NOAA told the bush admin days before the hurricane, that if the winds exceeded 110-115 mph that the levee would fail. winds exceeded 160mph. bush then went to arizona and another state, and then two days later finally cut his month long vacation short to return to the white house.
is that a leader?
once they learned that the winds approached those speeds, why wasn't action taken by the bush administration? why didn't he head back to washington at that time? they should have known that help, and a lot of it would have been needed.
it will come out soon enough, that the disaster was much greater
because of the mayor/governor.
if it wasn't for bush, there would have been NO mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. he had to force the governor to order it.
no matter what the truth is though, the left will blindly blame bush.
both sides are just as blind. you are correct. the truth will come out. there is enough blame to go around, but even conservatives, and a lot of them, are faulting bush also.
o+
Your right, I am a freshman. Cant you tell by my grammar.
You are also correct that a predictable event lies at local level. Until a request is made for help. Which was made early on, even before the strom hit.
I think your missing the point. This is not just about the single storm, as bad as it was.This is about a bumbbling admistration. Thier inability to protect its citizens, lack of leadership by the prez. and a whole lot of other issues. Which will be flushed out once things calm down.
this is about a single storm, and about a single mayor who had over 600 buses at his disposal with 2 days to evacuate those who couldn't evacuate themselves. if he had acted, this discussion would be moot.
o+
we are going around in circles. Only time will expose the truth.
If in the end, it is determained that only the mayor and govenor are at soley at fault. i will extend a warm christian apology for calling GWB names.
Until then, I think your wrong!!!
O... Everyone knows that the local system failed. Plainly. But the 4 days after the storm hit where nothing happened to mitigate the chaos and loss of life is equally clear evidence that the Bush administration (as represented by our President, and FEMA) fucked up as well. I don't understand what is so hard to grasp about that.
To listen to your argument, we should blaming all of 9/11 on the airport screeners.
'The guy who runs this building I’m in, Emergency Management, he’s responsible for everything.
'His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, “Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?†and he said, “Yeah, Mama, somebody’s coming to get you.†Somebody’s coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Friday… and she drowned Friday night.
'She drowned Friday night! [Sobbing] Nobody’s coming to get us. Nobody’s coming to get us...'
i am enlightened...the cure for 'bureaucracy & red tape' is more 'bureaucracy'. lovely.
"...if America had responded like Walmart responded..." you mean the private sector will always be more efficient and faster-acting than government? wow. sounds like a structural truth.
that all said, looks like some heads should role at FEMA. maybe we've discovered how Bush is a 'uniter' not a 'divider'...he doesn't fire anyone!
while i question the 'cry-on-queue-reality-tv' vibe of that MTP clip, I feel for all the victims of this act of nature...and those who would have been rescued if it weren't for all the red tape.
Is it also red tape and bureacracy that got us into the most blatant lie-justified land-grab/murderfest of a war in US history (that has made the world far less rather than more safe)? Or the opening of National Parklands to ultimate destruction? Or the ignorant dismissal of scientific proof of the environmental calamity to be wrought by global climate change? Or the sad crumbling of the American educational system? No, its the unbeleivably shortsighted and heartless corporate-American puppet of a president we have to thank for all this. Christian values my ass.
Efficiency and progress is ours once more
Now that we have the Neutron bomb
It's nice and quick and clean and gets things done
Away with excess enemy
But no less value to property
No sense in war but perfect sense at home:
The sun beams down on a brand new day
No more welfare tax to pay
Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light
Jobless millions whisked away
At last we have more room to play
All systems go to kill the poor tonight
Gonna
Kill kill kill kill Kill the poor:Tonight
Behold the sparkle of champagne
The crime rate's gone
Feel free again
O' life's a dream with you, Miss Lily White
Jane Fonda on the screen today
Convinced the liberals it's okay
So let's get dressed and dance away the night
While they:
Kill kill kill kill Kill the poor:Tonight
i rarely, if ever, would offer a straight copy of someone elses opinions, but this editorial from the nytimes pretty much hits it dead on...
Each day since Katrina brings more evidence of the lethal ineptitude of federal officials. I'm not letting state and local officials off the hook, but federal officials had access to resources that could have made all the difference, but were never mobilized.
Here's one of many examples: The Chicago Tribune reports that the U.S.S. Bataan, equipped with six operating rooms, hundreds of hospital beds and the ability to produce 100,000 gallons of fresh water a day, has been sitting off the Gulf Coast since last Monday - without patients.
Experts say that the first 72 hours after a natural disaster are the crucial window during which prompt action can save many lives. Yet action after Katrina was anything but prompt. Newsweek reports that a "strange paralysis" set in among Bush administration officials, who debated lines of authority while thousands died.
What caused that paralysis? President Bush certainly failed his test. After 9/11, all the country really needed from him was a speech. This time it needed action - and he didn't deliver.
But the federal government's lethal ineptitude wasn't just a consequence of Mr. Bush's personal inadequacy; it was a consequence of ideological hostility to the very idea of using government to serve the public good. For 25 years the right has been denigrating the public sector, telling us that government is always the problem, not the solution. Why should we be surprised that when we needed a government solution, it wasn't forthcoming?
Does anyone remember the fight over federalizing airport security? Even after 9/11, the administration and conservative members of Congress tried to keep airport security in the hands of private companies. They were more worried about adding federal employees than about closing a deadly hole in national security.
Of course, the attempt to keep airport security private wasn't just about philosophy; it was also an attempt to protect private interests. But that's not really a contradiction. Ideological cynicism about government easily morphs into a readiness to treat government spending as a way to reward your friends. After all, if you don't believe government can do any good, why not?
Which brings us to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In my last column, I asked whether the Bush administration had destroyed FEMA's effectiveness. Now we know the answer.
Several recent news analyses on FEMA's sorry state have attributed the agency's decline to its inclusion in the Department of Homeland Security, whose prime concern is terrorism, not natural disasters. But that supposed change in focus misses a crucial part of the story.
For one thing, the undermining of FEMA began as soon as President Bush took office. Instead of choosing a professional with expertise in responses to disaster to head the agency, Mr. Bush appointed Joseph Allbaugh, a close political confidant. Mr. Allbaugh quickly began trying to scale back some of FEMA's preparedness programs.
You might have expected the administration to reconsider its hostility to emergency preparedness after 9/11 - after all, emergency management is as important in the aftermath of a terrorist attack as it is following a natural disaster. As many people have noticed, the failed response to Katrina shows that we are less ready to cope with a terrorist attack today than we were four years ago.
But the downgrading of FEMA continued, with the appointment of Michael Brown as Mr. Allbaugh's successor.
Mr. Brown had no obvious qualifications, other than having been Mr. Allbaugh's college roommate. But Mr. Brown was made deputy director of FEMA; The Boston Herald reports that he was forced out of his previous job, overseeing horse shows. And when Mr. Allbaugh left, Mr. Brown became the agency's director. The raw cronyism of that appointment showed the contempt the administration felt for the agency; one can only imagine the effects on staff morale.
That contempt, as I've said, reflects a general hostility to the role of government as a force for good. And Americans living along the Gulf Coast have now reaped the consequences of that hostility.
