Republicat Lessons We Will Learn from New Orleans
 

1) After the failure of the Federal Government to strengthen flood control we will learn that we need more government and less personal responsibility.

2) Because of fossil fuel shortages we will learn that it's necessary to increase capacity in fossil fuels rather than investing in other fuels.

3) We will learn of the necessity of more victim disarmament legislation after we start losing soldiers in NO sent there to protect citizens.

4) After being left in N.O. by ineffective government planning the urban poor will learn they need to vote for a larger government impact in their lives.

5) With 35% of Louisiana National Guardsman in Iraq, we will learn that less State and more Federal control of guardsman is necessary for national security.

6) We will learn that lying about sex under oath is an impeachable offense but gross incompetence is not.

By the time the public absorbs the impact of the Hurricane response debacle, the high price of energy, and the deleterious effects of each on our national economy (and security, for that matter), I think we'll see the Republican majority in government finally start to shrink.

[dripping]But it's my damn money!! I won't tolerate an increase in tax rates when I can decide best what to do with *my* money. I want a big tv. I want to take the levee road to the walmart across town in my suburban, and I'm going alone--I don't need any input from anybody about how to spend *my* money.

If the pumps fail and the levees brake and the hospitals shut down, that's the GOVERNMENT'S PROBLEM! NOT MINE. Give me my money dammit.[/sarcasm]



edit: reduced subtlety quotient

GWB has just said that ..."the good news is that Trent Lott's house will rebuilt and it will be beautiful, and I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch there."

No, I'm not making it up. How could I make this sh*t up?

We saw something about it on the BBC at chow and it amazed us all. Five days of sitting there waiting to die, people dead in wheelchairs and on beds, looting for food and water. It was bad. And then they said a news helicopter was shot at in the air. Awesome. Thanks for stopping by, Mr. Shooter. Way to support the community in it's time of need.
And then the broadcaster turned it all into a race issue and said most of the people there were African American and blathered on how it was a race/class thing. I can understand the money aspect of it, but come on, enough with the Black/White thing already. I wish I could help those people. But that is about the extent of what I can say to how I feel.
I just started reading Victor E. Frankl's Man's Search For Meaning about the Nazi prison camps. It reminded me of the people in New Orleans minus the SS and the Capos. Frankl does say doctors are wrong about how long you can survive without food, though. Lucky for them, I guess.

I wish Jesse Ventura would run for President. He would be there handing out food to those people. Out of touch politicians make me laugh, and then punch something until my knuckles are swollen and I get shooting pains up through my wrists because I've fractured something again.

Well, I imagine the snipers could stand in for the Capos, anyhow.

This entire tragedy just is unbelievable! Come on folks, this used to be OUR country! What in the world has happened to it? What is the greater threat to our country - imaginary WMD's or a crumbling infrastructure that left a very beautiful, MAJOR American City open to this kind of destruction? I've been following the arguments about "Well, they shudda built their houses somewhere else" or they "shudda left," but when our own fearless leader goes on the news saying, "We never expected the levee's to fail," what did you expect?

Yeah, you folks in the Midwest better move away from the giganto fault line that might give way to the world's greatest earthquake any time now; the folks in the Rocky Mountain West should stop living in towns adjacent to National Forests just dying to burn down, folks who live in Arizona will get what they deserve when the Good Lord visits them with the next major drought; everybody outta the Gulf Coast states, and CALIFORNIA? HAH!

So, what people? Just what? We are sending brave men and women – the members of our military - to fight and die in a very expensive foreign war on terror, but what about the terror here at home? Go turn on your TV set and watch it. 9/11 pales in comparison.

You know what the current damage estimates are? $100 billion And that's aside from the loss of human lives and the price of the human suffering we sit watching in front of our TV sets this Labor Day Weekend. "Oh, honey, switch the channel to "The Simpson's." I'm bored with that New Orleans stuff!"

I am SO SICK of hearing people say that "throwing money" at a problem is not the solution.

