IT IS ALL NAGIN AND BLANCO'S FAULT THAT THOUSANDS DIED IN NEW ORLEANS!

[ClassWarz]

You fucking DEMOCRATS are fucking INCOMPETENT!
Blanco and Nagin should be charged with criminal negligence and homicide.
---
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/003463.htm
"APOCALYPSE NOW IN NEW ORLEANS
By Bryan Preston · September 05, 2005 12:13 AM
The JYB guy here, best known most recently for blogging about buses,
specifically the hundreds and hundreds of buses that the city of New
Orleans failed to use to evacuate its most disadvantaged citizens out of
harm's way before hurricane Katrina hit last week. Tens of thousands of
New Orleans' residents could have been spared the worst of the past week
and many might still be alive today if the city had actually activated its
plan to use its own vehicles--school and commuter buses--to give them a
ride. But the plan was never activated, though the city was fully aware of
the plight of its citizens after hurricane Ivan nearly struck it last
year. And of course the city had known that it was sinking into the gooey
soil of the Mississippi delta for decades. New Orleans knew that it was
living on borrowed time. But it partied on, eating, drinking and being
merry, knowing that tomorrow it might well die.
Instead of acknowledging the faults that lie at city level and stepping in
to organize relief efforts, Louisiana and New Orleans officials spent most
of last week lashing out at the Bush administration, though its response
was three times faster than the response to hurricane Andrew just 13 years
ago. Government actually got quicker at doing something, in spite of the
massive increase in the number of lawyers on the public dime in the
intervening years. The locals blamed the feds even though the
administration, whatever its faults, was ahead of all local officials when
it came to declaring a state of emergency and requesting a mandatory
evacuation. A massive butt-covering exercise is underway in Louisiana as I
write, so massive it is second only to the actual relief and law and order
efforts going on in the vast Katrina destruction zone.
Here's Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, threatening to punch President
Bush if local officials come under any criticism.
Here's a local New Orleans official bizarrely suggesting that the head of
the government needs to be "chainsawed off."
These officials and dozens like them all across Louisiana are trying to
shift blame to Washington for their own failures.
The buses I mentioned earlier and have blogged about extensively all
weekend are evidence of and a symbol for those failures. They sit unused
and waterlogged, their empty seats representing lives lost to the flood.
Their useless presence in flooded parking lots demonstrate that the best
plan is useless if it's never implemented. And they fact of their unuse
demonstrates a deeper pathology at work in New Orleans government: The
entire thing was rotted from the inside out. New Orleans' government was a
disaster waiting to happen.
One of my readers at the JYB pointed this out in the process of bugging me
about drivers. This reader wanted to know where all the drivers were
supposed to come from to drive those buses full of people out of the city.
I replied that the answer was obvious--they're school buses, use school
bus drivers, contact them via a phone tree, make emergency driving part of
their job. Turns out it's not so easy as that. The New Orleans school
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- Students return to class Thursday in a
school system in such turmoil that no one is sure how many employees it
has, the new budget is millions of dollars out of balance, and the
buildings are old and deteriorating.
The story, dated August 18, 2005, goes on from there to detail the fiscal
horror show that is the New Orleans school system. Read it when you're not
in the mood for a good laugh. Read it when you're in the mood to slug
someone, and you'll slug them twice as hard. Sen. Landrieu should read it
and then sit down chanting "serenity now." If you've ever paid taxes to
the city of New Orleans, you've been had. And the fact is, through federal
education programs chances are we have all paid tax dollars that have been
disappeared by that awful system. We have all been had.
We can't lay all of the blame for this sorry state of affairs at Mayor Ray
Nagin's feet (though he's almost entirely to blame for the city's pathetic
response to the current crisis). He's only been in office for three years,
and to his credit he has tried to reform the city's government. But the
fact is that a school system that doesn't even know how many employees it
has won't be in a position to reach bus drivers when they're needed to
ferry thousands of people out of the path of a hell storm like Katrina.
New Orleans' city government was an abscess. I say "was," by the way,
because for all intents and purposes it ceased to exist some time last
week--probably at about the same time the local officials realized that
their multiple failures were bound to lead to major loss of life. Its
emergency management czar, one Terry Ebbert, squealed about an absence of
command and control over the relief effort, when it was his job to
establish that command and control. The police department is two-thirds
gone after about 1,000 officers deserted in the face of the flood and the
looters--some of whom were police officers themselves. Mayor Nagin sent up
a profanity-laced diatribe against the federal government that should have
been delivered in front of a mirror. The abscess at city hall failed its
citizens. It is guilty of gross negligence leading to death for many of
its most vulnerable citizens. As the wretched condition of its school
system demonstrates, long before it collapsed last week, the municipal
government of New Orleans was a total and unmitigated disgrace."

Yes, there is blame to be had at the local level; there is classism within
both political parties and racism within both political parties. It's
always poor minority women and children last, and you can add the disabled
too.

But it is not all Nagin and Bianco's fault. National leaders saw the
disaster coming and did little to help; if there was a shortfall locally,
then our national leadership ought to have diagnosed and corrected it. Bush
fiddled while New Orleans drowned; Bush was playing hooky from work before,
during and after the storm hit. He had ample time to move on his own to get
the poor, elderly, and the disabled out of the city. He compounded his
error by failing to rush in needed supplies to points where they were
desperately needed. And, Bush failed to act promptly to restore order just
as he failed in Baghdad when chaos broke out after Saddam was deposed.

ClassWarz

[George]

Post by ClassWarz

You fucking DEMOCRATS are fucking INCOMPETENT!
Blanco and Nagin should be charged with criminal negligence and homicide.
---
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/003463.htm
"APOCALYPSE NOW IN NEW ORLEANS
By Bryan Preston · September 05, 2005 12:13 AM
The JYB guy here, best known most recently for blogging about buses,
specifically the hundreds and hundreds of buses that the city of New
Orleans failed to use to evacuate its most disadvantaged citizens out of
harm's way before hurricane Katrina hit last week. Tens of thousands of
New Orleans' residents could have been spared the worst of the past week
and many might still be alive today if the city had actually activated
its plan to use its own vehicles--school and commuter buses--to give them
a ride. But the plan was never activated, though the city was fully aware
of the plight of its citizens after hurricane Ivan nearly struck it last
year. And of course the city had known that it was sinking into the gooey
soil of the Mississippi delta for decades. New Orleans knew that it was
living on borrowed time. But it partied on, eating, drinking and being
merry, knowing that tomorrow it might well die.
Instead of acknowledging the faults that lie at city level and stepping
in to organize relief efforts, Louisiana and New Orleans officials spent
most of last week lashing out at the Bush administration, though its
response was three times faster than the response to hurricane Andrew
just 13 years ago. Government actually got quicker at doing something, in
spite of the massive increase in the number of lawyers on the public dime
in the intervening years. The locals blamed the feds even though the
administration, whatever its faults, was ahead of all local officials
when it came to declaring a state of emergency and requesting a mandatory
evacuation. A massive butt-covering exercise is underway in Louisiana as
I write, so massive it is second only to the actual relief and law and
order efforts going on in the vast Katrina destruction zone.
Here's Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, threatening to punch President
Bush if local officials come under any criticism.
Here's a local New Orleans official bizarrely suggesting that the head of
the government needs to be "chainsawed off."
These officials and dozens like them all across Louisiana are trying to
shift blame to Washington for their own failures.
The buses I mentioned earlier and have blogged about extensively all
weekend are evidence of and a symbol for those failures. They sit unused
and waterlogged, their empty seats representing lives lost to the flood.
Their useless presence in flooded parking lots demonstrate that the best
plan is useless if it's never implemented. And they fact of their unuse
demonstrates a deeper pathology at work in New Orleans government: The
entire thing was rotted from the inside out. New Orleans' government was
a disaster waiting to happen.
One of my readers at the JYB pointed this out in the process of bugging
me about drivers. This reader wanted to know where all the drivers were
supposed to come from to drive those buses full of people out of the
city. I replied that the answer was obvious--they're school buses, use
school bus drivers, contact them via a phone tree, make emergency driving
part of their job. Turns out it's not so easy as that. The New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- Students return to class Thursday in a
school system in such turmoil that no one is sure how many employees it
has, the new budget is millions of dollars out of balance, and the
buildings are old and deteriorating.
The story, dated August 18, 2005, goes on from there to detail the fiscal
horror show that is the New Orleans school system. Read it when you're
not in the mood for a good laugh. Read it when you're in the mood to slug
someone, and you'll slug them twice as hard. Sen. Landrieu should read it
and then sit down chanting "serenity now." If you've ever paid taxes to
the city of New Orleans, you've been had. And the fact is, through
federal education programs chances are we have all paid tax dollars that
have been disappeared by that awful system. We have all been had.
We can't lay all of the blame for this sorry state of affairs at Mayor
Ray Nagin's feet (though he's almost entirely to blame for the city's
pathetic response to the current crisis). He's only been in office for
three years, and to his credit he has tried to reform the city's
government. But the fact is that a school system that doesn't even know
how many employees it has won't be in a position to reach bus drivers
when they're needed to ferry thousands of people out of the path of a
hell storm like Katrina.
New Orleans' city government was an abscess. I say "was," by the way,
because for all intents and purposes it ceased to exist some time last
week--probably at about the same time the local officials realized that
their multiple failures were bound to lead to major loss of life. Its
emergency management czar, one Terry Ebbert, squealed about an absence of
command and control over the relief effort, when it was his job to
establish that command and control. The police department is two-thirds
gone after about 1,000 officers deserted in the face of the flood and the
looters--some of whom were police officers themselves. Mayor Nagin sent
up a profanity-laced diatribe against the federal government that should
have been delivered in front of a mirror. The abscess at city hall failed
its citizens. It is guilty of gross negligence leading to death for many
of its most vulnerable citizens. As the wretched condition of its school
system demonstrates, long before it collapsed last week, the municipal
government of New Orleans was a total and unmitigated disgrace."

Yes, there is blame to be had at the local level; there is classism within
both political parties and racism within both political parties. It's
always poor minority women and children last, and you can add the disabled
too.
But it is not all Nagin and Bianco's fault. National leaders saw the
disaster coming and did little to help; if there was a shortfall locally,
then our national leadership ought to have diagnosed and corrected it.
Bush fiddled while New Orleans drowned; Bush was playing hooky from work
before, during and after the storm hit. He had ample time to move on his
own to get the poor, elderly, and the disabled out of the city. He
compounded his error by failing to rush in needed supplies to points where
they were desperately needed. And, Bush failed to act promptly to restore
order just as he failed in Baghdad when chaos broke out after Saddam was
deposed.

A nice response.

With one problem....

"Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for
assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of
Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior
Bush official said."

It's not Bush's fault at all. It's Nagin and Blanco.

[ClassWarz]

Post by George

Post by ClassWarz

You fucking DEMOCRATS are fucking INCOMPETENT!
Blanco and Nagin should be charged with criminal negligence and homicide.
---
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/003463.htm
"APOCALYPSE NOW IN NEW ORLEANS
By Bryan Preston · September 05, 2005 12:13 AM
The JYB guy here, best known most recently for blogging about buses,
specifically the hundreds and hundreds of buses that the city of New
Orleans failed to use to evacuate its most disadvantaged citizens out of
harm's way before hurricane Katrina hit last week. Tens of thousands of
New Orleans' residents could have been spared the worst of the past week
and many might still be alive today if the city had actually activated
its plan to use its own vehicles--school and commuter buses--to give
them a ride. But the plan was never activated, though the city was fully
aware of the plight of its citizens after hurricane Ivan nearly struck
it last year. And of course the city had known that it was sinking into
the gooey soil of the Mississippi delta for decades. New Orleans knew
that it was living on borrowed time. But it partied on, eating, drinking
and being merry, knowing that tomorrow it might well die.
Instead of acknowledging the faults that lie at city level and stepping
in to organize relief efforts, Louisiana and New Orleans officials spent
most of last week lashing out at the Bush administration, though its
response was three times faster than the response to hurricane Andrew
just 13 years ago. Government actually got quicker at doing something,
in spite of the massive increase in the number of lawyers on the public
dime in the intervening years. The locals blamed the feds even though
the administration, whatever its faults, was ahead of all local
officials when it came to declaring a state of emergency and requesting
a mandatory evacuation. A massive butt-covering exercise is underway in
Louisiana as I write, so massive it is second only to the actual relief
and law and order efforts going on in the vast Katrina destruction zone.
Here's Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, threatening to punch President
Bush if local officials come under any criticism.
Here's a local New Orleans official bizarrely suggesting that the head
of the government needs to be "chainsawed off."
These officials and dozens like them all across Louisiana are trying to
shift blame to Washington for their own failures.
The buses I mentioned earlier and have blogged about extensively all
weekend are evidence of and a symbol for those failures. They sit unused
and waterlogged, their empty seats representing lives lost to the flood.
Their useless presence in flooded parking lots demonstrate that the best
plan is useless if it's never implemented. And they fact of their unuse
demonstrates a deeper pathology at work in New Orleans government: The
entire thing was rotted from the inside out. New Orleans' government was
a disaster waiting to happen.
One of my readers at the JYB pointed this out in the process of bugging
me about drivers. This reader wanted to know where all the drivers were
supposed to come from to drive those buses full of people out of the
city. I replied that the answer was obvious--they're school buses, use
school bus drivers, contact them via a phone tree, make emergency
driving part of their job. Turns out it's not so easy as that. The New
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- Students return to class Thursday in a
school system in such turmoil that no one is sure how many employees it
has, the new budget is millions of dollars out of balance, and the
buildings are old and deteriorating.
The story, dated August 18, 2005, goes on from there to detail the
fiscal horror show that is the New Orleans school system. Read it when
you're not in the mood for a good laugh. Read it when you're in the mood
to slug someone, and you'll slug them twice as hard. Sen. Landrieu
should read it and then sit down chanting "serenity now." If you've ever
paid taxes to the city of New Orleans, you've been had. And the fact is,
through federal education programs chances are we have all paid tax
dollars that have been disappeared by that awful system. We have all
been had.
We can't lay all of the blame for this sorry state of affairs at Mayor
Ray Nagin's feet (though he's almost entirely to blame for the city's
pathetic response to the current crisis). He's only been in office for
three years, and to his credit he has tried to reform the city's
government. But the fact is that a school system that doesn't even know
how many employees it has won't be in a position to reach bus drivers
when they're needed to ferry thousands of people out of the path of a
hell storm like Katrina.
New Orleans' city government was an abscess. I say "was," by the way,
because for all intents and purposes it ceased to exist some time last
week--probably at about the same time the local officials realized that
their multiple failures were bound to lead to major loss of life. Its
emergency management czar, one Terry Ebbert, squealed about an absence
of command and control over the relief effort, when it was his job to
establish that command and control. The police department is two-thirds
gone after about 1,000 officers deserted in the face of the flood and
the looters--some of whom were police officers themselves. Mayor Nagin
sent up a profanity-laced diatribe against the federal government that
should have been delivered in front of a mirror. The abscess at city
hall failed its citizens. It is guilty of gross negligence leading to
death for many of its most vulnerable citizens. As the wretched
condition of its school system demonstrates, long before it collapsed
last week, the municipal government of New Orleans was a total and
unmitigated disgrace."

Yes, there is blame to be had at the local level; there is classism
within both political parties and racism within both political parties.
It's always poor minority women and children last, and you can add the
disabled too.
But it is not all Nagin and Bianco's fault. National leaders saw the
disaster coming and did little to help; if there was a shortfall locally,
then our national leadership ought to have diagnosed and corrected it.
Bush fiddled while New Orleans drowned; Bush was playing hooky from work
before, during and after the storm hit. He had ample time to move on his
own to get the poor, elderly, and the disabled out of the city. He
compounded his error by failing to rush in needed supplies to points
where they were desperately needed. And, Bush failed to act promptly to
restore order just as he failed in Baghdad when chaos broke out after
Saddam was deposed.

A nice response.
With one problem....
"Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for
assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of
Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior
Bush official said."
It's not Bush's fault at all. It's Nagin and Blanco.

If Bush tries to lay this on Bianco, then he is no leader at all. A real
leader would have diagnosed any local shortfall, grabbed the bull by the
horns, and would have implemented an effective and swift solution over local
objections and over local procrastination.

Here is the text to a followup elsewhere in this thread:

Why was this request from Bianco to President Bush for help not acted upon
with the utmost speed?

http://gov.louisiana.gov/Disaster%20Relief%20Request.pdf

Here is the text of a thread addressing the issue presented in
alt.california:

quote

Blanco's Letter to Bush, a letter to the White House the
Sunday afternoon before the storm hit asking for a declaration of
emergency and federal assistance.

