Katrina's POLITICAL aftermath (keep the political discussions HERE)

(from 31 Aug 05)

Just look at these images, though, friends. Again, you know, the first day Haley Barbour came down here, he talked about scenes reminiscent of Hiroshima. Some people were concerned he may have been engaging in hyperbole. You know, I don‘t know what you call it when you walk through entire neighborhoods and there‘s not a single building left standing.

"To kick us down when we're down and destroy hope" is unnecessary, Blanco said.

Read the article again. Yes, Clinton and Carter both squeezed budgets for ALL Corp projects. No one gets the whole budget they would like. Here:

Other presidents also have taken aim at the Corps' budget. President Carters' first veto came against a big water projects bill passed by a Democratic-dominated Congress. And President Clinton squeezed the Corps budget as well. Doing so frees money for other White House priorities.

As compared to specific, gutting of a project by the Bush admin here:

Even though the administration has chronically cut back on the Corps of Engineers' own requests for funding - including two key New Orleans-area projects - White House officials trumpeted the administration's support for the Corps.

See the generic, "they messed with our budget" vs specific projects.

And notice how the article's information comes from a former Republican Congressman who has "battled" all the way back to Carter but only gives vague examples about Carter and Clinton. I'm sure Reagan and Daddy-Bush were more than happy to give out money for enviornmental bullshit, right?

This is what passes for fair and balanced reporting; if you dare criticize Dear Leader, make sure to toss in some "Clinton did it too!" stuff for the rubes.

--

If I may -- to all and sundry -- much of the reaction around this reminds me of four years ago in this sense: LOTS of axes are being reground, again. Those predisposed to certain conclusions have made them and in some cases are being incredibly vocal about it.

Personally I think Bush has handled the politics of this situation poorly. At the same time I'm not imagining he's supposed to be going around distributing food and water to everyone personally. But that said, one does wonder quite a bit about what he IS doing, asking after, etc. Frankly, my impressions are underwhelmed.

But it isn't just him -- it's a lot of different organizations, local, state, federal, government, non-government. It is quite obvious that the coordination needed has proven to be a dismal, wretched failure. The point is not to blame it on bureaucracy in and of itself, but on a situation that resulted from lack of care and expectations that things would handle themselves otherwise. Inured, I think, to the idea that Americans would somehow never act 'badly' in a dread situation -- that our purported exceptionalism means we are all somehow equally equipped and caring to help each other out 24/7 with a smile on our face (and the unstated expectation that that's all that's needed in order to help) -- many people are now confronting a different reality and either giving into bitterness (how many random calls of 'that's it, I'm buying a gun' have I read over these past few days? too many) or grasping at straws to score political points.

That said, I do not excuse Bush fully. The serious question I could and would ask Bush right now is this -- "Mr. President, you created a cabinet-level position to help protect against further attacks on this country and its citizens, part of the responsibility being to provide coordination in case of emergency from top to bottom among appropriate bodies. This disaster shows that no such coordination existed, or was and has continued to be handled wretchedly while our fellow citizens die. Why is this so, and why should anyone be assured that this situation could not repeat itself with another catastrophic natural or manmade disaster?"

Claims could be made that it is not Bush's responsibility to provide these answers. Well, frankly, bull -- because it is not Bush's responsibility per se but *the President's* -- and any President who found him or herself in this position, regardless of party or intent, would deserve the same question. On that level, Truman's brittle but pointed slogan of "The buck stops here" applies, fully.

otm. normally i think anderson cooper is a smarmy little prick but i was so proud of him for putting sen. landrieu in her place.

It broke my heart to go to the flood scene in Del Rio where a fellow and his family got completely uprooted. The only thing I knew was to got aid as quickly as possible with state and federal help, and to put my arms around the man and his family and cry with them. That's what governors do. They are often on the front line of catastrophic situations.

I guess it's a sign that I'm too tired/drunk when I thought for a second that an actual governor was posting here!