This newspaper article came out in June of this year. I quoted part of it before, and here's another quote from that same article:

The Corps' budget could still be beefed up, as it is every year, through congressional additions. Last year, Congress added $20 million to the overall budget of the New Orleans district but a similar increase this year would still leave a $50 million shortfall.

One of the hardest-hit areas of the New Orleans district's budget is the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, which was created after the May 1995 flood to improve drainage in Jefferson, Orleans and St. Tammany parishes. SELA's budget is being drained from $36.5 million awarded in 2005 to $10.4 million suggested for 2006 by the House of Representatives and the president.

The project manager said there would be no contracts awarded with this $10.4 million, Demma said.

The construction portion of the Corps' budget would suffer if Congress doesn't add money. In 2005, the district received $94.3 million in federal dollars dedicated to construction. In 2006, the proposal is for $56 million.

It would be critical to this city if we had a $50 million construction budget compared with the past years, Demma said. It would be horrible for the city, it would be horrible for contractors and for flood protection if this were the final number compared to recent years and what the city needs.
Construction generally has been on the decline for several years and focus has been on other projects in the Corps.

The district has identified $35 million in projects to build and improve levees, floodwalls and pumping stations in St. Bernard, Orleans, Jefferson and St. Charles parishes. Those projects are included in a Corps line item called Lake Pontchartrain, where funding is scheduled to be cut from $5.7 million this year to $2.9 million in 2006. Naomi said it's enough to pay salaries but little else.

Since when have Americans become so mean spirited toward their own? George W. Bush and the Republican Party didn't even save the tax payers that $50 million dollars mentioned at the start of the quote. We paid that $50 million to Halliburten, instead, and have reaped a reward of 100 BILLION in destruction and God knows how many lost human lives because we couldn't "throw money" at fixing the levee's here at home.

This is MY country, damn it! Those are MY fellow Americans suffering and dying on the the TV screen because Junior didn't want to throw money at anything but his own best interests.

I don't believe it. I did a Google search and found no reference. Could you cite a source and provide a link?

Noone could be that clueless.

BTW, New Orleans might be the last straw for the economy. The adminstration has been trying to run a $200 billion dollar war with no sacrifice to the average American. They did this by hiding the money in the books and not counting it towards the deficit.

Now we will need tens of billions of dollars to rebuild New Orleans. There is no way they can push aside the cost of the reconstruction after the trick they played with the Iraq war and reconstruction money.

Now comes the real sacrifice for the American people. And many of them will start asking why so many of our resources are being sent to Iraq when we need them here.

What will really be interesting is to see what happens to the carefully gerrymandered districts in Texas now that they have relocated tens of thousands of people, many of whom are very pissed off at the existing government. In 12 months, some of these people may be eligibile to vote in Texas.

This one's actually true.

So where the heck were the other 65%?

I read this quote from multiple sources. The mental midget president is talking about stabilizing things when that should have been started five days ago. Instead he's talking about rebuilding when people are still dying - when stability is no where in sight. At what point does anyone ask, "When does he have a clue."

Where are all these George Jr supporters when this is the event that measures the mettle of a president? Why so much silence? Oh. Maybe intelligent design will save these victims. Sarcastic? Show me one good reason why contempt and George Jr should not be part of the same paragraph. He’s talking about rebuilding Trent Lott's house when he sat for days doing nothing – promising aid - as American were dying.

Never forget the damning picture of 50 C5As on tarmacs in Louis Armstrong International airport unloading supplies AND taking out the victims. One small problem – the C5As were not dispatched – as the president waited for things to stabilize.

George Jr again makes decisions as any good MBA would. Go ahead. Show me. Show me where any of these facts are in error. Show me where top management took charge during a disaster. Show me. This time there was no Mayor Guiliani to save an MBA's sorry ass.

Well, he said it on CNN today during his "Go Team!" speech, after being publicly briefed by the FEMA guy and a governor. Back patting and applause ensued. A cringeworthy moment if there ever was one.

I think people are blaming race and class issues, because there isn't any other real explanation. Local officials have been calling desperately for help since Tuesday, and...nothing. Today, federal officials are claiming that the locals did not tell them where to send help, and that's why no help was sent. This, of course, as reporters can tell us, is a BS excuse--after all, they found their way there.