Then, after Bush does nothing and the
world saw how they treat the poor in this country, they go on
television to try to lie their way out of their despicable disaster
response. FEMA and Chertoff tried to say they weren't asked for help --
it was a lie and they know it.
Read:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050903/ap_on_re_us/katrina_national_guard

Blanco's Letter to Bush:
http://gov.louisiana.gov/Disaster%20Relief%20Request.pdf

Federal Disaster Response document which states explicitly that in the
event of a catastrophic disaster the federal government need not wait
for any explicit request from the local authorities in the affected
regions: http://www.dhs.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/NRPbaseplan.pdf

Op-Ed in 'Times-Picayune' calling them on some of their lies:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001054586

Whatever you Bush appologists think, Bush is done. On top of it all, the
Homeland Security Act gives Bush free reign to act and Bush didn't act.
Why is Bush and his cabinet still in Washington? They should be headed back
to Weedhole, Texas in disgrace.

end quote



ClassWarz

[Kalib Akhlar]

What happened to the tens of millions of federal dollars which
were given to Louisiana and New Orleans, specifically for the
purpose of diaster preparedness?

Answer: The money was fed into the corrupt *democrat*
political machine, never to be seen again.

[ClassWarz]

Post by Kalib Akhlar
What happened to the tens of millions of federal dollars which
were given to Louisiana and New Orleans, specifically for the
purpose of diaster preparedness?
Answer: The money was fed into the corrupt *democrat*
political machine, never to be seen again.

It was cut by the Bush administration:

" It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to
handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price
we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we
are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue
for us."

-- Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish,
Louisiana; New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 8, 2004.

and

" The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection
project is another major Corps project, which remains about 20% incomplete
due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi, project manager. That project consists
of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank
of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson
parishes. "


" Washington knew that this day could come at any time, and it knew the
things that needed to be done to protect the citizens of New Orleans. But in
the tradition of the riverboat gambler, the Bush administration decided to
roll the dice on its fool's errand in Iraq, and on a tax cut that mainly
benefitted the rich. "



http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/attytood/archives/002331.html


There's a lot more on this at the link above. It looks like there will be a
lot of questions asked as to why the Bush administration was slow to get
this job finished.


ClassWarz

[Kalib Akhlar]

Nice job of post editing to make your *junk* look like
it is from legitimate sources.

BZZZZZZZT! Another liberal leftist caught using forged
documents. You and Dan Rather need to sharpen your
forgery skills.

ROTFLMAO!



"

[Michael Scheltgen]

Post by Kalib Akhlar
Nice job of post editing to make your *junk* look like
it is from legitimate sources.

Innocent question: Why is it junk? There are sources for every
quote. They may not be from peer reviewed journals, but what
are you looking for?

[Kalib Akhlar]

Post by Kalib Akhlar
Nice job of post editing to make your *junk* look like
it is from legitimate sources.

Innocent question: Why is it junk? There are sources for every quote.
They may not be from peer reviewed journals, but what are you looking for?

Radical liberal extremist leftists are funny. You quote material
from some of the most extreme leftist sources in the country
and you expect Americans to swallow your liberal pablum
without question.
ROTFLMAO!

[Michael Scheltgen]

Post by Kalib Akhlar

Post by Kalib Akhlar
Nice job of post editing to make your *junk* look like
it is from legitimate sources.

Innocent question: Why is it junk? There are sources for every quote.
They may not be from peer reviewed journals, but what are you looking for?

Radical liberal extremist leftists are funny. You quote material
from some of the most extreme leftist sources.

Goverment employees in Louisians are extreme leftist sources?
The New Orleans Times-Picayune is an extreme leftist source? If
you say so.

[Kalib Akhlar]

Post by Kalib Akhlar

Post by Kalib Akhlar
Nice job of post editing to make your *junk* look like
it is from legitimate sources.

Innocent question: Why is it junk? There are sources for every quote.
They may not be from peer reviewed journals, but what are you looking for?

Radical liberal extremist leftists are funny. You quote material
from some of the most extreme leftist sources.

Goverment employees in Louisians are extreme leftist sources? The New
Orleans Times-Picayune is an extreme leftist source? If you say so.

There you go again, twisting the facts to support your liberal leftist
lies. How typical of a wacko from the looney-left.

[nmp]

Post by Kalib Akhlar

Post by Kalib Akhlar

Post by Kalib Akhlar
Nice job of post editing to make your *junk* look like
it is from legitimate sources.

Innocent question: Why is it junk? There are sources for every quote.
They may not be from peer reviewed journals, but what are you looking for?

Radical liberal extremist leftists are funny. You quote material
from some of the most extreme leftist sources.

Goverment employees in Louisians are extreme leftist sources? The New
Orleans Times-Picayune is an extreme leftist source? If you say so.

There you go again, twisting the facts to support your liberal leftist
lies. How typical of a wacko from the looney-left.

If you say someone's lying, please point out where they are wrong.

[George]

Post by ClassWarz

Post by George

Post by ClassWarz

You fucking DEMOCRATS are fucking INCOMPETENT!
Blanco and Nagin should be charged with criminal negligence and homicide.
---
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/003463.htm
"APOCALYPSE NOW IN NEW ORLEANS
By Bryan Preston · September 05, 2005 12:13 AM
The JYB guy here, best known most recently for blogging about buses,
specifically the hundreds and hundreds of buses that the city of New
Orleans failed to use to evacuate its most disadvantaged citizens out
of harm's way before hurricane Katrina hit last week. Tens of thousands
of New Orleans' residents could have been spared the worst of the past
week and many might still be alive today if the city had actually
activated its plan to use its own vehicles--school and commuter
buses--to give them a ride. But the plan was never activated, though
the city was fully aware of the plight of its citizens after hurricane
Ivan nearly struck it last year. And of course the city had known that
it was sinking into the gooey soil of the Mississippi delta for
decades. New Orleans knew that it was living on borrowed time. But it
partied on, eating, drinking and being merry, knowing that tomorrow it
might well die.
Instead of acknowledging the faults that lie at city level and stepping
in to organize relief efforts, Louisiana and New Orleans officials
spent most of last week lashing out at the Bush administration, though
its response was three times faster than the response to hurricane
Andrew just 13 years ago. Government actually got quicker at doing
something, in spite of the massive increase in the number of lawyers on
the public dime in the intervening years. The locals blamed the feds
even though the administration, whatever its faults, was ahead of all
local officials when it came to declaring a state of emergency and
requesting a mandatory evacuation. A massive butt-covering exercise is
underway in Louisiana as I write, so massive it is second only to the
actual relief and law and order efforts going on in the vast Katrina
destruction zone.
Here's Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, threatening to punch President
Bush if local officials come under any criticism.
Here's a local New Orleans official bizarrely suggesting that the head
of the government needs to be "chainsawed off."
These officials and dozens like them all across Louisiana are trying to
shift blame to Washington for their own failures.
The buses I mentioned earlier and have blogged about extensively all
weekend are evidence of and a symbol for those failures. They sit
unused and waterlogged, their empty seats representing lives lost to
the flood. Their useless presence in flooded parking lots demonstrate
that the best plan is useless if it's never implemented. And they fact
of their unuse demonstrates a deeper pathology at work in New Orleans
government: The entire thing was rotted from the inside out. New
Orleans' government was a disaster waiting to happen.
One of my readers at the JYB pointed this out in the process of bugging
me about drivers. This reader wanted to know where all the drivers were
supposed to come from to drive those buses full of people out of the
city. I replied that the answer was obvious--they're school buses, use
school bus drivers, contact them via a phone tree, make emergency
driving part of their job. Turns out it's not so easy as that. The New
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- Students return to class Thursday in a
school system in such turmoil that no one is sure how many employees it
has, the new budget is millions of dollars out of balance, and the
buildings are old and deteriorating.
The story, dated August 18, 2005, goes on from there to detail the
fiscal horror show that is the New Orleans school system. Read it when
you're not in the mood for a good laugh. Read it when you're in the
mood to slug someone, and you'll slug them twice as hard. Sen. Landrieu
should read it and then sit down chanting "serenity now." If you've
ever paid taxes to the city of New Orleans, you've been had. And the
fact is, through federal education programs chances are we have all
paid tax dollars that have been disappeared by that awful system. We
have all been had.
We can't lay all of the blame for this sorry state of affairs at Mayor
Ray Nagin's feet (though he's almost entirely to blame for the city's
pathetic response to the current crisis). He's only been in office for
three years, and to his credit he has tried to reform the city's
government. But the fact is that a school system that doesn't even know
how many employees it has won't be in a position to reach bus drivers
when they're needed to ferry thousands of people out of the path of a
hell storm like Katrina.
New Orleans' city government was an abscess. I say "was," by the way,
because for all intents and purposes it ceased to exist some time last
week--probably at about the same time the local officials realized that
their multiple failures were bound to lead to major loss of life. Its
emergency management czar, one Terry Ebbert, squealed about an absence
of command and control over the relief effort, when it was his job to
establish that command and control. The police department is two-thirds
gone after about 1,000 officers deserted in the face of the flood and
the looters--some of whom were police officers themselves. Mayor Nagin
sent up a profanity-laced diatribe against the federal government that
should have been delivered in front of a mirror. The abscess at city
hall failed its citizens. It is guilty of gross negligence leading to
death for many of its most vulnerable citizens. As the wretched
condition of its school system demonstrates, long before it collapsed
last week, the municipal government of New Orleans was a total and
unmitigated disgrace."

Yes, there is blame to be had at the local level; there is classism
within both political parties and racism within both political parties.
It's always poor minority women and children last, and you can add the
disabled too.
But it is not all Nagin and Bianco's fault. National leaders saw the
disaster coming and did little to help; if there was a shortfall
locally, then our national leadership ought to have diagnosed and
corrected it. Bush fiddled while New Orleans drowned; Bush was playing
hooky from work before, during and after the storm hit. He had ample
time to move on his own to get the poor, elderly, and the disabled out
of the city. He compounded his error by failing to rush in needed
supplies to points where they were desperately needed. And, Bush failed
to act promptly to restore order just as he failed in Baghdad when chaos
broke out after Saddam was deposed.

A nice response.
With one problem....
"Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for
assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of
Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior
Bush official said."
It's not Bush's fault at all. It's Nagin and Blanco.

If Bush tries to lay this on Bianco, then he is no leader at all. A real
leader would have diagnosed any local shortfall, grabbed the bull by the
horns, and would have implemented an effective and swift solution over
local objections and over local procrastination.
Why was this request from Bianco to President Bush for help not acted upon
with the utmost speed?
http://gov.louisiana.gov/Disaster%20Relief%20Request.pdf

It was.

It was a request FOR MONEY. Specifically, $130,000,000 in direct federal
aid grants, loans and housing assistance and debris cleanup.

It was NOT a request for troops or emergency personnel.

It was NOT a declaration of emergency.

Did you even BOTHER to read it, moron?

Post by ClassWarz
Here is the text of a thread addressing the issue presented in
quote
Blanco's Letter to Bush, a letter to the White House the
Sunday afternoon before the storm hit asking for a declaration of
emergency and federal assistance.

It was a request for EXPEDITED assistence, specifically money to pay for
cleanup, housing assistance, unemployment compensation, individual emergency
loans, financial grants.

If you bothered to read it, you would know that was also a request for
REIMBURSEMENT for the state for its expenditures -- an attempt to stick all
US taxpayers for the clean up costs without any spending from Louisana.
Now, THAT'S pretty fucking cheap of Blanco, IMHO.

Nothing in the letter contains a request for additional military/National
Guard or assistence in maintaing security. Neither was there a request for
assistance in evacuating the people of New Orleans, or supplying food,
water, sanitary or security for the people expected to be sheltered at the
Superdome/convention center.

Blanco/Nagin's lack of foresight, considering that the hurricane was already
at category 5 and on a course for New Orleans -- a city whose levees were
designed only for category 3 is breathtaking! On August 28, Blanco and
Nagin should have considered it a near "extinction event" and (1) called up
all 8,000 available Guard, (2) requested another 25,000 from the Compact
states, (3) delivered emergency food, water and portapoties and provided
police protection for the Superdome/convention center, and (4) recalled ALL
city workers, especially including school bus drivers.

And the moment the storm passed, Nagin should have ordered the school buses
to drive to the Superdome/convention center and EVACUATED the people before
the flooding isolated it.

Post by ClassWarz
Then, after Bush does nothing and the
world saw how they treat the poor in this country, they go on
television to try to lie their way out of their despicable disaster
response.

Nobody in the federal government lied.

Only Bush-Hate inflicted assholes believe that.

Post by ClassWarz
FEMA and Chertoff tried to say they weren't asked for help --
it was a lie and they know it.

Nonsense.

The letter to Bush was a REQUEST FOR FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE not material
assistance for evacuation or law enforcement or even post hurricane rescue
assistance.

Try reading the document before posting -- you can save yourself the
personal humiliation of being exposed as a stupid fucktard.

Post by ClassWarz
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050903/ap_on_re_us/katrina_national_guard

Yawn.

So what?

Read the Washington Post article I cited instead. You might learn
something. I doubt it, but at least it states on the record that BLANCO is
responsible in the delay, not Bush.

Post by ClassWarz
http://gov.louisiana.gov/Disaster%20Relief%20Request.pdf

Been there, done that. Too bad you are too fucking stupid or lazy to read
it for compreshension.

Post by ClassWarz
Federal Disaster Response document which states explicitly that in the
event of a catastrophic disaster the federal government need not wait
for any explicit request from the local authorities in the affected
regions: http://www.dhs.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/NRPbaseplan.pdf

No, it doesn't. Can't you even read?

Read page 2, moron!

"Nothing in this plan alters or impedes the ability of Federal, State, local
or tribal authorities and agencies to carry out their specific authorities
OR PERFORM THEIR RESPONSIBILITIES under all applicable laws, Executive
orders, and directives"

Does the meaning of the above need to be explained to you?

Then go find and read the Staffort Act. And spend time on Article 4,
Section 4 of the US Constitution.

The US Government must wait for the state/local government to declare an
emergency before supplying material disaster recover aid.

That is the way it is and no lies you Bush-hating, lying assholes tell
change the facts.

Post by ClassWarz
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001054586

The Picknose-Times eats shit and swallows it. They're nothing but a
meaningless noise.

The real LIARS are Blanco, Nagin, The Pickynosers and YOU.

Post by ClassWarz
Whatever you Bush appologists think, Bush is done.

Why do you ignorant skanks still think that BUSH is going to run for
reelection. He isn't allowed to.

Do you Bush-haters think that Bush is going to resign over this? Dream on.
He's going to be President until 1/20/2009 and there is NOTHING you howling
monkeys can do about it -- except make flatulent-sounding noises which will
just make us laugh at you harder.

Post by ClassWarz
On top of it all, the
Homeland Security Act gives Bush free reign to act and Bush didn't act.

No, ignorant one, IT DOES NOT!

And if you bothered to READ it - for compreshension - you'd know.

Assuming that you CAN read, that is.

Post by ClassWarz
Why is Bush and his cabinet still in Washington? They should be headed back
to Weedhole, Texas in disgrace.

Why aren't you drinking from the toilet like all the other barking dogs?

