The Bush administration has embraced a term that truly sets my teeth on edge: The Blame Game.
Yet again, the administration trivializes that which it wants to draw attention from or diminish, finding new and innovative ways to dodge questions and avoid responsibility.
I have no clear idea yet, for certain, if lapses in administrative judgment can be blamed for everything from siphoning money away from shoring up the levies in order to support the war and Bush’s tax cuts, to slow response to the emergency. But these are questions that must be asked. Clearly, the Bush administration embraces this notion with the same enthusiasm and thirst for truth that it did the 9/11 panel. Instead it endeavors to sprint along the obvious “high road”: The Bush administration will not play “the blame game” when people need to be helped.
You know what? The government is large enough to multitask. There’s no reason it can’t help people AND investigate. Not play “the blame game.” It’s not a game, Mr. Bush. Perhaps much of your life has been thus far. Play with toys such as corporations, governments and armies, run them into the ground, and then wait for others to clean up your mess. But it’s not. A game. It never has been, and that’s something that this administration has yet to comprehend.
One thing guaranteed, though: They’ll try to find a way to blame it on Clinton. But Clinton shouldn’t take it personally. It’s all part of the game.
UPDATED 10:45 AM. Maggie Thompson sent me the following link: http://www.thisisnotover.com/archives/2005/09/heres_what_gets.html This is one of those “I wish I’d said that” entries.
PAD
• 
“Isn’t it obscene that the federal government can find money to build bike paths, but couldn’t find the cash to fund a project that might have prevented the flooding in NO back in 1998?”
i don’t know the specifics on this case, but bike paths aren’t something i’d complain about. considering this nation’s problems with oil dependency and obesity (not to mention urban gridlock), i think bike paths are a pretty good use of gov’t money, especially if they make it easier for one to use a bicycle for practical transport.
recreational bike paths are a nice thing but i would argue that paths for bicycle commuters could be a serious boon to the community.
i’m not saying it’s more important than fixing levies, but i would say it’s more important than giving the rich tax breaks.
FEMA Blocking Relief Efforts – An Amazing List
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10195.htm
There’s no way Bush is responsible for the lack of response in New Orleans
Who removed the competant head of FEMA & replaced him with incompetant cronies? Who put a likewise incompetant person in charge of homeland security? Who moved the National Guard 8000 miles away from where it was needed?
And most importantly – who was playing golf, attending concerts & going to birthday parties while thousands were dying in the flood waters?
bush isn’t alone to blame, but he deserves the most because he had command of the most resources & chose instead to piss away those resources & enjoy himself while others paid the price of his decisions.
There’s no way Bush is responsible for the lack of response in New Orleans
It’s his team that’s running it, right? It’s his strategy that led FEMA in a new direction in his direction, right? It was his strategy that led to the demphasis of disaster recovery for FEMA earlier this year right?
In the world of business, that means the man at the top is ultimately responsible for strategy and the placement of his men in the proper place. If they screw up, it’s his screw up, too, particularly if he could have stepped in to mitigate the damage.
What you’re saying is that Bush is no way responsible for the performance of his appointees. That his remaking of FEMA had no impact on the function of the organization. That it was the right call to de-emphasize disaster mitigation and disaster relief for FEMA.
You don’t believe in responsibility and you’re anti-business, aren’t you?
i don’t know the specifics on this case, but bike paths aren’t something i’d complain about. considering this nation’s problems with oil dependency and obesity (not to mention urban gridlock), i think bike paths are a pretty good use of gov’t money, especially if they make it easier for one to use a bicycle for practical transport.
The question isn’t whether they are a good idea. I’d be all for it if a local government wanted to build bike paths in their community. The question is, should this be something the FEDERAL government should be footing the bill for?
I’d rather let state and local governments build the small stuff and let the feds put their money into the large scale projects.
Ummm… excuse me, American people? My President seems to be broken or something, because he’s completely ineffectual.
Now I’m flashing on that guy who was on The Amazing Race a while back…
“My President is BROKEN!! This is BÙLLSHÍT!!!”
🙂
Just since I’ve seen it come up here and elsewhere:
http://gov.louisiana.gov/2005%20%20proclamations/48pro2005-Emergency-HurricaneKatrina.pdf
http://gov.louisiana.gov/Disaster%20Relief%20Request.pdf
These are the papers filed creating a State of Emergency and requesting aid and relief (with FEMA refs) before the thing hit NO. The statements that the ball was dropped and that Bush had to beg the local government to declare a State of Emergency or to request aid are %100 bull***t.
The Red Cross link:
I can’t find it and no one seems to be posting it. I keep hearing about the story but no one is giving out a link. The Red Cross homepage doesn’t have anything that stands out and the articles I’ve read don’t say anything of the kind (or even hint at it.)
I’m not saying that the story isn’t true. I’m just saying that it would be nice if all the people talking about it would link it so that the rest of us could read the entire piece and see what the entire statements were.
And there were other things holding up aid relief.
Citing Rep. Charlie Melancon’s (D-LA) chief of staff, a September 3 New Orleans Times-Picayune article reported that crews were unable to deliver three tons of food for hurricane survivors in Louisiana’s St. Bernard Parish and Algiers Point on September 2, as “air traffic was halted because of President Bush’s visit to New Orleans.” The food, secured by Melancon and Bob Odom, Louisiana’s agriculture commissioner, “baked in the afternoon sun as Bush surveyed damage across southeast Louisiana,” according to the Times-Picayune. A September 2 Associated Press article reported the difficulty Melancon had in contacting Bush regarding federal aid for refugees in St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes and also noted Melancon’s claim that the restriction on air traffic hindered getting aid to those parishes. According to the AP:
In St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, just south of New Orleans, victims of the hurricane are still waiting for food and water and for buses to escape the floodwaters, Melancon said. And for the entire time Bush was in the state, the congressman said, a ban on helicopter flights further stalled the delivery of food and supplies.
“I thank the president for his visit today, but it was more show than substance,” Melancon said. “Frankly, we needed action days ago.”
Another September 2 AP article cited a paramedic who reported that helicopters transporting sick and injured refugees to a makeshift treatment center at New Orleans’ Louis Armstrong International Airport were “stopped” upon Bush’s arrival, though the AP did not indicate the duration or effect of their grounding. According to the AP: “Helicopters flying patients in for treatment were stopped Friday when President Bush arrived. But the president didn’t enter the airport, which swelled with armed guards during his visit, [paramedic James] Teague said.”
http://www.nola.com/weblogs/print.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_Times-Picayune/archives/print076556.html
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/K/KATRINA_CONGRESSMAN?SITE=MIDTF&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2005-09-02-22-38-44
http://www.journal-news.com/local/content/gen/ap/OH_Katrina_Ohioans.html
And everybody’s fave wingnut, Pat Robertson, seems to believe that the trashing of NO has a really good side.
