Katrina Take III
Some catchup on Katrina:
Ray Nagin tried to get people to come back to New Orleans, which is a fantastic idea, considering that public utilities are spotty and there is little infrastructure to support them and, oh, there’s another big storm coming that way. How would these people get back to New Orleans? Buses maybe? Funny how Nagin is so quick to bus his constituents into harms way, but couldn’t really be bothered when he had a chance to move them out. It took pressure from Bush for Nagin to finally say “hey, maybe this isn’t such a good idea.” Once again, Louisiana needs Bush to burp them and put them down for their nap. At least this time, they let him, instead of waiting five days (thank you, Kathleen Blanco).
It is becoming more and more obvious that the levees were way overfunded by the Federal government, but Louisiana has this nasty habit of spending money on other things than what the money is meant for, or an even worse habit of stealing the money. Anyone else feeling nervous about pumping tens of billions of taxpayer dollars in through those people? Katrina was the best thing to ever happen to these scumbags.
Remember that guy on MSNBC crying talking about a colleague’s mother who drowned in a nursing home, blaming the Feds for not getting there in time? Apparently, he lied.
Death toll for Louisiana, so far: 736. It’s not good, but it’s also more than an order of magnitude smaller than the “10,000″ number that was touted. It remains to be seen if any on the left are going to complain that the number would have been higher if our medical technology weren’t so good, like they do when they look at the low number of deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes… damn those people for not dying to make your point.
Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam suggests that Whitey blew up the levees in order to flood the black neighborhoods and spare the white ones. I hereby sentence Mr. Farrakhan to be Pat Robertson’s bunkmate in hell.
The “nature over people” folks over at the Sierra Club blocked strengthening of the New Orleans levees in 1996 with a lawsuit. On September 5th, Al Gore gave a speech blaming Bush for the levee’s failures. The speech was given to… the Sierra Club, naturally. One has to wonder if the applause Gore received was meant to say “yes, we agree, it is Bush’s fault” or “death to all humans who defy Mother Nature by encroaching on wetlands!”
A new poll says that 54% of Americans think New Orleans should be abandoned and rebuilt somewhere else (you know, somewhere that isn’t normally underwater.)
This response is great:
Early reports of the survey results prompted angry phone calls from displaced residents of New Orleans. Among them was a tearful Mary Dawn Pugh.
“My first reaction is, where? Where would you move it? There’s water everywhere,” said the recent law school graduate whose New Orleans home is submerged.
Something tells me that if your house is currently submerged, you couldn’t very well do worse anywhere you moved it. It’s no wonder that Ms. Pugh thinks that the is water “everywhere.” Living on the bottom of the ocean rather skews one’s perspective on these things.
Pugh complained about public reaction to recent TV coverage of the worst moments of a city known worldwide for its romance and charm.
“I’ve heard so much hatred spewed about New Orleans, people talking about what they’ve seen,” said Pugh, who questioned whose opinions are measured in the poll. “It could be backwoods Minnesota people thinking how their tax dollars are going to be spent.”
Yeah, how dare those silly backwards-thinking people be apprehensive about paying for Ms. Pugh’s freaking underwater sea-lab?
Sarah publishes a new FAQ page, primarily dedicated to parents who are interested in starting violin lessons for their children. Angsuman briefly discusses designing for usability and aesthetics. Mark discusses some of the truth, lies, and stupidity that followed Hurricane Katrina. And, Tom discovers Netvibes, a highly customizable portal service. Copyright © 2004-2005 MacManX.com. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not
What wasn’t widely reported, and that you seemed to have missed, is that Nagin’s plan was a phased repopulation, basically one zip code at a time, as services such as electricity were restored to those areas, people would be asked to come back to them. By the way, NOW he’s got his 500 buses to re-evacuate New Orleans if needed, but Hurricane Rita isn’t all that likely to hit — or even come close to — New Orleans.
Painting Bush as a hero in the Katrina situation? Talk about misguided hero-worship; no matter what else might be said about anyone else involved, he and his administration have screwed up on this from the very beginning.
Let’s not even talk about how the disaster was foreseen from the beginning, despite the president’s mournful claims to the contrary in various public addresses. Oh, and rebuilding NO — no new taxes but $100 billion extra dollars out of an already broken budget. Right.