[ClassWarz]

Post by George

Post by ClassWarz

Post by George

Post by ClassWarz

You fucking DEMOCRATS are fucking INCOMPETENT!
Blanco and Nagin should be charged with criminal negligence and homicide.
---
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/003463.htm
"APOCALYPSE NOW IN NEW ORLEANS
By Bryan Preston · September 05, 2005 12:13 AM
The JYB guy here, best known most recently for blogging about buses,
specifically the hundreds and hundreds of buses that the city of New
Orleans failed to use to evacuate its most disadvantaged citizens out
of harm's way before hurricane Katrina hit last week. Tens of
thousands of New Orleans' residents could have been spared the worst
of the past week and many might still be alive today if the city had
actually activated its plan to use its own vehicles--school and
commuter buses--to give them a ride. But the plan was never activated,
though the city was fully aware of the plight of its citizens after
hurricane Ivan nearly struck it last year. And of course the city had
known that it was sinking into the gooey soil of the Mississippi delta
for decades. New Orleans knew that it was living on borrowed time. But
it partied on, eating, drinking and being merry, knowing that tomorrow
it might well die.
Instead of acknowledging the faults that lie at city level and
stepping in to organize relief efforts, Louisiana and New Orleans
officials spent most of last week lashing out at the Bush
administration, though its response was three times faster than the
response to hurricane Andrew just 13 years ago. Government actually
got quicker at doing something, in spite of the massive increase in
the number of lawyers on the public dime in the intervening years. The
locals blamed the feds even though the administration, whatever its
faults, was ahead of all local officials when it came to declaring a
state of emergency and requesting a mandatory evacuation. A massive
butt-covering exercise is underway in Louisiana as I write, so massive
it is second only to the actual relief and law and order efforts going
on in the vast Katrina destruction zone.
Here's Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, threatening to punch President
Bush if local officials come under any criticism.
Here's a local New Orleans official bizarrely suggesting that the head
of the government needs to be "chainsawed off."
These officials and dozens like them all across Louisiana are trying
to shift blame to Washington for their own failures.
The buses I mentioned earlier and have blogged about extensively all
weekend are evidence of and a symbol for those failures. They sit
unused and waterlogged, their empty seats representing lives lost to
the flood. Their useless presence in flooded parking lots demonstrate
that the best plan is useless if it's never implemented. And they fact
of their unuse demonstrates a deeper pathology at work in New Orleans
government: The entire thing was rotted from the inside out. New
Orleans' government was a disaster waiting to happen.
One of my readers at the JYB pointed this out in the process of
bugging me about drivers. This reader wanted to know where all the
drivers were supposed to come from to drive those buses full of people
out of the city. I replied that the answer was obvious--they're school
buses, use school bus drivers, contact them via a phone tree, make
emergency driving part of their job. Turns out it's not so easy as
that. The New Orleans school system is, to put it mildly, a basket
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- Students return to class Thursday in a
school system in such turmoil that no one is sure how many employees
it has, the new budget is millions of dollars out of balance, and the
buildings are old and deteriorating.
The story, dated August 18, 2005, goes on from there to detail the
fiscal horror show that is the New Orleans school system. Read it when
you're not in the mood for a good laugh. Read it when you're in the
mood to slug someone, and you'll slug them twice as hard. Sen.
Landrieu should read it and then sit down chanting "serenity now." If
you've ever paid taxes to the city of New Orleans, you've been had.
And the fact is, through federal education programs chances are we
have all paid tax dollars that have been disappeared by that awful
system. We have all been had.
We can't lay all of the blame for this sorry state of affairs at Mayor
Ray Nagin's feet (though he's almost entirely to blame for the city's
pathetic response to the current crisis). He's only been in office for
three years, and to his credit he has tried to reform the city's
government. But the fact is that a school system that doesn't even
know how many employees it has won't be in a position to reach bus
drivers when they're needed to ferry thousands of people out of the
path of a hell storm like Katrina.
New Orleans' city government was an abscess. I say "was," by the way,
because for all intents and purposes it ceased to exist some time last
week--probably at about the same time the local officials realized
that their multiple failures were bound to lead to major loss of life.
Its emergency management czar, one Terry Ebbert, squealed about an
absence of command and control over the relief effort, when it was his
job to establish that command and control. The police department is
two-thirds gone after about 1,000 officers deserted in the face of the
flood and the looters--some of whom were police officers themselves.
Mayor Nagin sent up a profanity-laced diatribe against the federal
government that should have been delivered in front of a mirror. The
abscess at city hall failed its citizens. It is guilty of gross
negligence leading to death for many of its most vulnerable citizens.
As the wretched condition of its school system demonstrates, long
before it collapsed last week, the municipal government of New Orleans
was a total and unmitigated disgrace."

Yes, there is blame to be had at the local level; there is classism
within both political parties and racism within both political parties.
It's always poor minority women and children last, and you can add the
disabled too.
But it is not all Nagin and Bianco's fault. National leaders saw the
disaster coming and did little to help; if there was a shortfall
locally, then our national leadership ought to have diagnosed and
corrected it. Bush fiddled while New Orleans drowned; Bush was playing
hooky from work before, during and after the storm hit. He had ample
time to move on his own to get the poor, elderly, and the disabled out
of the city. He compounded his error by failing to rush in needed
supplies to points where they were desperately needed. And, Bush
failed to act promptly to restore order just as he failed in Baghdad
when chaos broke out after Saddam was deposed.

A nice response.
With one problem....
"Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for
assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As
of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the
senior Bush official said."
It's not Bush's fault at all. It's Nagin and Blanco.

If Bush tries to lay this on Bianco, then he is no leader at all. A real
leader would have diagnosed any local shortfall, grabbed the bull by the
horns, and would have implemented an effective and swift solution over
local objections and over local procrastination.
Why was this request from Bianco to President Bush for help not acted upon
with the utmost speed?
http://gov.louisiana.gov/Disaster%20Relief%20Request.pdf

It was.
It was a request FOR MONEY. Specifically, $130,000,000 in direct federal
aid grants, loans and housing assistance and debris cleanup.
It was NOT a request for troops or emergency personnel.
It was NOT a declaration of emergency.

You've entirely missed the point. This request was obviously made before
the levees broke, so of course it was a small request for money. No, it was
not acted on with speed, as you claim. There was no move by Bush to act at
all.

You've got your chronology wrong:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5253658,00.html

After the levees broke, Bush ought to have rushed to get aid into the city.
He failed to act. He did NOT need local approval to act in an event of this
magnitude.

When has Bush ever been bashful about overriding the domain of local
officials? In my area, he commandeered the local police force to help guard
his campaign appearance; he did this over the objections of local officials
over cost concerns--my city has still not been paid by the Bush campaign.
Your thesis that Bush was stymied by Louisiana officials does not wash.
Bush was stymied by his unusually long vacation, which, BTW, is far longer
than most American workers get.

Post by George
Did you even BOTHER to read it, moron?

Post by ClassWarz
Here is the text of a thread addressing the issue presented in
quote
Blanco's Letter to Bush, a letter to the White House the
Sunday afternoon before the storm hit asking for a declaration of
emergency and federal assistance.

It was a request for EXPEDITED assistence, specifically money to pay for
cleanup, housing assistance, unemployment compensation, individual
emergency loans, financial grants.

Again the request occurred before the levees broke.

Post by George
If you bothered to read it, you would know that was also a request for
REIMBURSEMENT for the state for its expenditures -- an attempt to stick
all US taxpayers for the clean up costs without any spending from
Louisana. Now, THAT'S pretty fucking cheap of Blanco, IMHO.

IMHO, irrelevant.

Post by George
Nothing in the letter contains a request for additional military/National
Guard or assistence in maintaing security. Neither was there a request
for assistance in evacuating the people of New Orleans, or supplying food,
water, sanitary or security for the people expected to be sheltered at the
Superdome/convention center.

Again, the request occured before the real catastrophe--the breaking of the
levees.

Note the phrase "as Hurricane Katrina approaches" in this document.
Clearly, you did not read it, to borrow your happy phrase!

Note that I do fault Bianco and Nagin elsewhere in this thread for failing
to act decisively concerning the evacuation of the poor and the disabled.
Clearly, you did not read that either.

Nevertheless, Bush and his minions ought to have moved into NO on their own;
the threat of a levee break was known to national agencies. A real leader
would not have quibbled about whose jurisdiction this was; a real leader
would have taken immediate action to evacuate everyone in the city. If
there was local incompetence, a real leader would have diagnosed it in real
time and would have taken steps to correct the incompetence of the locals.
For example, Bush could have warned the public that local evacuation
procedures were inadequate and he could have alerted the press to the
danger, or he could even have appeared on national television himself. Why
wasn't the Bush administration monitoring the evacuation efforts or lack
thereof? Why was Bush so slow to respond after the levees broke?

Post by George
Blanco/Nagin's lack of foresight, considering that the hurricane was
already at category 5 and on a course for New Orleans -- a city whose
levees were designed only for category 3 is breathtaking! On August 28,
Blanco and Nagin should have considered it a near "extinction event" and
(1) called up all 8,000 available Guard, (2) requested another 25,000 from
the Compact states, (3) delivered emergency food, water and portapoties
and provided police protection for the Superdome/convention center, and
(4) recalled ALL city workers, especially including school bus drivers.
And the moment the storm passed, Nagin should have ordered the school
buses to drive to the Superdome/convention center and EVACUATED the people
before the flooding isolated it.

True. Both the locals and the federals should have acted. Both knew the
dangers of a levee breach. Both failed to act decisively. We needed
Pattons, we got Elmer Fudds; that is true at the national level as well as
the local.

Post by George

Post by ClassWarz
Then, after Bush does nothing and the
world saw how they treat the poor in this country, they go on
television to try to lie their way out of their despicable disaster
response.

Nobody in the federal government lied.
Only Bush-Hate inflicted assholes believe that.

Not at all. Results are all that counts. Decisive action from Buchco could
have greatly improved the results and I have already made that same
criticism of the local leaders. Excuses are like belly-buttons; everbody
got one.

Post by George

Post by ClassWarz
FEMA and Chertoff tried to say they weren't asked for help --
it was a lie and they know it.

Nonsense.
The letter to Bush was a REQUEST FOR FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE not material
assistance for evacuation or law enforcement or even post hurricane rescue
assistance.

Again, the request is pre-levee breach, so your comment is not applicable.

Post by George
Try reading the document before posting -- you can save yourself the
personal humiliation of being exposed as a stupid fucktard.

It is you who have been so exposed--by your own faulty logic.

You've completely ignored the chronology of the events involved.

Post by George

Post by ClassWarz
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050903/ap_on_re_us/katrina_national_guard

Yawn.
So what?
Read the Washington Post article I cited instead. You might learn
something. I doubt it, but at least it states on the record that BLANCO
is responsible in the delay, not Bush.

More buckpassing. Both are responsible for the delay because both had the
power to monitor the situation and act in accordance with the needs on the
ground.

Post by George

Post by ClassWarz
http://gov.louisiana.gov/Disaster%20Relief%20Request.pdf

Been there, done that. Too bad you are too fucking stupid or lazy to read
it for compreshension.

Again, you miss the fact that the request occured before the levee broke;
the situation was far different after than before. Go back and read the
document and you'll see.

All this misses the big picture. It was known for decades that a major
hurricane could create the calamity we saw in NO. Therefore all parties
should have acted swiftly and decisively to get ALL the people out of that
city as fast as possible.

Post by George

Post by ClassWarz
Federal Disaster Response document which states explicitly that in the
event of a catastrophic disaster the federal government need not wait
for any explicit request from the local authorities in the affected
regions: http://www.dhs.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/NRPbaseplan.pdf

No, it doesn't. Can't you even read?

It is a quote, moron. Can't you even read?

Post by George
Read page 2, moron!
"Nothing in this plan alters or impedes the ability of Federal, State,
local or tribal authorities and agencies to carry out their specific
authorities OR PERFORM THEIR RESPONSIBILITIES under all applicable laws,
Executive orders, and directives"

You can play semantics all you want, but the public has a right to expect
the federal government to solve these kinds of procedural issues before
disaster hits so that the federal government can respond effectively. You
want to look for excuses; I am interested in results. Quibbling over who is
responsible for what does not get the job done. Is it reasonable to expect
Louisiana and Mississippi, two of the poorest states in the US, to handle a
Category 5 hurricane like Katrina alone? Your pass-the-buck arguments don't
wash.

Here is another critique, given that you did not like the first, where
Chertoff himself admits to federal deficiencies:

quote
Despite four years and tens of billions of dollars spent preparing for the
worst, the federal government was not ready when it came at daybreak Aug.
29, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former senior
officials and outside experts.

Among the flaws they listed:

.Failure to take the storm seriously before it hit and trigger the
government's highest level of response.

.Rebuffed offers of aid from the military, states and cities.

. An unfinished new plan meant to guide disaster response.

. And a slow bureaucracy that waited until late Tuesday to declare the
catastrophe "an incident of national significance," the new federal term
meant to set off the most sweeping possible relief effort.

Born out of the confused and uncertain response to 9/11, the massive new
Department of Homeland Security was charged with being ready the next time,
whether the disaster was wrought by nature or terrorists. But Homeland
Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Saturday his department had failed
to find an adequate model for addressing the "ultracatastrophe" that
resulted when Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters breached New Orleans's levees
and drowned the city.

end quote



http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/news/nation/12565977.htm

Post by George
Does the meaning of the above need to be explained to you?
Then go find and read the Staffort Act. And spend time on Article 4,
Section 4 of the US Constitution.
The US Government must wait for the state/local government to declare an
emergency before supplying material disaster recover aid.

Nonsense. The US government is expected to solve problems. If there is a
procedural impediment that limits national response to a hurricane disaster
as you claim, then the Bush administration and the Republican Congress are
expected to solve that too. Excuses and insults are no substitute for
performance.

ClassWarz

Post by George
That is the way it is and no lies you Bush-hating, lying assholes tell
change the facts.

"White House Shifts Blame"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/03/AR2005090301680.html

Post by George

Post by ClassWarz
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001054586

The Picknose-Times eats shit and swallows it. They're nothing but a
meaningless noise.
The real LIARS are Blanco, Nagin, The Pickynosers and YOU.

Post by ClassWarz
Whatever you Bush appologists think, Bush is done.

Why do you ignorant skanks still think that BUSH is going to run for
reelection. He isn't allowed to.
Do you Bush-haters think that Bush is going to resign over this? Dream
on. He's going to be President until 1/20/2009 and there is NOTHING you
howling monkeys can do about it -- except make flatulent-sounding noises
which will just make us laugh at you harder.

Post by ClassWarz
On top of it all, the
Homeland Security Act gives Bush free reign to act and Bush didn't act.

No, ignorant one, IT DOES NOT!
And if you bothered to READ it - for compreshension - you'd know.
Assuming that you CAN read, that is.

Post by ClassWarz
Why is Bush and his cabinet still in Washington? They should be headed back
to Weedhole, Texas in disgrace.

Why aren't you drinking from the toilet like all the other barking dogs?

[George]

Post by ClassWarz

Post by George

Post by ClassWarz

Post by George

Post by ClassWarz

You fucking DEMOCRATS are fucking INCOMPETENT!
Blanco and Nagin should be charged with criminal negligence and homicide.
---
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/003463.htm
"APOCALYPSE NOW IN NEW ORLEANS
By Bryan Preston · September 05, 2005 12:13 AM
The JYB guy here, best known most recently for blogging about buses,
specifically the hundreds and hundreds of buses that the city of New
Orleans failed to use to evacuate its most disadvantaged citizens out
of harm's way before hurricane Katrina hit last week. Tens of
thousands of New Orleans' residents could have been spared the worst
of the past week and many might still be alive today if the city had
actually activated its plan to use its own vehicles--school and
commuter buses--to give them a ride. But the plan was never
activated, though the city was fully aware of the plight of its
citizens after hurricane Ivan nearly struck it last year. And of
course the city had known that it was sinking into the gooey soil of
the Mississippi delta for decades. New Orleans knew that it was
living on borrowed time. But it partied on, eating, drinking and
being merry, knowing that tomorrow it might well die.
Instead of acknowledging the faults that lie at city level and
stepping in to organize relief efforts, Louisiana and New Orleans
officials spent most of last week lashing out at the Bush
administration, though its response was three times faster than the
response to hurricane Andrew just 13 years ago. Government actually
got quicker at doing something, in spite of the massive increase in
the number of lawyers on the public dime in the intervening years.
The locals blamed the feds even though the administration, whatever
its faults, was ahead of all local officials when it came to
declaring a state of emergency and requesting a mandatory evacuation.
A massive butt-covering exercise is underway in Louisiana as I write,
so massive it is second only to the actual relief and law and order
efforts going on in the vast Katrina destruction zone.
Here's Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, threatening to punch
President Bush if local officials come under any criticism.
Here's a local New Orleans official bizarrely suggesting that the
head of the government needs to be "chainsawed off."
These officials and dozens like them all across Louisiana are trying
to shift blame to Washington for their own failures.
The buses I mentioned earlier and have blogged about extensively all
weekend are evidence of and a symbol for those failures. They sit
unused and waterlogged, their empty seats representing lives lost to
the flood. Their useless presence in flooded parking lots demonstrate
that the best plan is useless if it's never implemented. And they
fact of their unuse demonstrates a deeper pathology at work in New
Orleans government: The entire thing was rotted from the inside out.
New Orleans' government was a disaster waiting to happen.
One of my readers at the JYB pointed this out in the process of
bugging me about drivers. This reader wanted to know where all the
drivers were supposed to come from to drive those buses full of
people out of the city. I replied that the answer was
obvious--they're school buses, use school bus drivers, contact them
via a phone tree, make emergency driving part of their job. Turns out
it's not so easy as that. The New Orleans school system is, to put it
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- Students return to class Thursday in a
school system in such turmoil that no one is sure how many employees
it has, the new budget is millions of dollars out of balance, and the
buildings are old and deteriorating.
The story, dated August 18, 2005, goes on from there to detail the
fiscal horror show that is the New Orleans school system. Read it
when you're not in the mood for a good laugh. Read it when you're in
the mood to slug someone, and you'll slug them twice as hard. Sen.
Landrieu should read it and then sit down chanting "serenity now." If
you've ever paid taxes to the city of New Orleans, you've been had.
And the fact is, through federal education programs chances are we
have all paid tax dollars that have been disappeared by that awful
system. We have all been had.
We can't lay all of the blame for this sorry state of affairs at
Mayor Ray Nagin's feet (though he's almost entirely to blame for the
city's pathetic response to the current crisis). He's only been in
office for three years, and to his credit he has tried to reform the
city's government. But the fact is that a school system that doesn't
even know how many employees it has won't be in a position to reach
bus drivers when they're needed to ferry thousands of people out of
the path of a hell storm like Katrina.
New Orleans' city government was an abscess. I say "was," by the way,
because for all intents and purposes it ceased to exist some time
last week--probably at about the same time the local officials
realized that their multiple failures were bound to lead to major
loss of life. Its emergency management czar, one Terry Ebbert,
squealed about an absence of command and control over the relief
effort, when it was his job to establish that command and control.
The police department is two-thirds gone after about 1,000 officers
deserted in the face of the flood and the looters--some of whom were
police officers themselves. Mayor Nagin sent up a profanity-laced
diatribe against the federal government that should have been
delivered in front of a mirror. The abscess at city hall failed its
citizens. It is guilty of gross negligence leading to death for many
of its most vulnerable citizens. As the wretched condition of its
school system demonstrates, long before it collapsed last week, the
municipal government of New Orleans was a total and unmitigated
disgrace."

