Patience, are you kidding me

Tuesday September 16, 2008- Patience is an interesting thing. The idea of patience is usually preached by those who are not in need of what we are longing for. It seems that it is the catch phrase for those in charge of the post Hurricane Ike cleanup. It has been preached by the radio talk show hosts. It has been preached by Mayor Bill White and Judge Ed Emmitt and various other county judges. It has been preached by the spokesmen for Centerpoint energy. All of these people share one thing in common; they are speaking from locations that have electricity and gasoline. I am sure Judge Ed Emmit has not been sitting in the dark for the past 4 days. I am sure that Mayor Bill White has not spent 3 hours in line waiting to fill his gas tank. I am sure that the executives of Reliant energy and Centerpoint energy have slept in air conditioned comfort the past 3 nights. The people of Houston and Galveston do not need to hear any more politicians preach about patience. We need to see and experience a sense of urgency by our elected officials. As of Monday, FEMA had 17 POD centers set up to distribute ice and “food”. 17 locations? Houston has 5.5 million people. You do the math. It seems as if the government has learned nothing over the past 5 years. This decade will be remembered for the hurricanes we have experienced as much as anything else. It would seem that after 2 or 3 major storms the governments would learn how to cope with natural disasters. The situation in Houston is comparable to that of New Orleans for the simple fact of the number of people it is affecting. Houston is the 4th largest city in America and as of Tuesday September 16, 2008, approximately 4.5 million still have no power. Many people have no water. Storms will happen and people will be made to deal with hardships but it would be a little easier to handle if the elected officials were more competent and gave us a reason to have confidence in them. I think Ronald Reagan may have been right when he said, “The government is not the solution, the government is the problem.”