Katrina: The Political Hurricane
By Tim Saler Posted in User Blogs — Comments (172) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Promoted from the diaries . . .
“Blanco admitted that it was the President himself who convinced her to order a mandatory evacuation.”
For the better part of a week now, the left wing of the American political spectrum has been at President Bush's throat over the Hurricane Katrina disaster. I've seen it with my own eyes, when I visited several communities across the liberal blogosphere and even participated in what could be described as less-than-scrupulous debate. In other words, I played along with their game as best as I could to see what kind of reaction was really brewing under the surface.
I thought about what a more moderate liberal might think about the Katrina disaster, and what approach he might take to discussing it. I chose the one that made the most sense to me: don't politicize the hurricane, but if the other side starts swinging, you've got to fight back. I was well-received by some and mercilessly attacked by others; yet no one that I saw ever remarked that I was being too tough on the President or the Republicans. Every criticism, from top to bottom, was based around not hitting them hard enough.
I had intended to keep with it for a little while and see how things developed over a few days, but it simply got too personal. There were personal attacks made against me, which I didn't mind so much, but another contributor at this community described several people at the inimitable RedState.org, who I consider friends, as being heartless and soulless non-entities. That was too much for me to bear, so I departed permanently, perhaps with a new understanding of how the modern left operates in this post-9/11 political world.
I've had a little time since to collect my thoughts about the experience and the general political reaction to the hurricane. There are many things that have been said that shouldn't have been, and there are many things that need to be said that haven't been. It is an unfortunate fact that, while people were still being rescued from their roof-tops all across the coastal towns and cities of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, the global left was trying to find a way to turn this disaster into a political hatchet that they could proceed to bury into the President and his party. Very few Republicans have had the sheer lack of human dignity required to respond in kind. That was yesterday.
More below the fold.
“[W]e now have a situation where state and local governments no longer have the motivation nor the funding or equipment necessary to take care of their own problems.”
Since even before the hurricane struck, liberals across the world have been trying to find a way to blame the President. The entertainer Kanye West claimed, on a televised NBC fundraiser for the victims of Katrina, that "George Bush doesn't care about black people." Randall Robinson, a black "social justice advocate," whatever that is, remarked on the unintentionally-hysterical Huffington Post that this hurricane is a "defining watershed moment in America's racial history." He ends his diatribe with the unqualified claim that the United States of America is a "monstrous fraud."
The unknown left-wing blogger Joseph Cannon posited at his website, Cannonfire, that "Bush is at fault" and "Bush caused this disaster." He goes even further, adding that the victims of the hurricane largely were at fault for the disaster themselves, since the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama all voted for the President's re-election in 2004. He finishes his comments by claiming that, if just one more "science-hating" conservative attacks liberal left-wingers, he will simply say this: "Drown and die, you arrogant hillbilly Southern-fried leeches!!" Gerry Daly referred to this as becoming "completely unhinged," and I would submit that that is a very accurate description.
The mayor of New Orleans, the only city that -- according to the vast majority of mainstream media coverage -- has been actually affected by this storm (even though Gulfport and Biloxi in Mississippi are equally at risk, just to name two examples), went on a profanity-laden tantrum a few nights ago on a local radio station. Mayor Ray Nagin claimed, "They flew down here one time two days after the doggone event was over with TV cameras, AP reporters." He said, "we had an incredible crisis here and that [President Bush's] flying over in Air Force One does not do it justice ... I have been all around this city and that I am very frustrated because we are not able to marshal resources and we are out-manned in just about every respect."
Image: Unused School Buses in Louisiana
Perhaps Mayor Nagin, if he was so concerned about evacuating the city of New Orleans and save all the poor black residents who people like Randall Robinson, Jesse Jackson, and Kanye West believe were slighted by the President and the Republican government, he would have used the over two-hundred school buses at a depot in New Orleans. It is estimated that each bus could have carried around sixty-six people. At a round number, if there were two-hundred buses that could carry sixty-six people at a time, that's 13,200 people evacuated to safety -- on just one trip. Now those buses are under water and are mostly useless. But instead of doing what he could have done at a local level to save his residents, Mayor Nagin sat on his hands and waited for the federal response, then proceeded to bite the hand that is trying to save his city. Days later, Nagin complains to CNN, "Right now we are out of resources at the convention center and don't anticipate enough buses. We need buses." You had them, Mayor. You chose not to use them, and now you blame the President and the federal government for your mistakes.
Now Republicans are joining in on the criticism. Presidential hopefuls Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have been quoted critiquing the President and the federal response to the disaster. Gingrich wondered, "If we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?" Romney simply described the federal response as "an embarrassment."
Some Republicans have the right idea, though. They know that the United States of America is a federal system in which local, state, and federal government agencies must work together in the face of disaster and tragedy. The Republican governor of Georgia, Sonny Perdue, is signing an executive order to waive the gas tax in order to relieve some of the financial pressure on his citizens in the wake of this disaster.
Political scientist Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia has described Haley Barbour, the Republican governor of Mississippi, as being a "Giuliani-type leader." Sabato says, "He's risen to the challenge and he clearly has the leadership gene." Even when there are no television cameras to record his every move, Barbour visits with the refugees and victims of the storm. As the chief executive of one of the poorest states in America, Barbour has risen to the challenge.
Contrast this with the Democrats in charge of Louisiana and New Orleans in particular, Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Mayor Ray Nagin. Blanco admitted that it was the President himself who convinced her to order a mandatory evacuation. If not for the President's intervention, how many more Louisiana residents would not be alive today? The city of New Orleans had a specific emergency plan, available here, for how to handle situations precisely like this. It was the Democrats in charge of the city who did not, according to the emergency plan, "[p]osition supervisors and dispatch evacuation buses," as evidenced by the photo above showing over two-hundred unused and now mostly unusable school buses that could have saved tens of thousands of lives.
This should have never been a "blame game," but Democrats suffer from a post-9/11 political syndrome. They believe that if they, in the face of a national disaster, allow the President and his party even two seconds to actually lead, they will capitalize politically and Democrats will lose elections and influence. So, they have instead chosen to attack the President, his administration, and his party with a brutality and ruthlessness possibly never before seen in American politics. Republicans, as people who have a fundamental level of decency that is unmatched by their opponents across the aisle, have been -- up to this point -- rather silent in regards to the politicization of this issue. As linked by Patrick Ruffini, one blogger has done a side-by-side comparison of the reactions on left-wing and conservative blogs, available here. The comparison is staggering.
Democrats want to play politics over the carnage, destruction, and devastation in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. They are using the bodies of those who lost their lives in this tragedy as a rhetorical platform from which to attack the President and everything he stands for. Republicans don't want to fight about this issue, but when Democrats start firing, we have no choice but to oblige them in their desire for political combat.
The lack of speedy response to this disaster can be summed up simply as this: after decades of Democrats reinforcing the domination of this country by the federal government, we now have a situation where state and local governments no longer have the motivation nor the funding or equipment necessary to take care of the own problems. Many left-wingers are using this disaster as an example of how small government has failed the American people and must be replaced with a gargantuan, overbearing federal government presence to solve all of our problems. If anything, this disaster is the ultimate failure of federal power.
We do not need a larger federal government to solve our problems. We do not need a larger, heavier, and more expensive federal government to go clean up the disaster area in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. We need a smaller government, a more nimble government. We need a federal government that works in conjunction with state and local governments rather than displacing them and instilling in them a mental condition by which they are helpless in the face of crisis. The President shouldn't need to be in Louisiana right now for Louisiana to be able to take care of its own business.
After decades of Democrats attempting to utterly destroy the federal system of government on which this country was founded, people like Kathleen Blanco and Ray Nagin freeze in the face of disaster. They no longer do what they need to do at the state and local level to help their citizens. Instead, they look for the federal government to come step in and save them. The federal government as our great American mommy has utterly and completely failed us.
The solution is not to make it bigger and stronger, but to put it back in its place and give states and local governments their constitutionally-defined power to take care of their own business. We will never know the number of lives that could have been saved if only we had respected the right and ability of states and local governments to do their job.
With respect to the comparison of liberal and conservative blogs, cherry-picking will give you whatever result you want.
The broader point to be made is that both the left and right blogs have gone to bat to raise money for the victims, and the generosity of their readers is inspiring.
Every blog that has put up a link or somehow attempted to help raise money for disaster relief in the face of this tragedy deserves credit. No doubt about it.
(1) You have here, I think, inappropriately collapsed the definition of "Democrat." It is indubitable to say that the lefty screeds being e-penned all across the blogosphere are from people who vote Democratic, but they are, in VO Key's phrase, the party-in-the-electorate. The Democratic party-in-government has not been making political hay over this. Thus, I do not think you can argue that the reason lefty bloggers are doing what they are doing is because, "they believe that if they, in the face of a national disaster, allow the President and his party even two seconds to actually lead, they will capitalize politically and Democrats will lose elections and influence." This is the sort of motivation characterized by the party-in-government. The Democratic party-in-the-electorate, I would argue, just hates Bush a priori, and the hurricane, like everything else, is "proof" of how evil he is. I doubt very much that the average Dem blogosphere poster/screeder is intentionally trying to delegitimize Bush. They might like that if it happens, but they likely do not see themselves as having that kind of influence. To make this claim, your evidence would have to largely rest upon claims made by Democratic politicians.
(2) The party which you implicitly praise, The Republican Party, is actually a straw party. The inference to be drawn from this statement -- "The lack of speedy response to this disaster can be summed up simply as this: after decades of Democrats reinforcing the domination of this country by the federal government, we now have a situation where state and local governments no longer have the motivation nor the funding or equipment necessary to take care of the own problems." -- is that if Republicans had had more control over the government, they would not have involved themselves so much in local affairs. I am interested to know of which Republican you speak. On the presidential level, you would have to go back to Calvin Coolidge to find a GOPer who resembles this kind of Republican. Dubya certainly does not, which can be seen in four oft-repeated words: No Child Left Behind. It was a nice bit of rhetoric back in 1995 when the Speaker of the House was carrying around in his breast pocket the 10th Amendment, but the GOP has not moved beyond rhetoric since taking control of Congress. And, as I said, GOP presidents do not take the 10th Amendment bull by the horns very often.
I would take this opportunity to say that I think this in large measure cannot be blamed on personal causes -- this guy screwed up or that guy did. I mean, it can, and this fella Ray Nagin certainly needs to be castigated as incompetent. Ditto it seems for this Blanco lady. But I think that the "solutions" that we are looking for are long-term solutions, and thus cannot be attempting to solve personal causes. Saying, "The mayor is an idiot" (which you are not saying, I am just using this as an example) is not going to help future planning. What would the maximand be? "New Orleans: Don't elect idiots!" That is not very helpful
I think that, beyond the two causes I put forth in my diary post "The Political Causes of the Flood of 2005," I would proffer some additional political/structural causes which might enable future reforms: (1) The state of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans has historically been corrupt to its core. Corruption breeds ineffective government, which is exactly what the city and state have both demonstrated here. Political reforms should start with a modern day Progressive Movement overhauling of how government in LA and NO works. <Step 1, I think, would be a reform of their electoral procedures away from their two-stage ballot> (2) Urban sociologist after urban sociologist has shown again and again that city governments are inherently constrained entities. They are, for instance, locked into what many, Paul Peterson comes to mind, have characterized as growth policies. They have to grow to keep their more affluent residents there, instead of losing them to the suburbs, and so they cannot do a sufficient job in other tasks which we traditionally conceive city/urban governments suited for. Given how they blew their emergency management plan in NO, my guess is that they were either (a) not paying enough attention to preparations because of other governmental maximands and/or (b) had not allocated enough resources to carry out the plan. If prevention of these sorts of situations is the top priority, then it might very well be the case that city governments should not be in charge of spearheading majory emergency response preparations, or at least city governments identified as being inherently constrained (as NO gov't is). In general, I think this speaks to the inherent problems of emergency management in mid-level cities. If I lived in Milwaukee, in Cleveland, in Pittsburgh, in places where the governments have limited resources and where most of the money is outside the city, I would be very concerned about their disaster relief/preparation capabilities. I doubt that any city could react as poorly as NO -- mostly because few cities are corrupt as NO or in as precarious a position as NO -- but I would infer from what has transpired in the last few weeks that there are reasons to doubt emergency responses in many major cities.