The administration has always tried to treat 9/11 purely as a lesson about good versus evil. But disasters must be coped with, even if they aren't caused by evildoers. Now we have another deadly lesson in why we need an effective government, and why dedicated public servants deserve our respect. Will we listen?
say what you want about the local authorities, but they don't oversee the raw manpower to pull something like this off. you think the mayor could have found 600+ people to drive those buses, even assuming they were gassed up and ready to go? o+ and nico - you're both defending something that has no defense. the leadership from fema down let those people down. trying to whitewash the white house is just asinine.
yes, G-love, the mayor could have found 600 + people easily to drive the buses, he had over 2 days to do so(and failed miserably)and could have easily gotten between 40,000-80,000 people out of the city to ease the disastor relief. 200+ officers in new orleans quit before the hurricane hit. it's a local/state leadership problem. the governor could have had state troopers go down and drive the buses, there was plenty of time to do so beforehand.
no one can be blamed for the hurricane, but the glaring lack of local/state preparedness is disgusting, and the ignorant blaming of the federal level without even a basic understanding of the situation is
typical for the imbicilic left.
o+, even the feds have admitted they also fucked up >>
Local and state resources were so weakened, said Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, that in the future federal authorities need to take "more of an upfront role earlier on, when we have these truly ultracatastrophes."
"IGNORANT BLAMING OF THE FEDERAL LEVEL?" Who the fuck is this guy? Partisanship aside, you have to be utterly blind to not understand FEDERAL BLAME has been QUALIFIED.
(This discussion is useless with these two kids -- i've taken comments from metafilter and composited them bc it is not worth my effort to explain it all again):
Don't pay attention to FEMA's fuck ups, people! It was the Mayor! And the Governor!
Note: using these buses to get people completely out of NO before the hurricane would most certainly have required FEDERAL coordination and leadership.
Where would the buses go? Look, even the suburbs in Dallas are turning away refugees instead of clearing their high school gynasiums and community centers to accomodate evacuees.
The idea that responsibility lies with a city mayor for something this epic is just preposterous to me. That's why we have FEMA.
If you ask me, the government at all three levels should have planned for failure at all the other levels. The City should have stockpiled food and water at the superdome to last for weeks, the state should have had an evacuation plan ready to go without federal assistance.
The plans they came up with relied on FEMA doing its job, and FEMA didn't. The mayor and gov. were assuming that there would be help from FEMA, but there wasn't. That's their true mistake--trusting the Bush admin.
The amazing bullshit about posse comitatus and local jurisdiction (despite disaster orders being signed by locals before the damn hurricane hit) and a mayor's magical ability to have the manpower and money to deal with city-wide evacuation over hundreds of miles is really quite disgusting.
Believe what you wish; however, it is fact that funds were diverted from maintenance and reinforcement of levees to support the Iraq campaign. Those funds were requested by LA state officials two years ago.
The president also decided to move a large percentage of the country's homeland defense (National Guard) to Iraq.
The president's staff also apparently ignored the State of Emergency declared by the governor on the 26th of August, at their peril.
All these decisions were made by the executive branch of our federal government. Nature cannot be fooled. Blaming the mayor or governor for the effects of these decisions seems criminal.
Its not just Kanye West sayng Bush doesnt support black people- Bush's own actions show his true colors:
Bush Criticizes NAACP's Leadership
Relationship With Rights Group 'Basically Nonexistent,' President Says
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A05
Bush's assessment of his relationship with the nation's largest civil rights organization was a sharp reversal from his rhetoric during his last campaign. Then he spoke to the group's convention as part of an effort to show he was a different kind of Republican and said that "there is much we can do together to advance racial harmony and economic opportunity."
Bush will not be speaking before the 2004 convention, which will open Saturday in Philadelphia. Bush, during a day-long bus tour through Pennsylvania, said in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer and two other state newspapers that he "admired some" NAACP leaders and said he would seek members' support "in other ways."
But he castigated the group's officers, who include President Kweisi Mfume and Chairman Julian Bond. "I would describe my relationship with the current leadership as basically nonexistent," Bush said, as reported by Knight Ridder Newspapers. "You've heard the rhetoric and the names they've called me."
Earlier this week, the White House said the invitation had been declined because of scheduling commitments, and officials said that was the reason cited in the letter to the group. But when asked about the matter by reporters on Air Force One on Friday, White House press secretary Scott McClellan made it clear that a lot more was involved. "The current leadership of the NAACP has certainly made some rather hostile political comments about the president over the past few years," he said.
The NAACP said Bush is the first president since Warren G. Harding not to meet with the group while in office.
Bond has accused Republicans of "playing the race card in election after election." He said they have "appealed to that dark underside of American culture, to that minority of Americans who reject democracy and equality," and "preach racial neutrality and they practice racial division."
The snub could affect voter turnout in November. In Florida in 2000, Bush was hurt by heavy black turnout, organized in part by the NAACP because of the group's opposition to Republican Gov. Jeb Bush's rollback of the state's affirmative action program.
oh, i wish i could be young and stupid again, but i'll leave that to mintcar and the other bush haters here. everytime the real causes of the catastrophic perils of these poor people is brought to light, a squak of idiocy is called to blame everyone but the local leadership. the sad part is, this is the kind of illogical reasoning that won't help if this kind of event happens again.
i think you're just wrong about the drivers. if you mean 'sure they could just pluck 600 adults off the streets', sure. but people who actually know how to use the things.
and the fact that you're defending fema at all is mind blowing. were you even following what that idiot michael brown was saying all week? on tuesday he was claiming that a breached levee wouldn't fill new orleans in, like a fishbowl. on thursday night he said that they had just heard about all the folks being at the convention center. on friday morning he claimed that of those same people had been given one or two meals a day for the past few days. face it. that guy looked like a deer caught in the headlights all week. he didn't know sh*t. he was scared silly - you can actually hear him in his hotel room saying 'this is not happening, this is not happening...).
jeez, he's making rush look like he's spin free.
this disaster was the number 3 scenario for the top potential disasters in the u.s. why, then, in god's name did they not think to coordinate with the state and local officials on an ongoing basis? oh. because they don't really care about that beer swilling bastion of democrat leaning whinos? let's hope not.
want to know what michael brown's qualifications to run fema are? well, he ran an international arabian horse organization. which he was forced out of because he couldn't manage it very well. oh, and he happened to be the college roomate of the first guy bush appointed. yeah. hmmm. really qualified. and, yeah, we can put all the blame for that move right on the president. he could have given fema the status and attention that clinton did (something he praised lavishly if you go back and look at the 2000 debates). instead he allows the best friend of his campaign manager to take the top slot. what would that do to your morale?
if you're going to insist the feds had nothing to do with this debacle in the aftermath, then please just say so. i'm not sure that 70% of the country's going to be with you though...
i never said the feds are doing a great job did I? no, never, all i said was that the main problem with new orleans was leadership in their action leading up to the devistation. the feds aren't responsible for evacuation plans for every city across the u.s., that's assinine. fact is, thousands of lives are lost, and the rescues made more difficult by the local/state failure of leadership, period. end of discussion.
your previous post: "the ignorant blaming of the federal level without even a basic understanding of the situation is
typical for the imbicilic left."
essentially, yes -- you implied the federal government is not worth blaming.
and no, "rescues are made more difficult by the local/state failure of leadership" is NOT an excuse for the failure of the federal government.
it is NOT an issue of left vs right when we see this kind of devastation. thousands have died. it was the fed's responsibility to aid them, but they came too little, too late. the president could have been democrat or republican, it doesn't matter. a failure like that is a dereliction of duty. they did not live up to their duty.
it's no use trying to divert blame the local/state, because in the end, more people died who did not have to, because the president and all his people failed to live up to their duty.
Please make sure you dont trip up on your own mucky tracks as you backpedal.
FEMA and its Secreatry Brown ARE responsible for leading FEDERAL disasater response and coordinating with other fed agencies and the Red Cross.
Instead of being so belligerent you should brush up on your civics and take off your BUSH rose colored glasses. Read up and decide who is the boorish donkey.
Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response
Michael D. Brown was nominated by President George W. Bush as the first Under Secretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response in the newly created Department of Homeland Security in January 2003. As the head of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Under Secretary Brown leads federal disaster response and recovery operations and coordinates disaster activities with more than two dozen federal agencies and departments and the American Red Cross. He also oversees the National Flood Insurance Program and the U.S. Fire Administration, and initiates proactive mitigation activities.
Additionally, Under Secretary Brown helps the Secretary of Homeland Security ensure the effectiveness of emergency responders, and directs the National Incident Management System (NIMS) Integration Center, the National Disaster Medical System and the Nuclear Incident Response Team.
Under Secretary Brown has led Homeland Security’s response to more than 164 presidentially declared disasters and emergencies, including the 2003 Columbia Shuttle disaster and the California wildfires in 2003. In 2004, Mr. Brown led FEMA’s thousands of dedicated disaster workers during the most active hurricane season in over 100 years, as FEMA delivered aid more quickly and more efficiently than ever before.
Previously, Mr. Brown served as FEMA's Deputy Director and the agency's General Counsel. Shortly after the September 11th terrorist attacks, Mr. Brown served on the President's Consequence Management Principal's Committee, which acted as the White House's policy coordination group for the federal domestic response to the attacks. Later, the President asked him to head the Consequence Management Working Group to identify and resolve key issues regarding the federal response plan. In August 2002, President Bush appointed him to the Transition Planning Office for the new Department of Homeland Security, serving as the transition leader for the EP&R Division.
Prior to joining FEMA, Mr. Brown practiced law in Colorado and Oklahoma, where he served as a bar examiner on ethics and professional responsibility for the Oklahoma Supreme Court and as a hearing examiner for the Colorado Supreme Court. He had been appointed as a special prosecutor in police disciplinary matters. While attending law school he was appointed by the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee of the Oklahoma Legislature as the Finance Committee Staff Director, where he oversaw state fiscal issues. His background in state and local government also includes serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight and as a city councilman.
Mr. Brown was also an adjunct professor of law for the Oklahoma City University.
A native of Oklahoma, Mr. Brown holds a bachelor's degree in Public Administration/Political Science from Central State University, Oklahoma. He received his J.D. from Oklahoma City University’s School of Law.
no matter who was president, no matter how well or poorly they handle a disaster situation, they could have done better. there's always room for improvement. so, from your perspective, they are eternally damned.
i'm more forgiving because i understand that Krugman's 'effective government' is generally an oxymoron, and Bush isn't 'god on the throne'. the more local the government, the more effective they can be. this is why, in general, the more local the government, the more blame to be placed.
fed, state, & local levels are to be blamed, and the higher the level of government, the more the symbolic blame, while the lower the government, the more the practical blame.
i'm sure there is plenty of practical blame to go around at all levels, but we'll have to wait for all the facts to settle out before jumping to conclusions.
By Matt Stearns and Seth Borenstein, Knight Ridder Newspapers Sat Sep 3, 4:50 PM ET
WASHINGTON - From failed Republican congressional candidate to ousted "czar" of an Arabian horse association, there was little in Michael D. Brown's background to prepare him for the fury of Hurricane Katrina.
But as the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Brown now faces furious criticism of the federal response to the disaster that wiped out New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast. He provoked some of it himself when he conceded that FEMA didn't know that thousands of refugees were trapped at New Orleans' convention center without food or water until officials heard it on the news.
"He's done a hell of a job, because I'm not aware of any Arabian horses being killed in this storm," said Kate Hale, former Miami-Dade emergency management chief. "The world that this man operated in and the focus of this work does not in any way translate to this. He does not have the experience."
Brown ran for Congress in 1988 and won 27 percent of the vote against Democratic incumbent Glenn English. He spent the 1990s as judges and stewards commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. His job was to ensure that horse-show judges followed the rules and to investigate allegations against those suspected of cheating.
"I wouldn't have regarded his position in the horse industry as a platform to where he is now," said Tom Connelly, a former association president.
Brown's ticket to FEMA was Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's 2000 campaign manager and an old friend of Brown's in Oklahoma. When Bush ran for president in 2000, Brown was ending a rocky tenure at the horse association.
Brown told several association officials that if Bush were elected, he'd be in line for a good job. When Allbaugh, who managed Bush's campaign, took over FEMA in 2001, he took Brown with him as general counsel.
"He's known Joe Allbaugh for quite some time," said Andrew Lester, an Oklahoma lawyer who's been a friend of Brown's for more than 20 years. "I think they know each other from school days. I think they did some debate type of things against each other, and worked on some Republican politics together."
Brown practiced law in Enid, Okla., a city of about 45,000, during the 1980s and was counsel to a group of businesses run by a well-known Enid family. Before that, he worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., and was an aide in the state legislature.
From 1991 until 2000, Brown earned about $100,000 a year as the chief rules enforcer of the Arabian horse association.
He was known as "The Czar" for the breadth of his power and the enthusiasm with which he wielded it, said Mary Anne Grimmell, a former association president.
The suspensions Brown delivered to those suspected of cheating resulted in several lawsuits. Although the association won the suits, they were expensive to defend, and Brown became a controversial figure.
"It was positive controversy," Connelly said. "It got word out that we were serious about enforcing our rules."
But he said Brown could be "abrasive." Others were less charitable.
"He just wouldn't follow instruction," said Bill Pennington, another former association president. "Mike was bullheaded and he was gonna do it his way. Period."
At FEMA, Brown rose from general counsel to deputy director within a year. Bush named him to succeed Allbaugh in February 2003. With FEMA now part of the Department of Homeland Security, Brown's title is undersecretary for emergency preparedness and response.
Brown's old friend Lester said the progression from horse shows to hurricanes was natural.
"A lot of what he had to do was stand in the breach in difficult, controversial situations," Lester said. "Which I think would well prepare him for his work at FEMA."
Despite the withering criticism and a promised congressional investigation of FEMA's performance, Brown still has the support of his most important constituent.
In Mobile, Ala., on Friday, Bush said the response to Katrina was unsatisfactory. But he had nothing but praise for his FEMA director. "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," the president said.
Stearns reports from Washington for The Kansas City Star.
---
Following are excerpts of some of Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown's remarks about Hurricane Katrina:
-"The federal government did not even know about the convention center people until today (Thursday). ... And I - my heart goes out to every - even if they chose not to evacuate, my heart still goes out to them, because they now find themselves in this catastrophic disaster. Now is not the time to be blaming."
-"I think the other thing that really caught me by surprise was the fact that there were so many people, and I'm not laying blame, but either chose not to evacuate or could not evacuate. And as we began to do the evacuations from the Superdome, all of a sudden, literally thousands of other people started showing up in other places, and we were not prepared for that. We were, we were surprised by that."
-"We pre-positioned all the manpower and equipment that we could prior to the storm making landfall. And I think once the storm made landfall, it was still at a Category 5, and the devastation became so widespread that it moved further inland and geographically wider than we expected. And so now we're having to work our way inward from a lot further out than we anticipated."
-An exchange with Ted Koppel on ABC's "Nightline":
Brown: "The people in the convention center are being fed; the people on the bridges are being provided with water. ..."
Koppel: "With all due respect, sir, the people, the people in the convention center are not being fed. Our reporters. ..."
Brown: "I misspoke. The people in the, the people in the Superdome. I'm sorry, you're absolutely correct. We're getting the supplies to the convention center now. But the people in the Superdome have been being fed, that supply chain has been working, and that has been moving along and those evacuations have been continuous."
-On CNN:
"I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans."
"Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans - virtually a city that has been destroyed - that things are going relatively well."