Yes, there is blame to be had at the local level; there is classism
within both political parties and racism within both political
parties. It's always poor minority women and children last, and you
can add the disabled too.
But it is not all Nagin and Bianco's fault. National leaders saw the
disaster coming and did little to help; if there was a shortfall
locally, then our national leadership ought to have diagnosed and
corrected it. Bush fiddled while New Orleans drowned; Bush was playing
hooky from work before, during and after the storm hit. He had ample
time to move on his own to get the poor, elderly, and the disabled out
of the city. He compounded his error by failing to rush in needed
supplies to points where they were desperately needed. And, Bush
failed to act promptly to restore order just as he failed in Baghdad
when chaos broke out after Saddam was deposed.

A nice response.
With one problem....
"Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for
assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As
of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the
senior Bush official said."
It's not Bush's fault at all. It's Nagin and Blanco.

If Bush tries to lay this on Bianco, then he is no leader at all. A
real leader would have diagnosed any local shortfall, grabbed the bull
by the horns, and would have implemented an effective and swift solution
over local objections and over local procrastination.
Why was this request from Bianco to President Bush for help not acted upon
with the utmost speed?
http://gov.louisiana.gov/Disaster%20Relief%20Request.pdf

It was.
It was a request FOR MONEY. Specifically, $130,000,000 in direct federal
aid grants, loans and housing assistance and debris cleanup.
It was NOT a request for troops or emergency personnel.
It was NOT a declaration of emergency.

You've entirely missed the point. This request was obviously made before
the levees broke, so of course it was a small request for money. No, it
was not acted on with speed, as you claim. There was no move by Bush to
act at all.

YOU have missed the point. Blanco did not request *material* aid from the
Compact state NOR the federal government until Wednesday -- 2 full days
AFTER the levees broke. That is a matter of *FACT*.

Post by ClassWarz
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5253658,00.html

Try the timeline archive at
http://rightwingnuthouse.com/archives/2005/09/04/katrina-response-timeline/

The source data is New Orleans own "Pickynose." (i.e., the Times-Picayune).

The "Guardian" sucks leftwing dick and is therefore, unreliable under any
circumstances.

Post by ClassWarz
After the levees broke, Bush ought to have rushed to get aid into the city.

Why?

On WHOSE SAY SO should he have acted? Yours?

Read the Constitution, fool.

Post by ClassWarz
He failed to act. He did NOT need local approval to act in an event of
this magnitude.

What the FUCK is wrong with you people?

The magnitude of the event has nothing to do with meeting the requirements
of the CONSTITUTION and the STAFFORD ACT.

Beside, you're a liar.

Bush and FEMA *DID* preposition men and material outside the impact zone and
DID deploy them immediately after the storm cleared the area.

Pickynose says so itself:

See:
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_Times-Picayune/archives/2005_08.html#074653
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_Times-Picayune/archives/2005_08.html#074670
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_Times-Picayune/archives/2005_08.html#074725

Pickynose specifially notes at:
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_Times-Picayune/archives/2005_08.html#075222

"FEMA deployed 23 Disaster Medical Assistance Teams from all across the U.S.
to staging areas in Alabama, Tennessee, Texas, and Louisiana and is now
moving them into impacted areas.

Seven Urban Search and Rescue task forces and two Incident Support Teams
have been deployed and propositioned in Shreveport, La., and Jackson, Miss.,
including teams from Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee,
Texas, and Virginia. Three more Urban Search and Rescue teams are in the
process of deployment.

FEMA is moving supplies and equipment into the hardest hit areas as quickly
as possible, especially water, ice, meals, medical supplies, generators,
tents, and tarps.

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) dispatched more than 390 trucks
that are beginning to deliver millions of meals ready to eat, millions of
liters of water, tarps, millions of pounds of ice, mobile homes, generators,
containers of disaster supplies, and forklifts to flood damaged areas. DOT
has helicopters and a plane assisting delivery of essential supplies.

The National Guard of the four most heavily impacted states are providing
support to civil authorities as well as generator, medical and shelter with
approximately 7,500 troops on State Active Duty. The National Guard is
augmenting civilian law enforcement capacity; not acting in lieu of it. "


Pickynose also reports that looting broke out even before the storm moved
out.

The Pickynose notes that the Red Cross mobilizes immediately:
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_Times-Picayune/archives/2005_08.html#074986
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_Times-Picayune/archives/2005_08.html#074993

Post by ClassWarz
When has Bush ever been bashful about overriding the domain of local
officials?

When he has been PREVENTED by federal law and the Constitution fromm doing
so, fool!

Post by ClassWarz
In my area, he commandeered the local police force to help guard

The Secret Service, no doubt, requested assistance of the local police
department.

Post by ClassWarz
his campaign appearance; he did this over the objections of local
officials over cost concerns--my city has still not been paid by the Bush
campaign.

Considering that everything else you've writen in this thread is a lie, I
don't believe you. You rabid Bush-Haters rarely tell the truth. Your
hatred blinds you.

Post by ClassWarz
Your thesis that Bush was stymied by Louisiana officials does not wash.

It's time you howling monkeys stopped lying and started telling the truth:
You hate Bush and will throw stones at him no matter what he does. And that
you don't give jack about the people of NOLA: this is just another
opportunity for you evil dogs to attack Bush.

While it is true that FEMA could have improved its response and streamlined
the process by eliminating more of the red-tape (hindsight is always 20-20),
the fact is that the response to Katrina was *3* time faster than Andrew in
1992. See: http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins200509020719.asp

This event was at least twice as more destructive than Andrew was, covering
90,000 square miles in size which is larger than the country of Britian.

But don't let the fact get in the way of you telling lies....Oh no. Here's
your chance to howl about Bush. Here's your chance to try to "bring down"
Bush -- in your hopes and in heart-of-hearts, at least. Fuck the people of
New Orleans, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida -- "WE GOT BUSH IN OUR SIGHTS
AND LET'S GO DESTROY HIM!"

Post by ClassWarz
Bush was stymied by his unusually long vacation, which, BTW, is far longer
than most American workers get.

Hmmm.

DONTCHA THINK that Bush has telephone service and cable TV at the ranch,
moron?

Don't you think he has communicaton facilities robust enough to make a
porn-downloader like you green with jealously?

Post by ClassWarz

Post by George
Did you even BOTHER to read it, moron?

Post by ClassWarz
Here is the text of a thread addressing the issue presented in
quote
Blanco's Letter to Bush, a letter to the White House the
Sunday afternoon before the storm hit asking for a declaration of
emergency and federal assistance.

It was a request for EXPEDITED assistence, specifically money to pay for
cleanup, housing assistance, unemployment compensation, individual
emergency loans, financial grants.

Again the request occurred before the levees broke.

The request for MATERIAL AID DID NOT!

Post by ClassWarz

Post by George
If you bothered to read it, you would know that was also a request for
REIMBURSEMENT for the state for its expenditures -- an attempt to stick
all US taxpayers for the clean up costs without any spending from
Louisana. Now, THAT'S pretty fucking cheap of Blanco, IMHO.

IMHO, irrelevant.

Wanting to make all of us taxpayers bear the cost of the revovery is damned
relevant! Why should every American tax payer pay for Blanco andNagin's
dereliction of duty? And now Nagin is pulling his cops off duty and sending
them to Las Vegas for a vacation while the recovery effort is STILL under
way...

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspecial/05vegas.html?adxnnl=1&oref=login&adxnnlx=1125932956-vBc0UALbvaE2C/kou95sWA

NOLA is underwater. The city is underwater. 10,000 people are dead
(Nagin's estimate). LET'S GO ON VACATION!!

I CALL THIS "DERELICTION OF DUTY."

And that is the entire my entire point. Mayor Ray Nagin and Governor
Kathleen Blanco WERE DERELICT in their duties as elected officials.

Nothing is more relevant than that!

And my second point is that this carping about Bush is nothing but partisan
BULLSHIT from Bush-Haters like you.

Post by ClassWarz

Post by George
Nothing in the letter contains a request for additional military/National
Guard or assistence in maintaing security. Neither was there a request
for assistance in evacuating the people of New Orleans, or supplying
food, water, sanitary or security for the people expected to be sheltered
at the Superdome/convention center.

Again, the request occured before the real catastrophe--the breaking of
the levees.
Note the phrase "as Hurricane Katrina approaches" in this document.
Clearly, you did not read it, to borrow your happy phrase!

Let's cut to the chase, stupid.

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican
form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on
application of the Legislature, or of the executive (when the Legislature
cannot be convened) against domestic violence." Article 4, Section 4.

The concept of "federalism" starts with this. This clause puts absolute
limits on what the federal government can do in disaster recovery. More
about this below.

This clause makes it impossible for Bush to simply take over until ASKED to.

Disaster Relief is codified in the Stafford act. And the Stafford Act
*SPECIFICALLY* requires a formal request from local authorities before
providing material aid.

In addition, the Act pulces the primary RESPONSIBILITY for disaster relief
on local government.

"§ 5121. CONGRESSIONAL FINDINGS AND DECLARATIONS {Sec. 101}
a. The Congress hereby finds and declares that--


1. because disasters often cause loss of life, human suffering, loss of
income, and property loss and damage; and
2. because disasters often disrupt the normal functioning of governments and
communities, and adversely affect individuals and families with great
severity;


special measures, designed to assist the efforts of the affected States in
expediting the rendering of aid, assistance, and emergency services, and the
reconstruction and rehabilitation of devastated areas, are necessary.


b. It is the intent of the Congress, by this Act, to provide an orderly and
continuing means of assistance by the Federal Government to State and local
governments in carrying out their responsibilities to alleviate the
suffering and damage which result from such disasters by--


1. revising and broadening the scope of existing disaster relief programs;
2. encouraging the development of comprehensive disaster preparedness and
assistance plans, programs, capabilities, and organizations by the States
and by local governments;
3. achieving greater coordination and responsiveness of disaster
preparedness and relief programs;
4. encouraging individuals, States, and local governments to protect
themselves by obtaining insurance coverage to supplement or replace
governmental assistance;
5. encouraging hazard mitigation measures to reduce losses from disasters,
including development of land use and construction regulations; and
6. providing Federal assistance programs for both public and private losses
sustained in disasters [.]

(Pub. L. 93-288, title I, § 101, May 22, 1974, 88 Stat. 143; Nov. 23, 1988,
Pub. L. 100-707, title I, § 103(a), 102 Stat. 4689.)"

What part of this do you NOT UNDERSTAND.

The INTENT is to "provide an orderly and continuing means of assistance by
the Federal Government to State and local governments in carrying out their
responsibilities to alleviate the suffering and damage which result..."

And not only that, but the DHS National Response Brochure categorically
states at http://www.dhs.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/NRP_Brochure.pdf

"Emphasis on Local Response

All incidents are handled at the lowest possible
organizational and jurisdictional level. Police, . re, public
health and medical, emergency management, and other
personnel are responsible for incident management at the
local level. For those events that rise to the level of an
Incident of National Signi. cance, DHS provides operational
and/or resource coordination for Federal support to on-scene
incident command structures."


The RESPONSIBILITY for disaster relief lies with the state.

It always has.

And Blanco's 8/28/05 request for FINANCIAL aid was not a request for
MATERIAL AID.

Further, Blanco SPECIFICALLY DID NOT ASK FOR MORE GUARD until Wednesday!

Stop being a partisan asshole. Tell the truth for a change, Bush-Hater!

[ClassWarz]

Post by George
The RESPONSIBILITY for disaster relief lies with the state.
It always has.

All right, I'll make this simple for you so that you may, at last,
understand why the Bush admin shares blame for the NO fiasco:

"If the city and the state are stumbling or in over their head, then it's
FEMA's responsibility to show some leadership," said Jerry Hauer, director
of public health preparedness at the Department of Health and Human
Services.

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/HurricaneKatrina/story?id=1102467&page=2

Yes, Nagin and Bianco bungled--I clearly said that elsewhere in this thread,
but you did not bother to take that in. But no president with an iota of
leadership skill and technical competence would have left the safety of a
million American citizens to the competence of local officials (if Clinton
were President and if he had performed as Bush did, you'd be all over him).
There was plenty Bush could have done to rectify the failure of the locals
to evacuate ALL citizens in the affected area: for starters, he could have
called a televised press conference alerting the press and the locals to the
prospect of a levee breach and he could have said flat out that the local
evacuation measures were incomplete and inadequate. Real leaders lead; they
don't look for excuses.

And, well after the levee breach, when the ball was even more clearly in
FEMA's court, as it were, it was known nationally that conditions at the
Superdome and at the Convention center had deteriorated drastically; FEMA
did not even bother to send in a few truckloads of supplies nor did they act
in a timely manner to quell the criminal gangs who were terrorizing the
occupants of those two hell holes. Bush's FEMA appointee Brown was not
qualified as a disaster relief manager; Brown's prior experience had to do
with Arabian horses. Incompetent leaders appoint incompetent leaders.

Nagin failed, Bianco failed, yes. But Bush failed, Brown failed, and
Chartoff failed. BTW, where the hell is Cheney? Is he still on vacation in
Wyoming?

ClassWarz

[George]

Post by ClassWarz

Post by George
The RESPONSIBILITY for disaster relief lies with the state.
It always has.

All right, I'll make this simple for you so that you may, at last,
"If the city and the state are stumbling or in over their head, then it's
FEMA's responsibility to show some leadership," said Jerry Hauer, director
of public health preparedness at the Department of Health and Human
Services.
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/HurricaneKatrina/story?id=1102467&page=2

The legal "First Resonders" is the City of New Orleans and the State of
Louisiana.

Post by ClassWarz
Yes, Nagin and Bianco bungled--I clearly said that elsewhere in this thread,

I call it DERELICITION OF DUTY, and I think they should be prosecuted.

Post by ClassWarz
but you did not bother to take that in. But no president with an iota of
leadership skill and technical competence would have left the safety of a
million American citizens to the competence of local officials (if Clinton
were President and if he had performed as Bush did, you'd be all over
him). There was plenty Bush could have done to rectify the failure of the
locals to evacuate ALL citizens in the affected area: for starters, he
could have called a televised press conference alerting the press and the
locals to the prospect of a levee breach and he could have said flat out
that the local evacuation measures were incomplete and inadequate. Real
leaders lead; they don't look for excuses.

America does NOT hold Bush to blame.

"Respondents also disagreed widely on who is to blame for the problems in
the city following the hurricane -- 13 percent said Bush, 18 percent said
federal agencies, 25 percent blamed state or local officials and 38 percent
said no one is to blame. And 63 percent said they do not believe anyone at
federal agencies responsible for handling emergencies should be fired as a
result.

In recent days, 62 percent said they believe progress made in dealing with
the situation is satisfactory."
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/07/katrina.poll/

Post by ClassWarz
And, well after the levee breach, when the ball was even more clearly in
FEMA's court, as it were, it was known nationally that conditions at the
Superdome and at the Convention center had deteriorated drastically; FEMA
did not even bother to send in a few truckloads of supplies nor did they
act in a timely manner to quell the criminal gangs who were terrorizing
the occupants of those two hell holes.

Who has the responsibility? New Orleans and Louisiana -- NOT FEMA.

So says other politicians who have "been there, done that."

"Blame Amid the Tragedy
Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin failed their constituents.

