Posted on 09/12/2005 2:08:31 PM PDT by MaineVoter2002
September, 8th--Senator Huey “Kingfish” Long, who once boasted that he bought legislators “like sacks of potatoes” and “shuffled them like a deck of cards,” must find the actions of his Democratic Party, both in Washington and his home state of Louisiana, ironic. