So, when you said, “We should flood their homes,” you’re using the “royal we” that encompasses both the government and Hurricane Katrina. Riiiiight.
I never said that we should supply evacuation resisters indefinately. But I didn’t suggest that we flood people’s homes in order to either drive them out or kill them, which you did.
Last update: September 8, 2005 at 12:05 AM
Army’s engineers spent millions on Louisiana projects labeled as pork
Michael Grunwald, Washington Post
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Before Hurricane Katrina breached a levee on the New Orleans Industrial Canal, the Army Corps of Engineers had launched a $748 million construction project at that very location. But the project had nothing to do with flood control. The Corps was building a massive new lock for the canal, an effort to accommodate steadily increasing barge traffic.
Except barge traffic on the canal has been steadily decreasing.
In Katrina’s wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush’s administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times larger….
But hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state’s congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate. Despite a series of independent investigations criticizing Army Corps construction projects as wasteful pork-barrel spending, Louisiana’s representatives have kept bringing home the bacon….
But overall, the Bush administration’s funding requests for the key New Orleans flood-control projects for the past five years were slightly higher than the Clinton administration’s for its past five years. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the chief of the Corps, has said that in any event, more money would not have prevented the drowning of the city, since its levees were only designed to protect against a Category 3 storm. Strock also has said the marsh restoration project would not have done much to diminish Katrina’s storm surge, which passed east of the coastal wetlands.
My above two posts are to illustrate that there is plenty of blame to go around, and it should all rest on the agencies that should have done better, at the city, state and federal levels. Any talk about punishing the victims is just a smoke screen, to cover up cronysim, incompetence and corruption.
Well, you’re a nicely dense one, aren’t you?
Would the fines be provable in bankruptcy?
If the victims can even claim bankruptcy – the shiny new federal Bankruptcy Bill takes effect on October 17, just in time for the flood victims who’ve lost everything.
If you misspoke when you said that the government should flood the homes of people who don’t want to leave, just say you made a mistake. Or you could defend your proposition. Don’t call me names simply because I pointed out that you proposed an odious thing.
Patronage. Hoo boy, terrible, terrible stuff.
I wonder if anyone can tell me what disaster management experience the storied James Lee Witt had before Bill Clinton made him the head of the Office of Emergency Services for the state of Arkansas.
(Here’s a hint - he had no relevant experience in this area at all. He was a county judge.)
And by this I’m certainly not suggesting that Clinton shouldn’t have hired him, or brought him on at the federal level. His track record was a good one, no question. But he got the job in the first place because he was a connected Democrat in Yell County, Arkansas, and a FOB.
Was he fired from his position as a judge for mismanagement?
Did it ever occur to you, Moto, that there are times that you just cannot bend other people to your will? Once they have decided they will die rather than leave, there is not a damned thing that you, your laws, your fines, and the rescue workers (God bless them) can do.
For those who have no money, fines are laughable. And it would get a little confusing to give them debit cards for $2,000 and then fine them $2,500 for not evacuating and then buy them clothes because they have no money and on and on. And how much would it cost the government in Virginia to keep them in jail for a year? Good grief!
You have search and rescue (search and recover?) stories to tell and hurricane endurance that admittedly doesn’t compare with Katrina. (I’ve done my own time in basement windowless rooms several times a year for tornado warnings which is still different. I’m sure others have too.) I have twenty years of experience working with the poor and sometimes the homeless. Each of us brings different experiences and insights to this issue.
After your prompting above, Mr. Moto made his “full agreement” with your proposal in the following post. I hope that you are no longer confused.
Moto, you mentioned something about state and local weather forecasts being responsible for accuracy as much as possible. Did you intentionally leave out NOAA? How about the National Hurricane Center in Florida? (Not sure about their official title) More funding?
My first paragraph was talking about things the hurricane has already done! Moron.
As I read his insistent drumbeat of “how do we fix it, how do we change it, how do we handle it,” I have to shake my head, because he sounds like an alien being new to our world who doesn’t know the first thing about human nature. Breaking news: A given percentage of people will be stupid and irrational, and they will always be stupid and irrational, and there ain’t shit you can do about it but live with it and cope the best you can.
Here’s some other unexpected developments, Mr. Moto– rain is wet, needles are sharp, and tape is sticky. Anything else we can clear up for you?
I never thought for one second any solution would be perfect, but if it got more people out of danger and into safety, it might be worth looking into.
I’ve been mulling this over, and it seems to me that qwe don’t need to reinvent the wheel. I only looked in the Virginia Code and the Louisiana Code, but both of them provide for misdemeanor sentences in an evacuation order from the governor is ignored. I’d bet that’s the case most places.
What we need, then, is for these laws to be enforced, and enforced fairly.
That means people caught in an exclusion zone without good reason are cited or detained, dependeng on the severity of the offense. They get a hearing with a judge, where they may plead innocent, and might win their case. Should they lose, they have to face an appropriate penalty.
Now, most jurisdictions now provide alternative sentencing, which might be just the ticket to make this all work. In a near miss, people should be fined so that they have an incentive to leave next time. In a case like New Orleans, though, a fine would seem an insult, yet people still need to be made to pay for the unnecessary social costs they imposed.
They should be sentenced to community service. Their community will need it at that point, and it would do them good to serve it rather than being a burden on it.
Mr. Nolan, from my example above, acted stupidly and selfishly. A sentence like this would be mighty appropriate in his case.
I am of the opinion that laws should not be made if they will not be respected by the general populace. If the system has laws that people do not give a crap about, then respect for the system decreases. When respect for the system decreases, it becomes even more difficult to enforce reasonable laws. It can become a downward spiral.