BY BOB WILLIAMS
Wednesday, September 7, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

As the devastation of Hurricane Katrina continues to shock and sadden the
nation, the question on many lips is, Who is to blame for the inadequate
response?

As a former state legislator who represented the legislative district most
impacted by the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980, I can fully understand
and empathize with the people and public officials over the loss of life and
property.

Many in the media are turning their eyes toward the federal government,
rather than considering the culpability of city and state officials. I am
fully aware of the challenges of having a quick and responsive emergency
response to a major disaster. And there is definitely a time for
accountability; but what isn't fair is to dump on the federal officials and
avoid those most responsible--local and state officials who failed to do
their job as the first responders. The plain fact is, lives were needlessly
lost in New Orleans due to the failure of Louisiana's governor, Kathleen
Blanco, and the city's mayor, Ray Nagin.

The primary responsibility for dealing with emergencies does not belong to
the federal government. It belongs to local and state officials who are
charged by law with the management of the crucial first response to
disasters. First response should be carried out by local and state emergency
personnel under the supervision of the state governor and his emergency
operations center.

The actions and inactions of Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin are a national
disgrace due to their failure to implement the previously established
evacuation plans of the state and city. Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin cannot
claim that they were surprised by the extent of the damage and the need to
evacuate so many people. Detailed written plans were already in place to
evacuate more than a million people. The plans projected that 300,000 people
would need transportation in the event of a hurricane like Katrina. If the
plans had been implemented, thousands of lives would likely have been saved.

In addition to the plans, local, state and federal officials held a
simulated hurricane drill 13 months ago, in which widespread flooding
supposedly trapped 300,000 people inside New Orleans. The exercise simulated
the evacuation of more than a million residents. The problems identified in
the simulation apparently were not solved.

A year ago, as Hurricane Ivan approached, New Orleans ordered an evacuation
but did not use city or school buses to help people evacuate. As a result
many of the poorest citizens were unable to evacuate. Fortunately, the
hurricane changed course and did not hit New Orleans, but both Gov. Blanco
and Mayor Nagin acknowledged the need for a better evacuation plan. Again,
they did not take corrective actions. In 1998, during a threat by Hurricane
George, 14,000 people were sent to the Superdome and theft and vandalism
were rampant due to inadequate security. Again, these problems were not
corrected.

The New Orleans contingency plan is still, as of this writing, on the city's
Web site, and states: "The safe evacuation of threatened populations is one
of the principle [sic] reasons for developing a Comprehensive Emergency
Management Plan." But the plan was apparently ignored.

Mayor Nagin was responsible for giving the order for mandatory evacuation
and supervising the actual evacuation: His Office of Emergency Preparedness
(not the federal government) must coordinate with the state on elements of
evacuation and assist in directing the transportation of evacuees to staging
areas. Mayor Nagin had to be encouraged by the governor to contact the
National Hurricane Center before he finally, belatedly, issued the order for
mandatory evacuation. And sadly, it apparently took a personal call from the
president to urge the governor to order the mandatory evacuation.

The city's evacuation plan states: "The city of New Orleans will utilize all
available resources to quickly and safely evacuate threatened areas." But
even though the city has enough school and transit buses to evacuate 12,000
citizens per fleet run, the mayor did not use them. To compound the problem,
the buses were not moved to high ground and were flooded. The plan also
states that "special arrangements will be made to evacuate persons unable to
transport themselves or who require specific lifesaving assistance.
Additional personnel will be recruited to assist in evacuation procedures as
needed." This was not done.

The evacuation plan warned that "if an evacuation order is issued without
the mechanisms needed to disseminate the information to the affected
persons, then we face the possibility of having large numbers of people
either stranded and left to the mercy of a storm, or left in an area
impacted by toxic materials." That is precisely what happened because of the
mayor's failure.

Instead of evacuating the people, the mayor ordered the refugees to the
Superdome and Convention Center without adequate security and no provisions
for food, water and sanitary conditions. As a result people died, and there
was even rape committed, in these facilities. Mayor Nagin failed in his
responsibility to provide public safety and to manage the orderly evacuation
of the citizens of New Orleans. Now he wants to blame Gov. Blanco and the
Federal Emergency Management Agency. In an emergency the first requirement
is for the city's emergency center to be linked to the state emergency
operations center. This was not done.

The federal government does not have the authority to intervene in a state
emergency without the request of a governor. President Bush declared an
emergency prior to Katrina hitting New Orleans, so the only action needed
for federal assistance was for Gov. Blanco to request the specific type of
assistance she needed. She failed to send a timely request for specific aid.

In addition, unlike the governors of New York, Oklahoma and California in
past disasters, Gov. Blanco failed to take charge of the situation and
ensure that the state emergency operation facility was in constant contact
with Mayor Nagin and FEMA. It is likely that thousands of people died
because of the failure of Gov. Blanco to implement the state plan, which
mentions the possible need to evacuate up to one million people. The plan
clearly gives the governor the authority for declaring an emergency, sending
in state resources to the disaster area and requesting necessary federal
assistance."
[http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007219]



Nagin did NOT use the buses to evacuate people. In fact he let them get
DESTROYED by the flood instead of moving them to high ground. And you think
you can blame George W. Bush for this?

Without Nagin's buses to evacuate people, PEOPLE DIED! It's ONLY reason
they died! BUSH/FEMA HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS!

And this opinion is starting to be shared by more and more media...

"Don't blame only feds

Crime rate, inept pols leveled New Orleans before the storm

Let's take a break from the joy of Bush bashing to reveal the dirty little
secret of New Orleans: Its local government deserves an F for its planning
and response to Katrina. And one other thing: The New Orleans police force
would be a joke if it weren't a disgrace.

Yes, I know it's impolitic to say such things while the suffering in the Big
Easy is fresh and many cops risked their lives to save others. But now is
the time to blow the whistle on the story line being repeated by rote across
America: That the federal government ignored New Orleans because most of its
residents are black and poor....

...The charge of racism-inspired foot-dragging isn't just nonsense. It's
pernicious nonsense, as in destructive and malicious. You know that's a fact
because loony Howard Dean, the Democratic Party boss, is now peddling it.
He's joined by Jesse Jackson, who said the squalor in New Orleans "looks
like the hull of a slave ship." Oh, please.

If even a smidgen of the racism charges are true, President Bush should be
shot. But before we give him his blindfold, let's look at New Orleans before
Katrina.

Start with crime. That looters ran unchecked after the hurricane isn't
surprising when you consider that criminals have had the run of the city for
years.

It is a perennial contender for Murder Capital. The 264 homicides last year
were a drop of only 11 from 2003 - and the first decline in five years.

New Orleans, with fewer than 500,000 people, had almost half the murders of
New York, which had 570 homicides last year in a city of more than 8
million. Put another way, if New York had New Orleans' murder rate, we would
have more than 4,200 murders a year.

That the New Orleans police are hardly the Finest was proven by a shocking
report yesterday: Nearly a third of New Orleans cops - some 500 of the
1,600 - are now unaccounted for. The department says some quit, but it
doesn't know where most of them are.

The top cop, Eddie Compass, has responded by offering all officers paid
vacations to Las Vegas and Atlanta. Yes, that's right - he is pulling all
cops off the street, even while bodies lie in the open. Never in New York.

Then there's Mayor Ray Nagin, a Democrat, who has blamed everybody but
himself. Maybe he has forgotten his plans for dealing with Katrina.

Last July, his office prepared DVDs warning that, if the city ever had to be
evacuated, residents were on their own. According toa July 24 article in The
Times-Picayune (spotted by the Web's Drudge Report), "Mayor Ray Nagin, local
Red Cross Executive Director Kay Wilkins and City Council President Oliver
Thomas drive home the word that the city does not have the resources to move
out of harm's way an estimated 134,000 people without transportation."

"You're responsible for your safety, and you should be responsible for the
person next to you," one official said of the message.

And how's this for preparation? Cops were told not to work on the day
Katrina hit, one officer told The New York Times, but "to come in the next
day, to save money on their budget."

By all means, let's investigate what went wrong in New Orleans. Let's start
in City Hall. "

[Michael Goodwin, "Don't blame only feds ", 9/7/2005,
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/344065p-293598c.html]

Those people were robbed, raped, murdered, in the Superdome/convention
center and on the streets of NOLA, were victims ONLY because the COPS were
not on duty -- because Nagin considered his budget more important than his
people.

And

"I guess there is no way to avoid getting into the finger-pointing contest
taking place in connection with the New Orleans disaster. New Orleans is a
corrupt city in an extremely corrupt state, and the state and local response
to the hurricane was inept and irresponsible, and now the ineffective locals
are doing their best to shift the blame onto President Bush, Congress, and
FEMA. And the liberal press and the Democratic Party are helping them.

Let's start with one simple fact. States and cities bear primary
responsibility for preparing for and responding to their own problems, and
Louisiana and New Orleans get a big fat "F" for their efforts. They can
blame Bush all they want, but the fact remains, they blew it big-time and
caused a catastrophe to which an adequate federal response was virtually
impossible. It's amazing, how talking heads and Democrat politicians-and
even some Louisiana Republicans-are trying to make this a federal failure.
When did the federal government become society's diaper? If you don't take
reasonable care of yourselves, shouldn't you expect to have terrible
problems while Uncle Sam gears up to save you from yourself? How can anyone
pretend to be surprised, or that the federal government is chiefly to blame?

Look at the failures on the local level.
1. Locals chose not to pay for an adequate flood control system. It was well
within their means, and they had almost three hundred years to get it done.
When they complain about the "Bush-Dominated" Congress's evil refusal to
foot the whole bill, and they tell us how much more money was needed, they
themselves quote a figure of about sixty million dollars. Don't tell me an
entire state couldn't come up with sixty million dollars. As a reader of
mine pointed out, they somehow came up with a hundred and thirty-eight
million dollars to pay for a football stadium. But they chose to buy a
Category Three system instead of the obviously necessary Category Five
system. Now the bill will be in the tens of billions of dollars, and
thousands of people are dead. And who believes that flood control
improvements funded during the Bush administration would have been finished
by the time Katrina arrived? It helps if your political career depends on
believing it.

2. After assuring eventual disaster by refusing to pay for flood control
projects, local officials failed to respond quickly enough to the threat of
storm damage. They had a plan in place, and they failed to follow it. They
were aware that many citizens had no transportation, yet they failed to
identify them and take them to shelters. Here in Florida (and everywhere
else), we respond to the approach of hurricanes by notifying FEMA, setting
up shelters, and issuing evacuation orders well in advance of landfall. The
mayor of New Orleans and other local officials dragged their feet. They
didn't even open the Superdome to evacuees until noon on the day before the
hurricane, and at first, they limited access to people with special needs.
And the governor, who must request federal aid before Washington can come in
and provide it, didn't formally invite the feds in until Monday. Florida's
Democrat governor Lawton Chiles did the same thing after Andrew, and then he
complained about FEMA's slow response. A bureaucrat's prime directive is
"Cover your behind at all costs, and if you can blame your enemies in the
process, so much the better."

The failure of local officials is even more shocking when you realize that
New Orleans-as they well knew-is a city built in a bowl surrounded by dirty
water. A city whose floodwalls and levees were expected to fail in a severe
storm.

3. A large number of local citizens refused to evacuate, ensuring that they
and their children and pets would die. We're not supposed to talk about
this, because it's "blaming the victims." I'm sorry to ask this, but when a
person is a victim because of his own irresponsibility or bad judgment,
isn't it an injustice to blame his suffering on someone else? In the course
of ordinary life, when a parent makes an irresponsible choice that leads to
the death of a child, do we exonerate them because of their searing,
constant emotional pain? To the contrary. We do our best to put them in
jail....

...4. The New Orleans police have disappeared. A deputy commander had the
gall to blame the National Guard for taking two whole days to show up, and
then for amusing themselves during down time by playing cards. Meanwhile,
his own officers are gone, and some are too busy shoplifting to do their
jobs. According to the National Guard, the New Orleans police department has
"disintegrated," and part of the delay in restoring the city was caused by
the need to obtain troops to replace the police. But somehow, the disorder
is the Guard's fault. Here's what happened here: many of the deputy
commander's subordinates proved cowardly and selfish, and they abandoned
their jobs, and in order to avoid responsibility, he's launching a
preemptive PR/CYA strike on the very people who are now doing his job for
him.

5. Evacuation holdouts are shooting at the police and the Guard and
contractors and everyone else they can draw a bead on. Call me crazy, but I
think this discourages and slows down rescue efforts. General Honore has
confirmed that in interviews. Even liberal Sean Penn wore a bulletproof vest
on his highly publicized rescue missions. Here in Miami, after Andrew,
people shot looters, not the police (who stayed on the job, unlike the New
Orleans cops).

Sure, the federal response could have been better. That's what happens when
you shift your own responsibilities to the federal government. Like the
flooding of the city, this was expected. Has anyone in New Orleans or the
MSM been awake during the last two hundred years? Has the federal government
EVER responded to a national disaster in less than two days? The federal
government is like an ocean liner. It doesn't start and stop quickly. Local
government, when it works properly, is much more responsive. You don't call
the FBI when you see a burglar in your yard. You call the local police.
Similarly, you don't wait for Washington to build your floodwalls and
evacuate your citizens. New Orleans had buses. It had trains and planes.
There were places it could have set up temporary shelters, and they could
have been set up well before landfall. And the disaster should never have
occurred in the first place; locals should have looked after their own flood
control needs. But as I said, Uncle Sam is society's diaper, so none of that
matters.

Two things are going on here. First, local bureaucrats are sweating bullets.
They let down their constituents-with fatal results-and they know they're in
trouble, and a bureaucrat, by definition, cares more about his job than
anything. Imagine how you would feel, if you screwed up at work and caused
thousands of people to die. So they're desperate to find other people to
blame. Second, for a long time, Democrats have had a policy of responding to
every national development by finding some way to use it to hammer Bush. And
this is just another example...

...Democrats and local officials are so intoxicated with Bush Blame Disease
that they are actually calling for post-Katrina hearings. If they get them,
they'll find comparatively minor federal failings and egregious,
unconscionable local failings. Ray Nagin will be burned at the stake.
Governor Blanco may be the first liberal who actually has to move to
France."

[Steve H. Grahmam, "CYA is a Big Bob," 9/7/2005,
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-9_6_05_SH.html]

The actions of Nagin/Blanco BEFORE the storm hit, cost the lives of
everybody who died.

Bush/FEMA cannot raise the dead -- the ones killed by Nagin's and Blanco's
incompetence and dereliction of duty.

Post by ClassWarz
Bush's FEMA appointee Brown was not qualified as a disaster relief manager;
Brown's prior experience had to do with Arabian horses. Incompetent
leaders appoint incompetent leaders.

On the other hand, Ray Nagin is *proven* to be unqualified to be the mayor
of a major US city, and Kathleen Blanco is *proven* to be unqualified to be
governor of a state.

People like you should compare the federal government response for this
hurricane to that of Andrew.

The people DIED because of Nagin and Blanco, not Bush/FEMA.

Post by ClassWarz
Nagin failed, Bianco failed, yes. But Bush failed,

87% of Americans disagree with you. See:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/07/katrina.poll/

Post by ClassWarz
Brown failed, and Chartoff failed.

82% of Americans disagree with you.

"62 percent said they believe progress made in dealing with the situation is
satisfactory" [Ibid.]

America is "adult enough" to understand that this disaster is unprecidented.

"...for a long time, Democrats have had a policy of responding to every
national development by finding some way to use it to hammer Bush. And this
is just another example..." [Graham]

America knows this and that is why they reject YOUR premise.

Post by ClassWarz
BTW, where the hell is Cheney? Is he still on vacation in Wyoming?

Where was Kerry? On vacation in France? How come Teddy Kennedy wasn't
helping out rescuing people from the water -- oops, never mind. I already
know the answer to that question!

[ClassWarz]

Post by George

Post by ClassWarz

Post by George
The RESPONSIBILITY for disaster relief lies with the state.
It always has.

All right, I'll make this simple for you so that you may, at last,
"If the city and the state are stumbling or in over their head, then it's
FEMA's responsibility to show some leadership," said Jerry Hauer,
director of public health preparedness at the Department of Health and
Human Services.
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/HurricaneKatrina/story?id=1102467&page=2

The legal "First Resonders" is the City of New Orleans and the State of
Louisiana.

Yes, that is true. And, they did mess up badly.

But the national leader is George W. Bush. There's more to being a leader
during an emergency than quibbling over legal niceties. In an emergency,
leaders act decisively; they don't wait for others to act and they
understand that emergencies require the cutting of red tape to ensure the
safety of the citizenry.

Post by George

Post by ClassWarz
Yes, Nagin and Bianco bungled--I clearly said that elsewhere in this thread,

I call it DERELICITION OF DUTY, and I think they should be prosecuted.