He can’t have screwed it up from the very beginning because it’s not his job or the job of the Federal government! Nevertheless, he tried to help, but Blanco would have none of it. She didn’t want to appear weak by appealing to the Federal government. Many people weren’t even informed of the mandatory evacuation, when it was finally given. The local disaster plan was ignored, and no use was made of public resources to get people out. They just opened up the Superdome and crossed their fingers. And 5 days later, when Blanco finally asked for the Feds to take over, it is suddenly their fault?
Now, I’m with you on the ridiculous spending. I say we repeal that pork-laden highway bill and start cutting out presidential yachts and $250 million bridges to islands inhabited by 50 people. Federal spending is out of control, and Bush doesn’t seem capable of vetoing anything that increases it.
Submitted for Your Approval
First off… any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here, and here. Die spambots, die! And now… here are all the links submitted by members of the Watcher’s Council for this week’s vote. Council li…
Diggers Realm Nominated For Watcher of Weasels Vote
I’d like to thank those who nominated my entry “Charlie Norwood (R-GA) Lays The Smack Down On Vicente Fox’s Offer Of Mexican Labor” for inclusion in the voting this week at the Watcher of Weasels. I’m in the running against…
Saw this article on MyWay news this morning and thought of your post.
Actually, he did screw it up from the beginning: Mr. “hell of a job, Brownie” Brown was Bush’s glowing appointment to the FEMA position, replacing the competent and organized direction from the previous appointment (Witt), when FEMA was actually doing its job correctly. But you know what they say, “If it ain’t broke, fire the guy responisble and give your college buddy the job.”
Note the so-called four years of government reforms to make us safer from disasters and terrorists were also his responsibility, and we can see how well they turned out (because, you know, I feel so much safer now that the Bush government and its national disaster policies have actually been put to the test…that’s sarcasm, BTW).
You still misunderstand the Federal government’s role. People are already complaining that “Bush” isn’t evacuating people from Houston. Not the job of the Feds, period. I echo your disgust about the Washington cronyism that goes on, but don’t think it was to blame for the mess in New Orleans.
Mark…it’s FEMA. F E M A. Federal Emergency Management Agency. Note the first word making up the acronym.
Now, I get it is ridiculous that people are blaming Bush for not evacuating people from Houston, because we know that’s not his job (though, tangentially, it is a bloody ridiculous mess down there, again). But we’re not talking about Houston; we’re talking about the absolutely deplorable federal response to Katrina, a good chunk of which can be traced right back to said cronyism, which is Bush’s fault.
(And I note I misspelled “responsible” in my prior post. Bah.)
Time it took for Gov. Blanco to request that the Feds take over: 5 days
Time for the Feds to arrive at the Superdome after that request: a couple hours
I agree, the important part there is Federal. The Feds can’t just waltz in and save the day… they have to respect LA’s authority, which rests in the governor.
Also note that the response to Katrina, while inadequate in the eyes of many, was faster and better than normal for the agency.
These problems never seem to happen in Florida… we always manage to figure things out. I wonder why that is? The Federal involvement isn’t any different… it must be that our local government is just better at its job.
Actually, no they don’t. They can waltz right in and take over as soon as they feel like it. Just like the FBI can waltz in and take over a case from a local jurisdiction, they don’t have to wait for local permission to come in.
Waiting for permission is just being polite (and being polite in the case of a federal disaster is a case of misplaced priorities). In fact, for the 90’s hurricanes, FEMA pre-prepared for the disasters by bringing the necessary supplies in ahead of time, and they didn’t wait to be asked to do so, either.
I know this has been said before by one of the other readers/respondents in one of the Katrina posts hereabouts: FEMA’s response times were awful in comparison to the agency’s pre-Brown response times, particularly under director Witt. They were not better.
Heh. I wrote “federal disaster”…that should have read “natural disaster”. The old Freudian slip rears its ugly head.
Then why was Gov. Blanco able to, for 5 days, refuse to hand control over to the Feds? She finally relented, but didn’t want to hand power over because she would appear weak. Why did it take Ray Nagin and George Bush trying to convince Blanco to turn the power over?
Yep, FEMA did this for Katrina.
You are not contradicting me. I didn’t say that the Katrina response was faster than response times under director Witt. I said the Katrina response was faster than normal… i.e. average. Witt did a fine job. Witt should have the job now. His years represented the agency’s high point, after the agency miserable failure for hurricane Andrew in 1992.