Reply #14: NIMBY POPP -- A time to Ask for 'Proof of Preparedness'

[POLEIS]

NIMBY POPP -- A time to Ask for 'Proof of Preparedness'

"Not In My Back Yard - Proof of Preparedness Planning"
Something you and everyone can do this week - a call to every concerned citizen


The proof is in the pudding. Today, Sunday September the fourth, we have a toxic gumbo of living and dying proof that government planning for states of emergency are more promise than actual preparation.

For four years less seven days, our nation has made unasked sacrifice after sacrifice in the name of retaliation and protection from chaos and terrorism. The steep price paid was supposed to buy absolutely the very best of everything to prevent and recover from any and all threats to the safety of our proud people.

Your town is where on the overall list of "most threatened"? Do you feel any more comfortable that the emergency-preparedness documents in the safe in your city hall may be as obviously inadequate as whatever the Department of Homeland Security has been using to protect one of America's biggest economic and strategic ports?

You personally have no way to take FEMA to task, to get any kind of an answer from DHS, or to get Ray Nagin to tell you why no one in the billion dollar administration had a clue about the danger of the levee breech.

However, there is something you personally can do no matter where you live, and no matter your station or background.

You can ask what the plan is, for where you and your family live and work.

This week, ask your own town mayor to prove your own emergency preparedness plan is in hand, complete, vetted, and most of all, useful. You paid for it through direct municipal tax and through the trickle down of your federal and state taxes.

A suggestion if they bemoan a lack of funds to do their job right: tell them you are able to help, and that you figure just about everyone in your town would also like to help make security and safety an actuality for your home land.

Ultimately why we, the people, are not included in the list of those who can help our fellow neighbor when fortune smiles on us to be on the outside of a disaster zone, is a question that no longer can go unanswered. If "professional" help is not prepared to help your town, after Katrina, your neighbors probably are.

Ask your mayor -- after all, it's their home too!



<p.s. full permission for you as a reporter to STEAL THIS PIECE if you actually care to write this for your home town readers, as well for anyone else to email, fax, snail, or passenger pidgon to your friends and loved ones who would like to make the lives of their loved ones a little safer next week by actually doing SOMETHING that makes a difference to their home -- asking for proof!>