True, they ought to have done whatever it takes to get the disabled and
otherwise immobile citizens out of the path of a Cat 5 hurricane, of course.
And, they had the means to do so; even if the drivers had all left, as the
mayor said, it is not hard to drive a school bus--he ought to have flagged
down drivers off the street if that is what it took. A real leader would
have acted directly to get his citizens out, no matter what. That's what
marshal law is for.

Post by George

Post by ClassWarz
but you did not bother to take that in. But no president with an iota of
leadership skill and technical competence would have left the safety of a
million American citizens to the competence of local officials (if
Clinton were President and if he had performed as Bush did, you'd be all
over him). There was plenty Bush could have done to rectify the failure
of the locals to evacuate ALL citizens in the affected area: for
starters, he could have called a televised press conference alerting the
press and the locals to the prospect of a levee breach and he could have
said flat out that the local evacuation measures were incomplete and
inadequate. Real leaders lead; they don't look for excuses.

America does NOT hold Bush to blame.

This poll begs to differ:

"Last week, in the two days immediately after Katrina made landfall, a
majority of Americans said they approved of Bush's response, although more
than a third were not sure. Now, only 38% approve."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/08/opinion/polls/main824591.shtml

Seventy percent say that the federal response was inadequate. The same
holds true for the state and local government.

Post by George
"Respondents also disagreed widely on who is to blame for the problems in
the city following the hurricane -- 13 percent said Bush, 18 percent said
federal agencies, 25 percent blamed state or local officials and 38
percent said no one is to blame. And 63 percent said they do not believe
anyone at federal agencies responsible for handling emergencies should be
fired as a result.
In recent days, 62 percent said they believe progress made in dealing with
the situation is satisfactory."
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/07/katrina.poll/

Post by ClassWarz
And, well after the levee breach, when the ball was even more clearly in
FEMA's court, as it were, it was known nationally that conditions at the
Superdome and at the Convention center had deteriorated drastically; FEMA
did not even bother to send in a few truckloads of supplies nor did they
act in a timely manner to quell the criminal gangs who were terrorizing
the occupants of those two hell holes.

Who has the responsibility? New Orleans and Louisiana -- NOT FEMA.

Yes, FEMA.

FEMA was formed in the aftermath of Camille because the response to that
disaster was inadequate as well.

Hey, there are now a lot of Republicans who agree with me:


"Sen. Trent Lott, a Mississippi Republican who lost his coastal home in the
storm, said Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown's job
is in jeopardy."

""If he doesn't solve a couple of problems that we've got right now he ain't
going to be able to hold the job, because what I'm going to do to him ain't
going to be pretty," Lott said on CBS."



http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=uri:2005-09-07T064447Z_01_BAU471101_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-KATRINA-DC.XML&pageNumber=1&summit=

Post by George
So says other politicians who have "been there, done that."
"Blame Amid the Tragedy
Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin failed their constituents.
BY BOB WILLIAMS
Wednesday, September 7, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
As the devastation of Hurricane Katrina continues to shock and sadden the
nation, the question on many lips is, Who is to blame for the inadequate
response?
As a former state legislator who represented the legislative district most
impacted by the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980, I can fully understand
and empathize with the people and public officials over the loss of life and
property.
Many in the media are turning their eyes toward the federal government,
rather than considering the culpability of city and state officials. I am
fully aware of the challenges of having a quick and responsive emergency
response to a major disaster. And there is definitely a time for
accountability; but what isn't fair is to dump on the federal officials and
avoid those most responsible--local and state officials who failed to do
their job as the first responders. The plain fact is, lives were needlessly
lost in New Orleans due to the failure of Louisiana's governor, Kathleen
Blanco, and the city's mayor, Ray Nagin.

True, but Bush as national leader ought to have recognized their
shortcomings and moved to step in. Why wasn't Bush monitoring the approach
of a serious Cat 5 storm in real time? Why weren't the feds monitoring the
local response? Tens of thousands of lives were left in the hands of the
local officials; oughtn't an 'event of national significance' demand that
the feds intervene? They DID have the authority to act.

Politicians, both national and local, are mostly businessmen and lawyers in
private life. Why are emergencies of this magnitude left to politicians and
not handed over to trained technical specialists? A military man trained in
logistics and emergency management ought to have been at the top in FEMA;
instead we got a horse guy chosen for his buddy skills with Bushco.

Post by George
The primary responsibility for dealing with emergencies does not belong to
the federal government. It belongs to local and state officials who are
charged by law with the management of the crucial first response to
disasters. First response should be carried out by local and state emergency
personnel under the supervision of the state governor and his emergency
operations center.
The actions and inactions of Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin are a national
disgrace due to their failure to implement the previously established
evacuation plans of the state and city. Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin cannot
claim that they were surprised by the extent of the damage and the need to
evacuate so many people. Detailed written plans were already in place to
evacuate more than a million people. The plans projected that 300,000 people
would need transportation in the event of a hurricane like Katrina. If the
plans had been implemented, thousands of lives would likely have been saved.
In addition to the plans, local, state and federal officials held a
simulated hurricane drill 13 months ago, in which widespread flooding
supposedly trapped 300,000 people inside New Orleans. The exercise simulated
the evacuation of more than a million residents. The problems identified in
the simulation apparently were not solved.

No, not by the feds either.

Post by George
A year ago, as Hurricane Ivan approached, New Orleans ordered an evacuation
but did not use city or school buses to help people evacuate. As a result
many of the poorest citizens were unable to evacuate. Fortunately, the
hurricane changed course and did not hit New Orleans, but both Gov. Blanco
and Mayor Nagin acknowledged the need for a better evacuation plan. Again,
they did not take corrective actions. In 1998, during a threat by Hurricane
George, 14,000 people were sent to the Superdome and theft and vandalism
were rampant due to inadequate security. Again, these problems were not
corrected.

True, but the it is the responsibility of the feds to monitor the locals and
if they cannot correct incompetence locally for legal or whatever reasons,
then they ought to alert the citizens in the affected areas as soon as they
are aware of the deficiency. Bush could still have acted upon his authority
to declare the disaster "an event of national significance."

And, after the storm hit, there was much more that Bush could have done.

Post by George
The New Orleans contingency plan is still, as of this writing, on the city's
Web site, and states: "The safe evacuation of threatened populations is one
of the principle [sic] reasons for developing a Comprehensive Emergency
Management Plan." But the plan was apparently ignored.
Mayor Nagin was responsible for giving the order for mandatory evacuation
and supervising the actual evacuation: His Office of Emergency
Preparedness
(not the federal government) must coordinate with the state on elements of
evacuation and assist in directing the transportation of evacuees to staging
areas. Mayor Nagin had to be encouraged by the governor to contact the
National Hurricane Center before he finally, belatedly, issued the order for
mandatory evacuation. And sadly, it apparently took a personal call from the
president to urge the governor to order the mandatory evacuation.
The city's evacuation plan states: "The city of New Orleans will utilize all
available resources to quickly and safely evacuate threatened areas." But
even though the city has enough school and transit buses to evacuate 12,000
citizens per fleet run, the mayor did not use them. To compound the problem,
the buses were not moved to high ground and were flooded. The plan also
states that "special arrangements will be made to evacuate persons unable to
transport themselves or who require specific lifesaving assistance.
Additional personnel will be recruited to assist in evacuation procedures as
needed." This was not done.

True, but this is an event of national significance too.

Solid national leadership means that the President is to move decisively to
correct any local deficiencies.

More is expected from the President of the United States than a young Mayor
of New Orleans.

Post by George
The evacuation plan warned that "if an evacuation order is issued without
the mechanisms needed to disseminate the information to the affected
persons, then we face the possibility of having large numbers of people
either stranded and left to the mercy of a storm, or left in an area
impacted by toxic materials." That is precisely what happened because of the
mayor's failure.

Yes, true.

And, the President left the fate of the poor and disabled in New Orleans to
a panicky local mayor.

Post by George
Instead of evacuating the people, the mayor ordered the refugees to the
Superdome and Convention Center without adequate security and no provisions
for food, water and sanitary conditions. As a result people died, and there
was even rape committed, in these facilities. Mayor Nagin failed in his
responsibility to provide public safety and to manage the orderly evacuation
of the citizens of New Orleans. Now he wants to blame Gov. Blanco and the
Federal Emergency Management Agency. In an emergency the first requirement
is for the city's emergency center to be linked to the state emergency
operations center. This was not done.

The feds knew that conditions at the center and at the dome had deteriorated
for days, but did not even bother to send a few truckloads of water into the
dome or the center; this at a time when reporters were able to hop a taxi to
both hell holes via the back streets. Now the blame game devolves into the
excuse game for the feds; excuses do not get water to the dehydrated.

Post by George
The federal government does not have the authority to intervene in a state
emergency without the request of a governor. President Bush declared an
emergency prior to Katrina hitting New Orleans, so the only action needed
for federal assistance was for Gov. Blanco to request the specific type of
assistance she needed. She failed to send a timely request for specific aid.

Very very lame. The public's not buying it and you shouldn't be selling it.

This excuse satifies only the stauchest Bush apologists; no real leader
would resort to something this weak.

So, are you saying that Bush did not move in because Blanco and Nagin would
have thrown them out?

C'mon, the spin doctors are going to have to do a lot better than that!

Post by George
In addition, unlike the governors of New York, Oklahoma and California in
past disasters, Gov. Blanco failed to take charge of the situation and
ensure that the state emergency operation facility was in constant contact
with Mayor Nagin and FEMA. It is likely that thousands of people died
because of the failure of Gov. Blanco to implement the state plan, which
mentions the possible need to evacuate up to one million people. The plan
clearly gives the governor the authority for declaring an emergency, sending
in state resources to the disaster area and requesting necessary federal
assistance."
[http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007219]

The feds knew the hurricane was coming too. Get real. Excuses don't save
lives.

Post by George
Nagin did NOT use the buses to evacuate people. In fact he let them get
DESTROYED by the flood instead of moving them to high ground. And you think
you can blame George W. Bush for this?

Yes, the buck stops with the national leadership when a crisis of this
magnitude looms.

Post by George
Without Nagin's buses to evacuate people, PEOPLE DIED! It's ONLY reason
they died! BUSH/FEMA HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS!
And this opinion is starting to be shared by more and more media...
"Don't blame only feds
Crime rate, inept pols leveled New Orleans before the storm
Let's take a break from the joy of Bush bashing to reveal the dirty little
secret of New Orleans: Its local government deserves an F for its planning
and response to Katrina. And one other thing: The New Orleans police force
would be a joke if it weren't a disgrace.

Both the locals and the feds responded weakly to the disaster, both are
responsible to respond in an event of this magnitude, and both are to blame
for the failures.

Hey, guess who cut funding for the NO levees from 110 million to forty
million while allocating 220 million for a bridge to nowhere in Alaska: the
Republican-controlled Congress!

Post by George
Yes, I know it's impolitic to say such things while the suffering in the Big
Easy is fresh and many cops risked their lives to save others. But now is
the time to blow the whistle on the story line being repeated by rote across
America: That the federal government ignored New Orleans because most of its
residents are black and poor....

Bush never visited the dome or the center....

Post by George
...The charge of racism-inspired foot-dragging isn't just nonsense. It's
pernicious nonsense, as in destructive and malicious. You know that's a fact
because loony Howard Dean, the Democratic Party boss, is now peddling it.
He's joined by Jesse Jackson, who said the squalor in New Orleans "looks
like the hull of a slave ship." Oh, please.

The center did look like the hull of a slave ship. Were the center full of
middle class whites, food, water and police aid would have been rushed well
before the disabled were dying of dehydration.

Racism is real and it affected the response at the center and at the dome.

Post by George
If even a smidgen of the racism charges are true, President Bush should be
shot. But before we give him his blindfold, let's look at New Orleans before
Katrina.
Start with crime. That looters ran unchecked after the hurricane isn't
surprising when you consider that criminals have had the run of the city for
years.

Nonsense, even the general in charge of the military response called these
incidents isolated. Most 'looters' were looking for water and food; white
'looters' were not even given that label at all--to the media they were just
trying to survive. Even the cops were 'looting' from a local Wal-Mart.

Post by George
It is a perennial contender for Murder Capital. The 264 homicides last year
were a drop of only 11 from 2003 - and the first decline in five years.
New Orleans, with fewer than 500,000 people, had almost half the murders of
New York, which had 570 homicides last year in a city of more than 8
million. Put another way, if New York had New Orleans' murder rate, we would
have more than 4,200 murders a year.

Poverty and bigotry down south creates the social conditions that result in
a high murder rate.

Post by George
That the New Orleans police are hardly the Finest was proven by a shocking
report yesterday: Nearly a third of New Orleans cops - some 500 of the
1,600 - are now unaccounted for. The department says some quit, but it
doesn't know where most of them are.

Many lost their own homes and were panicked over the state of their own
families.

Post by George
The top cop, Eddie Compass, has responded by offering all officers paid
vacations to Las Vegas and Atlanta. Yes, that's right - he is pulling all
cops off the street, even while bodies lie in the open. Never in New York.
Then there's Mayor Ray Nagin, a Democrat, who has blamed everybody but
himself. Maybe he has forgotten his plans for dealing with Katrina.
Last July, his office prepared DVDs warning that, if the city ever had to be
evacuated, residents were on their own. According toa July 24 article in The
Times-Picayune (spotted by the Web's Drudge Report), "Mayor Ray Nagin, local
Red Cross Executive Director Kay Wilkins and City Council President Oliver
Thomas drive home the word that the city does not have the resources to move
out of harm's way an estimated 134,000 people without transportation."
"You're responsible for your safety, and you should be responsible for the
person next to you," one official said of the message.
And how's this for preparation? Cops were told not to work on the day
Katrina hit, one officer told The New York Times, but "to come in the next
day, to save money on their budget."
By all means, let's investigate what went wrong in New Orleans. Let's start
in City Hall. "
[Michael Goodwin, "Don't blame only feds ", 9/7/2005,
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/344065p-293598c.html]

Not exactly an impartial source.

Nagin is to blame for much, but one cannot leave management of a Cat 5
hurricane to the limited resources of City Hall.

Post by George
Those people were robbed, raped, murdered, in the Superdome/convention
center and on the streets of NOLA, were victims ONLY because the COPS were
not on duty -- because Nagin considered his budget more important than his
people.

The feds knew about this too as it was occurring. They failed to act. They
choose political spin, weak excuses, and now, even censorship instead of
action. FEMA is so worried about Bush's image that it is telling the press
to stop showing pictures of the dead, even when photographed with IDing the
victim, say from afar or with the face out of view.

Bushco has spent more time whitewashing its image than acting to relieve the
disaster.

Post by George
And
"I guess there is no way to avoid getting into the finger-pointing contest
taking place in connection with the New Orleans disaster. New Orleans is a
corrupt city in an extremely corrupt state, and the state and local response
to the hurricane was inept and irresponsible, and now the ineffective locals
are doing their best to shift the blame onto President Bush, Congress, and
FEMA. And the liberal press and the Democratic Party are helping them.

So if the locals were known to be corrupt, that's all the more reason for
Bush to act decisively; this author is saying that Bush left the fate of
thousands to the actions of officials known to be corrupt, inept and
irresponsible! So that proves that Bush is just as inept and irresponsible!

Action was what was required from Bushco--not "wait and see how the locals
do."

Post by George
Let's start with one simple fact. States and cities bear primary
responsibility for preparing for and responding to their own problems, and
Louisiana and New Orleans get a big fat "F" for their efforts. They can
blame Bush all they want, but the fact remains, they blew it big-time and
caused a catastrophe to which an adequate federal response was virtually
impossible.

False, this is an outright lie. The precarious state of the City was known
at the national level for years and years. It was even on a National
Geographic special I saw back in the seventies; it was common knowledge.
There was plenty of opportunity for the feds to shore up these levees so
that they could deal with a Cat 5 storm. If we can spend 200 mill for a
bridge to nowhere in Alaska...

Post by George
It's amazing, how talking heads and Democrat politicians-and
even some Louisiana Republicans-are trying to make this a federal failure.
When did the federal government become society's diaper? If you don't take
reasonable care of yourselves, shouldn't you expect to have terrible
problems while Uncle Sam gears up to save you from yourself? How can anyone
pretend to be surprised, or that the federal government is chiefly to blame?

Society decided that this was a federal responsibility after the lack of
response to the Camille storm.

The Gulf inhabitants pay taxes, die in our wars, and contribute to our
economy and to our culture; they are NOT looking for society's diaper. They
deserve an adequate response; they've paid for it.

Post by George
Look at the failures on the local level.
1. Locals chose not to pay for an adequate flood control system. It was well
within their means, and they had almost three hundred years to get it done.

