Yep, but you also aren't hearing 1/10 of the outcry about how poorly it is being handled compared to the wringing of hands that was going on in the media post Katrina about how poorly that response was being handled.
Trust me, no one knows that better than me.
Now that we are into tropical season the weather has been hampering a ton of cleanup efforts which just makes the time that was wasted exponentially more harmful. The time was wasted purely because of a "CYA" attitude and approach from the various Federal agencies. At least during the aftermath of Katrina the .gov eventually got their shit together (sorta), we are still fighting the same red tape that we were fighting months ago. Never in my life did I ever think I would hear people down here say they wished FEMA would take over.
Just yesterday we got news that oil has reached Lake Pontchartrain. So much more could have been done, so many good plans by local officials were ignored, so many assets that could have significantly helped were never procured, so many habitats destroyed and will be destroyed that didn't have to be.....
I was in Orange Beach for the 4th and those folks aren't doing to well either. I talked to many a business owner who didn't expect their business to survive the summer. I took the kids to "The Track" and the big waterpark, both were insanely slow for even a regular holiday during the summer. The kids didn't have to wait in any line except for the surfing thing at the waterpark (5-10 people in line at most) and at the track they didn't even have to get off of the go carts to ride again. Last year that would have been a half hour wait at the minimum.
Tons of workers on the beach not doing a damned thing productive. 30 guys in a "group" and at any given time 5 of them would be holding open plastic bags, 5 of them would be scooping tiny scoops of sand into the bag, and 20 would be sitting down under the tent. Its no different than what is happening down here but it is just as absurd, nothing but a dog and pony show.