The colossal failures in leadership in the wake of Hurricane Katrina have proven once again that, as historian Richard Weaver argued, “ideas have consequences.” In the aftermath of a natural disaster, abstract theories of public policy and governance are tested in the laboratory of reality. Bad ideas, naturally, can have catastrophic consequences. But as we are seeing, even good ideas, when poorly implemented, can be calamitous.
A primary example is the principle of subsidiarity, an idea found in Catholic social thought which is often embraced by conservatives. As David A. Bosnich explains,
This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom.
While limited government, personal freedom, and other such goods are worthy reasons to support such an ideal, there is an even more primary justification: it saves lives. The evacuation of New Orleans provides a useful example of how this works out in a real-world context.
According to the principle of subsidiarity, governmental agencies and leaders at the city, parish, and state agencies hold primary responsibility for implementing the evacuation process. The city of New Orleans apparently agrees, since in their “Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan” they vest the authority to authorize an evacuation with the Mayor and the implementation of such an action with the city’s Office of Emergency Preparedness. The state’s official hurricane evacuation plan even notes that the primary means of evacuation will be personal vehicles but that school and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles, and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating.
How many people would need to be evacuated? In a paper written over a year ago, University of New Orleans researcher Shirley Laska estimated that the city has approximately 120,000 residents who do not have their own transportation and would need to rely on the government. While this is an extremely large number, the Regional Transportation Authority and the local school system have roughly 560 busses in which they could use in an emergency. Assuming that each bus could carry sixty-six passengers, each trip could carry 37,554 residents to safety. Three round-trips would be required to move all 120,000 citizens.
Such a task would naturally be rather time-consuming and fraught with unforeseen difficulties. But it would have almost assuredly save many lives – if it had ever been attempted. Rather than follow their own operating procedures, though, the city allowed the busses to lie dormant and instead advised residents to seek shelter in the Superdome. Only after the storm did the people who had followed this advice discover that they were trapped in the stadium without food or emergency services.
Realizing that their plan was faulty, the city chose to shift the blame to the federal government. Terry Ebbert, the director of homeland security for New Orleans, criticized FEMA for not acting quickly enough to move the 30,000 people who were holed up in the shelter of “last resort.” New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin even had the audacity to criticize the feds for not moving quickly enough after the storm had subsided, “I need 500 buses, man.... This is a national disaster,” said Nagin. “Get every doggone Greyhound busline in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans.” In his rant Nagin never got around to explaining why he never got the 500 buses within the city to move out of New Orleans.
Some people claim that it is too early to start placing blame. Such talk is nonsense and has only compounded the problem. Mayor Nagin has proven to be remarkably incompetent and if his resignation had been called for earlier, more lives may have been spared. (He claims, for example, that he was unable to call for an evacuation until he had consulted with the city attorney. Yet that information is publicly available on the city’s official website.) Nagin failed as a leader and now the blood of his own constituents is on his hands.
What is most distressing about the situation, though, is not that a mayor failed to lead but that the principle of subsidiarity was already in place and yet failed to be implemented. Mayor Nagin and Governor Kathleen Blanco deserve the primary blame for the fiasco in New Orleans. But the larger failure belongs to conservatives.
Principles such as subsidiarity, federalism, and limited government are often considered cornerstones of conservative political thought. But when it comes to their actual implementation they are merely given lip-service. While aspiring young politicos sing the praises of states-rights, they prefer to do so on Capital Hill or in D.C. think tanks rather than in the choirs of their state legislatures or local governments. The very idea that our most competent conservative statesmen should be working in their actual states rather than in Washington is considered ludicrous. After all, everyone knows that state and local governments are reserved for the also-rans and has-beens rather than for the able and ambitious. Any job in FEMA, for instance, is considered superior to working in the New Orleans’s Office of Emergency Preparedness.
But mayor’s offices, city councils, and state legislatures all join the “little platoons” that serve as our first line of defense when natural or man-made disasters strike. So why then are we not working to put our best and brightest into these offices? Why do push them to take jobs as Senatorial aides rather than as state senators? Why do we lead them to roles as assistants to assistant directors in the Department of Education rather than as leaders on county school boards? Why do we put our rhetoric behind the local and yet but our faith in the federal?
If we expect to be taken seriously, conservatives must start supporting the principles we claim we believe. One way that we could begin is by “subsidizing” subsidiarity, by using our resources to promote our intellectual and political leaders at the state and local levels of governance.
Imagine if conservatives had identified a true leader – whether a Democrat or Republican – and supported them in the New Orleans mayoral race. Imagine if such a candidate had won instead of Nagin, a self-financed Republican who switched party registration to the Democratic Party days before filing for his candidacy. Imagine if we had supported a candidate who understood the responsibility of the chief elected official in a city was to look after the safety of his fellow citizens. Would there have been fewer deaths? We’ll never know. Perhaps in the future, though, we’ll start acting like we claim to believe. And then maybe next time disaster strikes we won’t even have to wonder.
1
I cannot bring myself to criticize all the people who were involved in the New Orleans catastrophe. At least not yet.
The way I look at it is that hurricane Katrina was like an act of war. Nature hurled a devastating bomb at New Orleans and managed to breach the levees.
In hindsight, it is easy to say, "This was a bad decision, that was the height of malfeasance, why the heck didn't they do that!" and so on and so on and so on.
But in the fog of war, you don't always see things that just a day or two later seem to be so obvious. In the fog of war, you have to make momentous decisions without knowing how all the consequences will play out. In the fog of war, mistakes can cause great suffering and death, and snowball into uncontrollable chain reactions.
Ray Nagin does not appear to be a Rudy Guiliani. His profanity-laced rant of a radio interview on Thursday was the direct opposite of statesmanship and leadership.
But when I place myself in his shoes, I know that I would have made mistakes too. Probably not the same mistakes, but mistakes nonetheless. And its impossible for me to know whether my mistakes would have been just as serious and just as costly as Mayor Nagin's.
Right now, the main thing, if not the only thing, that most Americans know about Ray Nagin is that he is the man who just had a city destroyed on his watch. He is the man who allowed his city to slip out of control and into a chaotic hell. That is a heavy burden to bear, and I don't want to add to it just yet by tossing half-baked accusations and characterizations his way. The man deserves a little sympathy.
It seems a bit premature to be throwing brickbats at the man before all the facts are in and before all the dead are buried. I'm going to hold my fire until I know more about what exactly happened and didn't happen and why.
If it turns out that Nagin and his emergency response co-ordinator, Terry Ebbert, were indeed negligent, then I will be very ready to pile on and ruthlessly analyze what went wrong. But it's not clear to me who's to blame, if anyone, for losing the battle against Katrina. And until clarity has arrived, the losing generals should be cut some slack.
posted on 09.05.2005 3:07 AM2
September 11, 2001 isn't that long ago. Prior to 9/11 I did not at all like George W. Bush. Seriously. Me and my wife supported Allen Keyes during the Primary and we thought President Bush was way too liberal for our tastes.
Then 9/11 came and changed everything. The man we didn't really care for became the man we loved, honored and adored. Whatever he was before 9/11 was gone and in our eyes he became a new man. One who had been tested and passed with flying colors.
The thing is, such testing is rare in the United States of America. Even those people who begin in poverty are much better off than those who begin in real poverty in the 3rd world. So it is very difficult to know what we are really going to get when we vote on election day.
Nagin is no different, nor is Blanco. Now they have been tested and they have failed (To steal from the left) miserably.
Its interesting to me how so many people are pointing the finger at our President as if he's never been judged on crises management before. How did he do during 9/11? How did he do in Florida after the Hurricanes? Most people would easily agree that he deserves an A or even an A+.
Yet put him together with a Democrat controlled city, Democrat controlled State with Democrat Senators and now he looks like a failure.
I can't be the only one who sees this. Look at his polling data.
posted on 09.05.2005 5:03 AM3
Local and state officials have the primary responsiblity for planning and implementing disaster relief. However, FEMA is not a mere onlooker or cheerleader. It is charged with the task of managing federal disasters. Once it is clear that events have overtaken the locals, even if it is the locals' faulty planning or implementation that worsens the crisis, it is the responsibility of the federal government to intercede as necessary to restore domestic tranquility. That is what FEMA and President Bush failed to do. There is a shared responsiblity here. When a catastrophe of this magnitude occurs, it becomes a matter of national priority and defense and the federal government must be prepared to take up the slack.
The failures of the mayor, governor and other local leaders doesn't not excuse the delay in leadership by the Bush administration.
posted on 09.05.2005 8:06 AM4
Getting to your main premise that state and local governments aren't attracting the right degree of attention - you're right; but fixing it is much more difficult than that.
