Tilting at windmills.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: Editorial

How to clear your inbox

The Small Business Administration canceled 8,000 loans to hurricane victims without notice to the borrowers. When the borrowers sought an explanation, they were told, according to Ron Nixon of the New York Times, "that they had voluntarily given up their loans," which was not true.

Why this fiasco? The SBA was being criticized for being too slow in getting money to borrowers whose loan applications had been approved. The SBA's solution to this public relations problem: cancel the applications of the borrowers who were waiting for money. If you don't show up on our books as having applied for a loan, we can't be accused of being too slow to give you the money.

Formaldehyde preservation

A similar example of bureaucratic logic occurred when FEMA learned there might be a problem with formaldehyde in the trailers they had provided for Katrina victims. Ordinary human beings might conclude that the trailers should be tested immediately to see if formaldehyde was present, and if it created a danger to the health of the occupants. But we're not talking about ordinary human beings. Instead, we're dealing with an attorney in FEMA's general counsel's office, who, according to Claudia Lauer of the Los Angeles Times, replied: "Do not institute any testing until we give the OK. Once you get results and should they indicate some problem, the clock is running on our duty to respond to them."

In other words, protecting FEMA from lawsuits is more important than the health of the Katrina victims living in the trailers.

And, proving that it was definitely a part of the Bush administration, FEMA blocked investigation of this incident by invoking attorney-client privilege.

If it ain't broke, break it

One bureaucracy that has a splendid record of efficiency has been put on a near-starvation diet by the Bush administration. "Staffing at the Social Security Administration will soon be at its lowest level since 1974," reports the Washington Post's Stephen Barr. "The number of disability claims waiting for hearing decisions is at an all-time high."

The agency's head, Michael d. Astrue, says "that inadequate funding since 2001 is largely to blame for staffing and workflow problems." Was the Bush gang trying to create problems with the present Social Security system to gain support for its privatizing proposals?

Going back

The Associated Press reports that the Army missed its recruiting targets for the second month in a row. It may be that potential recruits heard the same news that I did on CNN: that 200,000 soldiers have now been on two or more tours in Iraq.

Can you imagine what it's like to fly out of Baghdad thinking that at last you're safe, you're not going to have your brain injured or your legs blown off, and you're going home to your family and friends--and then comes the order to go back to the exact kind of hell you have just escaped? There is no way to avoid the order other than desertion. Only draft dodgers like George Bush and Dick Cheney, who have never faced this dilemma, could bear to do this to these young men and women, more than 3,700 of whom have been killed and 27,000 wounded.

Our younger readers may not know that even at their Vietnam worst, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon did not require soldiers to do two tours, much less three.

Bush and Lincoln

George W. Bush is said to identify with Abraham Lincoln. Most observers have found it hard to detect any similarities. But I may have found one: on at least one occasion, Lincoln displayed the same lack of empathy for his exhausted army that has been characteristic of our current president. Documents have come to light indicating that Lincoln was indignant at General George Meade for not following up on the Union victory at Gettysburg by not immediately pursuing the retreating Confederates, cutting them off from their bases in Virginia and bringing the war to a quick end. If you know anything at all about Gettysburg, you know it was a vicious and bloody struggle, leaving both victor and vanquished battered and battle-weary.

If Meade had given the order to charge after the Confederates, mutiny would only have been prevented because the soldiers were too tired to do anything.

Marshal flaw

A fact that I suspect most people don't know is, as the Boston Globe's Sean Murphy...