Katrina and the community

Thomas Friedman quotes some idiot in today's column:

Janadas Devan, a Straits Times columnist, tried to explain to his Asian readers how the U.S. is changing. "Today's conservatives," he wrote, "differ in one crucial aspect from yesterday's conservatives: the latter believed in small government, but believed, too, that a country ought to pay for all the government that it needed.

"The former believe in no government, and therefore conclude that there is no need for a country to pay for even the government that it does have. ... [But] it is not only government that doesn't show up when government is starved of resources and leached of all its meaning. Community doesn't show up either, sacrifice doesn't show up, pulling together doesn't show up, 'we're all in this together' doesn't show up."

Anne Applebaum's column, meanwhile, demonstrates that Mr. Devan doesn't know what the hell he is talking about:

Last week my son's elementary school raised several thousand dollars for hurricane victims by washing cars. My other son's preschool announced without fuss that a boy from New Orleans would be joining the class. My employer is organizing help for the company's Gulf Coast employees, my local bookstore is collecting money for the Red Cross and my favorite radio station raised $54,000 last weekend. Every church or synagogue attended by anyone I know is, of course, raising money, housing evacuees or delivering clothes to victims.

To put it differently, nearly every institution with which I come into daily contact -- my library, my grocery store, my search engine -- has already donated time or money to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, and I don't think this makes me or my community unique. A Zogby poll conducted last week found that 68 percent of Americans had donated money to hurricane relief. An ABC News/Washington Post poll published yesterday found that 60 percent had already donated, and a further 28 percent intend to. Those percentages mean that donors must represent a huge range of political views, economic classes, even aesthetic preferences. Indeed, among the fundraisers listed in last weekend's Post were a jazz concert, a tea dance, a "Christian music" concert and a rehearsal of Verdi's "The Sicilian Vespers." No wonder the Red Cross has already collected more than half a billion dollars; no wonder it was impossible to get on to the Salvation Army's Web site at peak times last week.

To place the blame for the failure of government to effectively respond on the shoulder's of modern-day conservatives is laughable. The government didn't lack the resources to respond to Katrina, it lacked any iota of intelligence. It put up stupid regulations. It blocked people from helping. And really in a nutshell that is the problem with government. It isn't evil, it's just stupid -- read the rest of Applebaum's column if you have any doubt.

Update: Like I said, the government doesn't lack resources:

In last week's $51.8-billion emergency appropriation, Congress quietly raised the "micro-purchase threshold" to $250,000 for purchases relating to relief and recovery from Hurricane Katrina. That's a 100-fold increase on the typical $2,500 limit and a completely different animal from the $15,000 limit previously in place for disaster relief efforts. And don't assume that Congress intended this to help the government's professional buyers. The warranted, trained officials authorized to bind the government in contracts already enjoy the authority to make expedited purchases up to $250,000. Instead, the micro-purchase authority permits agencies to designate any employee, including, all too often, administrative support staff, to carry a government charge card.

I need one of those.