MemeMachineGo!

This story is from the comments of a fine post on Making Light, comment and post both from Jim MacDonald.

FEMA had contracted with Landstar Express America, a Florida company owned by Bush supporter Jeff Crowe, for disaster transportation in a contract worth $100 million dollars.

Not two days before Katrina, when Brownie says he should have figured out that Louisiana was dysfunctional, but one day before Katrina hit New Orleans — Sunday — that company that had contracted for one hundred million bucks a year to provide disaster transportation figured out that maybe, perhaps, someone might need transportation, because it looked like a disaster might be shaping up. So — they did a web search and found Carey Transportation, a limo company whose web site said they had a meetings and events division that could move large groups of people.

Carey Transportation did their best. When Landstar called back on Tuesday, eighteen hours after Katrina hit, after the levees had already broken, to order 300 buses (lessee — 80,000 people — 300 buses sounds about right, doesn’t it?) they got out their phone book and started calling around. They found Transportation Management Services of Vienna, VA, which specializes in providing transportation for conventions, and hired the buses from them.

And that, my friends, is where the buses that started showing up in New Orleans on Thursday, five days after people went to the shelters, came from.

How was Landstar rewarded for taking a hundred million bucks for disaster preparedness then not doing anything to prepare for a disaster? By having its contract increased to four hundred million bucks. For a hundred million they did a Google search the day before the hurricane hit. For four hundred million maybe they’ll call Priceline.