First, most people, when they have a problem with ANY bureaucrat at ANY level go to their local US House Representative. A lady I work with who had a problem with enrolling her kids in school called the office of our local congressman. Even though the school was administered by a school board, funded by a county with a Board of Commissioners and the state where there she had both a local State Rep and a State Senator, she chose to "go to the top" and not "mess around". However, the quality constituent service is one of the biggest factors in reelection of a US House member. So, to start fixing this problem, the issue of constituent services has to be addressed. Would we start supporting staffs for state and local officials to field citizen complaint matters?
Second, news outlets don't cover local matters very well. Newspapers and blogs are about the only media outlets that spend any resources on local matters. TV doesn't bother, unless you live in the largest city in the viewing area. Even then, they do just enough to move on to the stuff that "interests the viewers". Local Talk Radio could be considered an exception, but they scream more than they think.
Third, there's the issue of compensation. Being a senior aide for a Congressional Committee has more pay and more perks than being Speaker of Any State House. Here in North Carolina, we're the largest state with a part-time legislature; and the prevaling conservative thought contradicts your article. Most conservatives in North Carolina want to preserve the part-time legislature and limit the length of the sessions. The debate on the propriety of a part-time state legislature can go on for days; but the main issue is that it makes candidate recruitment very difficult; because the only people who can serve must have their "real job" to be able to do without them for 6 months out of a year.
Finally, national gigs are sweet. And it comes down to do we make the national positions like "Assistiant Deputy Under-Secretary for Homeland Security" less sweet or do we make the deal for local and state leaders sweeter. Making the national gig less sweet means that it's harder to recruit from the private sector and the alternative would be a hard sell to voters.
posted on 09.05.2005 9:01 AM5
In defense of Mayor Nagin, the reason the buses were never used was because there was simply no time. You can't get hundreds of drivers, and at best, they might've made one trip on the city's choked outbound highways.
In offense to Mayor Nagin, the reason there was no time was because he ignored his city's own evacuation plan and did not order an evacuation 72 hours in advance, as he was supposed to. Further, it appears that the city wouldn't have been evacuated at all had Bush not personally called Blanco on the phone and told her to make people do their jobs.
That said, the federal response was precisely what was promised when this exact scenario was drilled for two years earlier. It was one of the first things Brown ordered when he took over FEMA, and at the end of the drill, they determined, according to a Louisiana state official (also named Michael Brown) that the people of New Orleans would be alone for a few days.
There are simply huge logistical challenges to attempting to deploy into the middle of a lake with no working facilities for a hundred miles in either direction. The federals held up their end of the bargain. The question is: Why didn't the State of Louisiana even *pretend* to try to hold up theirs and keep the city from burning before the federals could chainsaw their way through the rubble to get to these people?
posted on 09.05.2005 9:04 AM6
Joe:
Wasn't the perception that "Washington is better than municipality X" created by liberals? Did they, in the zeal to override the principals you discuss nt draw the "battle lines" in Washington? Did they not render the local governments so inept that Washington became the place to go if you want to make a genuine difference?
You have a point, but there are some real chicken-and-egg questions here.
Then there is the fact that it is virtually impossible to get elected as a conservative on a local level, quirk of political life at the moment.
posted on 09.05.2005 9:35 AM7
Well, let's see, one of your readers put to bed the bus myth...but let's get one thing straight here:
Even if Nagin bears blame here the fact is that it does not in any way absolve the Bush regime of their moral responsibility.
Ever hear of the parable of the good Samaritan???
8
Joe, turns out Fiedel Castro agrees with you:
(from http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2005/09/responding_to_h_1.html)
Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.
What is Cuban President Fidel Castro's secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, "the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go."
posted on 09.05.2005 12:09 PM9
Actually, the bus myth wasn't put to bed
New Orleans has been on the short list of potential disasters for a long time. Its dikes were rated to withstand a Category 3 hit. There was a Category 4 (almost 5) storm aimed at New Orleans for at least 72 hours before the hit.
They should have called for an evacuation on Thursday or Friday - and used those 560 buses to move people out. Period
The only non-criminal justification for not doing so is the kinda human "it won't happen to me/here/etc". Regretfully, people run for mayor so they get to make the hard decisions. Or not.
Now of course they know, and in the future evacuations will perhaps be called to quickly - inspiring complaint as the memory of horror subsides. So it goes.
posted on 09.05.2005 12:15 PM10
Matthew If it turns out that Nagin and his emergency response co-ordinator, Terry Ebbert, were indeed negligent, then I will be very ready to pile on and ruthlessly analyze what went wrong. But it's not clear to me who's to blame, if anyone, for losing the battle against Katrina. And until clarity has arrived, the losing generals should be cut some slack.
I can certainly appreciate your desire to withhold judgment until the facts are all in. But it doesn’t take much searching to see that the relevant facts are already in. We’re not talking about a man making a few missteps in implementing a plan. We’re talking about a mayor who was unaware of his basic role in carrying out the plan.
Of course, all of the blame can’t be put on Nagin. It has long been known that a Cat. 4 or 5 hurricane would destroy the city. But with this knowledge in hand, Nagin should have carried out his job in a responsible manner.
Joel However, FEMA is not a mere onlooker or cheerleader. It is charged with the task of managing federal disasters. Once it is clear that events have overtaken the locals, even if it is the locals' faulty planning or implementation that worsens the crisis, it is the responsibility of the federal government to intercede as necessary to restore domestic tranquility. That is what FEMA and President Bush failed to do.
That’s not exactly how it works, Joel. The feds can’t just step in a push the local authorities to the side. While it isn’t being widely reported, the state authorities do not want the to let FEMA or any other federal agencies take control. As noted in the Washington Post:
Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said Saturday.
The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. "Quite frankly, if they'd been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals," said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.
The failures of the mayor, governor and other local leaders doesn't not excuse the delay in leadership by the Bush administration.
Delay in leadership? Joel, the President had to ask the governor to evacuate the people of New Orleans:
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.
How incompetent do you have to be when the President has to call and ask you to do your job?
Justin First, most people, when they have a problem with ANY bureaucrat at ANY level go to their local US House Representative.
You are absolutely right. That’s another example of how we “conservatives” say one thing and do another.
Here in North Carolina, we're the largest state with a part-time legislature; and the prevaling conservative thought contradicts your article. Most conservatives in North Carolina want to preserve the part-time legislature and limit the length of the sessions.
The same is true of my home state of Texas. Part of the problem is that state legislative jobs are considered the province of rich men (and they are almost always men) who don’t really need the money. If we really believe in state’s rights then we need to fund the legislatures of the states so that people can afford to take such jobs.
Aaron In defense of Mayor Nagin, the reason the buses were never used was because there was simply no time.
No time? The hurricane hit Miami two days before it moved to New Orleans. Forty-eight hours is sufficient time to move at least one load of (37,000) people.
You can't get hundreds of drivers,…
If they can’t get hundreds of drivers then why is that their official plan to evacuate the city?
…and at best, they might've made one trip on the city's choked outbound highways.
One trip would have been enough to move everyone that was trapped in the Superdome.
Joel Wasn't the perception that "Washington is better than municipality X" created by liberals? Did they, in the zeal to override the principals you discuss nt draw the "battle lines" in Washington? Did they not render the local governments so inept that Washington became the place to go if you want to make a genuine difference?
Yes, I agree they did set up that mentality. But are we conservatives really willing to say that we have no choice but to accept the situation as it is? Are we going to claim that we have no choice but to follow the liberals lead and scrap federalism?
I can’t blame the liberals because they hardly believe in state or local rights. They are being consistent. But what is our excuse?
AndyS What is Cuban President Fidel Castro's secret?
Good grief. How sad is it that Castro understands – and is willing to implement -- the principle of subsidiarity better than conservatives?
11
It is pathetic when FEMA bureaucrats by the hundred struggle to coordinate 75 agencies. It is pathetic when they ask news crews "What's going on out there?" It's pathetic when a military man with three helecopters at his disposal must spend 24 hours getting permission to use them. This system does not need fixing, it needs abolition.
To borrow from Lord of the Rings, there needs to be one organization to rule them all. And that organization is the only organization built to move quickly and massively: the military. Let them be responsible, via the Corps of Engineers and otherwise to build all the levees and protections our cities need. This should be paid for in the defense budget. It really is defense. When disaster occurs, the military must move in quickly with their plan for that city, and everyone else will do what the military says when ordered. No mayors, no governors, no Washington bureaucrats, no civilians except the President.
We have seen it with our own eyes. Multiple layers of civilians is a disaster. And a military convoy is salvation. Take this job away from those with demonstrated incompetence and give it to those who actually did the job.
posted on 09.05.2005 12:19 PM12
"In defense of Mayor Nagin, the reason the buses were never used was because there was simply no time. You can't get hundreds of drivers, and at best, they might've made one trip on the city's choked outbound highways."
So they couldn't move 200 or so buses across town in spectacularly good weather in the 48 hours preceding landfall, but the feds are being criticized for not being able to move tons of materiel and personnel in a flood-ravaged 90,000+ acre region in 48 hours? Sheesh!
posted on 09.05.2005 12:28 PM13
The school systems know who drives their busses and has their names and phone numbers. The public trancit system is the same. There are a lot more drivers than busses so even if many didn't respond because they were getting their own families out of harms way it's likely that most if not all busses could have been rolling out of NO loaded with evacuees. That housing them in the Super Dome which was already projected to be a terrible option turned out to be the plan is appaling. Drivers could have been arrainged a day or two before the 72 hr. window,it wouldn't have been that hard and we can only guess how many lives would have been saved but that's hindsight. There's plenty of blame to go around and assigning it serves no purpose but a political one. What I want to know is will we get it right next time. I hope we do as we can be certain there will be a next time.
posted on 09.05.2005 12:50 PM14
Joe, don't be too quick to compliment Castro. The population's readiness to evacuate is a coincidental feature, not a virtue, of his totalitarian rule over that small nation. They are always on a war footing, and thus always ready to head for the hills.
A similar example: The Soviet Union, on a larger scale, did a much better job than the USA in educating that nation's students in the arts, especially classical music. But that was only because dead composers are easier to glorify than living ones, since they're no longer innovators, hence no longer a threat. But the consequent erudite musical taste of Soviet youth was not the result of good intentions on the government's part. The wheezing, farting, diseased old coots in the Politburo had not a single good intention among them.
Neither does Castro.
posted on 09.05.2005 1:34 PM16
Even if Nagin bears blame here the fact is that it does not in any way absolve the Bush regime of their moral responsibility.
Moral responsibility to do what? Know in advance the exact path of Katrina and to perfectly anticipate which areas would be most heavily damaged and in most need of federal assistance? Correct me if I am wrong, but weren't we on Tuesday talking about how NO "dodged a bullet."
posted on 09.05.2005 1:51 PM17
BCB,
Were my comments removed? And if so, why?
Yeah, any comment that uses profanity or rascist language gets deleted automatically. I started to simply delete the line with the profanity but I don't like to edit people's comments. If you want to resubmit it without that line I certainly have no problem with that. \
By the way, I tried to email you your original comment but you provided a fake email address. I have no problem with people wanting to remain anonymous. But don't you find it ironic that you hide behind a pseudonym and a fake email while calling me names?
posted on 09.05.2005 1:59 PM18
No, I don't find it ironic in the least. Could you explain to me what is ironic about it?
Please omit the offending language and repost.
posted on 09.05.2005 2:30 PM19
I know someone who tried to ride out the storm because he didn't want anyone to loot his apartment. Some people refused to evacuate because they didn't want to leave pets behind. The cost of public bus fare in New Orleans is $1.25. I doubt that most of the poor couldn't afford a bus ticket to get to a shelter.
Off topic: Does anyone know how much of Cuba is below sea level?
posted on 09.05.2005 2:43 PM20
Nice to see that Joe got today's talking point: shift blame to local official so that we can save Bush's political hide. No really, that the talking point, just look here: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspecial/05bush.html?adxnnl=1&oref=login&pagewanted=print&adxnnlx=1125939600-ezDPYXImuzxro7fQaCgE9g
Of particular interest:
Under the command of President Bush's two senior political advisers, the White House rolled out a plan this weekend to contain the political damage from the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.
It orchestrated visits by cabinet members to the region, leading up to an extraordinary return visit by Mr. Bush planned for Monday, directed administration officials not to respond to attacks from Democrats on the relief efforts, and sought to move the blame for the slow response to Louisiana state officials, according to Republicans familiar with the White House plan.
Moreover, the Dept. of Homeland Secrity says that they take primary responsibility for disasters like this.
http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/theme_home2.jsp
"This will entail providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort".
So do you get an email telling what the talking point is...a phone call...maybe a meeting? Seriously, how is it spread?
Anyway, my point is you're a hack and you're a hack that, not surprisingly, has his head up his ass.
Finally, and everytime I drop by here I don't have to look too hard to find a post that reaffirms my belief that your brand of Christianity and complete moral bankruptcy are in no way mutually exclusive.
21
The complete and utter lack of accountability of the "conservatives" has been brought out into the open on this topic; there's far too much in the public record already to convince anyone but the most ideological or willfully uninformed of the utter mendacity of the Bush regime on this.
The bus thing is a joke; some righty puts out a photo of submerged buses, and says "See! See!" as though that "proves" anything. What it proves is that the Bush apologists will do anything, will say anything, to keep the political fallout from falling on Dear Leader.
Ok, let's see some context for the "buses":
- Where was the gas?
- Where exactly were the buses with respect to the city?
- Where were the drivers? (Driving out of town???)
We now know that the Bush regime has lied through its teeth about when and how a state of emergency was declared in LA, and by whom.
The blame goes with Bush.
22
Mumon, until you learn how to rid yourself of the Left's code language (Bush "regime") you can't really throw effective stones at the spin meisters on the Right. Sheesh, how predictable.
posted on 09.05.2005 4:48 PM23
Here's more on the calculated pattern of lies the Bush regime has spun to try to cover up their horrible failure in New Orleans.
It is utterly absurd that anyone, in my mind, would purport to be a "morals" voter and have supported these people. Behold their "culture of life." Behold their "ownership society" (the buck stops everywhere else but with George W. Bush.) Behold their "Good Samaritan" ethics.
Here's what the bible says about George W. Bush and his "Photo-ops":
So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.
While I'm at it, this comes to mind:
"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.
Indeed.
posted on 09.05.2005 4:48 PM24
Mr. Gilbert:
Despite your thin skin, the term is not only apt, it's neutral.
posted on 09.05.2005 4:50 PM25
Hey, check this out: http://www.affbrainwash.com/chrisroach/archives/020271.php
This goes to that talking point thingy I was driving at.
posted on 09.05.2005 5:11 PM26
Joe writes:
According to the principle of subsidiarity, governmental agencies and leaders at the city, parish, and state agencies hold primary responsibility for implementing the evacuation process. The city of New Orleans apparently agrees, since in their “Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan” they vest the authority to authorize an evacuation with the Mayor and the implementation of such an action with the city’s Office of Emergency Preparedness.
This is the same principle used in the Fortune 500 corporations in which I have worked. I've always thought of it as common sense. You can't bubble up all the decision making to the top, and as a middle manager I sure didn't want to hear about all the issues that could reasonably be handled by smaller units in my part of the organization.
But does this apply to New Orleans in the case of Katrina? No one seemed to think about it with respect to 911 in NYC which was a far bigger, richer city with much less loss of life and infrastructure. Federal help poured in quickly, and in vast amounts.
Should we chastise New Orleans for not being better prepared, after all it is below sea level? Only if we are heartless. What city in America (or elsewhere) could evacuate it's entire population without help? What mayor would have the courage even to order it done?
Subsidiarity does say that when the smaller organizational unit cannot handle a problem then the larger one must step in. This has been the principle of FEMA and Homeland Security from the start. They failed miserably. GWB personally failed misserably. Where are we going to find politicians these days who will say "the buck stops here"?
The levees broke on Monday (that's not been reported much), by Tuesday anyone with a working TV could see how completely overwhelmed the locals were. The lack of coordinated (or even uncoordinated) Federal response was criminal. The excuses being made by and for the Federal government are shameful.
In a corporation if you see a subordinate not getting the job done, as a manager you first step in and complete the job. That is exactly your responsibility. It is amazing to see conservatives of all people not understanding that — and GWB with an MBA from Harvard has no excuse. Of course, he's the first to say he wasn't a good student.
posted on 09.05.2005 5:19 PM27
All politicians at all levels failed all of New Orleans - a long time ago. Blame government in general (its true) and at all levels; but to blame those at distance rather than (or before) those at the scene is simply foolish.
Saturday the evacuation should have been ordered. If you have an emergency plan, calling your bus drivers and asking them to leave in a bus with a load of people seems rational. This would have given them 48 hours before the hurricane hit; and 72 before the levies broke. The guy with the transportation infrastructure to evacuate the 120,000 folk without vehicles was the Mayor of New Orleans and no one else - unless you think between Sat and Mon the feds could have brought that kind of equipment to bear.
There were no mysteries here - just incompetence. That incompetence was primarily at the local level. President Bush has shown lack of sensitivity; and the local Homeland Security chief is a fool (appointed by the mayor).
posted on 09.05.2005 5:40 PM28
OK. I've gotta make clear here that I kinda breezed over a lot of the comments. However, I would like to point out a major problem with Joe's complaint over where conservative statesmen aspire to.