A quarter-truth. Ask the locals about what has been done upriver by the
Army Corps of Engineers. Ask them how the hurricane-abating marshes south
of the city have diminished to half of what they are now. I leave the
research to the reader as an exercise.

Post by George
When they complain about the "Bush-Dominated" Congress's evil refusal to
foot the whole bill, and they tell us how much more money was needed, they
themselves quote a figure of about sixty million dollars. Don't tell me an
entire state couldn't come up with sixty million dollars. As a reader of
mine pointed out, they somehow came up with a hundred and thirty-eight
million dollars to pay for a football stadium. But they chose to buy a
Category Three system instead of the obviously necessary Category Five
system. Now the bill will be in the tens of billions of dollars, and
thousands of people are dead. And who believes that flood control
improvements funded during the Bush administration would have been finished
by the time Katrina arrived? It helps if your political career depends on
believing it.

More pass the buck. The feds spend oodles and boodles of dollars on pet
pork projects; they knew of the danger in NO and they could have acted
alone.

Post by George
2. After assuring eventual disaster by refusing to pay for flood control
projects, local officials failed to respond quickly enough to the threat of
storm damage. They had a plan in place, and they failed to follow it. They
were aware that many citizens had no transportation, yet they failed to
identify them and take them to shelters. Here in Florida (and everywhere
else), we respond to the approach of hurricanes by notifying FEMA, setting
up shelters, and issuing evacuation orders well in advance of landfall. The
mayor of New Orleans and other local officials dragged their feet. They
didn't even open the Superdome to evacuees until noon on the day before the
hurricane, and at first, they limited access to people with special needs.
And the governor, who must request federal aid before Washington can come in
and provide it, didn't formally invite the feds in until Monday. Florida's
Democrat governor Lawton Chiles did the same thing after Andrew, and then he
complained about FEMA's slow response. A bureaucrat's prime directive is
"Cover your behind at all costs, and if you can blame your enemies in the
process, so much the better."

Weak and lame. I'll bet if anyone said that point blank to a survivor they
would end up with a broken nose.

Excuses, excuses. Bush, who wrongly took credit for acting decisively post
9-11, now wants to pass the buck for his indecision and incompetence.

Post by George
The failure of local officials is even more shocking when you realize that
New Orleans-as they well knew-is a city built in a bowl surrounded by dirty
water. A city whose floodwalls and levees were expected to fail in a severe
storm.

The feds knew too.

Post by George
3. A large number of local citizens refused to evacuate, ensuring that they
and their children and pets would die. We're not supposed to talk about
this, because it's "blaming the victims." I'm sorry to ask this, but when a
person is a victim because of his own irresponsibility or bad judgment,
isn't it an injustice to blame his suffering on someone else? In the course
of ordinary life, when a parent makes an irresponsible choice that leads to
the death of a child, do we exonerate them because of their searing,
constant emotional pain? To the contrary. We do our best to put them in
jail....

Most refused to evacuate because they had no money for a hotel, no relatives
or friends to stay with, had no means of transport, or were disabled. Not
everyone follows the news either.

Post by George
...4. The New Orleans police have disappeared. A deputy commander had the
gall to blame the National Guard for taking two whole days to show up, and
then for amusing themselves during down time by playing cards. Meanwhile,
his own officers are gone, and some are too busy shoplifting to do their
jobs. According to the National Guard, the New Orleans police department has
"disintegrated," and part of the delay in restoring the city was caused by
the need to obtain troops to replace the police. But somehow, the disorder
is the Guard's fault. Here's what happened here: many of the deputy
commander's subordinates proved cowardly and selfish, and they abandoned
their jobs, and in order to avoid responsibility, he's launching a
preemptive PR/CYA strike on the very people who are now doing his job for
him.

I've been to NO and I am aware of the local problems. Bush has been there
too, and ought to have been aware and he ought to have acted out of that
awareness. The President is expected to act to a higher standard, not the
same standard.

Post by George
5. Evacuation holdouts are shooting at the police and the Guard and
contractors and everyone else they can draw a bead on. Call me crazy, but I
think this discourages and slows down rescue efforts. General Honore has
confirmed that in interviews. Even liberal Sean Penn wore a bulletproof vest
on his highly publicized rescue missions. Here in Miami, after Andrew,
people shot looters, not the police (who stayed on the job, unlike the New
Orleans cops).

Isolated incidents, according to our own military, who were equipped to deal
with a few snipers.

Blown out of proportion here in hopes of whitewashing the weak federal
response.

Post by George
Sure, the federal response could have been better.

Bush said so himself.

Post by George
That's what happens when
you shift your own responsibilities to the federal government. Like the
flooding of the city, this was expected. Has anyone in New Orleans or the
MSM been awake during the last two hundred years? Has the federal government
EVER responded to a national disaster in less than two days? The federal
government is like an ocean liner. It doesn't start and stop quickly. Local
government, when it works properly, is much more responsive. You don't call
the FBI when you see a burglar in your yard. You call the local police.
Similarly, you don't wait for Washington to build your floodwalls and
evacuate your citizens. New Orleans had buses. It had trains and planes.
There were places it could have set up temporary shelters, and they could
have been set up well before landfall. And the disaster should never have
occurred in the first place; locals should have looked after their own flood
control needs. But as I said, Uncle Sam is society's diaper, so none of that
matters.

I pay taxes so that the feds can come to the aid of Americans, and not just
to the aid of wealthy, privileged conservatives; the feds pay 200 billion a
year in corporate welfare--talk about society's diaper!

Post by George
Two things are going on here. First, local bureaucrats are sweating bullets.
They let down their constituents-with fatal results-and they know they're in
trouble, and a bureaucrat, by definition, cares more about his job than
anything. Imagine how you would feel, if you screwed up at work and caused
thousands of people to die. So they're desperate to find other people to
blame. Second, for a long time, Democrats have had a policy of responding to
every national development by finding some way to use it to hammer Bush. And
this is just another example...

Bush is to blame for the weak response and for the failure to evacuate the
poor and disabled, just as Nagin and Blanco are.

That is the objective truth of the matter. Here is an objective view from
the BBC (who are not interested in American political spin):


This BBC article provides a level-headed picture of the events that led to
the response failures before, during, and after the Katrina disaster:



quote



Multiple failures caused relief crisis


Analysis


By Paul Reynolds
World Affairs correspondent, BBC News website




The breakdown of the relief operation in New Orleans was the result of
multiple failures by city, state and federal authorities.

There was no one cause. The failures began long before the hurricane with a
gamble that a Category Four or Five hurricane would not strike New Orleans.

They continued with an inadequate evacuation plan and culminated in a relief
effort hampered by lack of planning, supplies and manpower, and a breakdown
in communications of the most basic sort.

On top of all this, there is the question of whether an earlier intervention
by President Bush could have a made a big difference.

The planning

Before Hurricane Katrina struck, the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(Fema) was confident that it was ready. Its director, Michael Brown, said:
"Fema has pre-positioned many assets including ice, water, food and rescue
teams to move into the stricken areas as soon as it is safe to do so."

Mr Brown even told the Associated Press news agency that the evacuation had
gone well. "I was impressed with the evacuation, once it was ordered it was
very smooth," he said.

Yet on Saturday 28 August, the day before the evacuation was ordered, Mr
Brown did not say that people should leave the city. All he said was:

"There's still time to take action now, but you must be prepared and take
shelter and other emergency precautions immediately."

This has made Fema appear complacent in the period immediately before the
hurricane arrived. If it did not expect the worst, it would not have
prepared for the worst.

The Brown statement went out on the same day that the National Hurricane
Center was warning that Katrina was strengthening to the top Category Five.
Everyone knew the dangers of a Category Five. A Fema exercise last year
called "Hurricane Pam" had looked at a Category Three, and that was bad
enough.

The evacuation

It was announced at a news conference by the Mayor Ray Nagin on Sunday 28
August, less than 24 hours before the hurricane struck early the next
morning.

The question has to be asked: Why was it not ordered earlier?

The Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco said at the same news conference that
President Bush had called and personally appealed for a mandatory
evacuation.

The night before, National Hurricane Director Max Mayfield had called Mayor
Nagin to tell him that an evacuation was needed. Why were these calls
necessary?

Again, as with Fema, the New Orleans mayor should have known that on the
Saturday, Katrina was strengthening to Five.

It was already clear on the Sunday that the evacuation would not cover many
of the poor, the sick and those who did not pay heed.

The mayor said people going to the Superdome, a sports venue named as an
alternative destination for those unable to leave, should bring supplies for
several days. He also said police could commandeer any vehicle for the
evacuation.

But how much support was there at the Superdome? And how much city transport
was actually used? There is a photo showing city school buses still lined
up, in waterlogged parking lots, after the hurricane.

Update: a reader has pointed out that there are detailed plans for Louisiana
and the City of New Orleans for an evacuation and these make it clear that
buses should be used to transport those without cars.

There are questions for the mayor, dubbed heroic by some, to answer.

The relief operation

The scenes which most shocked the world were at the Superdome and the nearby
Convention Center. Yet it turns out that neither Mr Brown nor his boss,
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, knew about the crises there
until Thursday.

This, despite numerous television reports from the scene. It was not until
Friday that the first relief convoy arrived.

It was midday Tuesday that I became aware of the fact that there was no
possibility of plugging the gap, and that essentially the lake was going to
drain into the city
Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security Secretary


"The very day that this emerged in the press, I was on a video conference
with all the officials, including state and local officials. And nobody,
none of the state and local officials or anybody else, was talking about a
Convention Center," Chertoff told CNN. Note how he blames local officials.

Nor did he know about the breach in the floodwalls until a day later.

"It was midday Tuesday that I became aware of the fact that there was no
possibility of plugging the gap, and that essentially the lake was going to
drain into the city," he said on NBC.

Other, more successful operations, notably the airlift by the Coast Guard,
should be acknowledged.

And in a disaster area the size of Great Britain, resources were stretched.

But ironically the failure at the Convention Center would have been fairly
easy to put right. Reporters drove there without problems. One took a taxi.

What, one wonders, was Fema/the mayor's office/the governor's office doing
while all that was played out on live TV?

One lesson agencies might want to learn is that someone senior should do
nothing but monitor TV.

Some of this might explain why people at the Superdome and the Convention
Center had to wait so long. It does not explain why communications were not
better.

Another sign of slowness was that the Department of Homeland Security did
not issue the first ever declaration of an "incident of national
significance" until the Wednesday. Such a declaration allows the federal
government a greater role in taking decisions.

One lesson agencies might want to learn is that someone senior should do
nothing but monitor TV



In fact, the arguments between federal and state authorities about who was
able to do what is another part of this story.

The Department of Homeland Security said the local authorities were
inadequate. The locals responded that Fema had been obstructive - it had,
for example, stopped three truckloads of water sent by the store Wal-Mart.
And so on.

It took days to sort out who should send troops and from where.

Indeed, the intricacies of the various responsibilties of state and federal
authorities do not always allow for quick decision making, though that did
not stop rapid action in New York City on 9/11.

Nor does Governor Blanco escape criticism. It took until Thursday, for
example, for her to sign an order releasing school buses to move the
evacuees.

The president's response

Mr Bush has been blamed for failing to rise to the occasion. His critics
argue that he took too long to get back to Washington and did not provide
the inspirational leadership needed at such a time. Nor, it is said, did he
intervene early enough to get things moving.

Washington Post correspondent Dan Balz concluded:

"Anger has been focused on Bush and his administration to a degree
unprecedented in his presidency. Senator Mary Landrieu [a Louisiana
Democrat] said in an ABC News interview that aired Sunday that she would
consider punching the president and others for their response to what
happened there. Local officials, some in tears, have angrily accused the
administration of callousness and negligence."

The president's defenders point out that it was he who urged an evacuation
of New Orleans (he has no legal power to order one) and that he did
acknowledge the "unacceptable" pace of the relief effort. Further, they say
that aid is now flowing and reconstruction will take place.

Another issue for Mr Bush is why Michael Brown was appointed director of
Fema. He had previously been its deputy and had been hired as its general
counsel by the director Joe Allbaugh, George Bush's chief of staff when he
was Texas governor. Mr Brown, a lawyer from Oklahoma, played a role in
studying the government's response to national emergencies. Before that he
had run the Arab horse association.

Senator Hillary Clinton has said that Fema should be removed from the
Homeland Security Department and made an independent agency again.

The gamble

When Hurricane Camille, a rare top Category Five storm, hit Mississippi in
1969, just missing New Orleans, the levees around the city were
strengthened - but only enough to protect against a Category Three
hurricane.

The gamble was taken that another Category Five would not threaten New
Orleans anytime soon. This attitude prevailed among successive
administrations.

Lt General Carl Strock, the Army Corps of Engineers commander, admitted that
there was a collective mindset - that New Orleans would not be hit.
Washington rolled the dice, he said.

After flooding in 1995, the existing system was improved. However, the sums
were relatively small. About $500m was spent over the next 10 years.

From 2003 onwards, the Bush administration cut funds amid charges from the
Army Corps of Engineers that the money was transferred to Iraq instead. The
latest annual budget was cut from $36.5m to $10.4m.

A study to examine defences against a category Four or Five storm was
proposed, at a cost of $4m. The Times-Picayune quoted the Army Corps of
Engineers project manager Al Naomi as saying: "The Iraq war forced the Bush
administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new
studies."

But in any event, there was no plan for a major strengthening. This would
have taken billions of dollars and many years.

And an Army Corps of Engineers spokeswoman, Connie Gillette, said there had
never been any plans or funds to improve those floodwalls which had failed.

Update: a reader has pointed out a quote in the New York Times indicating
that the failed floodwalls had in fact previously been strengthened.

'"Shea Penland, director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental
Studies at the University of New Orleans, said [it] was particularly
surprising because the break was "along a section that was just upgraded."
"It did not have an earthen levee," Dr. Penland said. "It had a vertical
concrete wall several feel thick."' It is a long and complex chain of
responsibility.

All these issues, and many more, will now be the subject of congressional
and other inquiries.

Paul.Reynolds-***@bbc.co.uk

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/americas/4216508.stm


Published: 2005/09/05 19:04:01 GMT


© BBC MMV


end quote



I find it peculiar that Bush would appoint as FEMA manager someone without
an iota of disaster management experience, the horse guy Brown:

""There's still time to take action now, but you must be prepared and take
shelter and other emergency precautions immediately.""

"This has made Fema appear complacent in the period immediately before the
hurricane arrived. If it did not expect the worst, it would not have
prepared for the worst."

Exactly.

Regarding Bush: "he did acknowledge the "unacceptable" pace of the relief
effort." Hey, that's progress, of a sort!

Post by George
...Democrats and local officials are so intoxicated with Bush Blame Disease
that they are actually calling for post-Katrina hearings. If they get them,
they'll find comparatively minor federal failings and egregious,
unconscionable local failings. Ray Nagin will be burned at the stake.
Governor Blanco may be the first liberal who actually has to move to
France."
[Steve H. Grahmam, "CYA is a Big Bob," 9/7/2005,
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-9_6_05_SH.html]
The actions of Nagin/Blanco BEFORE the storm hit, cost the lives of
everybody who died.
Bush/FEMA cannot raise the dead -- the ones killed by Nagin's and Blanco's
incompetence and dereliction of duty.

Post by ClassWarz
Bush's FEMA appointee Brown was not qualified as a disaster relief
manager; Brown's prior experience had to do with Arabian horses.
Incompetent leaders appoint incompetent leaders.

On the other hand, Ray Nagin is *proven* to be unqualified to be the mayor
of a major US city, and Kathleen Blanco is *proven* to be unqualified to
be governor of a state.
People like you should compare the federal government response for this
hurricane to that of Andrew.
The people DIED because of Nagin and Blanco, not Bush/FEMA.

Post by ClassWarz
Nagin failed, Bianco failed, yes. But Bush failed,

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/07/katrina.poll/

Not anymore, see my link to today's CBS poll above.

Post by George

Post by ClassWarz
Brown failed, and Chartoff failed.

82% of Americans disagree with you.

Not any more

Post by George
"62 percent said they believe progress made in dealing with the situation
is satisfactory" [Ibid.]
America is "adult enough" to understand that this disaster is
unprecidented.
"...for a long time, Democrats have had a policy of responding to every
national development by finding some way to use it to hammer Bush. And
this is just another example..." [Graham]
America knows this and that is why they reject YOUR premise.

Post by ClassWarz
BTW, where the hell is Cheney? Is he still on vacation in Wyoming?

Where was Kerry? On vacation in France? How come Teddy Kennedy wasn't
helping out rescuing people from the water -- oops, never mind. I already
know the answer to that question!

They were mobilizing relief efforts; I know, they contacted me.