I'm sure you've noticed of late CNN getting rid of the pundit shows and moving to a hard news only format, right? I think the further they go towards that direction, the less likely you'll see them cater willingly to one side of the aisle or the other.

close paren.

Before the disaster:

- Not cut the funding to levee projects that were underway

- Not dismantle FEMA

- Provide busses to evacuate people who had no transportation

Now:

- Make sure the people who are stranded in NO have adequate food and water.

- Make complete evacuation of remaining refugees the top priority.

- Respond to the situation immediately by travelling to NO, finding some dry land somewhere to land and meet with the mayor, give a speech, talk about what steps are being taken, reassure people etc.

Those should have been some bare minimum no-brainer sort of steps.

My lord, the guy heading FEMA has no qualifications. What was he doing before getting pulled into FEMA by the Bush administration in 2003? He was an estate planning lawyer in Colorado and of counsel for the International Arabian Horse Association Legal Department. And yes, it is the same Michael D. Brown.

After CNN reported today that helicopters were diverted from plugging the levee breach on Tuesday, in order to rescue individuals on rooftops, I wondered what is involved in securing sufficient helicopters in a national emergency. It took me two minutes of Googling to identify the Erickson Air Crane Company and obtain their email address and phone number. The Air Crane is one of the most powerful helicopters in the world (used for lifting trucks and putting out fires, for example). I emailed them today asking if anyone had contacted them about the levee. They replied immediately that while they had put out the word to government entities, and while they are a DOD-listed contractor, they had not been contacted by any Government entity as of Wednesday evening. The levee broke on Monday night. I assume that a governor, or a general, or maybe a President would have gotten the CEO of this company (and other companies like them) on the phone and said "get over there ASAP."

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA. Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers... spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations.... Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars. Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it coming..."

I don't think that's true and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a similar degree of finger pointing after other disasters. The fact that it's a natural disaster does put the focus squarely on Bush's response to the crisis as opposed to 9/11 where the administration's negligence was overlooked thanks to an easy foreign scapegoat.

You can try to write-off any political discussion as a mere blame game but do you really believe that none of the questions being asked are valid? Do you think the response to the crisis has been sufficient and that we've exhausted every capibility we have as a nation? I think the political questions would have been out of place on day one or two but at this point the situation is nothing but political.

however i do indeed think that people like to be able to lay blame somewhere for natural disasters - it helps them feel a little more secure in a time of emotional trauma. and that's fair enough.

i had a thought earlier tonight...what would Johnny Cash have thought of all this?

Hell, what does Jimmy Carter think of all this? What Clinton thinks, some already have an idea...

xpost

Look at the reporters who are "incensed" by the rampant looting. Look at the smugness from those distant from the situation who chastise the dumb southerners for not evacuating when they had the chance. It blows their minds how many idiots stayed to wait it out. It makes them shake their heads and make "tsk-tsk" noises into their shiny microphones.

Well, fuck the lot of them.

New Orleans and Biloxi are not rich cities. They are poor southern cities disproportionately filled with poor southern people -- people who may not have reliable transportation, people who live hand-to-mouth, people who have nowhere else to go, even if they had the means to get there.

And the evacuation was little more than a vague order to get the hell out -- under your own power and at your own expense. If you have, at your immediate disposal, reliable transportation, money for gas, and either distant family OR money for shelter, then this isn't a big deal. Of course you leave. You pack up everything you can and you head for higher ground. But it is somewhat less easy to do if you are lacking any one of these things, AND you have been informed that what little earthly lot you may claim is about to be destroyed. Do you hang on and try to save what you can? Do you let it go and return to less than nothing?

What the hell do you do?

and then in the comments

The last time my brother had to evacuate Florida for a week or so it ran him about $1000. He couldn't really afford it but had no choice. Hotels jacked up their prices. Gas was nearly impossible get. They spent 17 hours stuck in traffic to travel a distance that would normally take 7. They ended up holed up in a small hotel because they lucked into a room.

We have a Disaster Assistance Response Team specializing in water purification and medical treatment (DART was recently sent to Indonesia following the Tsunami), shipments of drugs and (for what it's worth) the Canadian Military all "on standby".