From 1932-1980 power had been accumulating at the federal level like so many leaves in a gutter. In 1980 Americans started to get tired of having clogged gutters and began a process, fulfilled in 1994, of hiring gutter cleaners. Unfortunately, about half the crew were lazy sons of guns that did nothing but sleep on the job. Consequently, a lot of the power has remained accumulated at the federal level.
This is why we still need conservatives on the federal level. Contrary to popular opinion, Republicans are not conservatives. As such there are only a handful of folks of folks actually cleaning the gutters. Until they do, the state and local offices won't mean anything because they can't do anything. The solution is to actually elect real conservatives.
BTW, I think its laughable to say that New Orleans would elect a conservative mayor. To a certain extent Louisianians are getting the results of tolerating a corrupt political system: bad leaders at the worst of time. I pray they recover, but I also pray they learn a lesson about electing people on principle rather than patronage.
posted on 09.05.2005 6:16 PM29
I reread that last comment and saw a few typos and realize it came off as a little too flippant. I've got nothing but love and respect for Joe, I just don't think he's right on this one.
As to the general principle of whether subsidiarity, I don't think this is a fair charge against it. Again, as power accumulated at the federal level people expected it to act. However, as the Johnstown Flood proves, state and local public and private institutions can handle huge natural disasters with nothing more than financial donations from higher levels.
posted on 09.05.2005 6:22 PM30
Let's not forget Michael Brown, head of FEMA. For 11 years prior to joining FEMA at the request of his college roommate who was then head of FEMA (and a Bush crony), Mr Brown worked full-time for an Arabian Horse Society which had to ask him to resign. Now that's GWB's cross to bear for helping people fail upward into jobs which are critical to saving lives.
Of course our President congratulated Brown on his good work. I'm thinking the next step for Brown is likely a nomination to the Supreme Court.
posted on 09.05.2005 8:12 PM31
Conservatives?
Try Clinton for one then, whose flood control is discussed at http://eurota.blogspot.com/2005/09/us-left-all-straws-clutched-every.html.
He tried small government too didn't he, Joe?
posted on 09.05.2005 9:16 PM32
SNIP>>
But don't you find it ironic that you hide behind a pseudonym and a fake email while calling me names?
Posted by Joe Carter
18
No, I don't find it ironic in the least. Could you explain to me what is ironic about it?
Please omit the offending language and repost.
Posted by BCB
Try 'cowardly, profane, yet demanding' instead of ironic, Joe, and 'BCB' might understand.
33
I can promise you this: had New Orleans gone to the playoffs, they would have had no trouble moving thousands of people out of town in a short period of time to watch a ball game.
I'm in New Orleans three days a week. It is the most wretched, corrupt city in the South, quite possibly the whole country. It is underpoliced, filthy, and floods after a modest rainstorm, even in the best of times. And, they've been living on borrowed time for over 100 years.
It's almost amusing to watch the breakdown in the municipal leadership, which has been complete, and totally predictable. There was partying in the streets in the moments after Katrina passed, because they thought they had dodged the bullet, again. Then one levee broke, then another, then three more. Truth is, it should have been worse--had the storm jogged 20 miles West, it would have been cataclysmic: instead of gradually rising water, you would have had water pouring over all the lake levees, back flooding into the river, and annihilation of the lower parishes, as well as 150-mph shredding the attics people would have been desperately hiding in.
And all the along, Nagin's plan was this--do nothing, hope for the best, and if something goes wrong, blame Washington.
posted on 09.05.2005 9:27 PM34
Andy S, you don't know what you're talking about. Yes, I will be heartless enough to say that the mayor of a city that sits below sea level should have a plan in place in the event a Category 5 hurricane is bearing down on him.
So, the question is this, for those who say Bush isn't bright enough to be president:
if the mayor of New Orleans didn't that this storm was going to be a problem, why should the president have thought so? If the mayor of New Orleans couldn't order a mandatory evacuation, like we do here in Alabama and Mississippi, why should the president order a mandatory deployment of troops, just in case?
posted on 09.05.2005 9:31 PM35
"Yes, I will be heartless enough to say that the mayor of a city that sits below sea level should have a plan in place in the event a Category 5 hurricane is bearing down on him."
Does the plan involve FEMA?
Because FEMA certainly behaved before the hurrican as if it were going to be an essential part of any response to a flooding disaster in New Orleans.
But something odd happened afterward, as we all know.
Kevin seems to think that Mayor Nagin is to blame for the strange and tardy behavior by FEMA when it came to providing food and water and aid to the mostly poor and mostly black people stuck in New Orleans.
I think that's nuts but then again I'm one of those crazy guys who believes my Federal tax dollars are better spent hiring actual experts to manage preparations for hurricanes and earthquakes and, yes, terrorist attacks, rather than invading oil-rich countries on the other side of the world and killing innocent people who pose zilcho threat to us here.
The most loathesome story I've heard yet in the wake of the disaster is this one:
'At one point Friday, the evacuation was interrupted briefly when school buses pulled up so some 700 guests and employees from the hotel could move to the head of the evacuation line — much to the amazement of those who had been crammed in the Superdome since last Sunday."
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050903/ap_on_re_us/katrina_superdome_hk1
Is Mayor Nagin to blame for that?
Basically what we have here is a Rodney King-like event multiplied by a million. People simply aren't going to put up with a Federal government as inept and out-of-touch as Li'l Georgie's.
It's one thing when American soldiers die because of someone's incompetence -- we've all been told a billion times that that such soldiers are heroes, after all. It's another thing when people die simply because they happen to be black and poor. That's messed up, particularly when the top two people in charge of our country are some of the richest and most privileged white Americans ever born and who do everything they can to help other rich white Americans like them and diddly-squat to help poor blacks in this country.
36
Now that the "shoot to kill the guys taking a loaf of bread" thread is done, Larry and I find ourselves on opposite sides again, where we belong.
No, I find the most troubling news is that the Bush administration wanted to take control of the local and state authorities two days before the storm so as to coordinate evacuations and relief. The state officials pulled an all-nighter and decided, no, because if anything goes wrong, Washington can blame the municipal governments.
I don't know what Mayor Nagin is to blame for, except that every single person on the Gulf Coast, me included, knew that a hurricane aiming for New Orleans would annihilate the city. Apparently he was ignorant of this, or simply incompetent. He does have the blame game and the race baiting game mastered, I see, which passes for wisdom in the Lower Parishes, and will win elections most of the time.
The reports I read about the evacuations of the people from the Dome were this: the hotels repeatedly sent private buses in to evacuate their personnel and guests, and they were commandeered by local officials to evacuate the Superdome. So the people themselves were told to go to the Dome. Are you suggesting, Larry, that the hotel staff and guests were late arrivals? That they came to New Orleans after the storm for some sightseeing, and had trouble leaving? At least a dozen of the families were British tourists, who were told to form a circle, with the women and luggage in the middle, and to rotate men taking naps, to protect the women from rape and assault. They were called "the Internationals"--by the mob, who singled them out for their funny accents and their refusal to squat in public for their bowel movements.
Yeah, put them on a bus, since the hotel had been paying for them all along. Geez.
Blame Washington all you like. Which is fine. George Bush should have known that a liberal governor and a liberal mayor were incompetent to manage their own cities and their own crises, and should have just declared martial law on Saturday morning. We can both agree on that, I hope--that liberals are incapable of governing themselves?? Believe me, next time, he will.
posted on 09.06.2005 1:23 AM37
At least two facts are significant:
1. The Bush administration, on folding FEMA into Homeland Security, pushed for significant cuts in FEMA staffing and redirected much of FEMA's work to terrorism and away from naural disasters, even though natural disasters are the most predictable of all occurrences.
2. The Bush administration was slow to act even once it declared a federal emergency. Upon such a declaration, it becomes more a federal ballgame. If Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy could federalize the National Guard over the objections of the governors of the states of Arkansas and Alabama in order to support federal court orders on desegregation, it seems to me that once a federal emergency is declared that the federal government's temporary powers are massive.
Numerous former high-ranking FEMA employees have blasted how FEMA operated here and have disputed the notion that FEMA's hands were tied by local government.
The greater story seems to be that while Homeland Security was supposed to strengthen reponse in national disasters, in the case of natural disasters it actually weakened the response.
posted on 09.06.2005 2:03 AM38
The facts here are pretty clear so I don't see this damaging the President too much in the long run.
Local and State authorities are responsible. These local and state authorities happened to be incompetent liberals afraid of losing their power to the federal government. FEMA can't act if the incompetent officials at the state and local level block them from acting.
Are there problems with FEMA? Yes.
Do those problems have anything at all to do with this disaster? No.