I can't imagine what was going through Bush's mind when he flew over the area on Wednesday. I would hope a president would think something like, "Why aren't there helicopters flying over every square inch of that city?" and "Where are the caravans of supply trucks?"

But all we heard from him was, "It's devastating. It must be doubly devastating down there." And that was it. It just doesn't make any sense.

Saving their families, I expect.

With a disaster of this magnitude, a lot of the first line people who would ordinarily be activated will make the choice to defend their families first.

It's also the case that people who are impacted by the disaster really can't be effective as responders to it ... I would hope that logic would dictate activation of units from the northern, less directly affected parts of the state would be utilized, or crews from other states.

I can. It went something like this:

"My supporters ought to be pretty damn happy about those oil futures I told them to buy last year. Wonder if I should have put more than $600k in myself? Hmmm..."

Guilliani will be the republican candidate. Done deal.

Edwards' Two Americas issue now with strong visuals, jumps ahead for dems.

Oh, and if Ventura were in charge he would doing much the same as the N.O. Mayor...when leadership was called for, any broad collaboration he couldnt coordinate, any deep end, he would be getting pissed off at others on the radio. Having experienced it, media tantrums are pretty much his gubernatorial legacy.

I tried and failed to find a link. tw and bluecuracao nailed it though. I also found the link tw cited and is now dead. I don't doubt it. But I *did* hear it twice. The man should not speak extemporaneously. I reckon his PR people shudder when he approaches a microphone without his notes. I don't mean this to be a Bush Bash, but criminy! Somebody buy this man a compassion clue. Seriously.

edit:

This is what I mean.

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
-- George W. Bush, 9/1/05

"Experts have warned for years that the levees and pumps that usually keep New Orleans dry have no chance against a direct hit by a Category 5 storm."
-- AP story, 8/29/05

http://images.ucomics.com/comics/db/2005/db050901.gif

We've got a lot of rebuilding to do. First, we're going to save lives and stabilize the situation. And then we're going to help these communities rebuild. The good news is -- and it's hard for some to see it now -- that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house -- there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch. (Laughter.)


Again, I want to thank you all for -- and, Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job. The FEMA Director is working 24 -- (applause) -- they're working 24 hours a day.

From the Whitehouse.gov news release 9/2

It doesnt seem that ol' Brownie has done such a heck of a job to me. He may be putting in clock hours, working hard at that, lots of press conferences, but not actually leading very competently. Yes its a tough gig, but it's his gig. I have little sympathy, far less praise.

The active military leadership that arrived finally today 9/3 seem to be a "heck" of a lot more effectively coordinating info, security, and aid. They get my applause.

Actually, my understanding is that there will be a 'Compassionate Work Projects Act' established to provide jobs for displaced residents. The entire $10 million dollar budget will be used to hire and train residents to rebuild Trent Lott's house.

The previous statement was a joke (I hope).

David Brooks makes the case that this is a tipping point of history, the beginning of the fourth turning crisis cycle:

god. Seeing that Jefferson Parish guy break down in pain and frustration when telling of the slow, heartbreaking desertion/death of his coworkers' mama....I get teary just thinking about it. I tried to describe it to my mom and couldnt describe it with out sobbing. That captured some horror.

I find it odd that the story that some people are latching onto is the separation of a kid from his dog.

People are unable to wrap their minds around the concept of thousands of deaths, a number of them from dehydration, in the richest country in the world. The plight of a boy and his dog seems to reduce the horrendous reality to a single manageable scene of pathos.

The backlash from this event is going to cost the Republicans most of the gains they've made in the South, and probably a lot of other places as well.

Look for the Republican majority to start shrinking in the next election.

Does this mean the Republicans will never hold a convention in the New Orleans Convention Center?

Interesting article I received in e-mail.

just bloody amazing
 

First and fore most. I AM NOT A BUSH SUPPORTER. I am a libertarian IF I mustlist an affiliation. I find the modern republicans nearly as distasteful as I do the dems, but beyond party line is the definition liberal or conservative. That crosses party lines. As I sit reading these post, first time in ages I have had time, I am disgusted with nearly the lot of you.