One of the drawbacks of federalism is that you have different levels of government, and each has a share of the responsibility for acting in the face of disaster. If one of those levels fails, it takes time for the other levels to (1) recognize the failure (2) muster the nerve to actually overrule/override the level that's failed and (3) act.
Then, we also forget the drawbacks of living in three-dimensional space. National Guard logisticians in Florida can't magically appear in the French Quarter. It takes time to mobilize them, for the Florida governor to determine he can spare them, for FEMA to determine they should go to New Orleans as opposed to Biloxi or Gulfport, and to travel to New Orleans. And then, if the roads to New Orleans are blocked by felled trees or floodwaters--well, that slows down the process even further.
Federalism will by its nature take time to respond to a crisis as big as Hurricane Katrina. But, it also offers benefits. The outside levels of government (e.g., the Feds, the states surrounding LA/MS/AL) can focus on marshaling resources and dispatching them to assembly areas. The local authorities then point out where the greatest problems lay, and dispatch relief forces as they arrive. That's how the system should work. I'd prefer this to some monolithic Department of Disaster Response.
Let me offer one reason why reinforcements aren't reaching various parts of NO as fast as we'd like: the floodwaters. Imagine if we told every National Guard unit to head for the Superdome. Picture the traffic jam. There are only a few roads open.
And, for all the people complaining why they weren't rescued from their flooded homes---well, I'm sorry, but infantry doesn't swim. Forgive me for stating the obvious. But, we all knew that a hurricane could flood New Orleans. We also know that trucks and ambulances and buses can't swim. So, if you want relief forces to reach you, it behooves you to go someplace where they can reach you!
Enough for now. I'm sure there will be more later, as the weekend rolls on.
When the fingerpointing hearings begin, I would hope that some logistician tells the pompous windbag interrogator that moving two divisions around a knocked out Gulf coast ain't beanbag.
Amateurs talk tactics. Professionals talk logistics.
Thank YOU Tim,
This is the first non-hysterical review of the known info on the Katrina situation I've seen. While I am sure that more detail (and endless rhetoric) will emerge in the next few weeks, I'm glad SOMEONE has started the process.
What this entire story needs- not now, but soon enough that it still has our attention focused - is a serious review by people who KNOW WHAT THEY'RE TALKING about, not what they THINK is the case. The problems, challenges and forces at work in a huge situation like this are simply beyond the knowledge and experience of most of us. I've spent decades in the SAR business, and I don't pretend to understand the forces at work here.
IMHO, unless you have BEEN THERE, you don't have a clue what it takes to perform and manage rescue and recovery on this sort of scale.
My guess is, both Democrats AND Republicans (and many others) will be found to have contributed both to the problems AND to the solutions on the Gulf Coast - trying to blame it on one party, one President/Governor/Mayor reflects far more on the blamer's predjudices (and political agenda) and much less on what actually went wrong.
Could they really have used them?
My impression in these things, evacuations, is that many people not only have no way to get there... they don't have anyplace to go in the first place.
The Astrodome for instance was not opened to receive refugees until Wed. There was no place to take these people on Sunday, or on Saturday, or on Friday.
Now could the city have had the forethought to move the buses to high ground in the event of flooding? Well with afterthought such forethought is possible and a lesson could be learned by other municipalities from this. Perhaps they should have used the buses to go and collect people and take them to the Superdome and then parked the buses there.
While I agree Nagin is one of the people who will have a lot to answer for in all of this, in particular not declaring a mandatory evacuation earlier, but I don't know where he could have sent 13,000 refugees, or 26,000 refugees,...
I'm not sure I buy the flooded buses to nowhere solution.
Five years ago, I never would have considered it. Now, I wouldn't write it off. You're right: Some got it. Some don't.
Preparing America
In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will assume primary responsibility on March 1st for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation. This will entail providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort. The new Department will also prioritize the important issue of citizen preparedness. Educating America's families on how best to prepare their homes for a disaster and tips for citizens on how to respond in a crisis will be given special attention at DHS.
Department of Homeland Security
--
Please don't shoot the messenger
I don't doubt that it was. But 4 years out of 9/11, was it done in a way worthy of the United States?
I watched with disbelief as the order of N. O. collapsed into complete anarchy this week. One question came to mind over and over again. It is a question that will short circuit a sizable chunk of the blame radiating toward President Bush. The question is would we be seeing this horror if Rudy Giuliani were the mayor of New Orleans when Katrina hit? The answer is no.
Compare his handling of 9-11 with the feckless, impotent abdication of office by Nagin. I hope the Republicans can keep this in perspective. When all the investigations are over, and there will be many, two people will emerge to face the long disgrace of history: Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco.
wanna blame the mayor and the governer?
go ahead....but they did their jobs
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/?/mtlogs/nola_Times-Picayune/archiv
es/2005_08.html
an undertaking of evacuating a major city, and dealing with the aftermath of this tradgedy, could not be shoulderd alone by the mayor or governer....they needed the assistance of the feds...and asked for it on the 27th
bush didnt urge the governer to do anything...she took the initiative
oh, but what would giuliani do?
please!!!!.....9/11, although tragic, did not take out the entire city of new york...nor did it take out the entire coastline of new york state
why wont you neocons accept it....your prez dropped the ball on this....for while people were dying in monday, he was eating birthday cake with john mccain in san diego
he appointed the incompetents who now head the dept of homeland security and fema
he and his congress cut the funding to shore up the levees
his appointees laffed off the worse case scenario
in last years "hurricane pam" excercise
you cant blame the dems anymore....you are in charge of the country
you control the money....you are in the seat of power
fess up...the neocons effed this one up good
NG: "If we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?"
I don't get what the problem with his saying that is. It strikes me as pretty reasonable. At a minimum, it's forward looking/we gotta do betterish rather than hindsight looking/it's your faultish.
Could they really have used them?
My impression in these things, evacuations, is that many people not only have no way to get there... they don't have anyplace to go in the first place.The Astrodome for instance was not opened to receive refugees until Wed. There was no place to take these people on Sunday, or on Saturday, or on Friday.
Now could the city have had the forethought to move the buses to high ground in the event of flooding? Well with afterthought such forethought is possible and a lesson could be learned by other municipalities from this. Perhaps they should have used the buses to go and collect people and take them to the Superdome and then parked the buses there.
While I agree Nagin is one of the people who will have a lot to answer for in all of this, in particular not declaring a mandatory evacuation earlier, but I don't know where he could have sent 13,000 refugees, or 26,000 refugees,...
I'm not sure I buy the flooded buses to nowhere solution.
Consider for just one moment the incredibly difficult job its been to get supplies to the refugess in New Orleans, and to get buses and other transport to move refugees out. It takes time to get this done, and as the President pointed out today New Orleans is not the only point of devastation that needs to be dealth with. We're talking about 90,000 square miles, an area the size of Great Britain, that has been devastated.
If those buses had been used to move people out before the hurricane, or had been somewhere for use after the hurricane, it wouldn't have mattered where they went, it wouldn't have mattered whether places had been set up for them outside of New Orleans, because it would have been a thousand times easier to get basic necessities to these people if they had been moved practically anywhere else. A dry piece of land away from the flooding would have been tremendously easier for the National Guard to bring in supplies and troops than the flooded city of New Orleans.
In other words, wouldn't it have been better to have these people taken by bus to practically anywhere else rather than leaving them in the flood ravaged city of New Orleans? I can say I'd rather be in downtown Houston, or Dallas, or even somewhere out in the country side, with no money, etc., than in a destroyed city. At least if they had been moved somewhere else, someone would have been able to tend to them much easier than tending to them in New Orleans has been.
I don't know what "a way worthy of the United States" means, and you are careful not to say, so I cannot really respond to that. Except to say that, yes, it think the response by the governemnt has been worthy.
If the terrorists get a flood bomb, we're in trouble. That much we know.
You're looking for d-a-i-l-y-k-o-s.com.
Goodbye.
you could include a few more "Known Facts™" in your tirade?
almost anywhere. But where? There was no place open to take them. Obviously we would not want to leave them on the buses, and sending them to Mississippi wouldn't have done much good. But the mayor of New Orleans can't just send thousands of people to go live in another city.
Perhaps this sort of planning should have been part of NO's disaster planning, afterall we saw a levee break coming from years/decades away, but I'm not aware that it was.
How are things going?
You would think that New Orleans were an island and not a city of any state. All the blame is being cast upon the federal government but where is Louisiana??
Out here in California we are reminded ad nauseum that if a there were a catastrophe on the scale of a massive San Andreas earthquake or fire, we are told that we should plan to have enough food, water, first aid supplies to last 4 days because that might be how long it would take for help. It's pounded into us constantly.
California has had its catastrophes and we've always looked to our city and state leaders -first- for aid AND LEADERSHIP.
Where is Louisiana's Disaster Preparedness plan? In fact, where is the states Leadership?? Where is Kathleen Blanco??
If anyone is responsible, it is this governor. Governor Blanco should be called to the carpet and take responsibility for the lack of a proper execution of the disaster preparation plan IF THERE WAS ONE! If there was no plan then Blanco should be held responsible for not having implemented one.
Where was/is Kathleen's leadership? She is not fit to govern a state.
Keep the focus on Louisiana role in this catastrophic response to this catastrophe.
Do you honestly think Giuliani would have sat there while hundreds of city school buses sat there idle? How many lives could have been saved by sending those buses out to the housing projects and getting those people out of harms way?
All the troops in the US military won't bring those people back. Democrats are the best Monday Morning Quarterbacks on earth. The Democratic approach is to sit back and wait until there are dead bodies in the streets before they'll do anything. That's why a preemptive war is so repugnant to them. President Bush and the Republicans inherently believe in taking a proactive approach. True it's not perfect, but it's a lot better than what the Dems offer.
It is one of many that needs to be asked and answered. Unfortunately there's such a cosmic convergence of blame forming as millions of fingers are pointing at President Bush from liberals around the world that it will get lost in the either.
This is a dry run for the day when a major terrorist attack is perpetrated on the US. Hopefully we will learn many lessons from this.
ANYWHERE west of Orleans Parish is higher ground, away from the toxic sludge and the threat of disease. You remove X number of people from the evacuation problem in the city itself AND provide authorities with rolling stock (buses) to move DP's around the southern Lousiana region in a post-storm environment.
There's an old saying that the people get the kind of government they deserve. The citizens of New Orleans deserved far better than what they voted for.