Joel Thomas wrote:
"Numerous former high-ranking FEMA employees have blasted how FEMA operated here and have disputed the notion that FEMA's hands were tied by local government."
This is very interesting. I'd like to read up more on this, have any links?
I'm guessing either
a) These former FEMA employee's have some expertise and facts and so they know what they are talking about
or
b) These former FEMA employee's are democrats who are trying to score points against a Republican administration.
Let's let the facts help us decide. Link please.
posted on 09.06.2005 2:53 AM39
1. As a security professional who occasionally has to write contingency plans, I can say that the New Orleans "plan" seen on the Web is a joke. "Evacuate in buses" is not a plan, it's a wish. Real contingency plans would state where the buses are housed, where the drivers assemble and fuel, where they pick up and where they drop off. Real plans would have phone lists of the people required to implement each part of the plan. Real plans would have priority ordering of the tasks to be done and basic estimates of the lead time required for each task.
The point is, real plans succeed not on ingenuity but on execution -- just like football champions become so through blocking and tackling, not highlight-reel reverse plays. The offshore oil production companies do this kind of hurricane prep and evacuation all the time and they're good at it: rigs are all carefully shut down, secured as best they can be, and the people evacuated well in advance without fanfare. It's an expected part of the business, and that's why it's not in the news now.
2. As for subsidiarity and why conservatives aim for federal office instead of remaining local, chalk it up to original sin. It's kind of like the dynamic at work in the Church, where for 2000 years the lack of ambition to be a bishop makes one a better and holier priest but also leads to the bishops' ranks being filled with those who have such ambition.
40
Joel,
2. The Bush administration was slow to act even once it declared a federal emergency. Upon such a declaration, it becomes more a federal ballgame. If Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy could federalize the National Guard over the objections of the governors of the states of Arkansas and Alabama in order to support federal court orders on desegregation, it seems to me that once a federal emergency is declared that the federal government's temporary powers are massive.
So what you are saying is that Bush should have ignored the law of the land, usurped the power of a locally elected official, and took charge of the relief effort over the objections of the very officials the people of Louisiana chose to take care of them in crisis such as this. Yeah, that’s exactly what he should do – ignore the law and do whatever he wants. I’m sure that the left would have heaped praise on him for implementing such a bold move.
41
Tyler,
Are you accusing the 2/3 of the NOLA police force who stayed to rescue the city's citizens of participating in the shameful looting of DVDs and other non-necessities from storm-shuttered businesses? I just want to be sure that I read your comment right before I get royally pissed-off.
Are you saying that the only NOLA police that were involved in the looting are the ones that quit the force? That could be the case but I personally don’t think so.
I am saying that Katrina was a considerably bigger deal than a chemical spill on the tracks or a burglar in my backyard, and they needed some amount of federal help from the beginning. In case you missed it, they were promised this federal help from before the beginning -- Bush declared a state of emergency in Louisiana almost two days before the hurricane hit; three days before the levees broke.
Federal help was there. I’ve noticed that most of the critics of the federal response don’t seem to be truly aware of what was going on. The criticism is not that FEMA wasn’t providing relief – it was doing that from the start. The criticism is that FEMA didn’t move fast enough to do the evacuation that the locals failed to do.
Here's another simple thing FEMA could have done -- had 10 of its employees going around on the ground as soon as the weather cleared and finding out for themselves where the people were at and seeing whether or not the 1st responders were getting the job done.
10 employees? Have you ever been to New Orleans? FEMA is there to aid the locals. Not to do their jobs for them. You can’t really expect a someone to come to an unfamiliar city in the midst of a disaster and to know enough to get around town.
Again, the local authorities screwed up by not telling FEMA where the people were going. FEMA screwed up by not asking where the people had gone.
You didn’t really just say that, did you? You really think FEMA should have said, “No seriously, guys, where are you keeping the people?” FEMA doesn’t have psychics on the staff that know when they need to ask just the right question in order to get the local authorities to tell them where the people are! Sheesh.
On this point, admittedly, hindsight is 20-20. Now, the important task isn't so much to assign blame (although that is a slightly-less-but-still-important-task) but to figure out what both local governments and FEMA can do differently in future disasters.
I think this will soon be a major talking point. The more the blame shifts to the local authorities the more we will hear about “not assigning blame.”
I should have written "[FEMA] might have told the Mayor of NOLA that it might be a good idea to go around to the people and tell them to evacuate." Is it unreasonable to think that FEMA should be in the business of evaluating local disaster planning and making suggestions as to how they might be better?
Actually, the feds did better than that. Instead of having FEMA make such a suggestion they had the President do it himself:
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.
Would you say that fewer people on the right make idols out of American idealist foreign policy than lefties do with American disaster relief omnipotence? I wouldn't think so, but would like to hear your impression. I think some of your regular readers might benefit from such discussions.
Fair enough. Admittedly, it is often easier to see the idolatry of those you disagree with. Does the right make an idol of foreign policy? Good question and one that I’ll have to do some thinking about.
I think it's a problem that the lunatic fringes of both sides are approaching mainstream status.
I almost agree but I think it may be that the lunatic fringe has become the mainstream and those of us (noble gents like you and me ; ) ) who consider ourselves moderate are really on the fringes.
42
I think that it's disingenuous to blame Nagin now. If people were really concerned with how late the evacuation was ordered, they would have been up in arms at that time. It's not as if Mayor Nagin had different weather information than we did; if, on Saturday, we felt that Nagin had neglected his duties by not calling for evacuation, we would have been up in arms. We weren't. Blaming Nagin now is just an effective way of providing political cover for the federal government (and therefore Bush).
Even if he had been shouting "Evacuate!" from the rooftops, many of the people would have stayed. If you live in New Orleans (as I did until a year ago) you have been told to evacuate numerous time. We were told to evacuate twice in three weeks in 2002. Hindsight is 20/20, but if you have seen hurricane after hurricane fizzle itself out, it is understandable (altough not advisable) that you wouldn't evacuate. There are people still refusing to leave their homes.
My point: Even if Nagin had executed a perfect evacuation system, there was always going to be a need for a massive and prompt federal response.
The size of this disaster dwarfs 9-11. On 9-11, there was federal assistance within hours. Here, it took days. Blanco, while not completely blameless, was on television calling for federal assistance within hours. Are we supposed to believe that the slow federal response was because she forgot to sign the proper papers?
To those who are trying to make federal inaction look like state incompetency: stop spinning. You are trying to provide political cover for Bush (who doesn't even need it), when we should be analyzing why the federal (and state) disaster mechanisms failed to work. This is an institutional problem; let's not turn it into a political one.
posted on 09.06.2005 12:28 PM43
Well, Matt, if you take that view, there's nothing anyone could have done anyway.
If it's true you lived in New Orleans up until last year, you have to know several things.
1. Most of the city sits well below sea level
2. The New Orleans city officials planned everything around the levees holding. In fact, they foresaw the possibility that the levees would hold, but that they would have to be breached to let water OUT of the city
3. The city is accessible only via long bridges: US 90 to the East, the I-10 bridge from Slidell, the Lake Ponchartrain Bridge (about 28 miles long, if memory serves), and the two bridges over the river to the South which, in this case, lead to nowhere but more devastation. So . . .
4. If anyone was going to get out of the city, it had to be before landfall of the storm.
5. New Orleans is dysfunctional and nearly wrecked in the best of times. The police department is understaffed and incompetent; its school system is probably the worst anywhere; the city engineering has always been suspect; and, as you say, tens of thousands of people wouldn't have left even knowing what they know now.
If you want to give Nagin and the governor a pass, it sure becomes hard to fault the government in Washington who, by all accounts, took this storm a whole lot more seriously than the municipal officials there.
posted on 09.06.2005 12:52 PM45
John Derbshire:
"Under the circumstances, to say, as Steve Sailor does, that African Americans "tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups," and "need stricter moral guidance from society" does not seem to me very outrageous."
Try to believe that these words were uttered in 2005, folks!
posted on 09.06.2005 2:56 PM46
JCHFleetGuy:
They should have called for an evacuation on Thursday or Friday - and used those 560 buses to move people out. Period
That's easy to say in retrospect, but was anyone actually calling for this on Thursday or Friday (or even Saturday or Sunday)? If it was such an obvious decision to make, then Nagin's political opponents should have been calling for it in advance, saying it's what they would have done if they were in power. And FEMA could say "we recommended on Thursday that they start evacuating, and they ignored that recommendation."
Since none of that actually happened, I suspect you're operating from the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. This isn't to say that there's no blame for the local officials -- when the dust settles, I'm sure there will be plenty of blame to go around; but to suggest that there was an egregious dereliction of duty here that falls just on one or two local officials is an exaggeration at best and disingenuous at worst.