Almost all of you wanna blame the president of the country in things that are not his damned fault. THe failure to have a disaster plan?
The Mayor of NO.
Failure to get federal aid as fast as possible?
THe Govenor of LA
THe reason the feds screwed up when they where called in?
THe head of FEMA.(although I will give that he is an appiontee as well as a failure)

The federal goverment has failed us. Yes. By not keeping our borders but that is nearly the only job the feds actually have. THe disaster in NO is the DIRECT result of a liberal goverment in both the city and the state. Has Bush done a great job? Not really but then the last decent president we had was Nixon, a man who at least took the bullet when his people 'f'd up.

If you must bash stick to his failures on the Borders. Remember that energy problem are made worse by the fact that not only are we stuck with oil companies<bush is only a minor symptom> but because Environuts wont let us do anything either way to fix the situation.

As far as the Katrina disaster, put the blame where it belongs. With the local goverment who dropped the ball and now are slinking with their tail between their legs to beg for help from the feds.

Almost all politicitans are lying jerk, but then I never trust anybody that volunteers for a job like that.

speaking from experience
A HUGO survivor

Blame the victims. If we can convince the public they were all criminals and welfare queens, maybe people won't care that they died!

The feds are supposed to be there to pick up dropped balls. That's what a federal State of Emergency is for.

:mg:
Bush may be given a walk on this. Fucking amazing. I shouldnt be surprised anymore.

No, the victims aren't to blame for the hurricane. The magnitude of their suffering, however, is directly connected to the local government's unwillingness to choose prosperity and responsibility over entitlement and welfare.

That said, EVERYONE in New Orleans was wiped out. It's about human suffering, not black suffering. Rich people can rebuild, the poor can't without help. But the rescue workers and (vile Bush robot) military personnel are of all colors and backgrounds, and don't see race or class -- they see people in need. Time to get behind them with our wallets and words and leave the retarded partisanship behind. An entire American city has been wiped out, and all people can talk about is whether or not Bush directly caused the hurricane or simply likes eating babies.

The Bush Administration mantra: Everyone but us should take personal responsibility, and everyone but us should stop with the partisan attacks. The buck stops there. You can't support the troops (or rescue workers) while criticizing the top leadership. No finger pointing during a crisis. No finger pointing after a crisis. Finger pointing before a crisis will not be acknowledged.

Can someone explain to me why 72 hour relief response time was great for the Indonesian Tsunami, but is a National Tragedy for Which Bush is at Fault in New Orleans?

It wasn't great for the Indonesian Tsunami, and it's worse for an event within our borders for which we had warning, and which had already been declared a national emergency.

yes, it is horrible. Although the feds were a little fuddled once they got the ball they COULD NOT respond till the gov of LA gave them a yes. SHE felt that it would be better to wait awhile and see just how bad it was. BUsh's failing(notice the finger pointing) was in putting in a head of FEMA who didn't think to make plans just incase. That aside, having been around for those big movements it seems to atleast 2 days to get everything together and onsite.

As for blaming the victims. No, I would not blame the victims. But the victims should blame their own local reps first and then move up the line. If it reaches the presidents office fine.

As for Bush walking on this one, fuck people you make it sound like his personal fault that the levees were not reinforced and maintained and that the local organization was terrible or that he couldn't wave his dick and make 40,000 troops appear in a place were frankly they couldnt do anything in the first two days anyway. Why didn't the Govenor have the State national Gaurd on site before hand? Yes a portion of them are over seas but there are more than enough left with proper leadership. The state didn't have it.

The States are responsible for first response. I realize this is confusing to the liberal mind amoung us as this concept involves personal responsibility as well and self sufficiance. Two thing liberals seem to be against. Lets remember that Clinton fail us just as often as Bush. Atleast Bush is amusing to listen to.

When all is said and done it will be what wasn't done before the storm rather than what came after that is really the issue. In the mean time I send what I can spare to those in need and prepare myself for the storm that seems to be heading toward the SC coast.

