Sorry, I meant to say: no one is supporting the position that the state and local officials DIDN’T screw up. Too many negatives in one sentance.
FWIW, there was a report on the radio today pointing out how Federal money that had been sent to Louisiana over the last 10-15 years at least had been diverted and spent on other things besides levee and wetlands maintenance.
I hate to break it to the Bash-Bush-At-Any-Cost-For-Any-Reason gang, but you’re not going to be able to hang this on him. It’s the fault of the corruption in the Louisiana state and local governments.
Couldn’t agree with you more, Apos. Lots of faults have been made on all levels. The ones that struck me most initially and so far were the mistakes made in terms of levee management, cutting the funds for important projects, and a failed integration of FEMA into DoHS. Simply because these have been documented well enough even before what was already for a fair while categorised as the 3rd most likely disaster to strike the U.S. became a reality.
As the city is pumped dry and cleaning starts, we’ll see what other mistakes have been made. I think the governer doesn’t look to good, choosing to rely on help from neighbouring states and being far too fearful of relinquishing control to the feds simply because she thought everything that would go wrong would be blamed on her (or so I understand). It doesn’t look too good. I don’t know who has authority over allowing (which are commercial? - does anyone in fact have authority over them?) greyhound, railway and charters to stop running 24 hours too soon, but if so, he or she is in trouble too. The same probably for the school busses incident.
But instead of answering each accusation with ‘No, because’ or ‘Yes, but’, lets try to keep it as much just ‘Yes’ as possible. Everyone take responsibility, concentrate on dry fact finding, and prevent this from happening again.
I hate to break it to the defend-Bush-at-Any-Cost-For-Any-Reason gang, but his administration is multiply implicated in this scandal, and most of us can recognize that there are implications at multiple levels of government. When Bush chooses a failed horse-show director to head up disaster relief, he’s implicated. It’s the fault of the corruption in the local, state, and federal governments.
Daniel
John 11:35
Jesus wept. Then he wiped a sleeve across his cheeks and said, “Fuck this shit. I’ve had my fill.” Then he came down and started kicking the shit out of incompetent, lying scumbag political leaders and their brain-dead partisan defenders.
If Hentor the Barbarian wrote the Bible.
I don’t dispute the fact that available busses weren’t utilized and that it was gross negligence on the part of local government, but I just want to make sure you’re aware of the inaccuracy in your linked article. The disaster Bush declared for the state of Louisiana “two days before Katrina hit” had absolutely nothing to do with Katrina. It was actually a 7 week late response to hurricane Cindy, and primarily covered cleanup after-the-fact and financial assitance regarding that prior incident.
Please forgive what may appear to be a stupid question, but besides disaster recovery, what million other distractions could the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency have, exactly? I mean, I thought that was their one and only job. I would think it would be exactly the opposite, that the local officials would have the million other distractions, seeing as how they still have a city and state to run and FEMA’s ONLY responsibility is as their title suggests; “Emergency Management”.
I don’t think all state employees should be turned over to federal control. I think they should still answer to their governor, who in turn acts in compliance with directives from the feds in charge of the relief effort. And as stated previously, said governor would still be expected to have input, and possibly “veto” ability if she believes FEMA/DoHS is suggesting something beyond the state’s abilities and/or resources.
[hijack] P.S. If you don’t mind me asking, does the “South Bay” in your location field refer to southern or northern California? Just curious, since we’re in the “South Bay” of southern California and I was wondering if we were neighbors, perhaps. [/hijack]
You can’t have it both ways, she’s either an idiot because she had to wait for Bush, or she’s an idiot because she didn’t.
However, I was just dispelling one of the many myths of right-wing radio. You and the rest of the loonies have to decide what your complaint is: too slow, not at all, too late, too early, didn’t know, couldn’t know, no money, money misspent, corruption, naiveté.
You decide.
Umm…their complaint is “not Republican”.
Do you really think it comes down to anything more than that? Seen any evidence otherwise?
If so, I’d love to see it.
-Joe
Why on earth would the governor have to wait for Bush to do anything?
Other than “too early” and “couldn’t know”, all of the above. It ain’t hard.
The head of FEMA still has to run the entire FEMA agency. And the person you pick to run (ie, administer) an agency has a different set of skills than a person you pick to micromanage an operation. There also might be more than one distaster area at a time to deal with. Yes, the local guys will have a milliong things to do, but all of those things will be directly related to the disaster at hand. In even the most complicated military operations during wartime, neither the President nor the SecDef is the person who calls all the shots during the operaton itself. It’s normally some high level officer, but not the guy at the very top of the organization.
But isn’t that part of the problem-- that no one person is in charge?
South SF Bay area, near San Jose. I didn’t know there was a South Bay in southern CA…
It appears Blanco and Nagin were well aware last year that their evacuation plans left something to be desired. This was during Hurricane Ivan.
http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/091904ccktWWLIvanFlaws.132602486.html
New Orleans dodged the knockout punch many feared from the hurricane, but the storm exposed what some say are significant flaws ** in the Big Easy’s civil disaster plans.* *
*Mayor Ray Nagin’s spokeswoman, Tanzie Jones, insisted that there was no reluctance at City Hall to open the Superdome, but said the evacuation was the top priority.