"I've had no reports of unrest, if the connotation of the word unrest means that people are beginning to riot or, you know, they're banging on walls and screaming and hollering or burning tires or whatever. I've had no reports of that."
suture,
my civics are fine, maybe you should copy and paste the part about the state and local levels responsibilities, or maybe just try to use common sense with them.
people died needlessly initially because of a local/state failure to act. the president you so easily dismiss for dereliction of duty had to order the governor of LA to mandate an evacuation, thus saving who knows how many lives.
yes the RESPONSE was slower than ideal. and that's sad. but no-one here is holding the local/state accountable to their own standards of disaster preparation, they are only blaming the people trying to solve this difficult situation.
"On March 1, 2003, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) became part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). FEMA's continuing mission within the new department is to lead the effort to prepare the nation for all hazards and effectively manage federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident. FEMA also initiates proactive mitigation activities, trains first responders, and manages the National Flood Insurance Program and the U.S. Fire Administration."
The whole point of having a federal government is that individual municipalities and states are equipped to deal with rare incidents that require resources greater than they possess. Louisiana is not expected to maintain a standing army to protect it from invasion. It does not run its own postal service.
To dig a little deeper into your state's rights argument, there is a local body that is responsible for the maintaining order and providing support during times of civil unrest or natural disaster who didn't respond worth shit to the hurricane. It's the Louisiana National Guard, and at the time of the hurricane, 3,700 of them were deployed (at the behest of o+'s personal hero, our small government President) in Iraq. The total Louisiana National Guard is 6,500 persons, not all of them deployable. Half of their total number are out of the country, tending to LA's state interests in, um, the middle east.
is simple logic going right over your head, or do you actually not know
the difference between response and preperation? seriously, guys, pull your collective heads out....
No one mistakes the two except you o+, who seems intent on arguing that inadequate local preparation excuses a non-existent federal response. It doesn't.
If this is growing tiresome for you, perhaps you could better pass the time by rereading Atlas Shrugged until the Senate investigation convenes.
okay, i believe you make some sense -- we can't simply blame the federal government. on the same token, we can't simply blame the local governments. as someone mentioned, hopefully it'll all become more clear to us what went wrong, use that knowledge to be better prepared for the future, after some time.
the fact is, we are still in the midst of the disaster. the americans displaced have a multitude of needs we all need to carefully address. i believe in some sense, the finger pointing goes straight to the top because we are looking for someone to lead the recovery and care for our displaced. we want to protect the displaced from any more damage and indignities that they might the future -- whether it's being forgotten, or unwanted in their temporary places, or getting less help than they need to survive.
(as you've probably heard, numerous texas suburbs have been rejecting the refugees, closing their auditoriums and civic centers. one of my biggest worries is that those thousands will be neglected again after we've cleaned up the city).
we want to make sure our leaders (local included) can hear our concerns. we want to figure out what's going to happen to these people -- and make sure that they won't be forgotten or get paltry treatment as they have been before.
okay ... perhaps i shouldn't use "we" when i make those statements to imply "us' as a totality.
nonetheless, i think many of my neighbors and fellow citizens agree with me. we want to make sure the poor victims are not shoved into the background of photo opportunities and maligned, but rather, treated with empathy.
i think the main point that is also being lost is that the local
government did not have the funding to adequately prepare..
federal funding had been cut...leaving even less..
also..600 busses...assuming each bus could take 60 people
or even a hundred..that's only 6000 people per trip...and
where are they being taken? assuming houston...that's a
five hour ride or so as i recall. baton rouge is closer..but
still not that close. the mayor asked for an additional 500
busses. i don't know the population of new orleans without
cars..but evacuation would take a long time regardless of
how many busses one had at their disposal.
i can concur that the local government may have been
ill prepared...but o+ can you also concur that without money
it is difficult to prepare?
my main concern is that unless the locals/state are grilled on their incompetent preparedness, they won't be prepared for the next time/be more vigalant about their action plan(or actually enact their action plan, because they actually had a fairly straightforward one they ignored).
lars,unless my calculator is wrong, 60peopleX600 is still 36,000 per trip. and like i've said, they don't need to be taken 5 hours away, only an hour or so outside of danger, then back again for another trip. could have evacuated all that needed/couldn't leave in 1 day, and they had 2 days to prepare. the mayor asked for 500 buses because all of his were flooded/ruined for lack of action--AFTER the hurricane hit.
you don't need that much funding to get 600 people to drive buses for a day (most could have even been driven by the evacuees themselves, like the 12 year old kid who 'stole' that bus and helped 60 people escape) but using funding for intended purposes rather than pissing it away under curropt city/state mis-management is something that is as large a problem as the incompetence we've seen.
here's to hoping new orleans will rise again for the better.
maybe the mayor could have used some of this vegas vacation cash to help get the people out before the storm. this will definately not sit well with the poor and homeless evacuees...
"my main concern is that unless the locals/state are grilled on their incompetent preparedness, they won't be prepared for the next time/be more vigalant about their action plan"
imagine if this event had been the impending nuclear or dirty bomb attack this country has been pounding into our collective consciousness. how inept and how long do you think federal/state/local response would be then? this is the test run of US Homeland Security and it failed miserably. this is nothing compared to what will happen if our govt's nightmare scenario comes true. buy gold, buy lots of water and learn to live without life as we know it now, it will be global.
o+
you're right of course regarding my math...don't know what
i was thinking..
however, i think you might be highly oversimplifying
the problem when you say that all they had to do was pay 600
people to drive a bus...what happens when those people get
to their destination? just get dropped off? how about the
people that can't move..won't move...etc. all the hospitals,
jails, nursing homes..etc. backing up anything and everything
so that the government can be up and running in days/weeks...
i just feel like there's probably a heck of a lot more that goes
into preparing for a hurricane than figuring out which 600 people
you can get to drive buses..
i can agree that there was a problem with preparing for the storm
but i can't see how you can't agree that there were major problems
in the response to the hurricane...maybe you are?
and do you have any proof of the allegations of which you attest
to regarding corrupt government? only cause i'd like to read them..
O+
While we are all comfortably sitting around writing diatribe back and forth, people are suffering. The issue you keep brining up is over and I am sure there will be lessons learned. The fact is that for whatever reason FEMA is still dropping ball.
The following is desperate plee from a county administrator somewhere in Mississippi requesting help from anybody that will listen.
"There are literally thousands of senior citizens who have trees down on their houses, many are dying. A miniscule number of FEMA responders are doing anything without being paid handome sums.
FEMA has not declared all Counties in Mississippi as "INDIVIDUAL" assistance eligible.
We need volunteers to help. We need folks to cut trees, pass out ice and water, drive trucks, deliver to housebound citizens, and to help our overextended and understaffed Volunteer departments."
DO NOT WAIT!!!!!!! STOP WAITING FOR PENCIL PUSHERS!!!!!
James Taranto: Myths of Hurricane Katrina"...only 10.2 per cent of the US Army, including the guard and reserves, is in Iraq; 74.2 per cent, or 751,000 soldiers, are stationed in the US...."
when the levee breaks...
NOAA told the bush admin days before the hurricane, that if the winds exceeded 110-115 mph that the levee would fail. winds exceeded 160mph. bush then went to arizona and another state, and then two days later finally cut his month long vacation short to return to the white house.
is that a leader?
once they learned that the winds approached those speeds, why wasn't action taken by the bush administration? why didn't he head back to washington at that time? they should have known that help, and a lot of it would have been needed.
wrong losdogedog, a predictable event lies at at the local level first. guess your freshman then?
it will come out soon enough, that the disaster was much greater
because of the mayor/governor.
if it wasn't for bush, there would have been NO mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. he had to force the governor to order it.
no matter what the truth is though, the left will blindly blame bush.
both sides are just as blind. you are correct. the truth will come out. there is enough blame to go around, but even conservatives, and a lot of them, are faulting bush also.
o+
Your right, I am a freshman. Cant you tell by my grammar.