From the September 1 edition of CBN’s The 700 Club:
LEE WEBB (CBN News anchor): And back here at home, Supreme Court nominee John Roberts will be introduced by a Republican and Democrat when his confirmation hearings begin next Tuesday in Washington. USA Today reports Virginia Republican John Warner and Indiana Democrat Evan Bayh will appear with Roberts. It’s viewed as a positive symbolic boost for Roberts. The nominee is from Bayh’s state of Indiana. Bayh, though, says he hasn’t decided whether he will vote for Roberts, but many moderate Democrats are expected to support him. Liberal senators like Ted Kennedy and Charles Schumer have criticized Roberts. And now, let’s go back over to Terry with more of the Club.
TERRY MEEUWSEN (co-host): And this is an important time for us to remember to be praying for what’s happening with regard to the judicial system, because it’s so easy to forget that in light of the —
ROBERTSON: That’s right.
MEEUWSEN: — situation that’s happening south of us.
ROBERTSON: Well, in a sense, they say it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Out of this tragedy, the focus of America is going to be on these victims, and inflamed rhetoric in the United States Senate is just not going to play well now because this is a time of healing and compassion and reaching out to people, and if they start going on a vendetta against Roberts in the Senate, it’s just going to hurt them. And I think they know that, so, I mean, Judge Roberts can, maybe, you know, be thankful that a tragedy has brought him some good.
There are numerous reasons why I don’t (and most of America) do not blame Bush for the lack of response to the New Orleans crisis. One is simply that it’s happened in New Orleans in a way that it hasn’t happened to the other major cities that were devastated by Katrina. The state and city government is accountable for holding back the Red Cross and diverting food and supplies away from the Superdome. It was the state and city government which had an evacuation plan that it failed to implement. Bush, observing the powers alotted to the states, called Governor Blanco and asked her to declare what she needed to to allow him to send in the guard and she did not do so quick enough.
And this business about there not being enough Nat’l Guard for this crisis is also pap. The Nat’l Guard have been the most efficient part of the recovery thus far. Nobody directly involved with this is lamenting a lack of manpower in that area. Only leftist pundits.
“Bush, observing the powers alotted to the states, called Governor Blanco and asked her to declare what she needed to to allow him to send in the guard and she did not do so quick enough.”
Again, total BS that’s been debunked over and over and over again. Aug. 26th wasn’t quick enough? It was more then a day before Katrina’s eye even hit NO and a full week before Bush and Co. seemed to actually start acting like it really mattered to them. What, she was supposed to do it before the storm came into the gulf so Bush could get his photo ops together? Maybe you fell she should have reserved the time a month in advance.
One of the reasons I like to pop in here every once in a while is to read the sheer, seething and totally irrational hatred for Bush that comes up on my screen. Mostly for a good laugh. But today is a bit different because the accusations toward him are being flung before we’ve even collected all the bodies. This is an absolutely HUGE disaster. And to look at it in hindsight before it’s even close to being over and trying to somehow correlate this to a Bush failure would be funny, if it weren’t so pathetic. Bush Opponents were trying to tell us that Bush orchestrated the hurricane first (through not signing Kyoto and by “not doing enough” about global warming). Then he “planned” for the levies to break. The simple fact of the matter is that Bush Opponents will use ANYTHING they can grope for and try to somehow pin it on Bush. It has been a constant ever since he has had the position of President. I believe most people have seen it happen too many times now to not have started anticipating it, and rejecting it… as evidenced by a recent USAToday poll (a poll source that most Bush Opponents seem to trust) that stated that only 13% of those polled believe Bush is responsible for the tragedy and its level of poor response. But I’d like to continue seeing more of this irrationality and hatred. So, please continue! 🙂
DW
A rather outraged friend of mine was going off on The Shrub’s lack of response time just last week. She was saying how after the 3-Mile Island disaster, Jimmy Carter was there the next day, in a radiation suit, touring the building to survey the situation. Meanwhile, it took our president 3 days to put down the Nintendo long enough to see what the fuss was about in NO.
For the last few years, I’ve been hearing apologists giving mutually exclusive excuses for the president’s lack of response time. Like the president is “Never REALLY on vacation, he’s always at work.” Then I hear “The president delegates things like this so he doesn’t have to be at the ready 24/7” when it came to the 9/11 disaster and the excuse for him not reacting fast enough when he had a more pressing photo op reading to a bunch of schoolkids. (And the other one “Would you rather he panicked a bunch of schoolkids?” Hey, what’s wrong with someone simply saying “Sorry, the president can’t read “Phil the Foofy Bunny” to you today, he’s got important president things to do”? How would THAT have panicked the kids?) So, which excuse is it?
Not blaming Bush for the hurricane, but simply for his apparent lack of decisive, timely action. Applying both standard excuses given doesn’t exactly inspire confidence either way. Either he was “On the job 24/7, even on vacation” and simply didn’t think it worth the time to respond faster, or he “delegated the decision” on whether or not he should act to someone else, who dropped the ball. Either one of those scenarios give you a warm, fuzzy feeling of comfort? I don’t care who the president is or which political party he belongs to. If a disaster befalls the country he’s supposed to be in charge of, whose people he’s supposed to represent and protect, then by God I want to see someone who can take charge at the drop of a hat.
Finally, it was interesting to hear people say “I wonder when they’ll start blaming Clinton for not doing enough to stop hurricanes”. The current sound bite I’m seeing in the news stories is the current bereaucrats at all levels are saying that the fund for the levees has been a “Favorite target for fund cuts of ALL administrations, so don’t blame us”, even though it’s seen some of it’s biggest cuts in it’s history lately. More disturbing is the report that the Army Corps of engineers proposed a study to determine how best to protect New Orleans in just this sort of situation, given all the warnings about how the city couldn’t handle even a moderate hurricane. And the current administration told them that such a study was “Unnecessary”.
You know what… I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t know if this study would have done any good, and this isn’t “Hindsight criticism”… But I believe in “Better safe than sorry” and I honestly don’t see how a STUDY on HOW TO MAKE PEOPLE SAFER could have made the situation any worse. Whatever paper-pusher dismissed this study as “Unnesessary” should have his bacon frying in a very big pan right now. Why? If someone running a company refuses to fund a study on how to make his building safer, and it collapses and kills hundreds, he’s liable for not taking all the steps necessary to ensure safety. People who make these kinds of decisions that could affect people’s lives down the line have NO problem turning down proposals like this because for the most part, they’re insulated from any consequences. If we hold the people running things to the same standards that those of us in the public sector are held to, maybe some people will start covering their butts more by doing what’s RIGHT and not what’s best for them.
