I had ready a nice long post on the delusions the American people belabor under with respect to New Orleans … and it went away when CBS.com tried to install RealPlayer on my computer, Mozilla shuddered and revolted and my entire online world shut itself off. Begone, auto-install demons! As Jesus says, “Save early and save often!”
No fear, I’ll reproduce the whole thing from memory. Until then, here’s a funny that may be applied to the Corps’ broken floodwalls, FEMA trailers and our famous blue roof tarps.
Three contractors are bidding to fix a broken fence at the White House in D.C. – one from New Jersey, another from Tennessee and the third, Florida. They go with a White House official to examine the fence.
The Florida contractor takes out a tape measure and does some Measuring, then works some figures with a pencil. “Well,” he says, “I figure the job will run about $900: $400 for materials, $400 for my crew and $100 profit for me.”
The Tennessee contractor also does some measuring and figuring, then says, I can do this job for $700: $300 for materials, $300 for my crew and $100 profit for me.”
The New Jersey contractor doesn’t measure or figure, but leans over to the White House official and whispers, “$2,700.” The official, incredulous, says, “You didn’t even measure like the other guys! How did you come up with such a high figure?”
The New Jersey contractor whispers back, “$1,000 for me, $1,000 for you, and we hire the guy from Tennessee to fix the fence.”
“Done!” replies the government official.