RUSH: Here’s a little bit of a story. This is from the Charleston, South Carolina Post and Courier. “FEMA Again Plays the Villain to Some Across Lowcountry; Hard feelings toward agency stirred up as residents watch familiar response. — Hurricane Katrina is leaving one more big black blotch on the reputation of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, vilified in the Lowcountry since Hurricane Hugo and frustrating residents as recently as Hurricane Gaston last year. The nation has watched in horror as New Orleans has descended into lawlessness and despair in the wake of Katrina. By most accounts, armed looters now roam the streets, while tens of thousands of thirsty and tired refugees wait in filthy conditions for transportation out of the flooded city… Katrina is worse than what Charleston saw after Hugo, where FEMA’s response also trailed local efforts. Critics say the FEMA response for the new storm is just as slow as it was for Gaston last year. Local residents and officials watch it with reactions that range from disappointment to disgust.
CALLER: Hello?
RUSH: Yeah. Hi, Linda. We got real phone problems here, folks. You’ll have to pardon.
CALLER: That’s alright. We have problems here, too.
RUSH: How are you, Linda?
CALLER: Well, we’re doing fine, Rush. We’re independent truckers and we’re down here in Selena, Alabama with a load of water for the flood victims. It’s a FEMA load. And we have been jerked around since last night. We were first to Meridian Naval Air Station and sat there all night until about 5:30 this morning we finally got through the gate. And they sent us from there over to Selma, Alabama and —
CALLER: It’s FEMA. That’s who we report to at Meridian Naval Air Station. That’s who was running the show there. And they are here in Selma, Alabama, and you have never seen such a disaster in your life, a bureaucratic nightmare. There’s probably 400, maybe more, trucks sitting here, loaded, and nowhere to go.
RUSH: This sounds like the fiasco we’ve heard. The mayor put out a call for all these firemen from around the country. So the firemen said, “Oh, yeah, we’ll heed the call, answer the call.” They go down there and they find out they were going to use firemen to pass out pamphlets telling people where to go to get what. So many of the firemen said, “I didn’t come down here to pass out pamphlets.” So, hey, folks, this is bureaucracy on parade. Here you go. Bim, bam, thank you, ma’am, and, you know, the big government crowd is out there saying we need even bigger government to make this more efficient. You can probably just in these eyewitness accounts pick up the problem yourself.
END TRANSCRIPT