The Red Cross link:
I can’t find it and no one seems to be posting it. I keep hearing about the story but no one is giving out a link. The Red Cross homepage doesn’t have anything that stands out and the articles I’ve read don’t say anything of the kind (or even hint at it.)
I’m not saying that the story isn’t true. I’m just saying that it would be nice if all the people talking about it would link it so that the rest of us could read the entire piece and see what the entire statements were.
Well I don’t know if you consider this “anything that stands out” but on the red Cross homepage I found the following:
http://www.redcross.org/faq/0,1096,0_682_4524,00.html
Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.
The state Homeland Security Department had requested–and continues to request–that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.
Meanwhile, the few reporters who bothered with the story kept getting it wrong–confusing the Homeland Security agency in Washington with the unrelated State Agency. So this one guy did the unthinkable–he called up the Red Cross!
http://wuzzadem.typepad.com/wuz/2005/09/another_katrina_1.html
Yesterday I called the National Affairs office of the Red Cross (202-303-5551) and talked with Red Cross spokesperson Lesly Simmons, who told me that the shipment was not turned away by the US Dept of Homeland Security, but by this agency:
The Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (LHLS & EP); formally the Louisiana Office of Emergency Preparedness (LOEP), was created by the Civil Act of 1950 and is under the Louisiana Military Department.
Ms. Simmons also told me that the Red Cross has never mentioned any involvement in this incident by FEMA, because FEMA wasn’t involved. But lazy reporters and partisan Democrats eager to pin as much blame as they can for any mishaps or screw-ups in the wake of this tragedy on the federal government (Read: George W. Bush) can’t be bothered with facts that don’t fit their agenda.
Lastly, there is a video you can download here (http://thepoliticalteen.net/2005/09/08/garretredcross/) that actually has the president of the Red cross, as well as a rep from the Salvation Army, confirming that state officials deliberately kept them from delivering food to the superdome. (The reporting is from Fox News so some of you may choose to disregard it.)
You’d think this would be a bigger story…I’m sure there must be a perfectly good explanation why it isn’t.
“She was saying how after the 3-Mile Island disaster, Jimmy Carter was there the next day, in a radiation suit, touring the building to survey the situation.”
It’s interesting that you should bring this up. Carter was a former navigation officer on a nuclear submarine, and was thus well aware that there was nothing to fear from touring 3-Mile Island. The toxic soup that saturates NO is by far more dangerous.
DW
“It’s interesting that you should bring this up. Carter was a former navigation officer on a nuclear submarine, and was thus well aware that there was nothing to fear from touring 3-Mile Island. The toxic soup that saturates NO is by far more dangerous.”
The only area that poses any possible serious danger is New Orleans proper, and other flooded areas. There are plenty of areas where the waters had receded come Wednesday, or even Tuesday. Suggesting that the situation may have been too dangerous for the President to safely visit is nothing more than making an excuse.
“It’s interesting that you should bring this up. Carter was a former navigation officer on a nuclear submarine, and was thus well aware that there was nothing to fear from touring 3-Mile Island. The toxic soup that saturates NO is by far more dangerous.”
SO? The point is when there was a disaster, Carter was on the job, while bush continued his vacation for another 4 days.
And have you all forgotten what happened when Carter visited? The way the radiation caused him to grow at an uncontrolable rate becoming…THE AMAZING COLLOSAL PRESIDENT!!!
He was big, I’ll tell you that, he was a big guy. I tell you he was so big, I saw him sitting in the George Washington bridge dangling his feet in the water! He was a big guy! He was so big that when two girls made love to him at the same time, they never met each other! He was a big guy, you know what I mean? Why he could have had an affair with the Lincoln Tunnel! I mean, he was really big! He was a big guy!
On the lighter side: A Japanese weatherman says that hurricane Katrina was caused by the Yukuza
http://www.flashnews.com/news/wfn1050908J5463.html
To paraphrase Robertson “Someone should take Bush out”. First-he steals an election. Second-he takes out the Twin Towers(due to his incompetence). Third-he creates a hurricane to take out part of the US. Fourth-he blows up the levees to make sure the flooding destroys many cities. Fifth-as a racist, he makes sure black people in a predominately black area are not saved quick enough. When I hear that one person has so much power, I’m glad I have no interest in politics. Because as I listen to all of you bìŧçh and moan about the other party, I am surprised we haven’t destroyed ourselves yet. I did say ‘yet’.
“It’s not a game” -PAD
Peter, would you please pass that on to your liberal friends who want to take advanages of tragedies, like this to further their politcal power? I know democrats are exempt from even the hint of playing political games, and everyone should hate Bush as much as you do, but it seems to me that you may missing something.
Chummer, don’t bìŧçh that the Democrats are exploiting tragedy unless you’re willing to hold Republicans to the same standard. They uncorked the genie playing political power games with 9/11. If Republicans whine that Democrats aren’t taking the high road when they’ve been playing tunnel rat for years, they have no one save themselves to blame.
One more thing, I’m a little confused by your logic: You say Bush is playing “game” because the administration has stated it doesn’t want to play the “Blame game”. Their desire to “Not Play” would mean they are ar NOT playing a game, but are taking it seriously. I would take their statement as to mean that they are suggesting some people may be treating this situation like a “game”. If I say “I don’t want to play monopoly”, would you then accuse me of “playing monopoly”?
You’re not confused. You’re being intentionally obtuse. The fact that Bush and his underlings have insisted on not playing the “blame game” while still finding time to blame local officials for everything suggests politicking as usual. (My favorite example was a high muckety-muck of the Department of Homeland Defense who essentially said it was New Orleansians’ fault because they knew they were living in a soup bowl below sea level. That’s akin to saying that the victims of 9/11 should have known that the World Trade Center was a prime terrorist target, ‘cause, hey, it was hit before.) Quite frankly, considering the amount of double talk, equivocation, and manufactured talking points this administration produces on such a regular level, I’m disinclined to believe that the Pope was Catholic if this administration pronounced it so. Considering how quickly, the “blame game” meme spread through conservative circles, yes, I think the Bush administration is indeed playing political games as usual. And as has been said before, assigning accountability is not a game, it’s simply the responsible thing to do.
I think the president should have gone in sooner, but the govenor of Louisianna needed to sign off, and she had to think things over, so he couldn’t. Bush’s mistake was letting her think too long. I know liberals think the federal government should be all powerful, but until you guys burn the constitution there will have to be a system to be followed. The funny thing is liberals love bureaucracy, which is what hindered things in NO and after we have all these hearing and committees we will end up with an even larger bureaucracy in place.
Oh, bûllšhìŧ. It’s been stated before and worth mentioning again that the LA governor asked well in advance for help but didn’t get much response. The fact it took days, rather than hours for Bush to respond suggests his indifference to suffering. And considering that Bush himself instituted a huge bureaucracy with the utterly feckless Department of Homeland Security, well by your standards he must be a closet flaming liberal.