You are also correct that a predictable event lies at local level. Until a request is made for help. Which was made early on, even before the strom hit.
I think your missing the point. This is not just about the single storm, as bad as it was.This is about a bumbbling admistration. Thier inability to protect its citizens, lack of leadership by the prez. and a whole lot of other issues. Which will be flushed out once things calm down.
this is about a single storm, and about a single mayor who had over 600 buses at his disposal with 2 days to evacuate those who couldn't evacuate themselves. if he had acted, this discussion would be moot.
o+
we are going around in circles. Only time will expose the truth.
If in the end, it is determained that only the mayor and govenor are at soley at fault. i will extend a warm christian apology for calling GWB names.
Until then, I think your wrong!!!
O... Everyone knows that the local system failed. Plainly. But the 4 days after the storm hit where nothing happened to mitigate the chaos and loss of life is equally clear evidence that the Bush administration (as represented by our President, and FEMA) fucked up as well. I don't understand what is so hard to grasp about that.
To listen to your argument, we should blaming all of 9/11 on the airport screeners.
...and i will do the same.
fault always travels upward, while shit always flows down.
same as losdog that is.
...and the Federal Government will sit at home and assume everything will turn out fine.
Please watch this entire clip -- it shows, at the local government level, the helplessness and despair.
"The tear-filled eyes of Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard as he was interviewed by Tim Russert on NBC's Meet the Press:"
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/09/04.html#a4783
nicomachean and o+ ... if only you could open your eyes and hearts for a minute ...
Partial transcript of the above interview:
'The guy who runs this building I’m in, Emergency Management, he’s responsible for everything.
'His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, “Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?†and he said, “Yeah, Mama, somebody’s coming to get you.†Somebody’s coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Friday… and she drowned Friday night.
'She drowned Friday night! [Sobbing] Nobody’s coming to get us. Nobody’s coming to get us...'
via boingboing
i am enlightened...the cure for 'bureaucracy & red tape' is more 'bureaucracy'. lovely.
"...if America had responded like Walmart responded..." you mean the private sector will always be more efficient and faster-acting than government? wow. sounds like a structural truth.
that all said, looks like some heads should role at FEMA. maybe we've discovered how Bush is a 'uniter' not a 'divider'...he doesn't fire anyone!
while i question the 'cry-on-queue-reality-tv' vibe of that MTP clip, I feel for all the victims of this act of nature...and those who would have been rescued if it weren't for all the red tape.
good god, it's no use talking to these devil's advocate-types.
nicomchean and o+:
Is it also red tape and bureacracy that got us into the most blatant lie-justified land-grab/murderfest of a war in US history (that has made the world far less rather than more safe)? Or the opening of National Parklands to ultimate destruction? Or the ignorant dismissal of scientific proof of the environmental calamity to be wrought by global climate change? Or the sad crumbling of the American educational system? No, its the unbeleivably shortsighted and heartless corporate-American puppet of a president we have to thank for all this. Christian values my ass.
Efficiency and progress is ours once more
Now that we have the Neutron bomb
It's nice and quick and clean and gets things done
Away with excess enemy
But no less value to property
No sense in war but perfect sense at home:
The sun beams down on a brand new day
No more welfare tax to pay
Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light
Jobless millions whisked away
At last we have more room to play
All systems go to kill the poor tonight
Gonna
Kill kill kill kill Kill the poor:Tonight
Behold the sparkle of champagne
The crime rate's gone
Feel free again
O' life's a dream with you, Miss Lily White
Jane Fonda on the screen today
Convinced the liberals it's okay
So let's get dressed and dance away the night
While they:
Kill kill kill kill Kill the poor:Tonight
i rarely, if ever, would offer a straight copy of someone elses opinions, but this editorial from the nytimes pretty much hits it dead on...
Each day since Katrina brings more evidence of the lethal ineptitude of federal officials. I'm not letting state and local officials off the hook, but federal officials had access to resources that could have made all the difference, but were never mobilized.
Here's one of many examples: The Chicago Tribune reports that the U.S.S. Bataan, equipped with six operating rooms, hundreds of hospital beds and the ability to produce 100,000 gallons of fresh water a day, has been sitting off the Gulf Coast since last Monday - without patients.
Experts say that the first 72 hours after a natural disaster are the crucial window during which prompt action can save many lives. Yet action after Katrina was anything but prompt. Newsweek reports that a "strange paralysis" set in among Bush administration officials, who debated lines of authority while thousands died.
What caused that paralysis? President Bush certainly failed his test. After 9/11, all the country really needed from him was a speech. This time it needed action - and he didn't deliver.
But the federal government's lethal ineptitude wasn't just a consequence of Mr. Bush's personal inadequacy; it was a consequence of ideological hostility to the very idea of using government to serve the public good. For 25 years the right has been denigrating the public sector, telling us that government is always the problem, not the solution. Why should we be surprised that when we needed a government solution, it wasn't forthcoming?
Does anyone remember the fight over federalizing airport security? Even after 9/11, the administration and conservative members of Congress tried to keep airport security in the hands of private companies. They were more worried about adding federal employees than about closing a deadly hole in national security.
Of course, the attempt to keep airport security private wasn't just about philosophy; it was also an attempt to protect private interests. But that's not really a contradiction. Ideological cynicism about government easily morphs into a readiness to treat government spending as a way to reward your friends. After all, if you don't believe government can do any good, why not?
Which brings us to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In my last column, I asked whether the Bush administration had destroyed FEMA's effectiveness. Now we know the answer.
Several recent news analyses on FEMA's sorry state have attributed the agency's decline to its inclusion in the Department of Homeland Security, whose prime concern is terrorism, not natural disasters. But that supposed change in focus misses a crucial part of the story.
For one thing, the undermining of FEMA began as soon as President Bush took office. Instead of choosing a professional with expertise in responses to disaster to head the agency, Mr. Bush appointed Joseph Allbaugh, a close political confidant. Mr. Allbaugh quickly began trying to scale back some of FEMA's preparedness programs.
You might have expected the administration to reconsider its hostility to emergency preparedness after 9/11 - after all, emergency management is as important in the aftermath of a terrorist attack as it is following a natural disaster. As many people have noticed, the failed response to Katrina shows that we are less ready to cope with a terrorist attack today than we were four years ago.
But the downgrading of FEMA continued, with the appointment of Michael Brown as Mr. Allbaugh's successor.
Mr. Brown had no obvious qualifications, other than having been Mr. Allbaugh's college roommate. But Mr. Brown was made deputy director of FEMA; The Boston Herald reports that he was forced out of his previous job, overseeing horse shows. And when Mr. Allbaugh left, Mr. Brown became the agency's director. The raw cronyism of that appointment showed the contempt the administration felt for the agency; one can only imagine the effects on staff morale.
That contempt, as I've said, reflects a general hostility to the role of government as a force for good. And Americans living along the Gulf Coast have now reaped the consequences of that hostility.
The administration has always tried to treat 9/11 purely as a lesson about good versus evil. But disasters must be coped with, even if they aren't caused by evildoers. Now we have another deadly lesson in why we need an effective government, and why dedicated public servants deserve our respect. Will we listen?