I live in a relatively small town in the south of Brazil (Blumenau), where there has been a long history of flooding, due to a sinuous river that's only about 15 meters above sea level. The last bad one was about 22 years ago but everyone lives in constant awareness of the possibility. In fact we just went through another warning about 4 days ago. Mercifully I don't have cable television anymore so the only information I get is from blogs or MSM on the net. Has anyone reported whether or not those people that weren't evacuated received any indications from the city or state (or Fema) on how they should prepare themselves and how many supplies they would have needed? Believe me, the poverty in New Orleans can't be any worse than it is here, yet even the poorest people in my town have a clear idea about what floods mean and how to survive at least the first few days, and here it would be a lot longer than that before help arrived, if ever. In my house, I have a weapon, three water tanks of 400 liters each and make sure to stock up on necessities if I hear a bad report. Were the people in New Orleans advised?
"I watched with disbelief as the order of N. O. collapsed into complete anarchy this week. One question came to mind over and over again. It is a question that will short circuit a sizable chunk of the blame radiating toward President Bush. The question is would we be seeing this horror if Rudy Giuliani were the mayor of New Orleans when Katrina hit? The answer is no."
I hadn't realized that Giuliani had dealt with a half million people who were completely homeless and cut off from any effective mass or personal transit in and out of the city.
If in addition to the two building being destroyed, what if half the tunnels and bridges had been destroyed, crippling transport out of the city to New Jersey or Long Island or Connecticutt?
.. in Brazil, people are more self-reliant. Here in the US people expect the government will provide everything for them.
The liberals just can't deal with good leadership, can they?
All these lies they spew... Bush delayed relief! Racist Republicans!
I don't see the governor or mayor there in New Orleans, pulling poor black people out of their water-filled homes, but GWB has already gone to great lengths to help these poor folks. He would be there personally (closer than he already is) if his personal safety weren't so important.
I think, as do all but the most extreme left-wingers I've spoken with, that the federal government has surpassed its necessary level of involvement. It's really not Bush's job to go in person and lend his hand to those lazy people who stayed behind after the warnings--but maybe if he'd known they were being so self-negiligent, sending troops into this not-really-predictable storm zone would have been appropriate.
Section 9, that is exactly the point I was trying to make. People could have been moved somewhere, ANYWHERE, so that they would not have been caught in the flooding, or to subsequently evac those people from the Superdome or the Civic Center. How much easier could supplies have been brought in and evacution started if Nagin had used the resources of his city to get his people to higher ground, or out of town? Nagin was screeching that he needed buses to get people out of the Superdome and the Civic Center, and yet he would have had many available to him if he'd been planning for this disaster rather than dining when the Governor called him last Saturday night to tell him to make the evacuation mandatory. And of course, we know from Blanco's own lips that the only reason she got off her duff was because the President had called her and suggested the evacuation be mandatory. Have people become so dependent upon the Feds that they can't think for themselves?
Nagin doesn't seem to have planned ahead at all. Meteorologists knew for days what this hurricane was going to be like if it hit, did no one in authority bother to watch the weather channel last week? Why was there no food, water, and other necessities stocked at the Superdome or the Civic Center? Comminications equipment? Why weren't more law enforcement personnel brought in ahead of time? Why was Nagin screaming for more troops after the disaster rather than before hand? The answer to all of these questions is that local preparedness seems to have been nearly non-existent.
And then the media and leftists spin this whole thing by laying the blame on the Fed response. We're talking about a disaster that has encompassed an area the size of Britain for goodness sake. It takes time to mobilize that kind of force.
As has been pointed out by many, it is the responsibility of governors and state/local officials to not only plan for these disasters, but to mobilize their National Guard units, to request help from the Feds, to run the show. If they needed more troops, supplies, etc., someone in Louisiana should have thought of that when the meteorologists were calling them and predicting the dire consequences of this storm.
Rather than sitting around waiting for the Feds to step in and talk over, Louisiana
Rather than sitting around waiting for the Feds to step in and talk over, Louisiana
Rather than sitting around waiting for the Feds to step in and take over, Louisiana officials should have been on top of this.
Typo.
but one would have thought even the dimmest bulb would have keyed in on the state of emergency being declared and the manadatory evacuation order.
even with the horrid conditions at the convention center and the football stadium, those people were never threatened with drowning in a flood.
Thousands of people are dead in NO right now, because they stayed in the city, and didn't seek any of the shelters-either asigned or makeshift.
Had more people left the city, resources dedicated to getting people out of the city under water could have been directed elsewhere, like getting the superdome and convention people out.
A helicopter and boats can only carry about 10 or so people at a time. Helicopters and boats have probably gotten about 10,000 people out of the city (that was the figure I heard on the news this afternoon). If you consider how many trips that is, as much as people are complaining about the response, that is a lot of trips back and forth.
The problem is that just too many people didn't get out of the city, and the city basically became a giant bathtub, once the levees broke.
Anywhere would have been better than the city, even if it was the side of the road.
locals are so ineffective.
Mississippi and Alabama seem to be managing relief efforts pretty well, and considering Mississippi had the eye of the storm and significant damage.
Sounds like Barbour has his act together, and actually gave something for the DHS to coordinate with. I am not sure LA was doing that too well, but it hard to tell.
There were/are thousands of people stuck in NO, it sounds like the priority for everyone involved was getting those people out of the city, maybe overly focusing on that to the detriment of people in shelters elsewhere.
I heard on the news that about 10,000 people have been either helicoptered or boated out of the city. When you consider that only a handful of people can go at a time in these types of vehicles, there has been pretty much non stop work to get these people out. For maths sake-say 10 people per transport, that is 1000 trips in 5 days.
for evacuation to realize the mayor at least didn't do his job.
The first responder command didn't seem to be doing their jobs either.
And then about 1/4 of the first responders turned in their badges rather than do their jobs.
I think things were screwed up from the beginning. Had NO followed the plan, many of the current problems wouldn't exist.
The resources trying to get people out of the city could have been used elsewhere.
If the school buses were to be used, the only logical time was before the hurricane hit, at the time the urgent recommended evacuation was made.
To do so, enough bus drivers would have been required to abandon their families to drive the buses. But that is only about 200 families, and probably most would be able to fend for themselves.
The buses would need to navigate to points around the city, predefined, and pick up passengers. Then they would need to be driven out of town to some points of safety, either based on a fixed destination where there is safe shelter no matter where the storm turns or tracks, or to one of several closer locations selected based on some guess as to the storm track.
The buses would have been able to make just one trip because even if the buses were given a dedicated lane on the several highways switched to only outbound travel, insufficent police coveage is available to turn all lanes into outbound for about ten miles.
Perhaps you could argue that all the entrances into the city for 50 miles or 100 miles should be equiped with barricades that would ensure no one drives around them, so that police aren't needed at all the entrances. Still, at some point, the six or four lanes of traffic is going to hit a bottleneck and that is going to back up into New Orleans. People who left often spent 8-12 hours on the highway.
But even in the best case where the buses have quick outbound trips, they won't have any quick return because they can't return by the highway switched to outbound only.
So, for a city where about 100,000 people who rely on shared family or on public transport, only about one-eight of these people are evacuated.
Now, since the evacuation is taking place before the hurricane strikes, and New Orleans has issued quite a few of these urgent evacuation orders in the past few years, this is the only one that has proven to be absolutely necessary to follow. A common reason some people didn't leave was that they had left other times, spend hours in traffic, and then nothing happened. Today, gasoline costs a lot more than did when they spent time and money for no apparent reason, so it should be rational to expand this to any decision made by the Mayor or Governor.
Let's say that once a year over the past five years, New Orleans had invoked the plan that used the school buses without much happening. My guess is that the cost to run the school buses is at least $1 a mile, so driving 50 miles out and 50 miles back, is $100, plus the cost of the driver which we shall say is twice minimum wage - its emergency call duty for a day or $100 for the day, and we'll count it only for the day of driving, not the babysitting of the bus for the time waiting. So, now we have $200 for each bus, or $40,000 just to drive out and return, without providing water or food or shelter for one-eigth of one hundred thousand people.
Clearly, "saving" only part of those unable to evacuate doesn't make sense, so somewhere another 1400 buses are found, and now we have a cost of #320,000. Now who pays this cost? The City of New Orleans? Obviously not, because the city isn't a person with income. Shall we tax the businesses? The property owners? The resident's income? With a head tax. By charging each person a fare of $4 with each person being responsible for buying their own food and paying a fee at the emergency shelter? So, the cost ends up being at least $10 a person, so a family of five would need to have at least $50 to get on the bus?
Maybe the city can just press the bus drivers into service and confiscate the gasoline, food, shelter, etc.
Now if this had been done once a year for the past five years, who would be saying that it makes sense?
Would you be saying that the people who couldn't afford the $50 to transport their family were at fault, even if they were poor?
Would you be saying that the mayor is violating property rights and personal freedom by pressing into service and taking property without compensation?
Would you be saying the mayor is wasting limited government money on a low risk situation because he is just covering his ass?
Now maybe the school buses weren't submerged by the storm, but by the break in the levy. So, how does he get the drivers into drive the buses? Are they required to standby their buses and ride out the storm? Or does the mayor just ask for volunteers to break into the buses and hotwire them and then drive them?
Should the mayor have his own helicopter so he can fly around and get a good view of the problem?
Maybe New Orleans should have taken the cell phone company assets by eminent domain so they could ensure they were operational after any emergency, but cause cell communication is the cheapest and best solution today. Or New Orleans should have placed performance requirements on the cell phome companies to ensure that their system was rugged enough to handle any kind of natural emergency? Of course, he doesn't have that power, because that power is all with the Federal government.
Once the storm hit, power it out, transportation out of New Orleans is crippled with all the major highways impassible, and the best source of information was back in the TV and radio news editorial rooms.
Finally, I ask Tim Saler to outline the disaster emergency action plan for his community. When was it last used? Who pays for it? Do you know the hazzards in your community? And most important, who do you hold responsible for the succes or failure of the reaction to a disaster in your community?
I think there was a massive breakdown at the local/state level, and that breakdown probably caused problems with the FEMA response.
Also, I think in general the feds are too beauracratized-and that also may affect ability to respond quickly.
Those are things that can be evaluated after all is said and done.
I think there will be much blame to go around in the end, but frankly I don't think the president or even the federal response is where the majority of the problem is, it was effectively the inability/unwilingness of NO to actually follow their evacuation plan-had they followed taht, there wouldn't be nearly the catastrophe in human lives that it turned out to be. Their own plan understood that it would take a three day evacuation, and the mayor only gave a 24 hour notice-it just wasn't enough time, and even worse they didn't utilize the resources they had available, and they all went under water.
or in Louisianna. I know that those who went to the impromptu shelters at the superdome and convention center were told to bring three days worth of food and water with them.
I also know, from when I lived in hurricane prone areas (North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina) that we received a mailed flyer every year, and there were commercials that recommended what things you should buy, and store in the case of a hurricane. They listed enough food and water for three days for each person in the family, as well as things like batteries, battery powered radios, flashlights etc.
I can't imagine that the Gulf Coast didn't do similar fliers, but maybe not.
notice that it recommended a 72 hour evacuation plan, the first huge mistake was waiting until 24 hours before predicted landfall to make the evacuation order.
Also, if you read the plan, you will realize that use of buses was also part of the plan.