Oh, Peter why don’t you look up how all the levies are managed in NO, what politcal persons are responsible for each levy, and the steps needed to go through to do anything to a levy? Or don’t look it up as it might make it a little harder to hate Bush so much (and since he is the devil lets not give him any benefit of the doubt).
Oh, Randy, why can’t you take a step back from your dogmatism and accept that Bush fûçkëd a goodly amount of šhìŧ up, the most (?) dramatic of which was replacing a competent head of FEMA with a clueless crony? The biggest problem I have with a good portion of the current political right is their utter inability to criticize the president even when he is clearly wrong. (Or for that matter, adopt any position or philosophy that isn’t lockstep with what’s been duly approved by the gods on high at the RNC.) The fact that you insist that Bush did absolutely nothing wrong (except spuriously suggest that he didn’t move fast enough because the governor of Louisiana wouldn’t let him) tells me you are blinded with partisan blinders.
Take them off, please. You’ll be amazed how much more you’ll be able to see.
One of the reasons I like to pop in here every once in a while is to read the sheer, seething and totally irrational hatred for Bush that comes up on my screen.
Sorry, friend. Mostly, you’ll only find totally rational hatred for Bush and his works here.
🙂
I recommend going to Ted Rall’s site if you want something more (but not completely) less rational.
After Hurricane Betsy hit in 1965 (go ahead and Google it, I won’t spoon feed you), if the city officials of N.O. had spent as much $$$ on shoring up the levees as they did on corruption, them folks would still be doing just fine…speaking as someone who grew up on Palmer near Tulane.
Does anyone seriously think that if a Democrat was in office the same fûçkìņg things would have happened?/
This is about A)it not being an election year, therefore there was no need to make sure as many people as possible were happy with Bush(as was the case in 2004 in Florida) and B) general bureaucratic nightmarish BS.
Neither of which is a Republican specific problem. Democrats are just as easily caught up in expediency during an election year, the cronyism that lead to a FEMA director with no credentials AND they’re even worse at being overly optimistic about things in general.
Mayhap, but a President Gore wouldn’t have replaced James Witt with someone who managed to beat the Peter Principle and a President Kerry wouldn’t have kept Michael Brown as head of FEMA.
And as for being overly optimistic, I don’t think Democrats are necessarily that generally, but they can be on specific issues.
As for the article wishing there were stories about Bush losing his šhìŧ over this.
Do you want a President who will panic and lose his šhìŧ over things or one that’s calm and collected.
Well, Bush isn’t acting calm and collected; he’s acting callous and aloof. What that article was asking for was a human response from the President, rather than what was displayed. I’d expect sorrow, determination, and firm leadership. Instead, I get a someone acting like an overgrown fratboy cracking jokes and commerserating with a millionaire over his lost house while not giving even a superficial nod to ruined lives of tens if not hundreds of thousands of “everday” Americans.
I’ve no love for Bush, but most of this would have been the same under a Democrat, don’t fool yourselves, Democrats aren’t any more competant or any less corrupt and lazy.
I’m hard pressed to imagine that any other administration could equal the heights of incompentance, corruption, and foot-dragging that this one has achieved.
But we won’t do that, because you people are so fûçkìņg attached to your political parties that we’ll never get rid of them, no matter how corrupt and ineffectual they are.
And yet, you’re defending Bush at the same time?
Is your attention span that short, or is it easier to bìŧçh about everybody else, and that you just won’t admit you actually support Bush?
You know, Darin, what’s even more funny than the “irrationality and hatred” for Bush is your efforts to constantly make the Dems look like the bad guys.
So we were rushing to blame Bush? No, sorry, a lot more of us were trying to help the refugees. Those of us who couldn’t help tried to go on with our day to day business like everything was fine, then rushed to the TV to see if anything had been done yet.
I personally listened to both the right and the left side, and I heard a number of things. Most of the general failings of the deployment of FEMA and the National Guard are posted in the links of posts that are extremely well researched, and you may look at them if you think you can handle information that conflicts with what you think is true.
On the other hand, the right-wing counterarguments (I’ll be polite and not refer to them as “smear tactics”) were utterly nasty.
Let’s see…the people who stayed in the hurricane’s path should be fined for wasting the government’s time(Rick Santorum [1]), black people lacked “natural judgement” (http://vdare.com/sailer/050903_new_orleans.htm), and other such tripe.
Oh, and according to a CBS News Poll, only 38% of those polled said Bush did a good job. On a recent Zogby poll, he managed to get to 40%. So apparently all those liberals who blame Bush for everything are in the minority right now…
I seem to remember an earlier comment, around November, to the tune of “The people have spoken, so quit whining.” I say the same applies here. The people have spoken, and Bush mishandled the crisis.
[1]”I mean, you have people who don’t heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings. There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving.”
Sen. Rick Santorum
Interview with WTAE-TV CH 4 in Pittsburgh
September 4, 2005
One of the reasons I like to pop in here every once in a while is to read the sheer, seething and totally irrational hatred for Bush that comes up on my screen. Mostly for a good laugh. But today is a bit different because the accusations toward him are being flung before we’ve even collected all the bodies. This is an absolutely HUGE disaster. And to look at it in hindsight before it’s even close to being over and trying to somehow correlate this to a Bush failure would be funny, if it weren’t so pathetic. Bush Opponents were trying to tell us that Bush orchestrated the hurricane first (through not signing Kyoto and by “not doing enough” about global warming). Then he “planned” for the levies to break. The simple fact of the matter is that Bush Opponents will use ANYTHING they can grope for and try to somehow pin it on Bush. It has been a constant ever since he has had the position of President. I believe most people have seen it happen too many times now to not have started anticipating it, and rejecting it… as evidenced by a recent USAToday poll (a poll source that most Bush Opponents seem to trust) that stated that only 13% of those polled believe Bush is responsible for the tragedy and its level of poor response. But I’d like to continue seeing more of this irrationality and hatred. So, please continue! 🙂
And please continue your manufacturing of straw men, so Democrats and independents have sterling confirmation of how idiotic some Bush support can be.
Now, the rest of us with functioning brain cells (both from the right and from the left) can look at what actually did and did not happen. There’s nothing irrational about hating FEMA folks who kept National Guardsman waiting outside Louisiana DESPITE the request of both the New Mexico AND Louisiana governors. And there’s nothing idiotic about being angry about rescue helicopters being held up by extraneous paperwork or firefighters being kept from search and rescue so they can hand out flyers and attend sexual harassment seminars.
Unless you think that’s just craven Bush bashing….