E-mail: [email protected]
say what you want about the local authorities, but they don't oversee the raw manpower to pull something like this off. you think the mayor could have found 600+ people to drive those buses, even assuming they were gassed up and ready to go? o+ and nico - you're both defending something that has no defense. the leadership from fema down let those people down. trying to whitewash the white house is just asinine.
yes, G-love, the mayor could have found 600 + people easily to drive the buses, he had over 2 days to do so(and failed miserably)and could have easily gotten between 40,000-80,000 people out of the city to ease the disastor relief. 200+ officers in new orleans quit before the hurricane hit. it's a local/state leadership problem. the governor could have had state troopers go down and drive the buses, there was plenty of time to do so beforehand.
no one can be blamed for the hurricane, but the glaring lack of local/state preparedness is disgusting, and the ignorant blaming of the federal level without even a basic understanding of the situation is
typical for the imbicilic left.
o+, even the feds have admitted they also fucked up >>
Local and state resources were so weakened, said Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, that in the future federal authorities need to take "more of an upfront role earlier on, when we have these truly ultracatastrophes."
"IGNORANT BLAMING OF THE FEDERAL LEVEL?" Who the fuck is this guy? Partisanship aside, you have to be utterly blind to not understand FEDERAL BLAME has been QUALIFIED.
(This discussion is useless with these two kids -- i've taken comments from metafilter and composited them bc it is not worth my effort to explain it all again):
Don't pay attention to FEMA's fuck ups, people! It was the Mayor! And the Governor!
Note: using these buses to get people completely out of NO before the hurricane would most certainly have required FEDERAL coordination and leadership.
Where would the buses go? Look, even the suburbs in Dallas are turning away refugees instead of clearing their high school gynasiums and community centers to accomodate evacuees.
The idea that responsibility lies with a city mayor for something this epic is just preposterous to me. That's why we have FEMA.
If you ask me, the government at all three levels should have planned for failure at all the other levels. The City should have stockpiled food and water at the superdome to last for weeks, the state should have had an evacuation plan ready to go without federal assistance.
The plans they came up with relied on FEMA doing its job, and FEMA didn't. The mayor and gov. were assuming that there would be help from FEMA, but there wasn't. That's their true mistake--trusting the Bush admin.
The amazing bullshit about posse comitatus and local jurisdiction (despite disaster orders being signed by locals before the damn hurricane hit) and a mayor's magical ability to have the manpower and money to deal with city-wide evacuation over hundreds of miles is really quite disgusting.
Believe what you wish; however, it is fact that funds were diverted from maintenance and reinforcement of levees to support the Iraq campaign. Those funds were requested by LA state officials two years ago.
The president also decided to move a large percentage of the country's homeland defense (National Guard) to Iraq.
The president's staff also apparently ignored the State of Emergency declared by the governor on the 26th of August, at their peril.
All these decisions were made by the executive branch of our federal government. Nature cannot be fooled. Blaming the mayor or governor for the effects of these decisions seems criminal.
Its not just Kanye West sayng Bush doesnt support black people- Bush's own actions show his true colors:
Bush Criticizes NAACP's Leadership
Relationship With Rights Group 'Basically Nonexistent,' President Says
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A05
Bush's assessment of his relationship with the nation's largest civil rights organization was a sharp reversal from his rhetoric during his last campaign. Then he spoke to the group's convention as part of an effort to show he was a different kind of Republican and said that "there is much we can do together to advance racial harmony and economic opportunity."
Bush will not be speaking before the 2004 convention, which will open Saturday in Philadelphia. Bush, during a day-long bus tour through Pennsylvania, said in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer and two other state newspapers that he "admired some" NAACP leaders and said he would seek members' support "in other ways."
But he castigated the group's officers, who include President Kweisi Mfume and Chairman Julian Bond. "I would describe my relationship with the current leadership as basically nonexistent," Bush said, as reported by Knight Ridder Newspapers. "You've heard the rhetoric and the names they've called me."
Earlier this week, the White House said the invitation had been declined because of scheduling commitments, and officials said that was the reason cited in the letter to the group. But when asked about the matter by reporters on Air Force One on Friday, White House press secretary Scott McClellan made it clear that a lot more was involved. "The current leadership of the NAACP has certainly made some rather hostile political comments about the president over the past few years," he said.
The NAACP said Bush is the first president since Warren G. Harding not to meet with the group while in office.
Bond has accused Republicans of "playing the race card in election after election." He said they have "appealed to that dark underside of American culture, to that minority of Americans who reject democracy and equality," and "preach racial neutrality and they practice racial division."
The snub could affect voter turnout in November. In Florida in 2000, Bush was hurt by heavy black turnout, organized in part by the NAACP because of the group's opposition to Republican Gov. Jeb Bush's rollback of the state's affirmative action program.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
There is a great discussion on the topic at Democracy Now...plenty of blame to go around from local to federal, right and left.
real video feed
site
oh, i wish i could be young and stupid again, but i'll leave that to mintcar and the other bush haters here. everytime the real causes of the catastrophic perils of these poor people is brought to light, a squak of idiocy is called to blame everyone but the local leadership. the sad part is, this is the kind of illogical reasoning that won't help if this kind of event happens again.
o+
i think you're just wrong about the drivers. if you mean 'sure they could just pluck 600 adults off the streets', sure. but people who actually know how to use the things.
and the fact that you're defending fema at all is mind blowing. were you even following what that idiot michael brown was saying all week? on tuesday he was claiming that a breached levee wouldn't fill new orleans in, like a fishbowl. on thursday night he said that they had just heard about all the folks being at the convention center. on friday morning he claimed that of those same people had been given one or two meals a day for the past few days. face it. that guy looked like a deer caught in the headlights all week. he didn't know sh*t. he was scared silly - you can actually hear him in his hotel room saying 'this is not happening, this is not happening...).
jeez, he's making rush look like he's spin free.
this disaster was the number 3 scenario for the top potential disasters in the u.s. why, then, in god's name did they not think to coordinate with the state and local officials on an ongoing basis? oh. because they don't really care about that beer swilling bastion of democrat leaning whinos? let's hope not.
want to know what michael brown's qualifications to run fema are? well, he ran an international arabian horse organization. which he was forced out of because he couldn't manage it very well. oh, and he happened to be the college roomate of the first guy bush appointed. yeah. hmmm. really qualified. and, yeah, we can put all the blame for that move right on the president. he could have given fema the status and attention that clinton did (something he praised lavishly if you go back and look at the 2000 debates). instead he allows the best friend of his campaign manager to take the top slot. what would that do to your morale?
if you're going to insist the feds had nothing to do with this debacle in the aftermath, then please just say so. i'm not sure that 70% of the country's going to be with you though...
i never said the feds are doing a great job did I? no, never, all i said was that the main problem with new orleans was leadership in their action leading up to the devistation. the feds aren't responsible for evacuation plans for every city across the u.s., that's assinine. fact is, thousands of lives are lost, and the rescues made more difficult by the local/state failure of leadership, period. end of discussion.
your previous post: "the ignorant blaming of the federal level without even a basic understanding of the situation is
typical for the imbicilic left."
essentially, yes -- you implied the federal government is not worth blaming.
and no, "rescues are made more difficult by the local/state failure of leadership" is NOT an excuse for the failure of the federal government.
it is NOT an issue of left vs right when we see this kind of devastation. thousands have died. it was the fed's responsibility to aid them, but they came too little, too late. the president could have been democrat or republican, it doesn't matter. a failure like that is a dereliction of duty. they did not live up to their duty.
it's no use trying to divert blame the local/state, because in the end, more people died who did not have to, because the president and all his people failed to live up to their duty.
o+
Please make sure you dont trip up on your own mucky tracks as you backpedal.
FEMA and its Secreatry Brown ARE responsible for leading FEDERAL disasater response and coordinating with other fed agencies and the Red Cross.
Instead of being so belligerent you should brush up on your civics and take off your BUSH rose colored glasses. Read up and decide who is the boorish donkey.