Also, I would have no problem with my husband trying to get people out, if he was a bus driver. At least the buses could have moved out about 12,000 people before the storm hit, and that would be 12,000 people who wouldn't be dead or stranded (I came to 12,000 by multiplying 200, times 60, which is approximatly the number of people that can fit on a school bus).
It would have been better to try, than let them sit and go under water don't you think?
And waiting 4 days to do it really helps the situation! The point is that the very people who did not evacuate could not do it due to lack of resources.
Homeland Security, per its mission statement, should have been on top of it. But because it is run by complete morons, including Mike Brown, we saw this disaster unfold before our eyes.
Starving the beast will not solve anything. The states, and especially municipalities, will never be able to handle this type of disaster (or attack). This is the feds duty and they failed.
definition of "swift and effective?" I'd love to know. If its 4 days, for the sake of all of us, please don't go into disaster management.
I know that on Thursday I saw reports of complete towns where no one had come to even see what had happened there, much less provide aid. The reporters would drive through the towns and talk to people searhing for family and friends, or searching for food and water, saying that they hadn't seen anybody in charge. And no hint of any aid. Meanwhile there are sticks and boards and cars and boats just littering the background.
in New Orleans versus the situation in Mississippi isn't even close. The entire city of NO was flooded. It's apples and oranges. What the mayor of New Orleans has to handle versus Haley Barbour is in a different universe.
that he thought it through better than your objections. Fact is, those busses were in the evacuation plan and fact is they weren't used.
Are you saying that only "school bus drivers" can drive school busses? How about detailing 200 city employees or even police officers in those hours before the storm to drive the busses.
You seem to be making a case here for making a plan to have a plan but not blaming the planners if the plan isn't feasible.
I think there is lots of blame to go around.The underlying issue is poverty.Had the poor had the means there wouldnt have been this human disaster.
72 hours before it struck, I think the storm was still catagory 1 and while it was expected to pick up steam, it was expected to hit the Forida panhandle like the two previous tropicals storms to go over Florida into the Gulf.
If you read the plan carefully, I believe you wil find that the public transportation takes the residents to the shelters that are on their regular routes. In other words, the New Orleans RTA buses (and trolley's) would transport people within New Orleans to the convention center, dome, etc. And the school buses are not part of the NORTA.
How many times would you be happy to have your husband transport people during an emergency order, only to have the emergency turn out to be much less than forecast - the storm turns or weakens?
You also didn't say whether you expected your husband to be paid to work during the evacuation. If he is paid, who is he paid by. If this affects your taxes, will you accept evacuations when it was a "false alarm" and the added taxes as just the cost of prudent government?
After the storm hit, there were no clear roads out of the city, certainly none that would have readily carried buses. One part of the I-10, one of the major highways out of the city was completely destroyed and it won't be returned to service for probably three years at the earliest.
New Orleans has issued at least one emergency evacuation order every year for the past five years, though this was the only one that remained on track to hit New Orleans head on until about 6 hours before it passed. (When I was watching and listening the news before it hit, the last report before I went to bed was that a cat 5 would hit New Orleans in six hours. In the morning, the report was that it had dropped to cat 4 and then turned away, missing New Orleans, but that it was so massive it was still battering New Orleans with winds up to 100 MPH.)
New Orleans survived the storm, but the highways did not. And the fact the highways wouldn't survive is built into the plan, as the Red Cross had stated they would not place a Red Cross shelter in New Orleans because they would not be able to reach it after a storm. The shelters in New Orleans were only a last resort for the people who couldn't get out. And the last time they had been opened, the damage done was so extensive as people pulled up seating to get places to lay down, etc., that they didn't open it up until it was the last minute.
In other words, providing emergency services was criticized in the past for the costs associated with it.
According to the New Orleans emergency management agency, the city of New Orleans is responsible for this function. Leon has the pertinent parts and the links in his story.
Stick to the facts.
Do you actually believe Giuliani would have this mess if he had been in charge? Do you thing that police radios would be dead because they had no extra batteries? Do you think that people would be getting raped and murdered at shelters? Do you think he would have watched the death and destruction of the Tsunami 8 months ago and not be prompted into action at the thought of a 20 foot storm surge predicted to hit his city?
Hundreds of people are dead in N. O. because of Nagin's lack of leadership and all the National Guard troops in America won't bring them back to life.
Those lazy people you speak of probably didnt have the price of a bus ticket.
State of emergency was declared on Aug 26. Katrina hit on Aug 29.
But it was a good strawman while it lasted.
and probably wimpy compared to Katrina-I was without power for 5 days both times. I don't recall anyone coming immediately to our town, there were too many other towns with worse damage.
There is a think called priorities-some things get assessed first and some things get restored more quickly-sometimes you just have to wait your turn.
The damage from this storm covers hundreds of miles and three states, do you think it is realistic to expect every town to be covered immediately?
I think in general we have some pretty unrealistic expectations in regards to how quickly everything is assessed and fixed.
I remember after Floyd FEMA was there for months, and people had about a year to file their claims through them. Part of the problem with FEMA is that while power is still down, many people don't even know who/how to contact them. But FEMA doesn't knock on every door either.
They had the means.
The city of NO was supposed to provide the transport for ANYBODY who needed it.
(And, outside of possibly the homeless, nearly everyone in America has the means on their own - see the stats about the "poor" people in this country who own multiple cars, big screen TVs, etc. Pretty much everybody has enough cash on hand to buy a one-way bus ticket.)
The fact is, most of these people chose (i.e. were not "forced", but chose) to "wait the storm out". Ergo, it's primarily their fault, and the fault of the government of NO, that they were caught there.
No amount of Lib whining is going to change that fact, and most non-Libs recognize it.
What do you want done within your limit of four days?
How long do you think it takes to assess and recover from a hurricane?
plans for providing free buses out of the city.
Two problems occured though-they didn't announce th mandatory evacuations soon enough (they had a 72 hour plan, the mayor gave 24 hours. That plan was to utilize buses to get people out, that plan didn't go into effect.
Makes one wonder if the mayor or any other people in charge of the first responders even bothered to read the plan.
I suspect in the end it was complacency and the belief that NO would be spared again.
So there was still almost 48 hours they delayed the emergency evacuation.
And on Friday, it looked like it was headed for NO-there is no reason for not ordering a mandatory evacuation either Friday and especially on Sat.
Also, on Sat is when Bush declared the area a disaster area, and the mayor still waited another 24 hours to issue the mandatory evacuation order.
"Fact is, those busses were in the evacuation plan and fact is they weren't used."
The only reference I found in the plan was to RTA buses (and I assume trollies) that ran along regular routes to shelters. I searched the document for "bus", but maybe I missed it.
garbage truck or other large vehecles could easily have managed to drive a school bus.
the unions would prohibit qualified and capable drivers from hauling out the poor and infirm from being drowned in a Cat 4 hurricane.
Just gotta love the unions.
was just being snarky. Let's all dial it back a bit.
Tbone, you might want to watch that sarcasm in the future; sometimes gives people the wrong idea, then we start creating our own set of "Known Facts".
Or did I miss a press release about the unions?
Really. Care to back this up? Because, in a duel of subjective impressions, "most" of the people I see on TV being carried, semi-conscious or in wheelchairs have oxygen masks, IVs, dialysis bags, are in neo-natal cribs, have walkers, canes etc. "Most" of the people I have seen interviewed on TV had a really good reason to stay, as in, they had no money, no car, nowhere to go if they left, were bedridden, or too sick or weak to go. We're now hearing stories about how entire nursing homes were abandoned, how a home for the blind with 250 blind people was abandoned, and everyone inside is now surely dead. I suppose all these people "chose" to leave too, right? In a city of 400,000 people, who are among the poorest people in the USA, you will find at least 25 or 30,000 out of 400,000 who are too poor, sick, old, disabled, or just completely out of it (homeless, on drugs etc.) to "choose" to get out. Your icy cold, rock-hearted callousness towards these suffering people is unbelievable. I'd stick you in the superdome with no air condition, no food and no water for a week if I could.
it just says they will provide busses, not specifically school busses. So I guess it's fine.
comment. If you want to emote, take it elsewhere.
but very well could be true. After all Union rules can be pretty strange.
Say, Streif, how come that comment does not apply to what he said? I mean, when you trot out and say it is a "fact" that "most" of the people stayed because they wanted to and so "it" (by which I'm assuming being eaten by rats, sleeping in feces, drowning, dying of dehydration, electrocution, water moccasins, alligators, fire, dysentery etc.) is their fault...a statement like this is so counterfactual it itself is based on nothing but emotion. Or shall we say a basic deficit of humanity, honor, dignity, patriotism, Christianity, morality. You know, all those "emotive" things therefore inappropriate.
Frankly, I'm not sure what you would call the "emotion" that would drive someone to type such horrible words, perhaps "hateful" "spiteful" "vituperative" ... but whatever IJB's statement was, it wasn't factual.
Sorry, but as far the "stats" (which you don't cite) about all the poor people who actually have all these TV's and lots of cars etc., you have never been to projects. Here's a stat for you, but be prepared, it's a very "emotional" stat: 50,000 FAMILIES HAVE NO CAR IN NOLA. More than a third of the city lives under the poverty line. There's dry, hard facts for you. No emotion at all. But, as well all know, poor people actually have "multiple cars" and "big screen TVs." What else do poor people "actually" have according to the "stats" especially the poor people who are dead and dying in NOLA? Mansions? Yachts? Stock portfolios?
Here's a fact: your (IJB) disdain makes me sick.
Here's another fact: what you just wrote would be considered a very grave sin in just about every major religion I can think of at this point.
"More than a third of the city lives under the poverty line." If this is true, why are you not questioning how a city with a major seaport and major tourism can't be run so that there is better opportunity than this?
"Do you actually believe Giuliani would have this mess if he had been in charge? Do you thing that police radios would be dead because they had no extra batteries? Do you think that people would be getting raped and murdered at shelters? Do you think he would have watched the death and destruction of the Tsunami 8 months ago and not be prompted into action at the thought of a 20 foot storm surge predicted to hit his city?"
So, I guess we are talking about former Mayor of New Orleans Giuliani, who has spent the past eight years as a political reformer, using his heavy-duty State and federal connections to obtain government resources, laws, and regulations, and making use of his many private and government connections to transform the city.
In that case, I would say, no, the current situation wouldn't exist, but that would be largely due the investments in infrastructure including the upgrading of the levee system and other investments he had used his connections to fund. And in the aftermath of previous evacuations that had a number of problems, he would have also used his connections to get FEMA funds allocated to address them.
But my guess is that the levee wouldn't have failed either. We're not talking about something that a Mayor of New Orleans Giuliani wouldn't have known about in 1996.
Why not just take down that American red cross 1-800-HELP-NOW link, Streiff? I mean, if the only people who are suffering at this point, you know, those with no water, no food, no medicine, no nothing--if it is all just their fault that they stayed, and they should have all gotten out because all "non-libs" by which I am assuming you, Streiff and all the other Redstate organizers, all non-libs "know" that poor people "actually" have "multiple big screen tvs and multiple cars" why bother helping them? Because, donating to the Red Cross would just be "emoting" wouldn't it? Because, factually speaking, every one who is suffering now deserves every last bit of their suffering and shouldn't a dime of our money or a drop of our blood.