By the way, folks, you just might note that if you want the anti-fed/FEMA threads (which are not the same as Bush bashing), keep on insisting that it’s all the fault of the state and local authorities. That’ll inspire folks to bring up instances of FEMA and federal idiocies, of which there are many instances, to counter that statement, which means they won’t be looking at state and local malfeasance (of which there was quite a bit).
That’ll form a nice feedback loop to reinforce the very thing that you say that you’re decrying.
I just love how the right keeps declaring ‘the failure of the evacuation’. I ask what failure? 1.2 million people left before the storm hit. 1,200,000 some people left in a 48 hour period and that is a failure?!!! Even the discovery channel special tonight called that an unbelievable success. On CNN they said that it was estimated that 100,000 residents did not have the ability to get out according to the planning estimates. Yet in the end all estimates I’m hearing over the last week they were well below that 100,000 total when Katrina hit. How much will only be known when the bodies are counted.
And there is just the fact that no evacuation will ever be 100% successful because people are stubborn idiots who at times just won’t budge. I had a friend in NO, he packed up his step son and wife and shipped them a state away but insisted he would ride out the storm in their condo. Not because he had no way out but because he was too f*ing stubborn. He’s out and says he wished he had left with the family, but even intelligent successful business owners don’t always use their brains no matter how they are begged.
So I call the evacuation a success. Could a few more have gotten out if the plans had been better implemented, sure, no doubt but we are human and falliable and 100% is totally unrealsitic.
On the levee system, it is a benefit and a curse. NO sits on what was once a regenerating flood plane at the mouth of the Mississippi river. Think swamp and you aren’t far off. The soil in this area is highly unstable, and loosely packed. The trouble with NO and the surrounding areas and something that the residents decided to “fix” was that this area is very similar to Vinece, Itally. Over the years their buildings sunk into the ground as it compacted due to their activities and the river would flood the area and renew the ground by dumping additional seddiment in the area.
When NO was built it was I believe about 50 miles inland if I remember right and outside of that 50 miles there were also the barrier islands. All renewable land brought about by the flooding of the river and depositing of seddiment before it exists into the Gulf proper.
The trouble is now with the levees and the constant dredging of the river to keep shipping lanes open the barrier islands and the land that stretched out from NO is no being renewed by periodic flooding of the river. Because of this NO is now probably 20 feet below river level as the ground dries out and the earth compacts. If it wasn’t for the levees, the barrier islands would still exist as a force to deprive hurricanes of their force. Hitting islands a hundred miles out and land 50 miles out would have deprived Katrina of much of it’s fuel before hitting inhabited areas , as it happened Katrina didn’t have much between it and the city so it struck without being deprived of much fuel.
At this point NO does not need to be abandoned but south of NO the river should be cut free to once again rebuild the flood lands and barrier islands that protected NO for nearly 300 years.
On the subject of Shrub, how much longer is the right going to makeexcuses for this guys complete incopetance? The irony is while they whine about the way the left is portraying Bush, they forget they treated Clinton far worse for far less and spent millions trying to turn his private sex life into an impeachable offense.
How totally domestic the days of a sex scandle look all these years later. Give me womanizing over this incompetent. I never thought about it but everything from 1-30-2001 to now has been a giant domino fall. For the first time in it’s history, instead of appointing knowledgable prepared people to run FEMA, FEMA became the dumping ground of political pay offs, which was usually limited to the trade department in the past. Shrub ignores terrorist warnings so post 9-11 suddenly we need a department of homeland security which once again is staffed with people without a clue… But it gets worse. In the days that follow, it must have been the intelligence departments fault for 9-11 so they have to be shoved under HLS control, at the same time FEMA is being shoehorned in there with them. As we go to war and learn of the big lie, shrub plays the blame game and it must have been the CIA’s fault for the bad intell, even though that is being proven incorrect. The CIA was working fine, it was the Whitehouse that had no brains. So now we have an intelligence division that is being litterally dismanteled and brushed under the rug for their supposed “failure” of correct intel. Then comes Katrian, thus proving that all the changes that were implemented to supposedly fix the problems that led to 9-11 have all been for naught and we are probably in worse shape than we were on 9-10-01. All due to someone who says he’s protecting us, yet every move he has made has just made us weaker and more vulnerable . Putting a guy in charge of FEMA that was fired by a horse society… God help us. It is totally ironic that it took Clinton’s FEMA chief and a plea from the governor to get the FEMA control center up and running…
On the Shrubs response, isn’t it funny he can immediately leap into action in an attempt to sustain the life of a brain dead woman, but a hurrican isn’t allowed to interfer with his vacation.
On an earlier question, no we don’t need a president that falls apart during a tragedy, what we do need is a president who takes a disaster as seriously and leaps to the ready as fast as he did for a brain dead, beyond any help woman.
On the statment “don’t blame, fix it”. Sorry but in this instance blame needs to be assigned and heads need to roll because evidently it was the leaders who caused the problem in the first place. Do you seriously think someone who was fired by a horse society has the ability to fix something like this. And how do you trust the person who appointed such a person on the basis of a political payback to fix it along with that person. I don’t and CEOs of corporations have been fired for far less.
Bush once stated that he would run the government like a business, well in that case, it’s time for him to resign because he and his appointees are incompentants who should not be trusted to fix anything since all they have done is make things worse.
Oh this is hilarious, FEMA just announced that we shouldn’t trust information on their own website. Looks like a resume was heavily padded… If they can’t make sure a simple resume that was posted on their own fracking website was correct, and exactly who provided that information, they why should we trust anything they say? Wow which idiot issued that statment, ‘don’t trust what you read on our website’…
And the incopetance go on and on and on….
“Mayhap, but a President Gore wouldn’t have replaced James Witt with someone who managed to beat the Peter Principle and a President Kerry wouldn’t have kept Michael Brown as head of FEMA.”
And your source of this devine information is…? Please post a list or a link to the names and positions either Gore or Kerry would have nominated for positions in their administrations.
She was saying how after the 3-Mile Island disaster, Jimmy Carter was there the next day, in a radiation suit, touring the building to survey the situation. Meanwhile, it took our president 3 days to put down the Nintendo long enough to see what the fuss was about in NO.
OTOH, some people were complaining that Bush’s visit hindered relief efforts, because food couldn’t be delivered while AF1 was in the air. A tour is style of substance. To just say “he should be there to see it” is a touchy-feely move. It’s not a bad one, but that’s still what it is.
As far as what he was DOING, he asked the governor and mayor to declare a mandatory evacuation before the hurricane hit, he declared a state of emergency before it was hit, he declared the area a disaster the afternoon of the storm, he asked Blanco to federalize the disaster relief on Friday, etc. In other words, he was doing what the president does – releasing money and people. I’m not sure how he was “disengaged” from it -except in the minds of people who want to find a reason to criticize him. There have absolutely been problems, IMO at all levels not just the federal level.