FEMA's own website
http://www.fema.gov/about/bios/brown.shtm
Michael D. Brown
Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response
Michael D. Brown was nominated by President George W. Bush as the first Under Secretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response in the newly created Department of Homeland Security in January 2003. As the head of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Under Secretary Brown leads federal disaster response and recovery operations and coordinates disaster activities with more than two dozen federal agencies and departments and the American Red Cross. He also oversees the National Flood Insurance Program and the U.S. Fire Administration, and initiates proactive mitigation activities.
Additionally, Under Secretary Brown helps the Secretary of Homeland Security ensure the effectiveness of emergency responders, and directs the National Incident Management System (NIMS) Integration Center, the National Disaster Medical System and the Nuclear Incident Response Team.
Under Secretary Brown has led Homeland Security’s response to more than 164 presidentially declared disasters and emergencies, including the 2003 Columbia Shuttle disaster and the California wildfires in 2003. In 2004, Mr. Brown led FEMA’s thousands of dedicated disaster workers during the most active hurricane season in over 100 years, as FEMA delivered aid more quickly and more efficiently than ever before.
Previously, Mr. Brown served as FEMA's Deputy Director and the agency's General Counsel. Shortly after the September 11th terrorist attacks, Mr. Brown served on the President's Consequence Management Principal's Committee, which acted as the White House's policy coordination group for the federal domestic response to the attacks. Later, the President asked him to head the Consequence Management Working Group to identify and resolve key issues regarding the federal response plan. In August 2002, President Bush appointed him to the Transition Planning Office for the new Department of Homeland Security, serving as the transition leader for the EP&R Division.
Prior to joining FEMA, Mr. Brown practiced law in Colorado and Oklahoma, where he served as a bar examiner on ethics and professional responsibility for the Oklahoma Supreme Court and as a hearing examiner for the Colorado Supreme Court. He had been appointed as a special prosecutor in police disciplinary matters. While attending law school he was appointed by the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee of the Oklahoma Legislature as the Finance Committee Staff Director, where he oversaw state fiscal issues. His background in state and local government also includes serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight and as a city councilman.
Mr. Brown was also an adjunct professor of law for the Oklahoma City University.
A native of Oklahoma, Mr. Brown holds a bachelor's degree in Public Administration/Political Science from Central State University, Oklahoma. He received his J.D. from Oklahoma City University’s School of Law.
no matter who was president, no matter how well or poorly they handle a disaster situation, they could have done better. there's always room for improvement. so, from your perspective, they are eternally damned.
i'm more forgiving because i understand that Krugman's 'effective government' is generally an oxymoron, and Bush isn't 'god on the throne'. the more local the government, the more effective they can be. this is why, in general, the more local the government, the more blame to be placed.
fed, state, & local levels are to be blamed, and the higher the level of government, the more the symbolic blame, while the lower the government, the more the practical blame.
i'm sure there is plenty of practical blame to go around at all levels, but we'll have to wait for all the facts to settle out before jumping to conclusions.
Give that man a carrot!!!!! "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job"
+++++++++++++++++++++++
http://news.yahoo.com/s/krwashbureau/20050903/ts_krwashbureau/_wea_katrina_femachief
Head of FEMA has an unlikely background
By Matt Stearns and Seth Borenstein, Knight Ridder Newspapers Sat Sep 3, 4:50 PM ET
WASHINGTON - From failed Republican congressional candidate to ousted "czar" of an Arabian horse association, there was little in Michael D. Brown's background to prepare him for the fury of Hurricane Katrina.
But as the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Brown now faces furious criticism of the federal response to the disaster that wiped out New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast. He provoked some of it himself when he conceded that FEMA didn't know that thousands of refugees were trapped at New Orleans' convention center without food or water until officials heard it on the news.
"He's done a hell of a job, because I'm not aware of any Arabian horses being killed in this storm," said Kate Hale, former Miami-Dade emergency management chief. "The world that this man operated in and the focus of this work does not in any way translate to this. He does not have the experience."
Brown ran for Congress in 1988 and won 27 percent of the vote against Democratic incumbent Glenn English. He spent the 1990s as judges and stewards commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. His job was to ensure that horse-show judges followed the rules and to investigate allegations against those suspected of cheating.
"I wouldn't have regarded his position in the horse industry as a platform to where he is now," said Tom Connelly, a former association president.
Brown's ticket to FEMA was Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's 2000 campaign manager and an old friend of Brown's in Oklahoma. When Bush ran for president in 2000, Brown was ending a rocky tenure at the horse association.
Brown told several association officials that if Bush were elected, he'd be in line for a good job. When Allbaugh, who managed Bush's campaign, took over FEMA in 2001, he took Brown with him as general counsel.
"He's known Joe Allbaugh for quite some time," said Andrew Lester, an Oklahoma lawyer who's been a friend of Brown's for more than 20 years. "I think they know each other from school days. I think they did some debate type of things against each other, and worked on some Republican politics together."
Brown practiced law in Enid, Okla., a city of about 45,000, during the 1980s and was counsel to a group of businesses run by a well-known Enid family. Before that, he worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., and was an aide in the state legislature.
From 1991 until 2000, Brown earned about $100,000 a year as the chief rules enforcer of the Arabian horse association.
He was known as "The Czar" for the breadth of his power and the enthusiasm with which he wielded it, said Mary Anne Grimmell, a former association president.
The suspensions Brown delivered to those suspected of cheating resulted in several lawsuits. Although the association won the suits, they were expensive to defend, and Brown became a controversial figure.
"It was positive controversy," Connelly said. "It got word out that we were serious about enforcing our rules."
But he said Brown could be "abrasive." Others were less charitable.
"He just wouldn't follow instruction," said Bill Pennington, another former association president. "Mike was bullheaded and he was gonna do it his way. Period."
At FEMA, Brown rose from general counsel to deputy director within a year. Bush named him to succeed Allbaugh in February 2003. With FEMA now part of the Department of Homeland Security, Brown's title is undersecretary for emergency preparedness and response.
Brown's old friend Lester said the progression from horse shows to hurricanes was natural.
"A lot of what he had to do was stand in the breach in difficult, controversial situations," Lester said. "Which I think would well prepare him for his work at FEMA."
Despite the withering criticism and a promised congressional investigation of FEMA's performance, Brown still has the support of his most important constituent.
In Mobile, Ala., on Friday, Bush said the response to Katrina was unsatisfactory. But he had nothing but praise for his FEMA director. "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," the president said.
Stearns reports from Washington for The Kansas City Star.
---
Following are excerpts of some of Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown's remarks about Hurricane Katrina:
-"The federal government did not even know about the convention center people until today (Thursday). ... And I - my heart goes out to every - even if they chose not to evacuate, my heart still goes out to them, because they now find themselves in this catastrophic disaster. Now is not the time to be blaming."
-"I think the other thing that really caught me by surprise was the fact that there were so many people, and I'm not laying blame, but either chose not to evacuate or could not evacuate. And as we began to do the evacuations from the Superdome, all of a sudden, literally thousands of other people started showing up in other places, and we were not prepared for that. We were, we were surprised by that."
-"We pre-positioned all the manpower and equipment that we could prior to the storm making landfall. And I think once the storm made landfall, it was still at a Category 5, and the devastation became so widespread that it moved further inland and geographically wider than we expected. And so now we're having to work our way inward from a lot further out than we anticipated."
-An exchange with Ted Koppel on ABC's "Nightline":
Brown: "The people in the convention center are being fed; the people on the bridges are being provided with water. ..."
Koppel: "With all due respect, sir, the people, the people in the convention center are not being fed. Our reporters. ..."
Brown: "I misspoke. The people in the, the people in the Superdome. I'm sorry, you're absolutely correct. We're getting the supplies to the convention center now. But the people in the Superdome have been being fed, that supply chain has been working, and that has been moving along and those evacuations have been continuous."