Heck, all those people in Bandah Aceh should have known that when they felt a tremor they should have run to the high ground. All who didn't "deserved" to die in the Tsunami, right?
Disgusting. And for more "facts" I would imagine that one could prove without too much work that most "non-libs" are actually overcome with emotion for these people's suffering and are among the many opening their wallets, veins and homes right now for all these "so-called poor people" who deserved what they got.
"The damage from this storm covers hundreds of miles and three states, do you think it is realistic to expect every town to be covered immediately?"
I agree completely. In fact, that was the point of my post.
No place on the Gulf coast is in good shape even after almost a week, even at the first responder level.
I mean come on, what in the world does that have to do with anything! Just so you know, cities built on tourism rarely create good paying jobs for those who live there. Or have you never been to swank tourist hotels in the third world? Most of those dead and dying in NOLA and GUlfport are those who clean your rooms after your stay in the French Quarter or the Harrah's casino or cook your food or park your cars. Those are not good paying jobs, just so you know. And actually, the cities I've been in that are run by Democrats have experienced a great deal of economic and aesthetic and cultural regeneration. Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia are included in that.
What a ridiculously mean spirited comment. Mississippi has the second highest poverty rate as a state in the country. Let's talk about why Republicans are so bad at running states? I mean, for God's sake...
But the worst of it is that somehow I detect a similar sentiment as with IJB, that because Democrats mismanaged the economy, therefore causing poverty (amazing all these people trying to figure out the causes of poverty when you've got figured out so easily), and so therefore people had no ability to get out, that all these people deserve the collective punishment being visited upon them.
But wait, IJB just said that there is no such thing as poor people. So I guess, with a flat screen TV in every apartment in the projects, and multiple (no doubt expensive) cars parked outside every home in the 9th ward ghetto, Democrats have done a great job of running the city! Holy cow!
One of you is right and one is wrong. You guys sort it out.
If not you are majorly setting off the troll vibe.
Pure, unhinged ranting. Nothing more, nothing less.
favorite word of the right to refer to the reactions of those who care alot. Tell me, C17, what is more unhinged:
--snickering about how much all these people deserve to die a horrible death because everyone knows that poor people have tons of money and should have left but didn't
--or calling the person who did the above
If what IJB said didn't rock your soul to its foundations, you need to check to see if it is still there. I would hope that it is. Who here on this site is a christian? Who here is lover of humanity? Who here is a patriot? I call on you right now to call for IJB's banning from this board. Now.
C17, do you agree with what IJB said, that these people deserve what is happening to them? If not, why do you find my reaction to what he said to be "pure ranting"? I am a human, an American, a father, a husband--to hear this callousness is amazing to me. Amazing.
yesterday, $350 to ARC. Today, a pint of blood, and helped my Mom run a yard sale to send the proceeds to Katrina victims, $425 so far. Tuesday, we're taking a family from Biloxi that got sent to temp housing in Detroit, and donating all the empty cans we can find to our kid's Catholic school so the proceeds can go to United Catholic Charities hurricane relief fund.
What have you contributed? Never mind. I came here to find out conservative's ideas on how to fix the crisis.
Instead I found a bunch of very selfish people congratulating each other on how stupid poor people are and that's why they didn't get out of the city. What is going on????
let's not start putting words in their mouth -- that would be the Democratic (big D) thing to do!
you want me to call for his banning and not yours. You are both expressing opinions, but you are off the rails.
Now, for his comments-
Gov. Blanco was on the news about two days ago and told everyone listening that they sent buses into the city and begged people to leave. Many chose not to. Therefore, they are literally up sh*t creek without a paddle.
I have lived in a hurricane prone area before and when mandatory evac orders come and you don't evac, the next thing you are told is that when certain conditions are met, your safety can not be guaranteed and it may be days before help can get to you.
As for his comments regarding a one way bus ticket, he's probably pretty uninformed in that respect. Although I will tell you, when I taught in a very poor school in Charleston, the moms of my welfare kids had cellphones, pagers, and caller-id long before I ever could afford them and they usually drove better cars than I did. The also had manicures every week. So, I can see where he might be making his assumptions.
Lastly, I doubt I am any less emotional about this than you seeing as I have friends, ones that I would die for, all along the AL, MS, & LA coasts. I just chose to not air my frustrations in rants at others.
You need to take a deep breath and calm down. Otherwise, you just sound like a fool.
but even if all these people did have all the wealth you are describing, which, having been to the projects in NOLA I don't believe but I have no facts to back that up other than the statistic that 50,000 families are too poor to have a car in NOLA--even if, when people are suffering, you help. Period. Life is life. We are commanded by our maker, in whatever form we understand Him, to help the suffering, whether that suffering is of their making or not. Those blaming the victims are as ludicrous as those blaming Bush. I really don't care if they could have gotten on a Bus or not, to tell you the truth, although I certainly understand that many of them probably didn't know or couldn't find the right place or couldn't physically get there in time. They are suffering. They have my compassion. They don't IJB's.
Good for him-I was asking JustMe, since he's so worried about my contribution.
you shouldn't help them, but I think the argument can be made, that choosing not to evacuate was buying trouble, and the fact that you may not get out as quickly as you like.
About 10k people have been evacuated out of NO with helicopters and boats. NEither one can hold that many people-so far since the levee broke about 1000 trips have been made to get people out.
There are just too many of them.
They assumed the risk by staying, they probably were not taking the threat of the storm seriously enough, or maybe they just hoped NO would once again get lucky-it almost did. But in the end they made a poor choice, and right now they are dealing with the consequences of that choice, which is that they are stranded, and while help is on the way, they can only do so much at a time.
I don't think it is fair to say they deserve it-but they certainly did take a gamble and they lost.
your contributions regarding Katrina, but to the board.
As for my contributions-I have given to our church's disaster relief program, which is currently in the area serving hot meals to refugees and relief workers.
Does that meet your approval?
He did NOT say that these people deserve what is happening to them.
He said that for most of them, it is their own fault.
You are wrong that most were unable to get out. I have seen extensive video footage, and most are entirely able bodied people who weighed the risks and costs and decided to risk it.
As I posted elsewhere, they are guilty of making it more difficult to evacuate the ones who actually could not get out, e.g. the elderly and infirm.
You'll probably melt when you read this, and accuse me of being heartless, callous, ad infinitum, but these people really should have had some kind of plan. As individuals, in addition to better planning by the city and state.
I live in tornado alley. We don't get more than about 20 minutes warning, and as we are not town dwellers, there are no sirens, etc. We just have to pay attention to the weather and get out when we need to. Many times during any given year, we leave our humble little home, with nothing but one vehicle and the clothes on our backs, and head to my parent's basement.
It is a plan. You have to adjust your method of living to the place you live.
These people lived in a town that was below sea level with a Cat 4/5 hurricane bearing down. What were they thinking??
My wife and I have given up luxuries to give cash and will contribute the savings from Governor Perdue cutting out the gas tax to the Salvation Army, which has been quite effective in the relief effort.
subtle but distinct difference between pointing out that actions have consequences beyond any government's ability to overcome (short of totalitarianism), and saying that victims deserve what they get. I won't put words in IJB's mouth, but isn't it possible he was pointing out the former "fact", while not denying that we should all (as Christians, Humanists, and Patriots) now do what we can to lend a hand?
Has Michael Moore raise? How many charities does he list on is site? What about Matt Damon, George Clooney, Martin Sheen, etc.?
And we're trying very hard to figure out what else we can give.
Let me be completely clear on something: In every hurricane, you'll have two groups of people who don't leave the area when disaster is coming: The extremely poor or sick who can't leave, and the extremely dumb who won't. The former deserve our pity. The latter deserve our scorn.
There were living and dead in houses in New Orleans with no cars in the driveway; broken cars in the driveway; and gassed-up, ready to run cars in the driveway.
But both groups are groups of human beings. Though one deserves pity and the other deserves scorn, both deserve our help and charity. Just because you're stupid doesn't mean you're not human. Just because I think you're damned stupid doesn't mean that you don't deserve my assistance, and indeed, the assistance of our fellow citizens.
So the answer to your question, dear friend, is that we can remark on how stupid -- sadly, not unbelievably so -- it is to stay in the path of one of the most powerful forces of nature when you can leave, and we can do our damnedest to help them and those who couldn't leave to the fullest of our abilities.
A. Some were able to get out. With a car. And money to stay in a hotel room for a week. Some. Not many.
B. Some had a car, but almost no money. So what do you do when you run out of gas and have nothing to eat or drink somewhere between NOLA and Baton Rouge?
C. Most had no car, no money. Of these, some were able-bodied. Exactly what does able-bodied have to do with it? You mean to tell me that a father of four should have put his four kids on his back a run from a Category 5 Hurricane? How far do you think he could have gotten in the approximately 24 hrs between when the evacuation ordered was issued and when the 140 mph winds hit? 15 miles? 20 miles?
D. So you've seen video footage. I have too. And funny, I see some able-bodied people, and ALOT of crippled, sick, obese, homeless, elderly, wheel-chair bound, diabetic and so on. All of them look very poor, but what do I know. They probably all have two big screen tvs and 3 mercedes, according to IJB.
So, a small percentage of these people had the physical, vehicular and financial means of getting out and didn't. The rest, come on, are really talking about having some old woman roll her wheel chair down the interstate with a cat 4 hurricane at her back?
But my real point is that, in my moral universe, it doesn't matter if someone stood right in front of the eye wall or funnel or whatever. If they are suffering, their suffering must be alleved. By any means possible. And I thought this site would be full of people with better ideas for how to help than the usual liberal "make the federal gov't do it" but instead it is this water-treading debate on whether they deserve the help or not.
open your house, all of you. People can't and don't want to stay in a tent forever.
Everyone here, absolutely everyone, supports every effort being made to alleviate the suffering, rescue the stranded, and provide for their health and future. Don't get all sanctimonious with us.
I merely pointed out that
- Saying it is someone's fault is not the same as saying they deserved it. For example, if I hit you in the nose, I deserve to be hit in the nose. If I walk into a wall and hit my nose, it is my fault.
- Prior to the hurricane, many of the people who stayed in the city did so because they did not feel that the risk was high enough to justify the problems evacuation would cause them. I can assure you that if they were allowed the benefit of hindsight, they would have been more dedicated to the evacuation orders, though some truly could not have done anything. We will never know the percentages, and watching hours of video footage will not bring us one iota of enlightenment. Thus, this discussion is a waste of bandwidth, and I hereby cease and desist.
betweem NOLA and Baton Rouge is a much better place to be than New Orleans. AT least they wouldn't be stuck in flood waters.
Sure it may not be a nice situation to be in, but it would be a heck of a lot better than New Orleans.
I won't put words in IJB's mouth, but isn't it possible he was pointing out the former "fact", while not denying that we should all (as Christians, Humanists, and Patriots) now do what we can to lend a hand?
Exactly yes.
But, as some are so quick to dole out "blame", it's important to point out all the places "blame" can be assigned. And they don't all point at the Feds. Far from it.
People ignore "manditory evacuation orders" at their own peril.
can get to the PNW.
Honestly, after the kids go to bed and I settle in for the night to watch TV, the tears just flow. I hate not being able to do something. Several of my friends have no home to go home to and a couple have lost their businesses. Don't think for a minute that I wouldn't like to do more.
if they want to hit NH, I would take somebody in.
I suspect they won't come this far, and I suspect that somebody from NOLA isn't going to care much for our winters.