Bottom line: this is a disaster of biblical proportion – much, much worse than any other disaster this country has had to deal with. No other disaster in modern times has forced an entire city to have to relocate. Mistakes will be made, things will not happen as quickly as we’d like, and it’s heartbreaking.
At my software company, we’ve already got people requesting interviews, and we’re doing what we can. We’ve got people with family staying with them that we want to help. No help really seems adequate, though. I think that’s why so many on all sides are reacting to the ineffieciencies of the relief effort.
I think the big lesson that can be learned here, by persons on both sides of the poltical spectrum, is that if you depend on government for something this important, you’re very likely to be disappointed.
DW
Those who do not want to play the Blame Game, ARE TO BLAME. Better words about this situation have never been spoken.
Now, all you people supporting the decisions made by the Federal Goverment and the President, I’d like to play another game with, called the Shame Game. Do you people have any shame? Isn’t there a point where you look at the LOOOONNNGGG list of what went wrong, what was said in the aftermath (Convention Center comments), and the general reactions of our Leaders and go “Okay, they messed up bad, people are dying because of what they failed to do, I want some sort of accountability”. Looking at this situation, how the hëll can you still stand up for these guys after all thats been reported? As of right now over 2/3rds of the country think the President, Brown, and the Department of Homeland security f’ed up bigtime. Why cant you people drop your blind support and agree that theres a double standerd when it came to responding to this disaster? Seriously, dont you have any Shame?
Bill,
Thanks. At least now I can read the thing.
For the first time in it’s history, instead of appointing knowledgable prepared people to run FEMA, FEMA became the dumping ground of political pay offs, which was usually limited to the trade department in the past.
In all fairness, it was considered a dumping ground under Reagan and Bush I, too. Clinton was the first and only president to something radical like staff it with professionals with actual emergency management experience.
Bush once stated that he would run the government like a business, well in that case, it’s time for him to resign because he and his appointees are incompentants who should not be trusted to fix anything since all they have done is make things worse.
Given how many businesses he’d run into the ground, shouldn’t this have been our first warning?
In other words, he was doing what the president does – releasing money and people. I’m not sure how he was “disengaged” from it -except in the minds of people who want to find a reason to criticize him.
One rule of politics that I thought Bush understood is perception = reality. With a disaster of biblical proportions, people also need the president to project the image that he’s engaged. For him to stay on vacation and then put unrelated photo ops in Colorado and California ahead of at the very least, making a statement about the hurricane creates the image that he isn’t all the engaged. Then, on his first visit, his appearance consisted of making a joke about getting hammered at mardi gras and looking forward to Trent Lott’s new porch. His loose, easy going manner was completely inappropriate to the seriousness of the situation.
I don’t really care if the president cries or “loses it” in the face of the tragedy, but he should at least project the image that he’s taking the problem seriously.
Then there was the utter cluelessness of “Brownie” who apparently learned about the people in the Superdome from CNN. For Bush to publicly say to this guy that he’s “doing a heck of a job” again, shows a complete disengagedment from not only the seriousness of the situation, but reality itself.
Jerry,
No problem. . At this point there’s so much info out there it’s getting harder and harder to separate the good from the bad. It’s funny how, more than ever, the opportunity to get to the truth is available but the ability to do so is ever more elusive.
A few new bits of interest:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/09/national/nationalspecial/09military.html?ei=5090&en=aa642b8c89c27c01&ex=1283918400&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1126238795-dGCl9WlaN8lbkCHBy9hw2w&pagewanted=print
The NYT is no Friend of George but the article does not paint a terribly flattering light of Gov. Blanco. Some excerpts:
officials realized that Hurricane Katrina had exposed a critical flaw in the national disaster response plans created after the Sept. 11 attacks. According to the administration’s senior domestic security officials, the plan failed to recognize that local police, fire and medical personnel might be incapacitated.
This should be addressed in the future. Not every city has New York City Cops and Firefighters. The fact that so many New Orleans cops failed to rise to the occasion is no surprise to those who know New Orleans (and those cops who DID do their jobs above and beyond the call of duty deserve special praise–it’s esier to be heroic when evryone around you is doing the same).
To seize control of the mission, Mr. Bush would have had to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president in times of unrest to command active-duty forces into the states to perform law enforcement duties. But decision makers in Washington felt certain that Ms. Blanco would have resisted surrendering control, as Bush administration officials believe would have been required to deploy active-duty combat forces before law and order had been re-established.
While combat troops can conduct relief missions without the legal authority of the Insurrection Act, Pentagon and military officials say that no active-duty forces could have been sent into the chaos of New Orleans on Wednesday or Thursday without confronting law-and-order challenges.
But just as important to the administration were worries about the message that would have been sent by a president ousting a Southern governor of another party from command of her National Guard, according to administration, Pentagon and Justice Department officials.
“Can you imagine how it would have been perceived if a president of the United States of one party had pre-emptively taken from the female governor of another party the command and control of her forces, unless the security situation made it completely clear that she was unable to effectively execute her command authority and that lawlessness was the inevitable result?” asked one senior administration official, who spoke anonymously because the talks were confidential.
Officials in Louisiana agree that the governor would not have given up control over National Guard troops in her state as would have been required to send large numbers of active-duty soldiers into the area. But they also say they were desperate and would have welcomed assistance by active-duty soldiers.
You’ll never get them to admit it but the dailykos moveon.org crowd would have burst blood vessels in outrage had Bush taken over. I think it would have gone something like this…
Smirky McChimpface just couldn’t wait to shove aside a Democratic woman leader so he could hog all the glory. Sure he sent in the National Guard–that’s Shrub for you! Attack attack attack! Probably couldn’t WAIT to get the chance to shoot black people! My God, first we have the Patriot Act and now this! I hope all of you lickspittle conservative lackies feel properly stupid–we TOLD you that the military takeover of the United States of Amerikkka was about to happen! And did you notice that he staged his coup AFTER the New York Times and other reputable news organizations reported that Katrina had mostly missed New Orleans? Yet right after he called in the jackboots the levees mysteriously “burst”. You have to be awfully naive to believe that they survived the hurricane but broke just in time to justify Adolph W Bush’s putsch.
Or something like that. But I could be wrong.
Back to the news. Paul Krugman says that
The Daily Howler will suddenly have a lot fewer friends, I suspect:
But alas! We learned a sad fact from Katrina last week. Despite all the excited talk about the way we’re “reality based,” our liberal elites are increasingly vacuous—empty, stupid, dim and shrill, committed to loud, self-satisfied ranting and too inept—too self-involved—to traffic in trivial things like facts. What are the facts about last week’s reaction? Was FEMA’s reaction historically slow? We would guess that review of these facts would tend to promote progressive interests. But we’ve yet to see any real attempt to review past federal reaction to storms. Loud-mouthed liberals are calling folk names, something we simply love to do (it feels very good). But the facts are hard to find, about this and many other topics.
