04-25-2020, 05:00 PM
MT, you raise a good point. Coordinating the relief effort is exactly what the federal government should be doing. However, there seem to be a few problems here:
1) There doesn't seem to be a real coordination where supplies all funnel through the feds, and then out to those that need it. Trump at some point even explicitly said that governors were on their own for purchases. So they did that, but then it gets confiscated. You can't have it both ways.
2) Additionally, rather than buying for the nation and sending it out according to local needs, the feds seem to be sending supplies to wherever the optics are best. And I don't think this is purely a partisan thing, the article in the OP cites Maryland's governor (who's a republican) as critical of what's happening.
3) It's totally opaque. No one knows why decisions are being made, and it seems like it's hard to get official confirmation that this is even happening (all the quotes seem to be from aggrieved state/local/hospital officials, not from feds saying "oh yeah we're doing that because XYZ".) It would be one thing if we knew what was happening, but right now it seems like there's no visibility and no accountability. As you say it's easy to assume the worst, but the point the article I linked makes is that what we can see makes the worst seem most likely (I fully acknowledge that this could be an incomplete picture, which is why being clear about what's going on is so important).
It all paints a pretty troubling picture.
1) There doesn't seem to be a real coordination where supplies all funnel through the feds, and then out to those that need it. Trump at some point even explicitly said that governors were on their own for purchases. So they did that, but then it gets confiscated. You can't have it both ways.
2) Additionally, rather than buying for the nation and sending it out according to local needs, the feds seem to be sending supplies to wherever the optics are best. And I don't think this is purely a partisan thing, the article in the OP cites Maryland's governor (who's a republican) as critical of what's happening.
3) It's totally opaque. No one knows why decisions are being made, and it seems like it's hard to get official confirmation that this is even happening (all the quotes seem to be from aggrieved state/local/hospital officials, not from feds saying "oh yeah we're doing that because XYZ".) It would be one thing if we knew what was happening, but right now it seems like there's no visibility and no accountability. As you say it's easy to assume the worst, but the point the article I linked makes is that what we can see makes the worst seem most likely (I fully acknowledge that this could be an incomplete picture, which is why being clear about what's going on is so important).
It all paints a pretty troubling picture.