I just don't understand why we're not acting yet. Why hasn't any U.S. officials directed our resources anywhere. And failing that why hasn't DART just headed down on their own?

I guess maybe just showing up without the aid of U.S. coordination might be stepping on some toes and a tad chaotic - but when we've been offering our help for days i don't understand why it hasn't been sent anywhere.

There is a serious emergency going on and it seems the admin has a "Ya, thanks. We'll let you know" sort of attitude. And, for the most part, we're just twiddling our thumbs up here. It's kind of bothering me.

Mayor Nagin blasted federal relief efforts as woefully inadequate and said the initial slow response to rising floodwaters was the cause of unnecessary deaths over the past four days.

In an interview broadcast on New Orleans radio station WWL-AM last night, an angry Nagin said federal officials, including President Bush, were too slow to respond to the city's worsening problems — both as flooding worsened on Tuesday as a key drainage canal caved in near the city's lakefront and later as thousands of desperate people waited for buses to get out of the collapsing city yesterday.

"They are feeding the people a line of bull, and they are spinning and people are dying," Nagin said.

the fema head's behavior has been reprehensible in all of his public statements, most of which were denials!

as far as political fallout goes, the president gets the most of the "break it/bought it" logic, but everyone looks complicit in this failure because the sweeping change from dept of interior to homeland security was rubberstamped by both parties to streamline internal issues like this!

All this was minutes after Carol Costello was almost breaking down on air.

xpost: http://www.crooksandliars.com/

'It's awful down here'

Knight Ridder staff and wire services

New Orleans continued to sink into chaos and lawlessness, as gunfire, explosions and fire were reported overnight. People have reportedly fired at police.

Ragtag armies of the desperate and hungry begged for help, corpses rotted along flooded sidewalks and bands of armed thugs thwarted fitful rescue efforts as Americans watched the Big Easy dissolve before their eyes.

About 4:35 this morning, a series of massive explosions rocked the riverfront a few miles south of the French Quarter. The cause of the blasts or the extent of any possible damage was not immediately known.

An initial explosion sent flames of red and orange shooting into the pre-dawn sky. A series of smaller blasts followed and then acrid, black smoke that could be seen even in the dark. The vibrations were felt all the way downtown.

The explosions appeared to originate close to the east bank of the Mississippi River, near a residential area and rail tracks. At least two police boats were at the scene.

Despite the promise of 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to stop the looting, a $10.5 billion recovery bill in Congress and a relief effort President Bush called the biggest in U.S. history, the chaos spred.

Congress was rushing though a $10.5 billion aid package, the Pentagon promised 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to stop the looting and President Bush planned to visit the region. But city officials were seething with anger about what they called a slow federal response to the catastrophe.

"I need reinforcements," Mayor Ray Nagin said Thursday night on WWL-AM. "I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man. This is a national disaster. This is a major, major, major deal. And I can't emphasize it enough. It's awful down here, man."

Saying he would probably get in big trouble after his interview, Nagin ripped at President Bush. "We have an incredible crisis here and his flying over in Air Force One does not do it justice.

"Excuse my French - everybody in America - but I am pissed."

"This is a national disgrace," said New Orleans' emergency operations chief Terry Ebbert. "We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."

At the hot and stinking Superdome, where tens of thousands were being evacuated by bus to Houston, fistfights and fires erupted amid a seething sea of tense, suffering people who waited in a lines that stretched a half-mile to board yellow school buses.

Houston's Astrodome, which had been taking Superdome refugees for the past day, is full and cannot take more people, officials say. It accepted more than 11,000 people and began sending buses to other area shelters and as far away as Huntsville, about an hour north of Houston.

The state of Texas agreed Thursday to take in three times more refugees from Hurricane Katrina than officials initially expected, bringing the total number of evacuees to nearly 75,000.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced that 50,000 more refugees would relocate to Texas, with plans to house 25,000 each in San Antonio and Dallas.

Ellen Dunkel of Knight Ridder Digital contributed to this report.