womzilla | What the Fed can't honestly say

This bit of felicitous phrasing comes from Andrew Plotkin on rasff:

One can easily imagine a federal administration which said "NOLA flooded, because there's nothing mortals can do to prevent flooding with that kind of storm. But we did everything mortals *could* do to prevent it, and supported state/local operations to protect the city. We upheld the budget allocations to do the work; the work just wasn't specced for this kind of problem."

We know that there were preparations unmade, steps untaken, procedures unfollowed. No one can honestly look at the last week and say, "Everything that could be done was done." It is possible that no amount of preparation would have made things substantially better. But the attempt should have been made, and of course wasn't.