My inlaws live in South Alabama, and my father in law thinks October up here is way too cold. Shoot they put warm clothes on for temps we still wear shorts and short sleeves for.
...is if New Orleans got hit. Most other cities don't have the reported corruption of the police department, the bumbling mayor Nagin, or the slow-moving Gov. Blanco. If a nuclear attack struck NYC, they would handle it with the professionalism with which they handled 9/11. I also believe that California would do a good job since they have earthquakes and the lawlessness we've witnessed in NO doesn't happen. After the way I've seen MS and FL handle their hurricanes, I think any state run by Republicans would know what to do. Heck, I think that even the mayor of Chicago where I'm from would know what to do and he's a Dem. I think this is a LA problem and not indicitive of America as a whole. I'm tired of hearing how this is an embarrassment to America when this isn't the Feds fault.
Would New Orleans be in the mess it's in today if Giuliani had been mayor? Would 200 N. O. police have walked off their jobs and with two of them committing suicide? You have recited the liberal catechism, but you haven't given me an answer.
How about a simple yes or no? We are all waiting for your answer.
I have seen the emergency plan. Ray Nagin didn't put it in to action. The investigations will so he was negligent.
all I can give now is blood and treasure (as I told Jasmine earlier) and we have. Now I find out I am giving my husband, like C17wife, an Engineer with geological expertise. This may cost us our very small business (4 people) - maybe we can keep the doors open till he returns.
As you just stated, you are not "merely" pointing out a "fact." You are assigning blame.
Not that you had any substantive "fact" to point to.
Just curious, IJB:
why were people looting TV's if they already have multiple flat screens in their shacks? Is it because poor people are inherently greedy, or is it because they stayed in the city so they could get their greedy hands on them TV's? I'm just asking you because you know all about what "the poor" have in their homes, and even more on their motivations and their abilities.
Some of these people might have ignored warnings. I don't see what in the world that has to do with anything. Most couldn't get out. At all.
You've backed yourself in here, I understand. I'm going to assume you wish you'd left yourself room to get out of your tight little corner and not have to insist on blaming these people for the horrid fate they are experiencing. So I'll give you a shot. You know that this is a moment of compassion, not blame, right? You know that a vast majority of these people could not escape, right? Right? And you certainly have done your part to lend a helping hand?
He is a man of conviction with core values as to leadership which would have enabled him to act decisively before and after the disaster. These qualities were amply demonstated post 9/11. Nagin has neither conviction nor core leadership values. This was demonstrated by his willingness to change parties to get elected, his total failure in this matter and his "blame somebody else" approach since.
This was the perfect storm hitting a place run by perfect fools.
Its just insane.
A teenager, Jabbor Gibson, took an initiative and drove a school bus with 100 strangers, for 7 hours straight from New Orleans to Houston, saving the people, including new born babies.
Now get this -
"CITY OF NEW ORLEANS TO PROSECUTE YOUNG RESCUER FOR DRIVING A STOLEN BUS AND SAVING 100 PEOPLE"
DO THESE PEOPLE HAVE ANY SHAME?
Now you made us get Clayton involved.
- I do not believe that the reorganization of FEMA under the Dept of Homeland Security Changed the responsiblity of local governments to plan the first 3 days of emergency response (it may now be five days in fact).
- The hurricane did not stop on the southern shore of lake Pontchartrain, it continued up the midwest Making it difficult to organize federal relief efforts (e.g. tornadoes in Jackson MS)
- The fastest response would have been if the governor of Louisiana had mobilized her own national guard.
You know that a vast majority of these people could not escape, right? Right?
And you haven't proved this claim.
That's why you're not getting very far with anyone around here.
Playing the "I'm more compassion card" doesn't prove your case. It only undermines your credibility.
This Washington Post article interviews working poor people who didn't get out of New Orleans.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/03/AR200509030
1508.html
A self-employed graphic artist, a private-duty care-giver, a part-time janitor, a disabled man. Families with savings between $100 and $400.
That's not enough money to get out of town, stay for a week, eat, and come back.
You read "the plan" and show me where the details are for moving 100,000 people to safety are.
And where were they to be sheltered?
I have seen task force recommendations and continguency plans drawn up for business situations and after hours of looking at documents on the web, and the New Orleans website, there is nothing but words in regard to evacuating people from the city.
The city homeland security website is new, is looking for volunteers, and has no structure. Nothing provides citizens with any information on how to find a bus, what can be taken on the buses, and so on. The only things on the web are information on shelters IN NEW ORLEANS at schools, with information on what you bring, including five days of food. The news reports I heard before the storm hit included instructions for the people who couldn't evacuation to bring 3-4 days of food, medication, etc.
So, given the state of planning and organization, and there is some evidence that work was in progress, in response to the evacuation less than a year ago for Ivan, see http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/o/nov04/nov04c.html for a good commentary. For Ivan, the evacuation was in progress for almost two and a half days before the storm turned away from New Orleans, and only about have the people had evacuated. This paragraph is telling.
"Unwilling to merely accept this reality, emergency managers and representatives of nongovernmental disaster organizations, local universities, and faith based organizations have formed a working group to engage additional faith-based organizations in developing ride-sharing programs between congregation members with cars and those without. In the wake of Ivan’s near miss, this faith-based initiative has become a catalyst in the movement to make evacuation assistance for marginalized groups (those without means of evacuation) a top priority for all levels of government."
So, YES even Giuliani would have FAILED
"The city of NO was supposed to provide the transport for ANYBODY who needed it."
Or are you a liberal? Are you saying the government must protect people from natural disaster? Is that a legal right to be protected, or written in law? Or are you speaking of a moral imperative? And who pays?
Read http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/o/nov04/nov04c.html which reviews what happened with Ivan less than a year ago.
Here's the comment what was being done for those without transport:
"For those without means, the medically challenged, residents without personal transportation, and the homeless, evacuation requires significant assistance. The medically challenged often rely on life support equipment and are in such fragile states of health that they can only be moved short distances to medically equipped shelters. While a large storm-resistant structure with appropriate equipment has yet to be constructed or retrofitted, the Superdome was used to shelter nonevacuees during Ivan.
"Residents who did not have personal transportation were unable to evacuate even if they wanted to. Approximately 120,000 residents (51,000 housing units x 2.4 persons/unit) do not have cars. A proposal made after the evacuation for Hurricane Georges to use public transit buses to assist in their evacuation out of the city was not implemented for Ivan. If Ivan had struck New Orleans directly it is estimated that 40-60,000 residents of the area would have perished.
"Unwilling to merely accept this reality, emergency managers and representatives of nongovernmental disaster organizations, local universities, and faith based organizations have formed a working group to engage additional faith-based organizations in developing ride-sharing programs between congregation members with cars and those without. In the wake of Ivan’s near miss, this faith-based initiative has become a catalyst in the movement to make evacuation assistance for marginalized groups (those without means of evacuation) a top priority for all levels of government."
"No amount of Lib whining is going to change that fact, and most non-Libs recognize it."
It really disturbs me to see people of any political leaning making judgements and decisions without getting the facts first. Perhaps you can give me some informative statement about that from your perspective.
President Bush called for a "zero tolerance" policy against looters; I don't recall exactly what he said, but he seemed to respond to a query "even if they are taking food and water" with "zero tolerance".
On the BBC, a spokesman from the Red Cross stated in response to a query that they were prevented from entering New Orleans to provide aid to the many were waiting for evacuation. Should the Red Cross find some way to sneak in?
A number of countries and the UN emergency response organization have offered to send teams, but have not been given permission the last I heard - should they sneak in the US?
Jabbor Gibson took, not liberty, but the law into his own hands. If that is ok, then would it be ok to carjack someone, toss out all his belongings and fill his car with people and force him to take people out of the city? (A tourist from Britain arrived at her hotel too late to register because they were evacuating and they wouldn't arrange for her transport because she wasn't registered. She watched guest after guest leaving the hotel, but no one would give her or others in her situation a ride.)
Fortunately, this is one reason we have the right to a trial by a jury of our peers - to deal with gray areas. Everyone can present their evidence, and the jury can decide the fate of Jabbor Gibson.
Not sure that he was responding exactly in that manner. Regardless, it does provide fodder for the liberals, considering Rumsfeld's unfortunate comments about the looter's in Baghdad. Hopefully, the New Orlean citizens won't be subjected to the same levels of freedom and democracy.
As for NO Officers with inadequate batteries for their radios, I think EagleWatcher picked a rather poor example to hype Giuliani. Outdated radios were a major problem in NYC. Additionally, he knocks Nagin for changing his political party, but Giuliani did the same in 1975.
By the time this is all settled, I doubt that anyone involved is going to benefit politically. The Democrats in Louisiana have been ridiculously ineffective, but if Bush was as good a leader as he has been portrayed, he would have grasped the reins from the governor long ago. What this shows is a complete breakdown of leadership from our supposed "leaders" in the country as a whole, top to bottom, Republican or Democrat. The real leaders have been those in small towns along the evacuation routes offering shelter and food, the millions of Americans donating what they can, and the tremendous outpouring of support from all Americans. If only our official would take their cue from these brave Americans.
I like the way you slipped "grasped the reins" in there. Someone not paying attention might overlook the fact that you are trying to slip a knife into Bush's side by oh-so-gently pointing out that he failed to name himself Dictator.
I mean, we have Presidents overruling and replacing State Governors all the time, right? Bush could just get on the horn and announce that the elected Governors of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi are all relieved, and He's In Charge.
Let us know when you've returned to Earth.
point.
Feel free to go into a simpering pantytwister of a rant anytime you wish. But one more incident of name calling or anything that approaches it and you're gone.
hit that badly by the hurricane itself, the worst damage, and the highest number of deaths on Monday, when it hit, was in MS. FEMA at that point was playing triage and consentrating there.
It wasn't until Tuesday that the Levee broke, and New Orleans became the site of the worst devastation.
Bush ahve the right or ability to "grasp the reins" from a State governor?
It sounds good, but there is just no authority for him to do so.
From the Washington Post:
Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said Saturday.
The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. "Quite frankly, if they'd been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals," said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.
And this is classic:
Blanco made two moves Saturday that protected her independence from the federal government: She created a philanthropic fund for the state's victims and hired James Lee Witt, Federal Emergency Management Agency director in the Clinton administration, to advise her on the relief effort.
With Democrats like this I am more convinced than ever they are unfit to govern in times of crisis.
HT: LGF
Um, last time I checked Democrats were in charge of the state of LA and the city of NO. As elected officials of those areas, it's their responsibility to adequately prepare the citizenry for a catastrophe such as this. That's why the post above documents the PLAN to deal with such a problem as Katrina. Failing to follow demonstrates the failed leadership of those in charge in that area.
As far as Bush's culpability, troops and supplies were deployed prior to landfall. The President even declared Louisiana a national emergency on Saturday, two days before Katrina struck.
Quit being so pathetically knee-jerk in your criticism of the President and quit trying to pass the buck just because your buddies in LA and NO failed to implement a plan to deal with this problem.
Now.
Come back when you cool off.
streiff is much more generous with the banning trigger than I am. I understand that emotions are running high, but if you keep going after commenters on this board, I'll show you the door myself.
We've given you a lot of slack the last couple of days. The rope just ran out. Choose.
That was part of a 2004 contract to develop Catastrophic Hurricane Plans for the city of New Orleans, BTW.