There were no mysteries here - just incompetence. That incompetence was primarily at the local level. President Bush has shown lack of sensitivity; and the local Homeland Security chief is a fool (appointed by the mayor).
While I don't absolve the local officials of blame, I'm not ready to say that the blame lies primarily at the local level. The blame for most of what happened up to and including Monday probably rests largely with the locals (but I'm willing to be convinced either way), but by Monday afternoon, it was obvious that federal intervention was needed; and that didn't even start coming in any meaningful way until late Wednesday.
Joe:
It has long been known that a Cat. 4 or 5 hurricane would destroy the city.
And yet, despite this knowledge, funding for the maintenance of New Orleans' levees was repeatedly slashed, a fact that local authorities and media have been complaining about for years. In the "subsidiary" government you describe, there would be even less funding for these, because there's no way in hell that one of the poorest metropolises in the country could afford the work that was needed.
If we really believe in state’s rights then we need to fund the legislatures of the states so that people can afford to take such jobs.
I'm afraid this wouldn't prevent the seats from being taken almost exclusively by the wealthy. Unless, of course, you're willing to fund the campaigns, too, which I highly doubt.
Also:
Assuming that each bus could carry sixty-six passengers, each trip could carry 37,554 residents to safety. Three round-trips would be required to move all 120,000 citizens.
Umm, not by my math. 560 * 66 = 36,960. Further, 120,000 / 36,960 ~= 3.25 = four round trips needed; and that assumes that only those without personal transportation would take the buses (as opposed to people electing to take the bus out rather than drive themselves); and it ignores some of the logistics of getting the people -- who are highly unlikely to conveniently all be in one place -- onto the buses in the first place; and it ignores the fact that four round trips to Baton Rouge (well, three and a half, since the last return trip would be unnecessary) would take 12 hours in transit time alone, ignoring load/unload time, and assuming all the roads are clear and there's no traffic in either direction.
Based on all these factors, I think the merits of the bus evacuation option -- even had it been attempted -- are a bit overstated.
But it doesn’t take much searching to see that the relevant facts are already in.
You mean like the rescue ship being ready to go right behind the hurricane and waiting for federal orders to move in -- orders which didn't come until Thursday, three-plus days later?
Or maybe you're talking about the head of the DHS going on national radio on Thursday denying that there's anything amiss at the New Orleans Convention Center -- even becoming angry and argumentative about it -- even though CNN, Fox News, and others had been playing footage of the chaos there all day long.
Sorry, but plenty of heads should roll over this, both locally and federally.
Kevin W:
I can promise you this: had New Orleans gone to the playoffs, they would have had no trouble moving thousands of people out of town in a short period of time to watch a ball game.
Yeah, because a few thousand people who have enough money to afford to travel and buy sports tickets on a week's notice voluntarily doing so is the exactly same thing as forcibly evacuating hundreds of thousands on less than three days notice. Dude, do you even think about what you write?
Eric & Lisa:
I'm guessing either
a) These former FEMA employee's have some expertise and facts and so they know what they are talking about
or
b) These former FEMA employee's are democrats who are trying to score points against a Republican administration.
Let's let the facts help us decide. Link please.
I'll wager you were betting on (b). You would be wrong:
Some of the critics are Democrats, to be sure, but not all. See also here, where former FEMA chief of staff Jane Bullock -- with 22 years of experience in the agency, under administrations of both parties -- is also highly critical. posted on 09.06.2005 4:25 PMThirteen months before Katrina hit New Orleans, local, state and federal officials held a simulated hurricane drill that Ronald Castleman, then the regional director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, called "a very good exercise."
More than a million residents were "evacuated" in the tabletop scenario as 120-mile-an-hour winds and 20 inches of rain caused widespread flooding that supposedly trapped 300,000 people in the city.
"It was very much an eye-opener," said Castleman, a Republican appointee of President Bush who left FEMA in December for the private sector. "A number of things were identified that we had to deal with, not all of them were solved."
Still, Castleman found it hard to square the lessons he and others learned from the exercise with the frustratingly slow response to the disaster that has unfolded in the wake of Katrina. From the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans to the Mississippi and Alabama communities along the Gulf Coast, hurricane survivors have decried the lack of water, food or security and the slowness of the federal relief efforts.
"It's hard for everyone to understand why buttons weren't pushed earlier on," Castleman said of the federal response.
47
The bottom line, as I see it, is this: Irrespective of whatever failures may have occurred at the local level, the federal response has been embarrassing and shameful. If, as Joe suggests, the Feds have been trying to help and have been resisted by local officials, then the federal officials should be screaming about that on every media outlet, begging the local officials to let them do their jobs.
That this isn't happening speaks volumes. Spin it any way you like it, but no matter who's to blame for it, the federal response has been completely and utterly incompetent, and all the while our President has been praising those tasked with the job. That's repugnant, and is so no matter what pooches were screwed in the New Orleans and Louisiana governments.
posted on 09.06.2005 4:35 PM48
tgirsch
"Spin it any way you like it, but no matter who's to blame for it, the federal response has been completely and utterly incompetent, and all the while our President has been praising those tasked with the job."
Even as some of those people quietly fade into the scenery ...
posted on 09.06.2005 6:31 PM49
Yes, dude, I think about what I write.
I also happen to live here, right in Hurricane Central. So did this exercise run by the Feds include the levees giving way? Did the assumptions include having the local authorities not cooperate with the Federal people? Did the tabletop exercise include the mayor of New Orleans at all? And if so, why didn't he apply the lessons learned? And if not, why?
And why are you dicking around with the evacuation numbers on the school buses? So it would have taken four trips or three? So that is just the school buses on a single lot in New Orleans, and doesn't include the hundreds of buses in the public transit system? And doesn't include the hundreds more available in hotels, private charter, etc.--Am I to believe that if TGIRSCH were mayor of New Orleans, with a Category 5 hurricane barreling down on him, he wouldn't have picked up a friggin' telephone and asked somebody--hey, we have 3 days--any chance we can scare up some buses?
No, you probably wouldn't have. You would have just let things unfold just as they have, called your silly press conferences and blamed Bush. Right? Sorry liberals can't govern--that's the lesson we're all learning here. To anyone who knows the city of New Orleans, this has been completely, and totally, predictable. ALL OF IT!!!
posted on 09.06.2005 6:41 PM50
Did Kevin W just accuse tgirsch of being so political that he'd allow thousands of people to die just to make Bush look bad?
"You would have just let things unfold just as they have, called your silly press conferences and blamed Bush. "
Why, yes, he did just do that!
How rude.
posted on 09.06.2005 9:07 PM51
Did tgirsch just admit that the NO and LA officials were so incompetent that the federal government should have called press conferences and begged other bureaucrats to take over?
"If, as Joe suggests, the Feds have been trying to help and have been resisted by local officials, then the federal officials should be screaming about that on every media outlet, begging the local officials to let them do their jobs."
Why, yes, he did just that!!!
How totalitarian.
52
Did Larry Lord just admit that Mayor Nagin didn't know that mostly poor and black people also need food and water? That in a city of almost a million, the mayor and the city council never saw fit to stockpile foodstuffs and water in the event of, say, a hurricane that would knock out major roadways into a city sitting below sea level?
"Kevin seems to think that Mayor Nagin is to blame for the strange and tardy behavior by FEMA when it came to providing food and water and aid to the mostly poor and mostly black people stuck in New Orleans."
Why, yes, he does!!!
How obtuse.
posted on 09.06.2005 9:21 PM53
Tgirsch,
"If, as Joe suggests, the Feds have been trying to help and have been resisted by local officials, then the federal officials should be screaming about that on every media outlet, begging the local officials to let them do their jobs."
I take it you haven't been following the news too closely:
Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said Saturday.posted on 09.06.2005 9:24 PMThe administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. "Quite frankly, if they'd been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals," said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.
54
BCB,
Nice Ad Homenim attacks.
Try this one: Do you actually sleep in that tin foil hat, or do you have special night seliphane that you use. Delivery of talking points? Unplug, man! Unplug!
Why don't you actually present an argument rather than an attack? Like this one:
Joe has actually criticized conservatives for failing to talk their walk. Those conservatives that praise subsidiarity, particularly throught the American expression of it known as Federalism, often fail to back up such praise with action. How exactly does this make Joe a "hack?" Exactly which bucket of Bush administration water is he carrying?
You've failed to prove a single iota of your tasteless accusations. You're crude delivery of this pointless dribble fails to earn you any respect. Least of all from me.
Get an argument. Tell it with class. Then, you might actually persuade somebody.
posted on 09.06.2005 9:29 PM55
Tgirsch again:
"The blame for most of what happened up to and including Monday probably rests largely with the locals (but I'm willing to be convinced either way), but by Monday afternoon, it was obvious that federal intervention was needed; and that didn't even start coming in any meaningful way until late Wednesday."