The left won't admit it, but they have no interest in Bush "taking personal responsibility" for anything. They want his head on a charger, and will go to any lengths to achieve this, including political haymaking during a national tragedy. The hurricane was worse because he didn't sign the Kyoto Treaty. The cleanup was horribly late in starting because he was on vacation. FEMA was a "boondoggle" when applying for funding, but it's suddenly vital now that it can bolster the kill-George argument.

Some problems are much bigger, and much messier, than witch-hunting one man can solve. New Orleans illustrates a far more insidious wrong -- a failed social institution that started with FDR and sucked the life out of two generations of people. It left them with nothing but utter dependence on government for their livelihood; if the system glitches, they have fuck-all to pull them out of their mess. Just watch: thousands upon thousands of people will use this flood to forever leave the hellhole of New Orleans behind. Without a teat to hang on, they will look for work, get out of the ghetto, and raise children who don't shoot at rescue helicopters. No amount of leftwing handwringing will stop it, and it's loooong overdue.

That's not true. The request for assistance went through the Saturday before the storm. After that, the feds could go in whenever they wanted.

Sure. With what quality of education, and what skills? You said that some problems are much bigger and much messier--you have no idea how right you are.

Please. We don't know if it was welfare kids who were doing the shooting.

Hey, you're the one who posted that nasty "blame the victim article," so I don't think you should be getting up on your high horse there about "retarded partisanship," pal. And what's this about "local government's unwillingness to choose prosperity and responsibility over entitlement and welfare. " Welfare is a mostly federally funded program, administered by the states. TANF and WIC are FEDERAL programs, so are SSI and SSDI for the disabled.

Please explain and give concrete examples of the state of Louisiana's and the city of New Orleans' unwillingness to choose prosperity while making entitlement a priority. I want to see facts and numbers, please, not polemics.

So what? Are we lowering the bar for the US to that of the third world? See, it took them a month to go help people in Sri Lanka, since the US tops the rest of the world in EVERYTHING, let's just take two months and show THEM! A lot of people died in those three days in Indonesia, what was so great about that? Hello? :eyebrow:

The side arguing things like this is hardly in a position to demand statistics. However, I will look some definite statistics up and get back to you. Hold me to it -- pm me if I forget (i have a bad cold and a crappy week at work).

New Orleans is closer and there was plenty of warning for Katrina.

It was still up to the Governor of the State of Louisiana to ask for the help from FEMA. They can't just go in, disaster declaration or not.

The declaration frees the resources ... when they are requested. Although we function as one country, each US state is actually it's own little independent entity. We often forget that.

She did ask, on August 27, in a very detailed letter. A small snipet from her letter on nola.com:

Gov. Blanco's request is also documented on whitehouse.gov.

Rod Dreher of the Nat'l Review turns on Bush:

Select bits from that WaPo story:

It's nice that people are noticing this now, and it would be even nicer to see this spur some investigation into how many other important posts have been used as patronage prizes. I mean, it's not as if Bush even tried very hard to disguize that this is what he was doing.


Sure, everyone appoints their best buddy Ambassador to Elbonia, but some posts actually need skill. This is a symptom of the idea that government can't do anything well, so it doesn't matter who's in any position. If you truly believe that all civil servants do is waste tax dollars and sit on their asses, then of course you're going to use the posts as patronage.

I've been saying the same thing for the past week, although I used "Luxembourg" as my example.

Just be glad Karl Rove isn't Secretary of Defense.

I've been thinking about this very thing. When someone who doesn't believe in government is in charge he can go in one of two directions, make it fail or force it to be as effective as it can be by being skeptical of its capacity. Bush took the easy failure route with FEMA after a lot of bold talk about the effectiveness of the Homeland Security Department. That is not a great mix. Add to it the civil liberties we've handed over to make the department more effective and it starts smelling like the old Soviet Block, tons of power wielded by fools.

Quoting UT's quote of a WaPo story: "Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks."