-On CNN:
"I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans."
"Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans - virtually a city that has been destroyed - that things are going relatively well."
"I've had no reports of unrest, if the connotation of the word unrest means that people are beginning to riot or, you know, they're banging on walls and screaming and hollering or burning tires or whatever. I've had no reports of that."
suture,
my civics are fine, maybe you should copy and paste the part about the state and local levels responsibilities, or maybe just try to use common sense with them.
people died needlessly initially because of a local/state failure to act. the president you so easily dismiss for dereliction of duty had to order the governor of LA to mandate an evacuation, thus saving who knows how many lives.
yes the RESPONSE was slower than ideal. and that's sad. but no-one here is holding the local/state accountable to their own standards of disaster preparation, they are only blaming the people trying to solve this difficult situation.
guiddy up!!!!!
... that is a beautiful animal.
seems like they've been copying n pasting from "blogs for bush" again?
From FEMA's website:
"On March 1, 2003, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) became part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). FEMA's continuing mission within the new department is to lead the effort to prepare the nation for all hazards and effectively manage federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident. FEMA also initiates proactive mitigation activities, trains first responders, and manages the National Flood Insurance Program and the U.S. Fire Administration."
The whole point of having a federal government is that individual municipalities and states are equipped to deal with rare incidents that require resources greater than they possess. Louisiana is not expected to maintain a standing army to protect it from invasion. It does not run its own postal service.
To dig a little deeper into your state's rights argument, there is a local body that is responsible for the maintaining order and providing support during times of civil unrest or natural disaster who didn't respond worth shit to the hurricane. It's the Louisiana National Guard, and at the time of the hurricane, 3,700 of them were deployed (at the behest of o+'s personal hero, our small government President) in Iraq. The total Louisiana National Guard is 6,500 persons, not all of them deployable. Half of their total number are out of the country, tending to LA's state interests in, um, the middle east.
is simple logic going right over your head, or do you actually not know
the difference between response and preperation? seriously, guys, pull your collective heads out....
No one mistakes the two except you o+, who seems intent on arguing that inadequate local preparation excuses a non-existent federal response. It doesn't.
If this is growing tiresome for you, perhaps you could better pass the time by rereading Atlas Shrugged until the Senate investigation convenes.
okay, i believe you make some sense -- we can't simply blame the federal government. on the same token, we can't simply blame the local governments. as someone mentioned, hopefully it'll all become more clear to us what went wrong, use that knowledge to be better prepared for the future, after some time.
the fact is, we are still in the midst of the disaster. the americans displaced have a multitude of needs we all need to carefully address. i believe in some sense, the finger pointing goes straight to the top because we are looking for someone to lead the recovery and care for our displaced. we want to protect the displaced from any more damage and indignities that they might the future -- whether it's being forgotten, or unwanted in their temporary places, or getting less help than they need to survive.
(as you've probably heard, numerous texas suburbs have been rejecting the refugees, closing their auditoriums and civic centers. one of my biggest worries is that those thousands will be neglected again after we've cleaned up the city).
we want to make sure our leaders (local included) can hear our concerns. we want to figure out what's going to happen to these people -- and make sure that they won't be forgotten or get paltry treatment as they have been before.
okay ... perhaps i shouldn't use "we" when i make those statements to imply "us' as a totality.
nonetheless, i think many of my neighbors and fellow citizens agree with me. we want to make sure the poor victims are not shoved into the background of photo opportunities and maligned, but rather, treated with empathy.
i think the main point that is also being lost is that the local
government did not have the funding to adequately prepare..
federal funding had been cut...leaving even less..
also..600 busses...assuming each bus could take 60 people
or even a hundred..that's only 6000 people per trip...and
where are they being taken? assuming houston...that's a
five hour ride or so as i recall. baton rouge is closer..but
still not that close. the mayor asked for an additional 500
busses. i don't know the population of new orleans without
cars..but evacuation would take a long time regardless of
how many busses one had at their disposal.
i can concur that the local government may have been
ill prepared...but o+ can you also concur that without money
it is difficult to prepare?
my main concern is that unless the locals/state are grilled on their incompetent preparedness, they won't be prepared for the next time/be more vigalant about their action plan(or actually enact their action plan, because they actually had a fairly straightforward one they ignored).
lars,unless my calculator is wrong, 60peopleX600 is still 36,000 per trip. and like i've said, they don't need to be taken 5 hours away, only an hour or so outside of danger, then back again for another trip. could have evacuated all that needed/couldn't leave in 1 day, and they had 2 days to prepare. the mayor asked for 500 buses because all of his were flooded/ruined for lack of action--AFTER the hurricane hit.
you don't need that much funding to get 600 people to drive buses for a day (most could have even been driven by the evacuees themselves, like the 12 year old kid who 'stole' that bus and helped 60 people escape) but using funding for intended purposes rather than pissing it away under curropt city/state mis-management is something that is as large a problem as the incompetence we've seen.
here's to hoping new orleans will rise again for the better.
maybe the mayor could have used some of this vegas vacation cash to help get the people out before the storm. this will definately not sit well with the poor and homeless evacuees...
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspecial/05vegas.html?ei=5090&en=cc54b8b6ae100f44&ex=1283572800&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
"my main concern is that unless the locals/state are grilled on their incompetent preparedness, they won't be prepared for the next time/be more vigalant about their action plan"
can't this also be said about the feds?
imagine if this event had been the impending nuclear or dirty bomb attack this country has been pounding into our collective consciousness. how inept and how long do you think federal/state/local response would be then? this is the test run of US Homeland Security and it failed miserably. this is nothing compared to what will happen if our govt's nightmare scenario comes true. buy gold, buy lots of water and learn to live without life as we know it now, it will be global.
Beta,
Scarry point about the dirty bomb reaction.
Somewhere in the dark caves, Osama is salivating through his mischeveous smile.
o+
you're right of course regarding my math...don't know what
i was thinking..
however, i think you might be highly oversimplifying
the problem when you say that all they had to do was pay 600
people to drive a bus...what happens when those people get
to their destination? just get dropped off? how about the
people that can't move..won't move...etc. all the hospitals,
jails, nursing homes..etc. backing up anything and everything
so that the government can be up and running in days/weeks...
i just feel like there's probably a heck of a lot more that goes
into preparing for a hurricane than figuring out which 600 people
you can get to drive buses..
i can agree that there was a problem with preparing for the storm
but i can't see how you can't agree that there were major problems
in the response to the hurricane...maybe you are?
and do you have any proof of the allegations of which you attest
to regarding corrupt government? only cause i'd like to read them..
O+
While we are all comfortably sitting around writing diatribe back and forth, people are suffering. The issue you keep brining up is over and I am sure there will be lessons learned. The fact is that for whatever reason FEMA is still dropping ball.
The following is desperate plee from a county administrator somewhere in Mississippi requesting help from anybody that will listen.
"There are literally thousands of senior citizens who have trees down on their houses, many are dying. A miniscule number of FEMA responders are doing anything without being paid handome sums.
FEMA has not declared all Counties in Mississippi as "INDIVIDUAL" assistance eligible.
We need volunteers to help. We need folks to cut trees, pass out ice and water, drive trucks, deliver to housebound citizens, and to help our overextended and understaffed Volunteer departments."
DO NOT WAIT!!!!!!! STOP WAITING FOR PENCIL PUSHERS!!!!!
choice:
An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State "...she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago..."
James Taranto: Myths of Hurricane Katrina "...only 10.2 per cent of the US Army, including the guard and reserves, is in Iraq; 74.2 per cent, or 751,000 soldiers, are stationed in the US...."
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