But then, all across the landscape last week, we saw the dank waters of freeper creep invading the once-pristine liberal web. Progressives and liberals name-called freely and bungled facts—helping to doom progressive interests. We can be just as dumb as they have long been, our excited liberal leaders seemed to cry. Why have progressive interests foundered? Why do the poor just keep getting poorer? We thought we got a good idea as we saw these dank waters spread left.
Investors Business Daily has some harsh words about the idea that FEMA was a model of efficiancy under Clinton and has been dragged down by Bush:
http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=20
Hillary Clinton says FEMA was more effective when her husband was president. The victims of Hurricane Floyd might venture a different opinion, and it wasn’t FEMA that kept supplies from the Superdome.
…Just ask the tens of thousands of people left stranded up and down the Eastern Seaboard by Hurricane Floyd in 1999.
“We’re starting to move the trailers in,” said then-FEMA director and current Hillary favorite James Lee Witt, nearly a month after Floyd first hit. “It’s been so wet, it’s been difficult to get things in there” — an explanation that sounds familiar.
Many have called for the head of FEMA Director Mike Brown. But Bill Clinton’s choice to be Southwest Regional FEMA director in 1993 was even less qualified, earning his job handling disaster recovery of a different sort.
Raymond “Buddy” Young, a former Arkansas state trooper, got his choice assignment after leading efforts to discredit other state troopers in the infamous Troopergate scandal. If a storm like Katrina struck the Big Easy back then, Young would’ve been in charge.
On Aug. 27, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco was asked at a press conference what could be done to avert disaster. Her pathetic answer was, “We can pray hard that the intensity will weaken.” That was Louisiana’s disaster-recovery plan.
I can only imagine the response of the Reality Based Community if that had been Haley Barbour’s reply. (“Hey Haley! How about you unclasp those hands and use them to call up some bus drivers!”
I, for one, look forward to the hearings. Yes, they will be used for cheap political gain–that’s already happening (a moveon.org ad targeting John Roberts somehow ties it in to Katrina victims; the Democratic Party had to remove a request for donations to the party from a petition blaming Bush for the crisis, pretty much anything coming out of Al Sharpton’s mouth) but at least we will get it out in the open. There are reasons why the Astrodome is able to serve as a good shelter and the Superdome was not and we need to see to it that every city knows the difference.
The NYT is no Friend of George but the article does not paint a terribly flattering light of Gov. Blanco. Some excerpts:
Once again, I agree that Blanco and Nagin both screwed up their respective jobs, but I fail to see how that exonerates FEMA from their own screw ups.
“Mayhap, but a President Gore wouldn’t have replaced James Witt with someone who managed to beat the Peter Principle and a President Kerry wouldn’t have kept Michael Brown as head of FEMA.”
And your source of this devine information is…? Please post a list or a link to the names and positions either Gore or Kerry would have nominated for positions in their administrations.
It’s a logical assumption. There’s no reason for Gore to have replaced a competent head of FEMA from the immediately preceding Democrat administration with someone else, and there is certainly no way that Kerry would have kept an unqualified Republican spoils-system beneficiary on the federal dole. (Whether or not Brown’s notional replacement would have been as qualified as his successor is another matter entirely, but IMHO I can’t imagine Kerry staffing the job with someone as hopelessly inept as the incumbent has.)
The thing is, there’s going to be a voter reckoning for the mayor and the governor. Point all your fingers at them that you want, but unless you’re a registered voter for them, your opinion won’t matter. And it shouldn’t. The voters (assuming there’s even a New Orleans city left to be mayor over) of those jurisdictions will decide whether their elected officials should be held accountable.
Bush is another matter. This event has painfully exposed the risks of electing a sycophantic president. Granted, every president appoints his buddies and the people he’s most familiar with to government positions. It’s kind of one of the perks of the job. But with that power comes the responsibility to make sure that those folks are willing and capable of performing their duties, or to make sure that they’ve got the staff to cover for them. FEMA’s problem, as CNN has been reporting, is that it’s more than just Brown that’s incompetant: Bush has seeded FEMA management with a bunch of his cronies, very few to none of whom have any prior experience with dealing with any sort of emergency situation. Add to that Brown’s just general incompetance (reports are that he was asked to resign from his prior position, and audits of that arabian horse company have revealed gross mis-management) and FEMA is just a way for Bush to funnel taxpayer money into his friends’ pockets. When the President’s appointees do their jobs at least passable well, no one really cares that it’s all people he knows. When they fail to ensure that their agencies are capable of carrying out their essential mission, I think it’s time to start looking into criminal negligence on all levels.
I can tell you from personal experience that a government agency can still function and do its job even if the head of the agency is a complete incompetent. But from all reports, FEMA experienced a mass exodus of professionals after they were put under DHS and were replaced by Brownie clones. If middle management are just as clueless as the top position, then the agency is doomed.
Apparently, the Press has taken an active role in showing Mike Brown and the rest of FEMA as being inexsperienced. Its been on both CNN and MSNBC today. Hopefully, they wont let this drop. But I think when the death toll is actually announced, I doubt people will be so quick to let this story fade away.
BTW- Doesn’t it seem odd, after a week, we dont have an actual number for the dead? After 9/11, we had that 3,000 estimate within 3 days. With this, we have reported numbers in places like Missisippi in the hundreds, but supposedly theres piles of Dead bodies in some areas of Nola. Supposedly, FEMA put in an order for 20,000 body bags.
“It’s a logical assumption. There’s no reason for Gore to have replaced a competent head of FEMA from the immediately preceding Democrat administration with someone else, and there is certainly no way that Kerry would have kept an unqualified Republican spoils-system beneficiary on the federal dole. (Whether or not Brown’s notional replacement would have been as qualified as his successor is another matter entirely, but IMHO I can’t imagine Kerry staffing the job with someone as hopelessly inept as the incumbent has.)”
Oh please. It wouldn’t matter what party is in charge, appointments like this are always political favors. I am in no way defending the director of FEMA, in fact I’m waiting anxiously for this crisis to be over and for someone else to take charge of the agency.
“Oh please. It wouldn’t matter what party is in charge, appointments like this are always political favors.”
True, but at least under Clinton, his appointments for FEMA were qualified for the job.
“BTW- Doesn’t it seem odd, after a week, we dont have an actual number for the dead? After 9/11, we had that 3,000 estimate within 3 days. With this, we have reported numbers in places like Missisippi in the hundreds, but supposedly theres piles of Dead bodies in some areas of Nola. Supposedly, FEMA put in an order for 20,000 body bags.”
