in a jail cell and be up for the deaths of their own, fellow Americans. We must not let this act against our own to go unpunished or we are lost and so is our country. I can not say it enough, it was horrible and the angrier stills sits in my heart against all who would say they love this country and let her people suffer or die on their own soil in this manner because they were old or poor or black.

Most of all, I ask you, what right did they have to let this go unnoticed while ignoring these Americans, their rights to protection and safety, what right ?????

:mad: :mad: :mad:

[TahitiNut]

6. I'd like to see Brown's 60-page application.

:eyes: Oh, wait... members of the Korporatist Krony Klub are above mere mortals.

[applegrove]

7. Who here thinks that under Bush - they tried to make FEMA out

to be a dystopian bureaucracy - with all that red tape?

Someone needs to look at why all the red tape.

[aquart]

10. I would guess

they tried to cover their asses against any possible repercussion. The essential nature of BushCo is craven gutless fear of everything.

[applegrove]

12. I think they wanted to highlight the twin dangers of "bureaucratic red

tape" and "need for tort reform".

We need more information on how FEMA functioned before.

Going and copying red tape from the third world and bringing it to FEMA is not the way for a nation to have a discussion about regulations - or all the things corporations hate.

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. Yuo know I did my disaster relief in the third wordl

and never in my life did I face this level of... red tape

[TahitiNut]

13. It's the Kabuki of "Security" against them Evil-Doers.

These assholes pulled out all the stops and loaded up with every bit of window-dressing they could conjure up in a coke-headed daze. It's Big Brother keeping us chillen safe. We are made to know this with photo-ops, ling lines, metal detectors, camo-clad wannabe Rambos toting M-16s, and repeated refrains of "Terror! Terror! Terror!" Dontcha know we're made safer by that Glock-hipped and baton-swining renta-cop in the Social Security office? Senior citizens pose a real threat, y'know. On top of it all, they pull out and resurrect the casualties of Paperwork Reduction -- no form left behind.

[applegrove]

15. Whoa cowboy. The big brother stuff they like is Homeland Security.

The things they don't like - cause they interfere in either 1)war 2) corporate profit potential were the Red Cross & FEMA.

Going and stealing the third world model of bureaucratic mess and piling it on FEMA to make them look bad is artifice! And meant to diminish them both. It makes corporate delivery of these things seem relatively efficient. If corporations had been efficient at meeting public goals in these two areas - they would never have been privatized. This is simple perspective dunking. If you hold one person under the water and the other you let float - which one looks like they know how to swim? What is reality? Well the fact of the matter is that if you let them both float - the woman (the NGO or government institution) would do so easily because of her many functions as a human and that extra bit of body fat. The man sinks because his purpose is very efficient and single-mindedness - and upper-body mass, though great for getting meat, - wasn't invented to nurture or solve multiple issued & multipled goaled problems.

I wonder when the in detailed reports on FEMA will start to come out?

[aquart]

16. Never mind the reports.

Bitter volunteers from every state are calling home. Nothing people like better than a horse's mouth source. And doctors are upscale. Their friends are upscale. With email.

[applegrove]

17. BREAKING! Witnesses will now be known derogatorily as "horse

mouths".

Lots of people are waiting for the reports. Will be interesting the before FEMA and after FEMA reports.

[Nothing Without Hope]

9. This is a typical story - the doctor could not get through to FEMA for

TWELVE HOURS, gave up trying to check in with them by phone, and came to the Louisiana airport where dying patients were left unattended on cots on the tarmac. He was actually in the middle of trying to save a woman's life when FEMA personnel pulled him away saying that he couldn't treat them because he wasn't one of "their" doctors. He begged them to let him help the patients until they brought in one of their doctors. They refused. Two patients died right in front of him, and he could do nothing.

Read the whole story - it's very enlightening and it's from a solid news source in Baton Rouge. THe article gives FEMA's response and it confirms what happened.

At what point does negligent homicide shade over into mass murder?

Here's the story:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1786336
thread title: Doctor says FEMA ordered him to stop treating hurricane victims

Also read how they confiscated emergency supplies being brought to a Methodist hospital in New Orleans - patients died because of this:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4777505
thread title: Herbert/NYT: "Sick and Abandoned" FEMA blocked emergency hospital

[jhain]

24. this Dr featured on CNN- Aaron Brown

Monday night's 'News Night'.

Brown says doc WILL be back on, too.

[applegrove]

19. In a typical story - doctors or ministers speak out more than others

because they are educated & often in humanitarian world. They speak out because they are leaders.

Don't you remember that experiment people were told to press a button and torture others - and many people did that. The ones who didn't had some education and were less likely to hand over responsibility to some other scientist or allow someone else to think for themselves?

It is completely normal that the professionals are speaking out first.

[tkmorris]

21. Son of a BITCH

THEY LET PEOPLE DIE. Oh GOD DAMNIT I hate these people. That is it that is just fucking IT. I will never again be reasonable or even civil to these people or their supporters. I hope I never forget the red rage I feel right now towards these assholes. No more fighting nice. I want to see some prison sentences, long ones, and no "fall guys" either.

And I DARE some asshole to tell me Bush didn't know about any of this. I FUCKING DARE YOU. Damnit I can't even post legibly I'm too pissed off. Sorry gang.

[chat_noir]

22. M. D. credentials

Rather than a time-wasting bureaucratic 60-page application, couldn't FEMA just contact the AMA or some other organization to verify that the doctors wanting to help were licensed physicians?

[cap]

23. worse than that... this info is available online...

it's a 5 second check... show some id and go...