So? It was actually Wednesday morning before federal help starting arriving, here, in Biloxi, and in NO. It takes that long to clear the main roads of power lines, to identify and utilize passable roads and bridges, to assemble your crews and volunteers. This is not a heavy rainstorm we're talking about. This is a hurricane. And, so you know, the difference in magnitude between a Category 3 and a Cat 5 is about 100 times--100 times the damage and loss of life. New Orleans is more problematic still because of a universal lack of access, even in good times--only 3 ways in, then we were down to 1. This isn't as if Chesapeake Bay had flooded, or Chicago.
BTW, criticism is actually mounting somewhat here, in that all the federal attention has been directed at New Orleans. Gulfport, Biloxi, Pascagoula, Bayou la Batre, and Dauphin Island have suffered catastrophic damage, and there are about two dozen S. Louisiana communities that still haven't even been HEARD from. But, unless you're from here, I would suggest that you're not qualified to render an opinion. These areas simply are not accessible most of the time--knock out communications and power over a 90,000 square mile area, and the problems compound.
IMO, New Orleans was doomed the very instant Katrina formed, and the mayor and the governor and the president and every mortal on earth could not have done a thing. But if any of these people were going to be saved, it HAD to be on Sunday.
posted on 09.06.2005 9:32 PM56
Did Kevin W just scamper away after being called to the table for his distasteful remarks about tgirsch, leaving only a trail of poorly plagiarized sarcasm in his wake?
"Did Larry Lord just admit that Mayor Nagin didn't know that mostly poor and black people also need food and water?"
Why, yes he did!
Shameful.
posted on 09.06.2005 9:35 PM57
Is Larry Lord still trying to excuse the pathetic performances of the country's two newest famous liberals, Mayor Ray Nagin and Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, and trying to shift the blame to Bush instead, employing snide remarks about other posters and contributing no real substance to the debate?
Why, yes, he is!
How predictable.
posted on 09.06.2005 9:59 PM59
Yeah, I'm getting tired of it too.
Fun while it lasted, though :)
posted on 09.06.2005 11:16 PM60
Kevin W:
You continue to bring up Nagin's failure to have a proper evacuation plan in place, as if it would have been a panacea to the problems facing New Orleans. Yes, Nagin should be called to task for this, but it does not relieve the federal government of its responsibilities.
Your argument is a red herring. There was never going to be a 100% evacuation rate. Given that fact, there was always going to be a need for prompt federal assistance. This did not happen. Rather than falling into old patterns of partisanism and ad hominem attacks, we should be calling for a thorough review of the federal mechanisms that failed. This should not a "liberals suck!" or "conservatives blow!" kind of argument. These failures are institional, and need to reviewed on an institutional level.
As an aside, Kevin W., I get livid when posters start attacking the NOPD. They stayed in impressive numbers for four days, without assistance, while their own families were in shelters or were still in danger, and their own houses had been destroyed. These people are heroes on an NYFD level.
posted on 09.07.2005 4:48 AM61
LOL!!! What a post!!! Try that with any resident or frequent visitor to New Orleans, Matt!!
Gee, Matt, "Cops stayed in impressive numbers"--I thought that's what cops were supposed to do--not resign by the hundreds, or commit suicide. Are you aware that over the past few years many New Orleans cops have been sent to jail for rape and murder and for gang activity? Are you aware that the cops, too, were joining in the looting the very day after the storm? Are you aware that the NOPD has no sets of backup records, that all the original records have been completely destroyed by the flooding, and as a result of Katrina there will be hundreds of convicts awaiting trial who will be set free, most likely in communities like yours, as they've been moved elsewhere?
The New Orleans Police Department is the very model of "institutional" problems you should be concerned about.
Stay livid if you like. I happen to live here. And guess what? The rest of the country will now be paying for the gross ineptitude and criminal negligence of the police department.
posted on 09.07.2005 9:58 AM62
Kevin W:
I also happen to live here, right in Hurricane Central.
Define "here." I have friends in New Orleans, Metairie, Long Beach, Biloxi, and Bay St. Louis; most of them have lost everything. So while I don't know first-hand how things are there, I know how they are.
If you've lost anything, I'm sorry about that, but you would think that would make you even less likely to politicize this in a partisan manner, not more so.
So did this exercise run by the Feds include the levees giving way? Did the assumptions include having the local authorities not cooperate with the Federal people? Did the tabletop exercise include the mayor of New Orleans at all? And if so, why didn't he apply the lessons learned? And if not, why?
Why does it matter? The point is, pretty much every ex-FEMA person they've talked to has said that FEMA is screwing the pooch on this one.
And why are you dicking around with the evacuation numbers on the school buses?
Because if you're going to politicize these issues, accuracy is important. And because an extra trip takes time when time is the most valuable and limited resource, as in an evacuation scenario. If the destination is Baton Rouge, that fourth trip makes it even less likely you can complete an evacuation using the on-hand resources. If the destination is Houston, it's impossible.
So that is just the school buses on a single lot in New Orleans, and doesn't include the hundreds of buses in the public transit system?
I don't know, honestly, nor do I know whether those buses really hold 66 people each. I merely assumed Joe's numbers (culled from Hobbs) were accurate, and pointed out that his math was erroneous. Basically, his biggest mistake was that you don't get to round down when the remainder is people.
Am I to believe that if TGIRSCH were mayor of New Orleans, with a Category 5 hurricane barreling down on him, he wouldn't have picked up a friggin' telephone and asked somebody--hey, we have 3 days--any chance we can scare up some buses?
I can't say what tgirsch-as-mayor would have done, any more than I can say what Mayor Nagin actually did do.
Sorry liberals can't govern--that's the lesson we're all learning here.
To call Nagin "liberal" is laughable. Re-read Joe's post, and you'll see that he was a self-financed Republican who changed to "Democrat" late to get elected. You know the old saying about the rest of the country having a name "California Republicans," and that name is "Democrats?" It's the same thing with Louisiana Democrats -- to the rest of the country, they look like Republicans.
Did tgirsch just admit that the NO and LA officials were so incompetent that the federal government should have called press conferences and begged other bureaucrats to take over?
Actually, I did no such thing. All I said was that if the NO and LA officials actually were that obstructionist (not incompetent), then the feds should have done this. Further, I pointed out that it follows that since the feds didn't do this, we can surmise that either the NO and LA officials weren't that obstructionist, or that the feds didn't see this as a problem.
So? It was actually Wednesday morning before federal help starting arriving, here, in Biloxi, and in NO. It takes that long to clear the main roads of power lines, to identify and utilize passable roads and bridges, to assemble your crews and volunteers. ... New Orleans is more problematic still because of a universal lack of access, even in good times--only 3 ways in, then we were down to 1.
There are these things called "helicopters" and "boats." Perhaps you've heard of them. They could have started airlifting and boating in emergency supplies on Monday afternoon. Ditto for airlifting / boating out the stranded.
And if the national guard relies solely on roads for their deployment, how the hell did we get them to Iraq?
But, unless you're from here, I would suggest that you're not qualified to render an opinion.
Huh. And I thought the "liberals" were supposed to be the ivory tower elitists. Learn something new every day.
But if any of these people were going to be saved, it HAD to be on Sunday.
So where's your beef, then? Nagin called a mandatory evacuation on Sunday morning. Prior to that, evacuation was recommended but not mandatory. I'm guessing you really meant to say that if people were going to be saved, it had to be before Sunday.
Otherwise, what Matt Mulligan said.
Are you aware that over the past few years many New Orleans cops have been sent to jail for rape and murder and for gang activity? Are you aware that the cops, too, were joining in the looting the very day after the storm?
Corruption? In a police department? Say it ain't so!
Joe:
Since when are "trying to help" and "trying to take over" equivalent? And since when does a "behind-the-scenes" power struggle equate to "screaming ... to every media outlet" and "begging?"
And suppose we pin the failure to act prior to the storm squarely and completely on local officials. How does this excuse the feds not bothering to respond in any meaningful way until three days later, even when they knew this was coming?
posted on 09.07.2005 11:10 AM63
As I said in an earlier post, I lived in NOLA until a year ago. I lived in uptown for a number of years, at the riverbend, so attempts to dismiss my arguments by painting me as unfamiliar with New Orleans are not going to be effective. I agree that the NOPD has had problems in the past, but their efforts here have been extraordinary. True, hundreds resigned to take care of their families, but the majority stayed on duty.
Kevin, talking about suicides with such a cavalier attitude is crass. One man lost his wife, and the other was a well-known policeman who was overwhelmed with grief. Although this does not excuse their behavior, they were children of God, and need to be remembered as such. Additionally, it is improper to project their behavior onto the rest of the police force.