According to Ready.gov and the Ad Council, September is National Preparedness Month.
August, by contrast, must have been "Sit On Your Backside and Cross Your Fingers Month."
Or if they're clever enough to bomb the levees.
After 9/11, I wouldn't underestimate their creativity.
you link to a blog and not an actual report.
by those same standards Condoleeza was watching Spamalot and shopping for hot boots during the slow-to-start evacuation.
"Kulongoski received a request Friday from the Federal Emergency Management Agency asking him to help house victims of the massive hurricane, a spokeswoman said.
The governor has directed the Oregon Office of Emergency Management to immediately begin coordinating with relief agencies. The refugees are expected to begin arriving in Portland within the next day or two."
New Orleans had its own emergency plan that Nagin seems to NOT have followed AT ALL. If he had made any of the preparations that were part of New Orleans' emergency plan, many more people would be alive right now.
Furthermore, the Washington Post is running an article in which they are reporting that Louisiana officials are acknowledging that the Federal authoirities were DESPERATELY asking Blanco to let the Feds take the lead, but she REFUSED to give them that authority. What did Blanco do with the authority which she refused to turn over to the Feds? She set up a fund to help victims and hired Clinton's FEMA director to oversee the disaster relief program. Well, we can all see how well that went.
The only reason a mandatory evacuation was ever made in the first place is because the President called Blanco and Nagin begging them to do so.
As soon as Blanco asked for federal aid (Tuesday), the feds were on the ball and moving men and supplies.
It seems that Americans don't even have a clue as to how American government works any longer. I guess liberals got so used to Clinton abusing Federal authority that they expected Bush to shove Federal authority down Blanco's throat. Shame on Bush for actually following the law and respecting the authority of Louisana's governor.
BAH! Take a civics class before you start yapping.
I was replying to "oops" above, not streiff, by the way.
If the feds had wrested control from the locals they would have been able to blame the locals? How does that follow?
They are about to find out that it doesn't.
But the issue of the week was execution on plan, which was execrable.
I endured the Sunday morning talk shows, and witnessed Herculean efforts by both Mayor Nagin and Secretary Chertoff to exculpate themselves from responsibility. In Roman times, both would have been crucified the old-fashioned way; today, I had to be satisfied with the press version.
I found Nagin's invocation of the tired 'it was an unprecedented storm' mantra to discredit him just as entirely as all the others who have said it. Whether New Orleans is to become an ex-city or not, Nagin needs to become an ex-mayor.
And I found Chertoff's statement that the Tuesday morning papers indicated New Orleans had dodged the bullet to be beyond insulting. I might have thought Chertoff to be guilty of no worse crime than incompetence if he did not mention in the same interview that he was aware of the levees bursting Monday night/Tuesday morning. At that point, he became in my eyes guilty of blatant falsehood.
I have to concur 100% with Bill Kristol in his comment this morning -- a government badly executed is bad government... that this week was a national embarrassment. And while things began to get back to specs.
But perhaps the real issue is the one described above -- that people fell through the cracks by the thousands because the responsibility for saving them was diluted by sending it as high up the organizational scale as possible.
And perhaps the last thing homeland security needed was a new supergiant bureaucracy built just for the occasion...that had the funds used to buil d DHS been handed out as block grants to the states -- or stripped from the Federal budget entirely -- then we would not be having this unfortunate conversation, at the end of very unfortunate week.
What stands out in my mind, however, is the satisfaction expressed by Governor Haley Barbour this morning with the immediate aid rendered by FEMA to his state.
For some reason, big government worked for Mississippi, therefore Mississippi at the state, county, and municipal level worked, because the expectations of Federal coordination and aid were met.
Indeed, in much of Louisiana, the same story appears to be the case; FEMA aid was preplaced, ready to handle the huge outflow of evacuees from Hurricane Katrina. That was not the problem. In this case, too, because big government worked for Louisiana, the state, parish and city governments worked, as well, because the known rules of the game were adhered to.
Where everything fell apart, however, appears to have been over the levees that supposedly protected New Orleans and adjacent parishes. The dispute over who holds primary responsibility for levee works is a haggle that's been going on for decades; it would be disingenuous to claim that this problem started last Tuesday. What is unconscionable is that the preferred mode of dealing with this high-risk issue was to continue talking about it, for years and years and years.
In this matter, big government most certainly did fail, and the state, parish and local authorities failed, as well.
Yet, separate from this quarrel is the issue of delivering supplies into the flooded city -- there was no hope of airlifting or boating over 100,000 people out quickly enough to prevent additional casualties.
Quite a few schoolbuses left to drown, useless because they were unused, that could have delivered survivors from the Superdome and Convention Center out of town, to where relief supplies were available. This was a failure of civic leadership. The notion of using schoolbuses was eventually thought of elsewhere, at state and national levels. The wider scope and (in my opinion) talent base of larger levels of government won, here, by virtue of economics of scale.
As the city flooded, hundreds of boats converged on the drowned metropolis, volunteers looking to help as they do in flood situations. Louisiana state officials, at first concerned about safety issues (the town was going a little nuts, as has been widely reported), held off the offer, but then waved the flotillas of private boats forward. This was a win for state leadership.
Alas, the boats were stopped by Federal officials, for the reason of security. I also suspect, though it is unstated, that there were concerns about boats being used for, well, what boats are sometimes used for in lawless situations -- piracy. I'm going to give a tie to the Feds on this one; the situation was dicey all-around.
Where I am going to wail on the state of Lousiana the most, however, was in agreeing to the transportation of tens of thousands of its own people out of state, fobbing the responsiblity for their care on other states and on the American people at large. Further, I think such long-distance relocation was both wasteful, in terms of energy, which was in short supply throughout the South this week because of the storm. Further, there is the matter of logistics: Supplies were already in Lousiana. Why not set up tent cities near the pre-placed supplies that FEMA insists were available in Lousiana, close to New Orleans, where people highly motivated to rebuild their city and their lives and plenty of free time could do some work, if able-bodied, and be cared for by relatives, few if any were 350 miles away in Houston and, 600 miles away in San Antonio. I think the state concurring in this relocation is bad news. I think the Feds in choosing this much more expensive and disruptive option to be equally bad. I give F's to both.
Look what occurred: Panic, oversight, overreaction, hesitation, turf war, eschewing responsibility, and an utter breakdown in trust among levels of goverment and, far more dangerous, distrust not in levels of government, to the point that for several days, the city of New Orleans ceased to be part of the United States of America.
Perhaps the desired result will be obtained, that government will be rendered more responsive, more intelligent, more nimble.
One thing is for sure; the people of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana will never fully trust big government Washington in its current configuration ever again.
much.
I think the fact that MS and FEMA managed to work together is a pretty good indication that the problem here wasn't so much FEMA, as it was the inability of the state government and local government to get their behinds in gear.
NO couldn't even follow their own disaster plan.
So if the people of LA are looking for somebody to trust or distrust, they need to look closer to home than the federal government.
I'm not sure how I let him off the hook. :)
but Moveon has gotten volunteers to offer to house over 120,000 refugees.
....it isn't like 85% of New York City was destroyed. It was awful, catastrophic, but that was isolated to a couple square miles, tops.
As for this comment:
So, they have instead chosen to attack the President, his administration, and his party with a brutality and ruthlessness possibly never before seen in American politics.
:
Well, at least in five or six years.
First comment was to this particular "thread-let." I think that the situations can't really be compared. I don't take anything away from Giuliani at all, but I'm not sure that Nagin had the opportunity to be in nearly as much control as him.
The second comment is a direct response to the diary entry.
You should turn this into a separate diary entry.
It's impressively thorough and detailed, and compared to most of the postings, not partisanly charged.
There's failure galore to go around, but I think the longer term will focus on the fact that the federal aid took 4 days to arrive in forceful effect, 5 days in fairly complete effect, and that it was in substantial part military. I doubt the left will ever acknowledge or refer to these facets in the ongoing review. Many democrats will, particularly those who have been silent so far. The question then boils down to who is responsible, and who should pay for the first 3 days?
I think you've seen the answer from Governor Barbour, and the Louisiana authorities are still considering there replies.
You acknowlwdge that the federal government worked well in Mississipi and most of Louisiana, abd that the only real problems were in NO.
By implication, at least, you acknowledge that the problems were not with FEMA, but with the local authorities in New Orleans.
And yet you conclude that "the people of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana will never fully trust big government Washington in its current configuration ever again."
This does not compute.
and attacking anyone who does not attck Bush visiously enough. What do you expect?
If Bill Clinton was in office, do you seriously think the right would be reasonable to him?
It's called hard ball politics. You guys play it well and Karl Rove is your master.
What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
As the old man from Independence said "If you cannot stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen".
As Mr. Rove will tell you, politics has nothing to do with truth, but perception.
You guys are in charge, so you take the heat.
In the end, spin all you want. Either Americans will buy your spin or they won't. But you have a good track record so far. So take heart.
With that said, I suspect I used my one warning and will now be banned. Although the owners of this site have a right to ban me, it is ashame we all must hide in our own little cacoons of like-minded people and that we do not have the intellectual stamina to stand up for our beliefs.
I invite you all to my site, Daily Speech and I promise I will not ban anyone no matter what they say (short of gross profanity). I will not censor speech at my site and I am prepared to counter any argument you provide.
Have a nice life and see you all in 2006 and 2008.
Let the games begin!
Where the federal government honored existing rules of the game, things went well.
FEMA helped Mississippi immediately per Governor Haley Barbour lied on "Meet the Press" yesterday morning, and in the same interview Governor Barbour praised Federal government assistance.
The governor of Mississippi refered to the million MRE's and many FEMA trucks that showed up the very next day.
For some reason, those MREs and trucks didn't make it to New Orleans. But Secretary Chertoff says that the Tuesday morning newspapers said that New Orleans had dodged the bullet, so activity there was stood down.
I guess big government didn't do so well there.
Which, I think, makes the point about the capricious and inconsistency of a super-large federal bureaucracy that despite post-9/11 urgency, got an F grade in its first outing.
So, I'm not sure why I am being contradicted.
I am indicating evidence in abundance that big government Washington failed to execute on task...helping inconsistently, and making life-endangering decisions on stale bureacrat-supplied and -filtered information.
I'd guess that DHS's responsibilities are going to be rolled back into the military and the pre-existing intelligence/law enforcement services very soon. That $50-60 billion extra a year didn't save anyone. It was just more big government Washington waste.
They failed out the gate. Thank God it wasn't a terrorist attack.
FEMA was in charge from 8/27 (Saturday before storm hit)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/20050827-1.html
"The President's action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures"
We're all scared to death because when Karl leaves the White House, all of us are going to be like a bunch of robots with fillings in our teeth who have lost the signal to the mothership. Wandering around like a bunch of zombies, wrecking everything we see. Karl has implanted a self-destruct Easter egg mnemonic in every Republican across the land. Here's how it goes:
You lure a Republican into a Starbucks and over a Chai latte and a discussion of fair-trade coffee you mention President Hillary's national health care plan, then you pause five seconds, talk about how you just resubscribed to Harper's magazine, and cap it off by laying a 3x5 black-and-white picture of Paul Wellstone on the table.
BOOM! Republicans are programmed to self destruct.
Watch, you'll see.
Please define "gross profanity" without using it, per RS rules. Potter Stewart's definition of obscenity is fine, if that's what you mean.
