२ सप्टेंबर, २००५
Katrina politics.
Kos (and presumably other sites) are savaging Bush over Katrina. What's missing is criticism of state and local government. Justified outrage about the response to Katrina is — not surprisingly — merged with the usual partisan politics. On the other side, people are excusing Bush and putting all the blame on state and local government. How hard is it to play it straight here? I'm going to try.
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I appreciate your keeping an even keel. I've stopped reading Kos for now, and I've posted a couple of angry notes on Atrios. It's really important now to stand in the middle and look honestly at all sides. State and local government, for example, can't be accurately characterized as GOP or Democrat. It's much more complex. Federal agencies, likewise, are complex in that they build policy over and across administrations. Congress, with its bizarre pork barrel politics, is probably the most partisan of cesspools, and it won't be hard to look at their spending priorities and associate them with party dominance.
I'm hoping for wisdom, that voters will watch this with open eyes and start to challenge the pork barrel games, the party-line appointments to committees, the spin, spin, spin on issues that never ends.
It's vital that we do. This disaster is a wakeup for us in terms of homeland security.
So, several articles (especially in the New York Times and Chicago Tribune) make it clear that the levees were not engineered to withstand a storm of this size. Indeed, additional money would have made no difference, since it was a recently repaired and reinforced (up to the level that they were planning) levee which broke.
Given that, the city should have been evacuated earlier. (Obvious in hindsight now-- how much did previous near-misses and predictions that didn't come true at the last minute like Ivan affect things?) At least on Saturday, when the President pre-declared it a disaster area, there should have been an evacuation order. Why did the mayor wait until late Sunday? According to the LA Times, Greyhound already stopped running Saturday night, to protect their employees. The trains couldn't run, as the tracks go by and on the levees. The flights were canceled. There was no way that all the tourists and people without cars could get out. Just no way.
As far as the rescue goes, I don't know exactly when the governor asked for federal troops; that request was necessary under the Posse Comitatus Act. The Louisiana National Guard, 3/4ths of which, including their Engineers (though not the Combat Engineers, whose duties are different) were in the state and other states quickly offered their troops. Yet the delay and organization seemed slow.
It seems that everyone was taken by surprise with how the storm seemed to be averted at the last second, yet the levee then broke later. More damningly, there seems to have been no real plan for rescuing people who couldn't get out. The chain of command still doesn't seem clear.
Thank you, Ann, for trying to play it straight. That's why I'm such a faithful reader.
A lot of blame to go around.
Last night, Congress approved an aid package, and I bet many members didn't make the effort to vote.
I have heard Mayor Nagin is in Baton Rouge?? Is this true and if so, I expect it's sure difficult for him to lead or coordinate efforts from there. Isn't a captain supposed to go downwith his ship?
Why was there no President Bush with a megaphone, the way there was after 9/11? That was a simple symbolic act, which brought comfort to those reassured by simple symbolic acts, but it didn't do much to comfort those who lost friends in the attacks.
Yesterday, Scott McClellan said that "flood prevention has been a priority for this administration from day one" and President Bush said that "nobody could have forseen that the levees would overflow." Really, sort of like how nobody could have forseen that planes would be flown into buildings?
Bush doesn't have to create more photo opportunities, as he did today with a staged-for-the-camera briefing with his shirt sleeves rolled up, as if he was personally going to start shooing rats off the bloated corpses and loading them onto trucks. No, all he has to do is to stop, and to tell McClellan to stop, rewriting history and, you know, start governing.
AJ,
Yeah. Congress managed to convene on a Sunday to "save" Terry Schiavo.
I am looking for people to praise, too, and in fact, I expect both praise and blame will fall on the same people. I'm glad to see Bush meeting, intimately, with folks in Mississippi. I expect they're handpicked, but that'll do for now. There's a little comfort there. I'm glad Ray Nagin has stayed in the city, like a captain on a sinking ship, and despite his many failures, I pray God sends him strength and resolve. I'm sorry for the folks who find themselves doing things they're ashamed of to survive. I feel terribly guilty at how comfortable I am right now, but I'm also so so glad I took this seriously and left. Blanco and Nagin had a press conference late Friday or early Saturday, where the gravity on their faces told me as much or more than the weather channel could.
One thing I would do, if I was the President, would be to go on tv and tell people like this to shut the hell up: "Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city. From 'Girls Gone Wild' to 'Southern Decadence', New Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of sin. May it never be the same. Let us pray for those ravaged by this disaster. However, we must not forget that the citizens of New Orleans tolerated and welcomed the wickedness in their city for so long," - Michael Marcavage, in a statement from the evangelical Christian group, "Repent America," issued Friday.