I actually don’t see this as odd. Even before 9/11, large buildings had pretty decent security, and most companies would have individual security or some other way to log employees in and out of the office. Not to mention that the deaths were all pretty specific. Friends and relatives could report people as missing.
This is entirely different. The sheer number of people displaced, over 1.5 million, spread anywhere from Texas to Illinois, New York, Florida, and everywhere in between, makes tracking just the evacuees nigh impossible. Then you have to take into account that for many of the missing, all the people that could report them as missing might also be missing. Collecting the bodies alone is going to be a massive effort. Even more massive than that is the identification of them. We might never know the actual number of people killed in this event.
When the President’s appointees do their jobs at least passable well, no one really cares that it’s all people he knows.
Nor should we care; it’s competence we should be looking at first.
Certainly there are problems Nagin. And there are questions about Blanco, particularly about their communications and planning (The Florida plan on paper looks markedly better, and their real life execution was easily better, in that they took care of the old and inform in a much more effective way; nothing’s going to help the stubborn and stupid, however). And there are definitely things to restructure at FEMA; even if the locals are incompetent, you really shouldn’t be squabbling about it at the 11th hour. And you should be using your resources much more effectively–no excuses for all the red tape.
“I think the big lesson that can be learned here, by persons on both sides of the poltical spectrum, is that if you depend on government for something this important, you’re very likely to be disappointed.
DW”
and what is the alternative? every man for himself? rescue for hire? or perhaps private enterprise paid for with tax dollars? corporations have more than their fair share of inept bureacracy too.
do you believe we shouldn’t count on the government for national defense? isn’t the military also too important to be left in the hands of the government?
“I can drive a bus. I do it occasionally for field trips and things. It’s easy. Kind of like driving a car only taller.”
I’ve never driven a bus, but I have driven several 16-ft moving trucks and I wouldn’t characterize the experience “easy” – as a point of comparison, I find driving cars in Boston and NYC easy, the Autobahn was fun, and I once found myself in a pack of cars driving on the sidewalk in San Juan (interesting story).
“At any rate, excluding Halle Berry or Ted Kennedy, it’s hard to imagine many drivers being a worse option than staying.”
It only takes one crash to block an escape route and tie up emergency resources that could be used for other things (which supposedly happened in this instance).
“It was the state and city government which had an evacuation plan that it failed to implement.”
As another poster pointed out, the evacuation from NO by most accounts was a success – essentially 90-95% of the people who could get out *did* get out. The problem was people who couldn’t get out (poor, no car, sick, pets, or nowhere to go) and people who wouldn’t get out (idiots).
Ultimately, disaster preparedness is first a local concern. New Orleans was not prepared. They had busses for evacuation, and they didn’t use them. They had enough money to fix the levees, and they used it to build the Superdome instead. And when the predictable disaster hit, they had no workable plan. Their communications broke down horribly, they didn’t know what to do, where to put people, etc.
So New Orleans dropped the ball, and it was going to be a huge mess regardless of who was president. Did FEMA and Bush handle it well? No. And this is not excusable. But there is a list of inexcusable decisions here, and it seems odd to focus on only one.
It was a great city, and this was a terrible tragedy.
Once again, I agree that Blanco and Nagin both screwed up their respective jobs, but I fail to see how that exonerates FEMA from their own screw ups.
It doesn’t and I certainly did not suggest that it did. I’m on record as calling for the firing of Brown. the man never should have had the job in the first place.
True, but at least under Clinton, his appointments for FEMA were qualified for the job
Raymond “Buddy” Young?
I’ve never driven a bus, but I have driven several 16-ft moving trucks and I wouldn’t characterize the experience “easy”
I don’t see the problem. They are harder to park, certainly. You can’t go 75 mph and expect to stop on a dime but why would you want to?
It only takes one crash to block an escape route and tie up emergency resources that could be used for other things (which supposedly happened in this instance).
true but I don’t think that’s as likely a problem as the undeniable reality of thousands dying and suffering because the buses did not run.
As another poster pointed out, the evacuation from NO by most accounts was a success – essentially 90-95% of the people who could get out *did* get out. The problem was people who couldn’t get out (poor, no car, sick, pets, or nowhere to go) and people who wouldn’t get out (idiots).
I heard it was closer to 80%. While we can’t help the idiots, the vast majority of the remaining 20% should at least have had the opportunity to leave and with a little bit of planning they would have.
As another poster pointed out, the evacuation from NO by most accounts was a success – essentially 90-95% of the people who could get out *did* get out. The problem was people who couldn’t get out (poor, no car, sick, pets, or nowhere to go) and people who wouldn’t get out (idiots).
Well, that’s the nub…the success of any evacuation plan is how it handles the people who can’t voluntarily leave.
The Louisiana and New Orleans don’t meet the grade; Florida’s is demonstrably better, in that they have an ongoing database to keep track of the infirm and elderly (but they don’t have provisions to forcibly remove the stupid and the stubborn….I’m not sure it’d be practical for anyone to handle those…)
Whenever I read discussions about what another president would have done in this situation, I think of tat old Saturday Night Live sketch that reinvented historical events, like, ‘What if Eleanor Roosevelt could fly?’ I personally don’t give a šhìŧ what Clinton would have done, or Gore or Kerry. Let’s deal with the here-and-now situation, rather than indulging in some Harry Turtledove-like alternate universe speculation. I don’t care what Witt would have done if he was still in office. I only care about what Brownie the Wonder Horse did, and learning his facts from watching a TV broadcast suggests that maybe he’s not all that plugged into unfolding events.
There’s an interesting op-ed piece in today’s NY Daily News, which is aptly titled ‘Everyone’s to Blame.’ While I don’t necessarily agree with every point it makes, it certainly points out that there’s more than enough blame to go around. Which I think was one of the original points of this thread.
So New Orleans dropped the ball, and it was going to be a huge mess regardless of who was president. Did FEMA and Bush handle it well? No. And this is not excusable. But there is a list of inexcusable decisions here, and it seems odd to focus on only one.
Well, a few points. One, suppose FEMA did do their job well. The following discussion would be a hail of criticism of the local authorities; it wouldn’t last as long because there’d be no real disagreement.
Two, the reason there’s so much focus on the federal response is the implication it has for future events. Is this REALLY going to be the standard for future federal response to disaster and terrorism? That really SHOULD get a lot of discussion and attention.
Third, is that the focus of the administration over the past four years was on preparedness. That effort has now been shown to be inefficient and the money wasted. That’s a concern for anyone and would have justified a withering array of criticism if it had been a Democratic president. Which renders any comment about “it wouldn’t have been any better under a Democrat” to be null and void–it’s a really stupid comment. You simply CANNOT have FEMA and Homeland Security be this ineffective and blockheaded in their behavior.
The bottom line is, “get the job done.” And the job simply wasn’t done here.