Where exactly do you "indicate evidence in abundance that big government Washington failed to execute on task"?
Who exactly has given FEMA an F?
Is it not true that the reason FEMA assistance took so long to arrive in NO is that the local officals lost control of the situaton themselves, but refused to cede control to the feds?
I know you think it is a Know Fact that FEMA messed up, but there is no actual evidence so far that they failed to execute according to plan.
If you can produce any, you will be the first.
First Responders Urged Not To Respond To Hurricane Impact Areas Unless Dispatched By State, Local Authorities
This seems like a questionable order in the aftermath of a hurricane.
Perhaps there are better examples of big government failure
I know of fewer that are presented so proudly by their perpetrators.
Wha are you trying to say here? That first responders, who are after all under the control of state and local authorities, SHOULD take action without paying any attention to the mayor and governor of the region they are in?
Why is that a questionable order? As it turned out, the mayor and governor in NOLA spent their time crying and giving press conferences instead of taking charge of the situation. But how is that FEMA's fault?
I've asked this same question on multiple threads for the past several days, and have yet to see anyone attempt a serious answer. I don't think one exists.
This seems like a questionable order in the aftermath of a hurricane.
Tell me: What does the aftermath of a hurricane look like? What are the power lines like? Sewers? Buildings? Streets?
Might these questions have something to do with why first responders were told to wait on orders from decision making authorities?
I leave you to ponder that.
- This seems like a questionable order in the aftermath of a hurricane.
So Engine Company #13 in Duluth, MN should decide on its own to abandon its post and get on the highway now and head for New Orleans with the fire trucks and the ambulances? That's nuts.
Did you even read that notice you linked to?
Was to get big government interference out of the picture.
Are we trying to change society for the better, or just defend incumbency?
And if the latter, is defending blatant incompetence the way to achieve that end?
Seems to me that chucking a few fools overboard would be a really good idea for the Administration about now.
Not those who fill out the forms.
I thought the problem of the week was paper-pushers getting in the way of real Americans getting equally-real Americans out of harm's way.
I see a front-page diary laying the blame squarely on dependency on big government incompetency here.
Did I miss the purpose of the site? I'll show myself to the door, if that's the case.
And God knows I'm no fan of government any larger than strictly necessary; but we're on a narrow point here. The reason you don't want first responders flooding in on their lonesome is that you don't want to have to rescue them when they get trapped, stranded, or wounded. The aftermath of a small hurricane is not pleasant. The aftermath of a Cat4 with flooding is worse.
That's what rescue experts do, by choice, by talent and by expertise.
I am quite sure that reasonable people are capable of reasonable decisions in their areas of expertise.
In the anecdote just used, Duluth is a fair-sized city, and can make decisions about what it can donate without Federal advisement.
I mean, we are talking about maintaining a complex machine civilization, here.
I just want to understand how those decisions saved more lives than they cost.
If this were the army, there'd be a court-martial over this, just to assert confidence in the chain of command.
And many such inquiries end with a favorable outcome to all concerned, though that rankles some. It's not to whitewash, but to make sure the incident in question isn't symptomatic of a serious, persistent weakness in the ability of the organization to get things done.
The presumption is that if something looks bad, you'd better make sure that's it's not a problem with personnel or doctrine that needs to be dealt with before it loses more lives -- or a war.
I think the analogy applies to disaster relief, too.
See, I'm not an anarchist. :)
Is that how your body works? How do you even walk with your arms and legs making their own independent decisions about what, if anything, to do next? What happens if your left leg executes walkUpStairs() and your right leg decides on runBackwards()?
If you're going to advocate decentralized decisionmaking by independent units, you need to explain how you're going to get past the problem of having I-10 East full of well-meaning volunteers with firetrucks when what you really need right now is the mobile hospitals coming in from Fort Bragg and the Anhauser-Busch trucks with the bottled water. Neither of which the well-meaning Emergency Responders from Duluth and a hundred other places — who are now clogging the only highway into the city — knew about?
This stuff all sounds so easy to people who have never run anything bigger than the night shift at a McDonald's. But here's a clue: ad-hocracy does not scale.
Invoking biological processes only improves my argument.
Well, that's just it. The units of function in the human body aren't gross anatomical features; they're cells.
And the conscious decision to type a message, or retrieve a memory, or scoff with indignation is highly abstracted.
The muscle cells, the brain cells, and the skin cells in the examples do not require exacting conscious instruction - if they did, they would function several hundred times less efficiently.
All they require is a general indication, based on clear instructions, good communication of intentions, and practice. That's how babies learn to crawl, that's how organizations and communities learn to live and work and rescue and rebuild.
Further, I think you are mistaking statism for adhocracy, though I concede the point that anarchy by a more polite name is equally bad (see: looting).
In a perfectly random, uncoordinated response to a disaster, a supply of some of everything that could possibly be required will be made available. With communication of needs from the demand side, that provision of supplies will be rendered significantly more efficient. I don't think we take issue with one another's views, here.
Where we diverge is the question of consumption --- who is the consumer, a scattering of hundreds of thousands of trapped survivors in the disaster area, most of them either incommunicado or unable to communicate their needs efficiently - or a single state bureaucracy that is largely out of communication with those same survivors?
I submit that in an ideal hurricane relief `market', the survivors would be tied back into the communications grid ASAP, so they can among other things communicate their particular needs to a coordinating agency, that can then relay those needs and their approximate weightings in as timely a fashion as possible to service and supply providers. The idea of dropping cell phones and setting up signal repeaters throughout the city is well-taken.
I submit that absent such communication, a random provision of relief goods is preferable to bureaucratic dictation...never mind bureaucratic gridlock and an astonishing level of acrimony between different groups of key decisionmakers.
The original Weberian model of a rational bureaucracy was that once you atomize the functions -- make them simpler - the level of individual excellence required to fulfill that role is reduced. There is a corollary to this, however, that most proponents of reduced government do not consider -- that if one is to have less government, those who assist in governance must be of significantly superior quality, else the edifice falls apart that much more certainly and suddenly.
This applies to corporations and armies as well as politics.
Why, it even applies to understaffed MacDonald's franchises. Ever been to one that's shortstaffed...but with dolts? Oh, it's an ugly experience. :)
and demonstrate their foolishness, then fine, I'm with you.
To date nobody has been able to demonstrate the alleged foolishness or incompetence on the part of FEMA. Have they? I keep asking and nobody responds, so I'm thinking there is nothing there.
What, specifically, are the failures at the federal level that have you so excited? An actual quantifiable answer is what I'm looking for here.
that a brand-new, untested leadership team of a brand-new, untested super-bureaucracy is infallible is, well, incredible.
That, and it's just distasteful to me. We're talking about big government Washington, here.
I think the rookies (DHS in general, FEMA under Brown) need to show what good they can do...not have excuse made on their behalf.
General Honore seems to have the idea. He just gets things done.
That's a ringer for you. :)
Hell, a whole lot of people were gathering outside Crawford, Texas in the middle of nowhere for no good reason at all, a couple weeks before this whole disaster. The refugees would have been better off there than stranded in New Orleans.
I'm still laughing at this. I have this vision of all these guys with catapults flinging bottles of water and MRE's into the city, to land where they will. Which, as you point out, is a perfectly reasonable way to distribute them (provided that no one gets whacked by an incoming can of pork & beans or a bottle of water).
As I recall though, random distribution of aid only beats a decisionmaking bureaucrat if the aid recipients are themselves randomly distributed, or if you know nothing at all about how they are distributed. I suppose in the case of New Orleans we should also allow for the possibility that the decisionmaking bureaucrat who is supposed to know how needs are geographically distributed either does not in fact know anything, or has flown the coop. In which case we are back to the catapults.
I am also not convinced that this method solves the problem associated with having a single Serious Road into the city, especially when that single Serious Road must also serve to evacuate the people we do find in the city. I just see a big pile-up of trucks there that snafus things.
I really like the idea of the Instant Citywide Cellphone system. To your knowledge, does that technology exist, or is that something we get to design now that we know it would have been nice to have one? I presume the repeaters would have to talk to a satellite, since we could not be sure of line-of-sight routes for microwaves or lasers through a city full of big buildings. Also, I suppose now we have to worry about the physical security of the repeaters in the event of widespread lawlessness.
In hindsight, I am sorry I referred to McDonald's. In fact most McDonald's stores seem to be run reasonably. It is Burger King where the employees are all running around furiously doing stuff, but no one is getting any food.
is that you don't want to spread yourself too thin in other areas when first responders take off to disasters like this. If half the fire companies in Michigan decided to head on down to New Orleans, there's going to be a lot of trouble if a wildfire starts back home. Making sure the response is properly balanced among the rest of the country really does need to be done from the top, AFAICT.
You are quite right - Burger Kings have gone from the being the premier fast food franchise to something especially horrid, both in terms of quality of service, quality of food, and timeliness of delivery.
Regarding communications - Well, at this point, we've touched base with people the old fashioned way -- by boat. As for instant citywide communications -- They're called phones. The tech's been around for almost 130 years.
Regarding logistics and the 'single serious road' - And blocking almost all movement on that 'single serious road' for several days is preferable? So long as people stay on their side of the double yellow line, that's control enough, I think. And if there's an overweighting of traffic going one way, give that direction extra lanes.
Regarding decisionmaking bureaucrats - I detect an argument that bureacracy is good, so long as one's own people fill it.
I've said earlier that if the objective is to have less government, it needs to be populated with people who are of an even higher caliber and character than otherwise, just as in a competitive business. Large organizations encourage mediocrity and mischief, by placing people into overly precise roles and introducing strong disincentives to step outside the cube -- a skill that would have helped thousands in New Orleans, and a skill that few politicians and appointees at any level of authority showed last week.
I submit that this was a breakdown in imagination; people were afraid to innovate, to help as they knew how, out of fear of officialdom, out of fear of losing their place in the organization. This killed people. Thousands of them.
Would it be reasonable to expect that half the firefighters in Michigan would consider a sudden relocation to Louisiana?
In a world where people are wholly overcome by a willingness to risk their lives and leave their families on behalf of perfect strangers, that might be on the table.
I suppose.
In my experience, people value the safety of the lives and property closest to them, firefighters included, though their vocation is all about saving perfect strangers.
That, and I suspect their employers would offer strong reasons to choose to stick around. :)
I never claimed that anyone is infallible, did I?
I smply pointed out that, to date, there is zero evidende of any mistakes made by FEMA. I suppose some may surface eventually. If so, we can then examine them and decide if they merit firing.
Why the frantic urge to fire people when there is no sign they did anything wrong?
Why is this question so hard for people to answer?
to your question is, Yes. From Page 3 of the article you linked to:
Lavalais, who formerly lived in the 10th Ward, said that when the hurricane struck she had a total of $94 in the bank, which constituted her life savings. "And I couldn't even get to that," she said. "So thank goodness I had some gas in my car."
The problem was not their total savings (or potential savings); rather, it was the culture of dependency fostered by socialism and the welfare state. Big Government told them over and over again, "Don't worry -- we'll take care of you", but, when push came to shove, Big Government failed (as it invariably does), and these people paid the price. And if you think this was a Bush administration failing, let me refer you to the Clinton adminstration response timeline to Andrew in 1992. If you truly want to save lives and minimize tragedies in the future, try reinvigorating personal responsibility.
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