Although its impact cannot even be remotely compared to the Katrina/FEMA debacle, Missouri has experienced something similar. In our fair state, the Governor gets to decide who shall operate (and therefore profit from) the extremely valuable Fee Agent License Bureaus, where those of us who have no easy access to one of the very few State operated locations must go to get our vehicle licenses. Our freshman governor, Mel Blunt, whom I've ranted about before on The Cellar, has made a special groovy major fuck of it on his watch.

He has given many bureaus over to patrons who have absolutely *no* fucking clue about what to do with them, to the extent that many perfectly functional offices were closed (and remained closed for months) while the new owners tried to figure out what to do with them. In another spectacularly ballsy move, Blunt also closed License Bureaus that were *operated by the State of Missouri*, sold off their equipment assets at pennies on the dollar to the new Fee Agents, and allowed them to reopen those Bureaus as private Fee Agent locations. According to all reports, service, speed and accuracy of these *government mandated transactions* has gone right through the goddamn floor, becoming virtually impossible in many locations.

It helps if you understand that these Fee Agent offices are not bid for. There are no requirements or qualifications to be a Fee Agent. It is purely and simply a political plum that our State's highest elected official gets to dole out to his supporters. Folks, such patronage is dishonest at best, and apparently outright dangerous at worst, if you look at the case of all the losers heading up FEMA in a time of actual crisis. Oh, yeah...It was okay when they were sitting back holding press conferences, weariing nice suits and collecting fat paychecks for having done nothing more than knowing what to kiss and when, but now that they need to do an important and life-critical job, all they can do is point fingers and try to figure out a way to hang the blame on the people in the afflicted region.

As to the Left wanting to make political hay out of this...don't think for a moment that the Right wouldn't be just as quick and twice as righteous about it if the situation was reversed. In the end, the Right will come up with a game plan completely laying this at the feet of the Democrats, the Clinton Presidency, etc, and their little sycophants will praise Jesus and line up to spout the party line.

It would be the same if the Left was in power, too.

We know there are many things a government can't do well and many things it can't do at all. So when we as human beings say that something should be done by government, we should also specify whether it's the rare late-60s NASA or the more common modern DMV handling things.

And at the top, the talented people should go on the NASA projects and the paper shufflers should go to the DMV projects.

And people who think that government does nothing well should be kept away from all government projects.

David Brooks NYT

Resumes of FEMA's 10 regional directors. About half seem unqualified.

David Brooks has got his facts wrong on the army corps of engineers and the amount of funding they had. There are excerpts from documents stating just how woefully unfunded the corps of engineers were, and the pleas of Louisiana officials on other threads in the Current Events forum.

This was a failure of a government which took little interest in domestic matters and used tax payer dollars for a highly expensive foreign war that we had no business getting ourselves into, as stated by no one less than General Colin Powell, himself.

Brooks overlooks that one teensy little fact.

.., while people who believe government can do anything should never write legislation.

So I drew a quick political cartoon... Apologies for the complete off-the-cuff art quality.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/happymonkey/42888074/" title="Photo Sharing" target="_blank"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/29/42888074_05aa5518fa.jpg" width="500" height="484" alt="Political Cartoon" /></a>

Ha ha ha, that's cute. :)

Whaddaya know? Bush may have already trumped my cartoon!

We'll see what form this responsibility takes.

I'm still holding my breath from Reno taking responsiblity for Waco, so maybe somebody else cold cover this one.

Not a very impressive form.

Here's the original article cited in the article HM posted. Unfortunately, neither article has the Justice Dept. e-mail in it's entirety reproduced. It would be nice to see the date of the e-mail, and if it came after Bush's taking responsibility.

I have no problem with an independent inquiry looking into all the possible causes that led to this disaster, including this one, but this looks like a coordinated smear campaign against environmental groups in order to shift blame away from the Bush admin.

Chances are, *if* an environmental group had impeded levee work on New Orleans, they'd just say, "Duh...turning the area back into marshland is exactly what we had in mind. Looks like a helluva good start from our vantage point."

Did Greenpeace somehow reroute the money appropriated for levee work to other uses, then?