(Update: Greetings to visitors from the Washington Post. If this post interests you, you might want to check this one out as well. What a difference a month seems to make.)
As a friend pointed out to me this week, if Cindy Sheehan had not already planned to move off of center stage, with Bush's return to DC, Hurricane Katrina would have seen to it herself, bringing suffering and destruction on a positively Old Testament scale: Snakes! Poisoned earth! The dead rising up out of the ground! Wailing, gnashing, and rending! There scarcely is any other story right now.
And for that tiny little smidgen of good fortune, I suppose, Bush can be grateful. But that's about as far as it goes.
The damage Katrina visited upon New Orleans and parts of Alabama and Mississippi, beginning last week, has also had the effect of providing a simple narrative that features every single unflattering aspect of the administration of Three-Dollar George (as another friend has taken to calling him, in tribute to the price at the local gas pumps).See for yourself. Every theme that Scott McClelland has spent his waking life trying to spin away is returning with a vengeance, and even news items that normally wouldn’t have been associated with Bush are suddenly beginning to stick to the president like cat hair. To wit, some of the ugly questions raised--and moved into common circulation--by Katrina:
Leadership
- Shouldn't the Bush administration have seen this coming a little better?
- Wasn't Bush taking his sweet time getting back from vacation?
- Is Cheney, the man widely considered to be actually running the country, concealing illness?
- Four years later, is this all we've learned about evacuation, providing shelter, providing medical care, safe food and water, etc., from 9/11?
- If protecting our access to oil is now the reason why we went to war in Iraq, why isn't it worth the bother of protecting the domestic oil supply?
Fiscal priorities
- Did tax-cut driven budget cuts leave New Orleans unprepared for precisely this kind of emergency?
- Is it seemly for RNC chairman Ken Mehlman to be pimping for repeal of the "death tax" while New Orleans slips into "failed state" status?
Compassion
- Was the only time Condi Rice could shop for shoes and catch a Broadway musical while New Orleans sank into the ocean?
- Is anyone surprised that the amount of hardship you suffered in New Orleans following Katrina--as well as the media coverage of it-- seems to match up pretty well with your race and class?
- Is anyone else uncomfortable that Republican Speaker of House Hastert--who decides what appropriations bills live or die in the House-- says "it makes no sense to me" to rebuild New Orleans?
Iraq war
- How can the National Guard do its job--i.e.helping during national disasters--when its people and equipment are plugging the gap in Bush's Iraq war?
- Does Bush's make every place he touches, including New Orleans, look like downtown Baghdad?
- Given that the citizens of New Orleans have kicked in over $150 million in taxes toward Bush's Iraq war (which costs about $1.9 billion/day ) would it have killed the Bush administration to cough up the $71 million that the Army Corps of Engineers said was needed to prevent the very disaster we're looking at now?
Good lord--at one stroke, Bush has even managed to resurrect the "Pet Goat" meme.
This is not the way you want the conversation going if you're Bush. How did the team who cast Bush, with such perfect political pitch, as the heroic post-9/11 leader become so tone deaf?
Perhaps the biggest irony of recent events is that, despite his lifelong Oedipal rivalry with his father, Three-Dollar George has managed to burnish the reputation of the one-term, failed administration Bush the elder. With each passing day, Poppy appears in hindsight to have been a better leader, more compassionate , more astute on foreign policy--even more articulate--than we remember him, simply because Junior is such a failure.
Oregon Angle Postscript: If you're planning to make a donation to help the victims of Katrina--and you should--consider giving to Mercy Corps, a Portland-based relief organization with an amazing record of effectiveness and efficiency: Last year, 92% of the money Mercy Corps received went directly to relief programs; 8% went to overhead. (By comparison, Forbes reported an average of 84% efficiency for American charities, with the Red Cross coming in at 80%. Thanks to Nicole of Drinking Liberally/Portland for the reminder.)
And, while we're on that subject, you probably should consider avoiding entirely those relief organizations headed by people who put out death threats on foreign heads of state, and blamed the 9/11 attacks on gays, and called for nuking the State Department headquarters, even if--perhaps especially if--they are featured prominently on FEMA's web page right now.
1 comment:
This is ignorant of who is in charge and who is directly responsible for emergency preparedness. The Federal Government was slow to respond, but the state and local governments did very little to be prepared and to respond to the issues.
The real issue here is the failure of the Governor of Louisiana and the Mayor of New Orleans to be prepared and to respond.
• No matter how responsive the Federal Government is, it will NEVER be there immediately, not New Orleans, not Los Angeles, not New York, probably not even Washington DC. It is local government's job to deal with a disaster immediately (that is why they refer to fireman, police and paramedics as "first-responders") and the City of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana failed miserably! The Federal Government has to, if not required to, depend on the Cities and the States to know and access their problems and potential issues and communicate those problems to the Federal Government.