Compare and contrast:
Why was there no President Bush with a megaphone, the way there was after 9/11? That was a simple symbolic act, which brought comfort to those reassured by simple symbolic acts, but it didn't do much to comfort those who lost friends in the attacks.
Bush doesn't have to create more photo opportunities, as he did today with a staged-for-the-camera briefing with his shirt sleeves rolled up, as if he was personally going to start shooing rats off the bloated corpses and loading them onto trucks. No, all he has to do is to stop, and to tell McClellan to stop, rewriting history and, you know, start governing.
So, let me get this straight: you're complaining that Bush isn't down there with a megaphone comforting the afflicted, but you're also complaining that Bush is down there staging a photo-op instead of "governing."
It's amazing that your head doesn't explode.
Michael Marcavage may call himself an Evangelical Christian, but in reality he's a textbook Pharisee.
Is it not possible that everyone has been doing what they have thought was prudent, and to the best of what they had and knew at the time? Clearly, mistakes have been made... but unless you know the future and have an unlimited ability to move heaven and earth, some mistakes, or under-performances are going to occur. It's always easy to sit around after something happens and see what should've been done instead. There are multitudes of people that could come into blame, if that's the game you're going to play, from both sides of the political divide. Are there things the mayor of NO, and the governor should've done they didn't? Probably too many to mention. Could Bush (and every president in the last 25 years), Congress, and the federal bureaucracy have done something better? Of course. Could a guy named Bob who chose to live in a house in a place that was 20 feet below sea level in a hurricane-prone area have made different decisions?
Of course, the blame game has the overarching advantage of the 20/20 hindsight never having to be tested. If everything was done that the complainers now say should've been done, inevitably something would've gone wrong, and then people would be bitching about them. How about we give each other the benefit of the doubt, not saying that every decision was right, or even made intelligently, but that people have worked to the leading edge of their ability? Second guessing that is too easy and the second guesses are never tested, so they appear infallible, but we don't know that they are.
Perhaps we should investigate why it is that FEMA has wasted so much time and money planning for precisely this scenario over the past two decades if, as Prof. Althouse now informs us, this is really a local and state government problem.
David Brooks of The New York Times writes an editorial "The Storm After the Storm" which gives light to other dissaster and how the administration with stood.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/opinion/01brooks.html?oref=login
One of the major problems that the people who oppose Bush have with this administration is the utter lack of accountability. How do you point out one more time the incompetence without appearing partisan. You can blame people lower in the food chain, but ultimately, you know where, just like Truman, where the buck stops. Every time the Left sees this, they are told to stop playing politics. Why did Bush not clear the decks of every other issue and call everyone back from vacation. For G-d's sake, he had time to make a recess appointment, you would have thought he would have had time to make sure that Chertoff had the tools to identify tens of thousands of refugees at the NO Convention Center. After all, LIVE news reports were being broadcast from the location. I guess I'm not supposed to be playing politics with gross incompetence and lack of leadership, but I will if there is any chance that we can mitigate the disaster that has been inflicted upon this nation.
I am curious why everyone is so offended by evangelical Christians, when a brief internet will find Jews writing that the hurricane is a punishment of America for the evacuation of Jews from Gaza, Muslims who are equally that the storm is a punishment from God (I didn't read far enough to be sure for what), and environmentalists who say it is a punishment for not ratifying the Kyoto accord. Whatever floats your boat, religiously speaking. Why would Bush want to single out evangelical Christians.
Look at this article and tell me that the federal government is doing its best. I think CNN just got tired of the BS.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/katrina.response/index.html
I blame global warming!!
Ann: As an update, I've contacted all of the credit bureaus media departments, Equifax, TransUnion and Experian, and have asked for a statement as to how they're going to work with the crisis victim's credit reports.
They're all going to get back to me as soon as they figure something out. I'm not surprised.
Brando,
I'd like to meet more people on the left who emphasize freedom of religion, as opposed to freedom from religion (or at least freedom from evangelicalism). What I mainly see and here is a tolerance of everything except evangelical Christianity. Everyone thinks they're right; evangelicals are un-PC enough to actually say it.
Exactly when and how were evangelicals "alloted a special say" in what "Christian nation" means? What department is in charge of that?
I agree that people like Macavage are out of line in blaming the storm on New Orleans' depravity. In very similar circumstances Jesus clearly rejected that kind of theology (Luke 13). But he did say the takeaway for all of us is our need to get right with God or we will all eternally perish. Take it however you want; I'm just telling you what Jesus said.
Nagin is the biggest whiner I have ever heard.