“Our main focus is to get the people out of the city,” she said. *
Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Nagin both acknowledged the need to improve traffic flow and said state police should consider reversing highway lanes earlier. They also promised meetings ** with governments in neighboring localities and state transportation officials to improve evacuation plans*. *
Well a governor can’t activate federal troops or aid. That would be the reason for the letter I’ve already shown you.
You know, I hate it every time I cross paths with you. You made a claim. Without prejudice, I gave you the correct information. You then turned around and said that the exact opposite of what your previous claim was, was still true.
As someone said the last time I was in a thread with you: You have perfected the method of “debate by attrition”. Make a claim, refuse request for cite. Repeat the claim. When proven wrong, repeat the claim. When proof is reiterated. Repeat the claim. ad infinitum
Here’s a little point of truth for you: Just because you say it often enough, doesn’t make it true.
She could mobilize the National Guard and begin implementing her own evacuation plans, right? That’s all I meant when I asked why she would have to wait for Bush.
Yes, John, but that’s his job and his only job. The local mayor in a disaster area may not have any other city business to attend to, but he or she doesn’t have the resources, manpower or just plain power in general, to command an entire disaster/emergency situation. The local governor still has an entire state to run, as plenty of other cities exist under his or her jurisdiction and normal state business still has to plod on. And again, a state Governor isn’t trained or equipped in all the necessary functions of a major disaster recovery effort – FEMA is, as that’s precisely and exactly the only thing they’re charged with doing. Ever. What you’re asserting simply doesn’t make any logistic sense to me.
No. One person or entity, if you will, is still “in charge” of overall recovery efforts, with a logical chain of command. Therefore the local police and fire still answer to their Mayor or Governor, who then answers to the Federal guy in charge. But obviously there has to be COOPERATION, as they both need each other in order to make the damn thing work. We’re talking about saving lives here, not semantics, red tape and power plays. Figure out the scenario that best provides for the safety and welfare of human beings and just do it. Fuck bureaucracy.
GAH! This whole thing is making me so farklempt! Sorry.
Ah. Yep. See here. We use that bike path all the time, for walking, biking and rollerblading. It actually extends all the way around the bay into Malibu, as I understand (Google map showing Malibu (Zoom up one level to get more detail)), but we’ve never gone further by bike than Venice, which is just south of Santa Monica. LAX is in the “South Bay” area, so if you’ve ever flown through LAX, you’ve been in our South Bay. I didn’t know there was a South Bay in Northern Cali, either.
I’m not saying it couldn’t be someone from the FEMA organization, I just don’t see that it makes sense for it to be the top guy at FEMA. Or it could be a FEMA-type person at the local level. Cities and states have their own emergency preparedness gurus (for lack of a better word). I actually don’t think it should be an elected official (like the mayor). It should be someone who is an expert at crisis management. A mayor rarely, if ever, gets elected because he or she has great crisis management skills. No, we need a pro-fesh-un-al on the job.
I’m going by my own experience in crisis mangement at the corporate level. You get screw-ups when too many people are trying to control the action. Sure, it can make sense to have some tension of managment for non-crisis situations, but when we’re dealing in life and death situations, you want an almost military command and control trype structure. Orders are given, and carried out. You don’t want people arguing about who’s in charge (as we saw happen all last week).
YAY! I think we have agreement!! I don’t give a shit if it’s the “top” guy at FEMA giving out specific orders or commandeering the troops, so to speak (though I do expect everyone to be accountable to their supervisors, and the “CEO”, as it were, is always where the buck stops and should always be aware of what his subordinates are doing, so if things get fucked up, he’s ultimately held to the fire for it, kindof like Ken Lay). And I think your 2nd paragraph said exactly the same thing I did, if I’m not mis-reading it. Woo Hoo!
Too bad we’re not neighbors afterall, I’d buy you a drink! Whew!
Good.
Well, I can always buy one myelf and send you the bill. 
This is where the misunderstanding is. There was an evacuation plan. People left. The people who didn’t have cars were told they cold catch any city bus at any corner and it would take them to a shelter in Baton Rouge, at no charge. The evacuation was called for on Friday, and the mandatory was called for on Saturday. Unfortunately, by then the roads were so packed that it simply wasn’t feasible to get people out. By the time the levees broke it was way too late to get the busses out of the low-lying waters.
My complaint is what happened when it was too late to evacuate. When the level of disaster was clear, where were the feds? I don’t think anyone particularly comes out of this looking very clean, but I think the idea of holding the local govt solely responsible is insane.
I heard Brown say something to this effect : "when I went to bed on Monday the levees were fine, but when I got up on Tuesday it was clear the levees weren’t going to hold. This made me say: what the fuck! You were in bed!. If I can stay up all night for a single patient, you motherfucker, can stay yup for a million people.
For me, this isn’t just about LA, it’s about Mississippi, and Alabama. It’s been over a week and some of those people have not received anything. This is FEMA’s sole job. They are supposed to do nothing but, oddly enough" Federal Emergency Management. Hell, it’s in their name!
Copy of Blanco’s letter formally requesting Federal help through FEMA. (.pdf file)
Even Wikipedia has already spoken:
Ray Nagin
Kathleen Blanco
I still stand by the notion that the Mayor and the Governor started this trainwreck, and the Feds made sure that the trainwreck was a spectacular one.