• The idea that George Bush has to be in Louisiana supervising FEMA or some other lame brained notion is also a crock! It's called a bureaucracy for a reason. There are people at every level which have a function to deal with the details and the day-to-day running of various agencies.
• If anything, due to the secret service contingent and the security needed to guarantee the safety of ANY President, it is a hindrance to have the President go to a disaster area, because entourage interferes with needed resources and delay activities that need to be done (i.e., landing at an airport needed by helicopters ferrying evacuees).
• Obviously, FEMA and Homeland Security were slow to respond by approximately 24 hours. This does need to be fixed.
• When disasters occur, it is under the authority of the state and local governments to take whatever action they deem necessary to aid the problems. The Federal Government does not get involved unless the State requests them to do so.
• Besides the idea that the Federal Government could have responded immediately is not reasonable. As an example, the military hospital ship that is being sent needs 5 days notice just to prepare to leave port. Then there is travel time. Even if they had given it notice to ship out 2 days prior, it would only have arrived 4 to 5 days after the disaster.
• The immediate consequences of this hurricane sit squarely on the shoulders of the state and local governments, specifically the Governor of Louisiana and the Mayor of New Orleans.
• Bush actually "pre-declared" it a disaster area 2 days before the hurricane hit in order to not delay any action that needed to be taken in case any of the Governors asked for help.
• The National Guard is under the control of the State unless they are "Federalized". Each state has its own National Guard.
• The Governor of Louisiana could have deployed the National Guard before the Hurricane hit in preparation of maintaining order. The Governor didn't.
• The Louisiana National Guard only has approximately 3,700 troops in Iraq. They still have approximately 8,000 in Louisiana of which 6,000 to 6,500 could have been deployed.
• There is a post Civil War law that precludes actually military soldiers from guarding hospitals and public buildings, as well as being able to arrest people (a big problem if you are trying to prevent looting and armed gangs, much of which is preventing volunteers from distributing aid) so the military could not have been of immediate help with security issues.
• Whereas the National Guard is not precluded from executing police powers.
• Also, issues such as disaster preparedness fall under the jurisdiction of local and state governments. Hospitals and local authorities should have been much more prepared for the circumstances that occurred.
• The City had no clue as to how many people went to the Superdome nor did they set up a security mechanism to prevent people from bringing in weapons. Obviously, they also failed to stock it with adequate provisions.
• This was not an earthquake or some other disaster for which they had no notice. It was a hurricane that was supposed to be a Category 5 but only hit land as a 3 or 4. The City and the State had at least 2 days notice in order to prepare. A very long time relative to natural disasters.
• The Mayor of New Orleans didn't even attempt to use the Public Bus System to evacuate people from the poorer neighborhoods. The best that he could do with 2 days notice, was ship them off to the Superdome with very little security in place and very little preparation and previsions.
• The City of New Orleans instructed all who couldn't leave the city to go to the Superdome, yet they failed to set up adequate communication (such as satellite phones) and provide sufficient police and/or National Guard to police the thousands of people.
• Also, considering many people were able to evacuate, it was only common sense to understand that those which couldn't, didn't have money or transportation, therefore they were coming from some of New Orleans worse neighborhoods and some of the areas with the highest crime. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that there would be a need for adequate security.
• And the idea that the flooding due to the break in the levee, wasn’t expected, is a crock of smelly stuff. New Orleans has had major breaks before and a break should always be a concern. It’s almost like being surprised when an earthquake hits California. This is a poor excuse for the local government to not be prepared and have a plan of action in place.
• The Mayor knew or should have known the hurricane was potentially a Category 5 and the levee was only built to withstand a Category 3.
• ONLY 1 out 4 pumping stations was working when the storm hit.
• This just exposed the symptoms of a corrupt and inefficient government, which New Orleans has had for many years.
• Do you honestly believe that the local city governments in New York City or in Los Angeles would have failed so miserably? I don't think so. Maybe all the time that the Mayor of New Orleans spent complaining about the lack of response by the Federal Government, would have been better spent figuring out ways for his administration to actually help alleviate the problems themselves. Of course you have to have been prepared to do so, which they obviously were not.
• As far as the charges of racism, that is a crock of smelly stuff as well. It has everything to do with poverty. If the Governor and Mayor had been concerned about poorer areas of New Orleans, they would have sent buses and other transportation to evacuate many of those people out, but instead they sent them to the Superdome, which inadequate resources and security.
• The Mayor and most of his administration are black, yet in one incident the Mayor evacuated a hotel with 300 to 400 tourists after the storm and sent them to the Superdome, where those tourists were allowed to get on buses before residents (including sick people) of New Orleans who had been at the Superdome for many days.
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