ClassWarz

[George]

Post by ClassWarz

Post by George

Post by ClassWarz

Post by George
The RESPONSIBILITY for disaster relief lies with the state.
It always has.

All right, I'll make this simple for you so that you may, at last,
"If the city and the state are stumbling or in over their head, then
it's FEMA's responsibility to show some leadership," said Jerry Hauer,
director of public health preparedness at the Department of Health and
Human Services.
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/HurricaneKatrina/story?id=1102467&page=2

The legal "First Resonders" is the City of New Orleans and the State of
Louisiana.

Yes, that is true. And, they did mess up badly.
But the national leader is George W. Bush. There's more to being a leader
during an emergency than quibbling over legal niceties. In an emergency,
leaders act decisively; they don't wait for others to act and they
understand that emergencies require the cutting of red tape to ensure the
safety of the citizenry.

The moment Bush did that, you Bush-haters would be calling (again) for his
impeachment for a deliberate violation of his oath to uphold and defend the
Constitution.

[ClassWarz]

Post by George

Post by ClassWarz

Post by George

Post by ClassWarz

Post by George
The RESPONSIBILITY for disaster relief lies with the state.
It always has.

All right, I'll make this simple for you so that you may, at last,
"If the city and the state are stumbling or in over their head, then
it's FEMA's responsibility to show some leadership," said Jerry Hauer,
director of public health preparedness at the Department of Health and
Human Services.
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/HurricaneKatrina/story?id=1102467&page=2

The legal "First Resonders" is the City of New Orleans and the State of
Louisiana.

Yes, that is true. And, they did mess up badly.
But the national leader is George W. Bush. There's more to being a
leader during an emergency than quibbling over legal niceties. In an
emergency, leaders act decisively; they don't wait for others to act and
they understand that emergencies require the cutting of red tape to
ensure the safety of the citizenry.

The moment Bush did that, you Bush-haters would be calling (again) for his
impeachment for a deliberate violation of his oath to uphold and defend
the Constitution.

I do not hate Bush, I hate Bush's poor performance in office, just as I hate
Hoover's performance but I do not hate Hoover.

Bush could have done far more without violating the Constitution in any way,
not that such violations would have bothered him.


ClassWarz

[ClassWarz]

Post by ClassWarz

You fucking DEMOCRATS are fucking INCOMPETENT!
Blanco and Nagin should be charged with criminal negligence and homicide.
---
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/003463.htm
"APOCALYPSE NOW IN NEW ORLEANS
By Bryan Preston · September 05, 2005 12:13 AM
The JYB guy here, best known most recently for blogging about buses,
specifically the hundreds and hundreds of buses that the city of New
Orleans failed to use to evacuate its most disadvantaged citizens out of
harm's way before hurricane Katrina hit last week. Tens of thousands of
New Orleans' residents could have been spared the worst of the past week
and many might still be alive today if the city had actually activated
its plan to use its own vehicles--school and commuter buses--to give them
a ride. But the plan was never activated, though the city was fully aware
of the plight of its citizens after hurricane Ivan nearly struck it last
year. And of course the city had known that it was sinking into the gooey
soil of the Mississippi delta for decades. New Orleans knew that it was
living on borrowed time. But it partied on, eating, drinking and being
merry, knowing that tomorrow it might well die.
Instead of acknowledging the faults that lie at city level and stepping
in to organize relief efforts, Louisiana and New Orleans officials spent
most of last week lashing out at the Bush administration, though its
response was three times faster than the response to hurricane Andrew
just 13 years ago. Government actually got quicker at doing something, in
spite of the massive increase in the number of lawyers on the public dime
in the intervening years. The locals blamed the feds even though the
administration, whatever its faults, was ahead of all local officials
when it came to declaring a state of emergency and requesting a mandatory
evacuation. A massive butt-covering exercise is underway in Louisiana as
I write, so massive it is second only to the actual relief and law and
order efforts going on in the vast Katrina destruction zone.
Here's Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, threatening to punch President
Bush if local officials come under any criticism.
Here's a local New Orleans official bizarrely suggesting that the head of
the government needs to be "chainsawed off."
These officials and dozens like them all across Louisiana are trying to
shift blame to Washington for their own failures.
The buses I mentioned earlier and have blogged about extensively all
weekend are evidence of and a symbol for those failures. They sit unused
and waterlogged, their empty seats representing lives lost to the flood.
Their useless presence in flooded parking lots demonstrate that the best
plan is useless if it's never implemented. And they fact of their unuse
demonstrates a deeper pathology at work in New Orleans government: The
entire thing was rotted from the inside out. New Orleans' government was
a disaster waiting to happen.
One of my readers at the JYB pointed this out in the process of bugging
me about drivers. This reader wanted to know where all the drivers were
supposed to come from to drive those buses full of people out of the
city. I replied that the answer was obvious--they're school buses, use
school bus drivers, contact them via a phone tree, make emergency driving
part of their job. Turns out it's not so easy as that. The New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- Students return to class Thursday in a
school system in such turmoil that no one is sure how many employees it
has, the new budget is millions of dollars out of balance, and the
buildings are old and deteriorating.
The story, dated August 18, 2005, goes on from there to detail the fiscal
horror show that is the New Orleans school system. Read it when you're
not in the mood for a good laugh. Read it when you're in the mood to slug
someone, and you'll slug them twice as hard. Sen. Landrieu should read it
and then sit down chanting "serenity now." If you've ever paid taxes to
the city of New Orleans, you've been had. And the fact is, through
federal education programs chances are we have all paid tax dollars that
have been disappeared by that awful system. We have all been had.
We can't lay all of the blame for this sorry state of affairs at Mayor
Ray Nagin's feet (though he's almost entirely to blame for the city's
pathetic response to the current crisis). He's only been in office for
three years, and to his credit he has tried to reform the city's
government. But the fact is that a school system that doesn't even know
how many employees it has won't be in a position to reach bus drivers
when they're needed to ferry thousands of people out of the path of a
hell storm like Katrina.
New Orleans' city government was an abscess. I say "was," by the way,
because for all intents and purposes it ceased to exist some time last
week--probably at about the same time the local officials realized that
their multiple failures were bound to lead to major loss of life. Its
emergency management czar, one Terry Ebbert, squealed about an absence of
command and control over the relief effort, when it was his job to
establish that command and control. The police department is two-thirds
gone after about 1,000 officers deserted in the face of the flood and the
looters--some of whom were police officers themselves. Mayor Nagin sent
up a profanity-laced diatribe against the federal government that should
have been delivered in front of a mirror. The abscess at city hall failed
its citizens. It is guilty of gross negligence leading to death for many
of its most vulnerable citizens. As the wretched condition of its school
system demonstrates, long before it collapsed last week, the municipal
government of New Orleans was a total and unmitigated disgrace."

Yes, there is blame to be had at the local level; there is classism within
both political parties and racism within both political parties. It's
always poor minority women and children last, and you can add the disabled
too.
But it is not all Nagin and Bianco's fault. National leaders saw the
disaster coming and did little to help; if there was a shortfall locally,
then our national leadership ought to have diagnosed and corrected it.
Bush fiddled while New Orleans drowned; Bush was playing hooky from work
before, during and after the storm hit. He had ample time to move on his
own to get the poor, elderly, and the disabled out of the city. He
compounded his error by failing to rush in needed supplies to points where
they were desperately needed. And, Bush failed to act promptly to restore
order just as he failed in Baghdad when chaos broke out after Saddam was
deposed.
ClassWarz

Why was this request from Bianco to President Bush for help not acted upon
with the utmost speed?

http://gov.louisiana.gov/Disaster%20Relief%20Request.pdf

Here is the text of a thread addressing the issue presented in
alt.california:

quote

Blanco's Letter to Bush, a letter to the White House the
Sunday afternoon before the storm hit asking for a declaration of
emergency and federal assistance.

Then, after Bush does nothing and the
world saw how they treat the poor in this country, they go on
television to try to lie their way out of their despicable disaster
response. FEMA and Chertoff tried to say they weren't asked for help --
it was a lie and they know it.
Read:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050903/ap_on_re_us/katrina_national_guard

Blanco's Letter to Bush:
http://gov.louisiana.gov/Disaster%20Relief%20Request.pdf

Federal Disaster Response document which states explicitly that in the
event of a catastrophic disaster the federal government need not wait
for any explicit request from the local authorities in the affected
regions: http://www.dhs.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/NRPbaseplan.pdf

Op-Ed in 'Times-Picayune' calling them on some of their lies:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001054586

Whatever you Bush appologists think, Bush is done. On top of it all, the
Homeland Security Act gives Bush free reign to act and Bush didn't act.
Why is Bush and his cabinet still in Washington? They should be headed back
to Weedhole, Texas in disgrace.

end quote



ClassWarz

[ClassWarz]

Post by ClassWarz

Post by ClassWarz

You fucking DEMOCRATS are fucking INCOMPETENT!
Blanco and Nagin should be charged with criminal negligence and homicide.
---
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/003463.htm
"APOCALYPSE NOW IN NEW ORLEANS
By Bryan Preston · September 05, 2005 12:13 AM
The JYB guy here, best known most recently for blogging about buses,
specifically the hundreds and hundreds of buses that the city of New
Orleans failed to use to evacuate its most disadvantaged citizens out of
harm's way before hurricane Katrina hit last week. Tens of thousands of
New Orleans' residents could have been spared the worst of the past week
and many might still be alive today if the city had actually activated
its plan to use its own vehicles--school and commuter buses--to give
them a ride. But the plan was never activated, though the city was fully
aware of the plight of its citizens after hurricane Ivan nearly struck
it last year. And of course the city had known that it was sinking into
the gooey soil of the Mississippi delta for decades. New Orleans knew
that it was living on borrowed time. But it partied on, eating, drinking
and being merry, knowing that tomorrow it might well die.
Instead of acknowledging the faults that lie at city level and stepping
in to organize relief efforts, Louisiana and New Orleans officials spent
most of last week lashing out at the Bush administration, though its
response was three times faster than the response to hurricane Andrew
just 13 years ago. Government actually got quicker at doing something,
in spite of the massive increase in the number of lawyers on the public
dime in the intervening years. The locals blamed the feds even though
the administration, whatever its faults, was ahead of all local
officials when it came to declaring a state of emergency and requesting
a mandatory evacuation. A massive butt-covering exercise is underway in
Louisiana as I write, so massive it is second only to the actual relief
and law and order efforts going on in the vast Katrina destruction zone.
Here's Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, threatening to punch President
Bush if local officials come under any criticism.
Here's a local New Orleans official bizarrely suggesting that the head
of the government needs to be "chainsawed off."
These officials and dozens like them all across Louisiana are trying to
shift blame to Washington for their own failures.
The buses I mentioned earlier and have blogged about extensively all
weekend are evidence of and a symbol for those failures. They sit unused
and waterlogged, their empty seats representing lives lost to the flood.
Their useless presence in flooded parking lots demonstrate that the best
plan is useless if it's never implemented. And they fact of their unuse
demonstrates a deeper pathology at work in New Orleans government: The
entire thing was rotted from the inside out. New Orleans' government was
a disaster waiting to happen.
One of my readers at the JYB pointed this out in the process of bugging
me about drivers. This reader wanted to know where all the drivers were
supposed to come from to drive those buses full of people out of the
city. I replied that the answer was obvious--they're school buses, use
school bus drivers, contact them via a phone tree, make emergency
driving part of their job. Turns out it's not so easy as that. The New
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- Students return to class Thursday in a
school system in such turmoil that no one is sure how many employees it
has, the new budget is millions of dollars out of balance, and the
buildings are old and deteriorating.
The story, dated August 18, 2005, goes on from there to detail the
fiscal horror show that is the New Orleans school system. Read it when
you're not in the mood for a good laugh. Read it when you're in the mood
to slug someone, and you'll slug them twice as hard. Sen. Landrieu
should read it and then sit down chanting "serenity now." If you've ever
paid taxes to the city of New Orleans, you've been had. And the fact is,
through federal education programs chances are we have all paid tax
dollars that have been disappeared by that awful system. We have all
been had.
We can't lay all of the blame for this sorry state of affairs at Mayor
Ray Nagin's feet (though he's almost entirely to blame for the city's
pathetic response to the current crisis). He's only been in office for
three years, and to his credit he has tried to reform the city's
government. But the fact is that a school system that doesn't even know
how many employees it has won't be in a position to reach bus drivers
when they're needed to ferry thousands of people out of the path of a
hell storm like Katrina.
New Orleans' city government was an abscess. I say "was," by the way,
because for all intents and purposes it ceased to exist some time last
week--probably at about the same time the local officials realized that
their multiple failures were bound to lead to major loss of life. Its
emergency management czar, one Terry Ebbert, squealed about an absence
of command and control over the relief effort, when it was his job to
establish that command and control. The police department is two-thirds
gone after about 1,000 officers deserted in the face of the flood and
the looters--some of whom were police officers themselves. Mayor Nagin
sent up a profanity-laced diatribe against the federal government that
should have been delivered in front of a mirror. The abscess at city
hall failed its citizens. It is guilty of gross negligence leading to
death for many of its most vulnerable citizens. As the wretched
condition of its school system demonstrates, long before it collapsed
last week, the municipal government of New Orleans was a total and
unmitigated disgrace."

Yes, there is blame to be had at the local level; there is classism
within both political parties and racism within both political parties.
It's always poor minority women and children last, and you can add the
disabled too.
But it is not all Nagin and Bianco's fault. National leaders saw the
disaster coming and did little to help; if there was a shortfall locally,
then our national leadership ought to have diagnosed and corrected it.
Bush fiddled while New Orleans drowned; Bush was playing hooky from work
before, during and after the storm hit. He had ample time to move on his
own to get the poor, elderly, and the disabled out of the city. He
compounded his error by failing to rush in needed supplies to points
where they were desperately needed. And, Bush failed to act promptly to
restore order just as he failed in Baghdad when chaos broke out after
Saddam was deposed.
ClassWarz

Why was this request from Bianco to President Bush for help not acted upon
with the utmost speed?
http://gov.louisiana.gov/Disaster%20Relief%20Request.pdf
Here is the text of a thread addressing the issue presented in
quote
Blanco's Letter to Bush, a letter to the White House the
Sunday afternoon before the storm hit asking for a declaration of
emergency and federal assistance.
Then, after Bush does nothing and the
world saw how they treat the poor in this country, they go on
television to try to lie their way out of their despicable disaster
response. FEMA and Chertoff tried to say they weren't asked for help --
it was a lie and they know it.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050903/ap_on_re_us/katrina_national_guard
http://gov.louisiana.gov/Disaster%20Relief%20Request.pdf
Federal Disaster Response document which states explicitly that in the
event of a catastrophic disaster the federal government need not wait
for any explicit request from the local authorities in the affected
regions: http://www.dhs.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/NRPbaseplan.pdf
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001054586
Whatever you Bush appologists think, Bush is done. On top of it all, the
Homeland Security Act gives Bush free reign to act and Bush didn't act.
Why is Bush and his cabinet still in Washington? They should be headed back
to Weedhole, Texas in disgrace.
end quote
ClassWarz

Whoops, forgot the attribution.

"BUSH'S NIGHTMARE <***@it.net>"


ClassWarz

[Kalib Akhlar]

The looney-left hate mongers in this country better stop
wasting your time spewing your usual hate diatribes at
Bush. Instead, you wacko radical leftists need to gin up
your smear machine on the next justice that Bush is about
to nominate to the Supreme Court. Looks like the days of
radical leftist judges inventing new laws and legislating
from the bench are severely numbered!
ROTFLMAO!

[Weebie]

Post by Kalib Akhlar
The looney-left hate mongers in this country better stop
wasting your time spewing your usual hate diatribes at
Bush. Instead, you wacko radical leftists need to gin up
your smear machine on the next justice that Bush is about
to nominate to the Supreme Court. Looks like the days of
radical leftist judges inventing new laws and legislating
from the bench are severely numbered!
ROTFLMAO!

Now we'll get radical right judges inventing new laws and
legislating from the bench.

They all do it, left right and center.

[Kalib Akhlar]

Post by Weebie

Post by Kalib Akhlar
The looney-left hate mongers in this country better stop
wasting your time spewing your usual hate diatribes at
Bush. Instead, you wacko radical leftists need to gin up
your smear machine on the next justice that Bush is about
to nominate to the Supreme Court. Looks like the days of
radical leftist judges inventing new laws and legislating
from the bench are severely numbered!
ROTFLMAO!

Now we'll get radical right judges inventing new laws and
legislating from the bench.
They all do it, left right and center.

No. The judges Bush appoints will support the Constitution,
the way the Founding Fathers wanted the Court to operate.
They will not invent new laws, the way activist liberal judges
have.