HE and HIS city didn't utilize any of the resources on hand (seen the acres of flooded schoolbuses that could have been used for evacutation vehicles?), didn't have any plan - even after a previous exercise had pointed out the weaknesses in the city's lack of preparation - and now he's pulling this socialist whining for help from mommy.
FEMA and everything _always_ takes a few days to organize. That's a given, every situation is different. The city and state are supposed to plan and coordinate to get the efforts started while FEMA gears up.
That didn't happen. The NOLA mayor and the governor of LA (who failed in more ways than can be counted) should be tried for incompetence in office.
I think liberals and the liberal media should think twice about just bashing bush for this disaster. They should keep their crticism constructive. The last thing the people of New Orleans need are alienated people in places like Northern Wisconsin and Idaho calling their represenatatives to vote against or to water down reconstruction funding for New Orleans and the region.
If people start hearing charges of racism (as to why people were not rescued), they will start turing the channel, closing their checkbooks and ignoring the whole effort all together. This will be a political disaster for New Orleans. New Orleans needs a leader to stand up there and thank America while asking for more help .
In the end we all live in a nation that operates on mutual respect and shared sacrifice. We need to be grateful to one another for help despite the mistakes that may occur.
Brando,
Thanks for your gracious words. As an evangelical, I, too, am often uneasy with Christian leaders who talk about a "Christian nation" and move beyond political engagement to biblical triumphalism. If only we were all better at actually doing what Jesus said...
It really isn't hard to understand. The Mayor of New Orleans is a Democrat; the Governor of Louisiana is a Democrat. And if someone has to be blamed, you have to work up the chain of authority, and since there are no Republican executive officers in the state to blame, they're left with the President.
Simon, Jeff, and Charles,
Too bad there's such things as selective hurricanes, because I'd like see a Cat 5 run right down your flapping lips. Anyone whose posts contain words like "snicker" and "whiners" and the partisan know-nothingness of "liberals just want to blame Bush" is someone I'd like to see taken out of the gene pool.
There was a Corps of Engineers plan to deal with hurricanes and the levees, securing the city against a Cat-5, dating back to the Carter Administration (1977), which was sunk by lawsuits from environmentalist groups who sued because they thought the environmental impact statement did not adequately impacts on Lake Pontchartrain’s ecosystem and damage to wetlands. (p.4 of 12)
Wetlands...
Unfortunately it was also a 25-year plan and no other subsequent Administration has done anything either, but even if they had started during Carter's time they might not be finished today (example: the Big Dig) given the famously historic rampant corruption in the New Orleans political structure.
Wasn't/isn't it kinda like Mafia City South? I've got a buddy who lives there and I've been there a few times - there's really a lot of poor people in the city with no cars at all - people walk a lot to get around and to get where they're going - and the road conditions are pretty poor too.
A much more major percentage of the city is bad, like the Hunter's Point part of San Francisco, and the rest of the nice parts are smaller than most other cities I'm familiar with, and the crime rate is high - the looting was predictable and an expected pattern of behavior, Cops included...
Here's a story from back on August 28th, when the mandatory evacuation was first announced:
Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding.
I don't think Mayor Nagin has any room to blame President Bush, considering that Nagin should have called for a mandatory evacuation back on Saturday, when Bush was calling it a disaster area, and without Bush having to personally call and ask for a mandatory evacuation.
I just wanted to say that reading these comments and all the differences of opinions and how they are expressed ... well, it's a relief, really, compared to other comment sections I've read today (and tried to participate in before being belittled and called a troll).
Ann, your intelligence attracts a quality readership. Thanks for trying to approach this issue in a fair manner.
elizabeth said: "Too bad there's such things as selective hurricanes, because I'd like see a Cat 5 run right down your flapping lips. Anyone whose posts contain words like "snicker" and "whiners" and the partisan know-nothingness of "liberals just want to blame Bush" is someone I'd like to see taken out of the gene pool."
Gene pool-editing eugenics is back in fashion with socialists? I thought that went out sixty years ago.
Anne: Thanks. Thanks to all the great commenters too.
That's funny, lmeade. So people who disagree with you are socialists? Add yourself to the list of numbskulls with nothing to offer but wisecracks and cliches.
You mean you're not a socialist, elizabeth? My mistake then. I'm sure you can appreciate my confusion though as, historically, it's been socialists of one kind or another who've shown similar enthusiasm for selecting numbskulls and other inferior classes to be taken out of the... gene pool, as you put it.
lmeade, it must be nice to live in such a comfy delusion. There's you and all the people who agree with you, and there's the damned socialists. Read the comments to which I was respondining and maybe you'll understand my hyperbole. If not, too bad. We've both abandoned dignity at this point, so let's move on.
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