As regular readers of this column know, I’ve just returned from the back roads and byways of Mississippi and Louisiana. I spent time at the Mt. Zion Methodist Church in DeLisle, Miss., talked with the Reverends Rosemary Williams and Theodore Williams, vice principal Myrick Nicks of the Gautier High School and a good many other folks from Pass Christian, Miss.
But unlike some others, I’ve stayed in touch, and tried to follow through on the many personal requests and promises, and have followed these people’s struggles even as other media have begun to experience Katrina fatigue.
I’ve also witnessed how our federal government, so efficient at overthrowing Saddam Hussein in a few weeks, acted like a giant with feet of clay when it came to protecting Americans against the jihad of wind and water waged by Hurricane Katrina. It’s like dying a death of a thousand cuts: first the weather, then the destruction, then the displacement and now the slow, agonizing struggle to rebuild – not just bricks and mortar, but lives.
Humanitarian concerns should always trump shallow partisanship – left or right, human life should take precedence and rebuilding shattered lives should be not too far behind that. President Bush is our first MBA president, and while nobody doubts his good intentions, this behemoth government of ours is reacting to the real needs on the ground while he’s taking tours. Meanwhile, Congress – Democrats and Republicans alike – is counting beans and cutting much needed programs for block grants to our poorest citizens in Washington and those back roads and byways I toured are filling with rot.
So I’ve come up with a proposal. It’s designed to get real rebuilding dollars into the hands of the hardest hit. Now, and not later. Soon, and not after filling out a mound of federal paperwork that was originally designed for middle-class beneficiaries who could call on accountants and lawyers.
I’ll give it to you in two words: Wal-Mart. Or three initials: CVS. Or one word: Lowes.
Let me explain. While the federal government loses itself in a blizzard of paperwork, partisan wrangling and accountants playing knock hockey – all trying to figure out how, where, when, why, and who gets the money (and more selfishly, who gets the political credit for giving the money) – places like Wal-Mart will issue millions of credit cards to finance billions of transactions. You see, I may not have been the biggest fan of Wal-Mart in the past, but I give the private sector its due – after Katrina hit the fan in the Gulf, when it came to supplying goods to the people who needed them, Wal-Mart ran rings around FEMA.
Most very poor people have more familiarity with credit card apps than SBA loans, and know a lot more about shopping at Wal-Mart than downloading forms on high-speed DSL lines they don’t have, which is powered by electricity that’s still on the fritz intended for computers they can’t access.
What the feds need to do is to give companies like Wal-Mart the whole process of making credit available to people who need it. Let the feds then guarantee Wal-Mart against default by the borrowers – there are more than enough smart lawyers between Wal-Mart and Uncle Sam to figure out the details. Places like Wal-Mart have been successfully vetting credit apps for decades, so let them do what they do best. Just pay Wal-Mart some processing fee to make it worth their while. Hey, given the headaches Wal-Mart has had lately, the positive public relations would be something they’d probably die for.
Let federal agencies rent a few square feet from places like Wal-Mart, Lowes and CVS – stores that still stand all over the Gulf and for which the locals already have directions – in order to process other government programs right there and then. Why reinvent the wheel when a distribution network to meet and greet is already in place? Hey, if Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart were still alive, you can bet that’s what he would do if asked. Why shouldn’t Uncle Sam?