It's very possible that the NOPD has problems with its structure and "corporate culture", and those problems affected the efficacy of their response to Katrina. However, the officers themselves have demonstrated an enormous amount of courage, and for that, they deserve our thanks. Please save your venom for someone more deserving.
posted on 09.07.2005 11:11 AM64
Whatever.
I can only tell you than when Ivan came thru last year, we didn't have over a third of the municipal police departments in MS, Mobile, and Pensacola resign en masse, despite the fact that they, too, lost homes and they, too, had families to protect. And if police officers here busied themselves loading up on stuff stolen from electronics and jewelry stores, I must have forgotten.
Again, we have come to expect higher standards from our uniformed personnel and municipal authorities, but in New Orleans, it's all just par for the course.
posted on 09.07.2005 11:51 AM65
Matt,
There is going to be plenty of blame to go around. I think all government at all levels has failed to prepare for what happened in New Orleans. You are correct that even if the Superdome should never have been the "evacuation plan" some sort of food and water at least should have gotten to there or the convention center sooner.
The point of this post however is who is most responsible to the people of New Orleans. Is it local government with only that as a responsibility - or the federal government with the whole country to oversee? It has got to be the locals.
Look at this section of the very good timeline [My comments in brackets]:
________________________________________________
Afternoon: [Just before here the hurricane was upgraded to a 3 (limit of levies) and expected to hit land as a 4]
A press conference with Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco sounded the alarm. The Mayor urged residents to take the storm seriously saying to residents of low lying areas, “We want you to take this a little more seriously and start moving — right now, as a matter of fact,” Nagin said he would open the Superdome as a shelter of “last resort” for people with “special needs.”
He advised anyone planning to stay there to bring there own food, drinks and other comforts such as folding chairs, as if planning to go camping.
“No weapons, no large items, and bring small quanties of food for three or four days, to be safe,” he said.
[Also: "“This is not a test. This is the real deal,” Nagin said. “Things could change, but as of right now, New Orleans is definitely the target for this hurricane.” The mayor said he would stick with the state’s evacuation plan and not officially call for residents to leave until 30 hours before expected landfall, allowing residents in low-lying surrounding areas to leave first. But he recommended residents in low-lying areas of the city, such as Algiers and the 9th Ward, get a head start."]
[I think he is ahead, and behind, the game here. The New Orleans plan called for evacuation anywhere up to 72 hours. Later, the National Hurricane Center warns that the storm surge could come over the dikes up to 32 hours before landfall. The state plan was too short term; but he tries to get people moving early. Did he send buses into these areas to help those without transport get out? Nope]
Nagin spokeswoman Tami Frazier stressed that the mayor does not want citizens to plan on staying in the Dome—instead, they should make arrangements to leave the city if possible.
[NO: The start of the Superdome Plan. This is when those school buses, and RTA, should have been moving. Anybody showing up at the superdome without a way out of town should have been loaded up as they showed up.]
Police Superintendent Edward Compass said that looters would be “dealt with severly and harshly and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
By mid-afternoon, officials in Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Charles, Lafourche, Terrebonne and Jefferson parishes had called for voluntary or mandatory evacuations.
---------------------------------
[THE MISTAKE!!!! - this is where people died and got hung out to dry at the Superdome]
Mayor Nagin issued a voluntary evacuation order at 5:00 PM.
Nagin said late Saturday that he’s having his legal staff look into whether he can order a mandatory evacuation of the city, a step he’s been hesitant to do because of potential liability on the part of the city for closing hotels and other businesses. [My emphasis: I think he should be indicted for not calling for a mandatory at this point - especially for this reason. School buses, and RTA buses should be moving. Contraflow established] “Come the first break of light in the morning, you may have the first mandatory evacuation of New Orleans,” Nagin told WWL-TV.
The National Hurrican Center warns officials that Katrina is strengthening and will probably make landfall as a Category 4 or 5. This is really scary. This is not a test, as your governor said earlier today. This is the real thing,” said Director Max Mayfield. “The bottom line is this is a worst-case scenario and everybody needs to recognize it,” he said.
National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield calls Mayor Nagin at his home telling him that a mandatory evacuation was needed. Revised 9/7
SUNDAY, AUGUST 28
Morning
By 8:00 AM, Katrina, a category 5 hurricane, is headed straight for New Orleans. According to this peice in Editor and Publisher FEMA Director Brown, DHS Secretary Chertoff as well as local and state officials are informed by National Hurricane Director Max Mayfield via electronic briefing that the storm will cause massive damage and flooding – including levee breaches – in New Orleans 32 hours before the eye of the storm makes landfall. Revised 9/6
The Superdome opens at 8:00 AM and begins to take people in.
[Buses, buses, where are the buses?]
In the face of a catastrophic Hurricane Katrina, a mandatory evacuation was ordered Sunday for New Orleans by Mayor Ray Nagin.
[At least 16 hours late]
Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation. The President’s call came just prior to the news conference and occurred after the decision had already been made. for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding. Revised 9/6 (HT: Jay) Lexis-Nexis Subscription needed to access link.
“There doesn’t seem to be any relief in sight,” Blanco said.
The Mayor’s office announces at 9:30 AM that RTA (Regional Transit Authority) busses will pick people up at 12 locations throughout the city and take them to shelters – including the Superdome [My emphasis: how stupid was this? This is about 18 hours after he advised people to get out of low-lying areas; and 16 hours after voluntary evac notice]. This despite the city’s Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan that calls for busses to be used to evacuate citizens out of the city. Revised 9/7
At 11:30 AM the President delivers a statement vowing to help those affected by the hurricane.
By noon, the city puts its contraflow traffic system in effect so that both sides of major highways will allow for traffic out of the city.
_________________________________________________
Read the rest of the timeline. He updates it as he gets more information.
posted on 09.07.2005 12:21 PM66
FleetGuy
Since you seem to have access to all this detailed information, can you tell me why Bush claimed on national TV that no one expected the levees to break?
Was Bush lying in order to create some smoke and confusion (a strategy often employed by groups which hold power)?
Or is he an incompetent buffoon?
I don't see much room for other alternatives, under the circumstances. He is the President. He is allegedly surrounded by intelligent knowledgeable people. Maybe it's those people who aren't honest.
I've got a lot more questions along these lines, assuming you've finished doing the GOPs dirty work of taking a dump on Mayor Nagin.
posted on 09.07.2005 1:59 PM67
Nobody expected the levees to break.
Worst case scenario per the NO Disaster Planning Commission was that the levees would have water pouring over them, rendering the pumps useless, and that the levees would have to be breached by the ACOE to drain the city. Two of the levees that failed had just been upgraded, in fact.
None of the planning at the city and state level involved levee failure.
posted on 09.07.2005 2:10 PM68
Larry,
Got me - ask President Bush. According to this timeline "FEMA Director Brown, DHS Secretary Chertoff as well as local and state officials are informed by National Hurricane Director Max Mayfield via electronic briefing that the storm will cause massive damage and flooding – including levee breaches" on Sunday morning - about 30 hours before the breaches. Of course, President Bush's knowing or not knowing, lying or not lying, SHOULD have no real impact on the Mayor of a city 13-20 feet below sea level faced with a hurricane far in excess of the load limits of his city's levies.
Nagin is a fool at best. He will get to stand at the beginning of a line of fools - Republican and Democratic fools; local, state and federal fools. Past fools (and regretfully future ones). We will know the length of the line when the future Katrina Commission gets done. For now, if you think I have been unfair to Nagin start there. Otherwise, its just Larry Land to me - all silly rhetorical questions with no facts. All noise with no rational links
This is a well-researched timeline and well-documented. The guy who put this chronology together would just love you to research ANYTHING, with links, that could make it better and email it to him so he can continue to improve this work.
posted on 09.07.2005 2:51 PM69
FleetGuy
"Of course, President Bush's knowing or not knowing, lying or not lying, SHOULD have no real impact on the Mayor of a city 13-20 feet below sea level faced with a hurricane far in excess of the load limits of his city's levies."
Yeah, but it has an impact on how we judge the Federal Government's response to the disaster.
Surely you aren't arguing that the Federal Government should not be involved when disasters occur which affect multi-state regions and, indirectly but necessarily, the entire nation???
You can't be that stupid.
So we have this moron President who reluctantly drags himself out of his little vacation home days AFTER the hurricane hits and goes on TV and starts spouting inanities. Meanwhile, it's revealed that the cronies he appointed to head FEMA are inexpert incompetent twits.
And when this "strong leader" does finally wake from his slumber, he does what he always does: struts around in a scripted prop-filled environment that is ready-made for photo-ops for rubes like ... well, you know who.
"We will know the length of the line when the future Katrina Commission gets done."
Sure. Remember the 9-11 comm