When an entire region including a major urban area has been wiped out, including much of its legal system, it behooves one to be very careful as to which laws should be applied. It would be unfortunate if the system spent resources ticketing people when those resources were needed to rescue, relocate and assist people.
When the “legal system [is in] a shambles,” when prisoners are left without “food or water for two or three days,” when the lack of lawyers and legal aid for poor people make “adequate representation impossible,” http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/09/national/nationalspecial/09legal.html?th&emc=th
when there is no way for masses of poor people to evacuate despite the city having “550 municipal buses and hundreds of additional school buses at [its] disposal,” http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/special/05/katrina/3344347
when people are packed into the shelters “without food, water or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement,” http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5248531,00.html
when people are turned qaway from shelters, are forcibly prevented from evacuating, and have been terrified by the police who blocked their attempts to leave the area, http://www.livejournal.com/users/sfsocialists/3687.html
and when the police are looting (not obtaining needed supplies – simply looting), http://www.zippyvideos.com/8911023771013466/countdown-looting-in-walmart/
then I submit that strict liability fines concerning evacuation would not be effective, and attempts to enforce them would only lead to more conflict between the legal system and masses of poor people who have recently been let down by their local, state and federal governments. Best find better ways to encourage people to leave.
I spoke to my mother last night, the same woman who still supports Santorum. She said she can see why some people wouldn’t leave, as can I actually, and there are some circumstances under which she wouldn’t have left, herself.
Do I think people who didn’t evacuate when they could are fools? Yes! I’ve gone through a category 5 hurricane. That’s one reason why I live in Santorum’s constituency, far from the things. I also know hurricanes are unpredictable. The one I went through was heading straight for Waikiki, where I lived, and Waikiki was partially evacuated, although all they could do for the tourists who were there at the time was send them to higher floors in their hotels. Instead of hitting Waikiki, the hurricane veered west and hit Kauai. It seems to me New Orleans is constantly being threatened with hurricanes; how many evacuation orders have there been over the past 5 years? (I honestly don’t know.) How many threaten bits of Florida, including Ophelia, last I heard? I spoke to people who had to go into work in Waikiki during Hurricane Iniki. If it hadn’t hit on my day off, I might have been one of them. The individuals I spoke to worked for an answering service, but I know the realities of tourism and the hotels had to have at least a minimum of staff on duty. For that matter, much as I hate and fear hurricanes, if I was in the path of one and my employer told me I had to work, even though I’m nothing lifesaving, I’d face my fears and do it. If I didn’t, someone else would.
People have spoken of fining people. According to yesterday’s paper, 400,000 jobs could be lost because of this hurricane. Right now, I’m sure a lot of people’s employers are shut down and I doubt this is paid vacation. Money’s stopped coming in, but not going out. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a wave of bankruptcies result from this. If someone’s been out of work for a month and is facing extensive repairs to his home and replacement of other losses, where’s he going to come up with the money to pay a fine? I can see the sense in having such a person pay the expenses associated with his rescue; I’m just not sure where the money will come from.
By the way, the original purpose of this pitting was to grouse at Mr. Santorum’s forgetting or not being aware of the fact that most people couldn’t evacuate. I didn’t live here when he was first elected – too busy ducking hurricanes – but I assume he didn’t make this sort of foolish mistake then. It’s turned into a fascinating discussion, mind you, and I apologize for my absence. Things have been kind of crazy.
CJ
There are always some percentage of the population that is stuborn. So, why not deal with those who aren’t.
This is not a massive tragedy because of those who refused to evacuate, but because of those who couldn’t. Most of the people who stayed had no where to go, and no way to get there if they did. Do you propose to procecute 100 people to get the maybe 3 that had means and opportunity but refused. Provided they have anything to sue to get.
The other huge question I have is hospitals. Even I, a Canadian living in Wisconsin, could have predicted extended power outages, even if Katrina didn’t come very close. I know hospitals have generators, but still there is always a limited amount of fuel for those, even if flooding doesn’t knock them out. Why the hell weren’t all but the most unstable patients evacuated to somewhere before the storm. There was no need to have to rescue Alzhiemers patients by hellicopter. People who were stable but needed oxygen should not be lying dead now. There also would have been many family members that would have left if their sick were already gone.
I do think that in this case FEMA heads should roll, but so should plenty of others at local and state levels. Actually each and every one of them from Mayor Nagin to Mr. Brown, should be charged and convicted of Manslaughter, and forced to spend their sentance cleaning up New Orleans, and the next disaster, and the one after that.
And to those who might posit that fines would do well but for the failure of various governments, I submit that we must deal with the real world as exemplified by New Orleans, not a perfect world in which emergency measures are carried out effeciently and effectively, for one might as well conjecture such a perfect world to be one in which the people voluntarily evacuate when warned.
You’re better than these simple lies and slanders, aren’t you? Then why do you fucking do it?
http://www.wittassociates.com/1127.xml
It just astounds me that Republicans of conscience continue to listen to the same sources that they get all their other propaganda, no matter how many times it proves false or misleading.
Sorry, I retract my last post, Mr. Moto. In my first reading, I read it as you suggesting that Witt had no relevant history before being brought to FEMA.
He did own a construction company before taking over the OES in Arkansas.
It still seems a fairly petty and irrelevant point. Someone with limited experience heading up a state level office? This is similar to tapping a former Arabian Horse organization guy to run FEMA?
Not really my point. My point was that patronage exists, and is how James Lee Witt got his job in the first place.
Not really an issue, in my mind, as long as the person involved turns around and then does a good job.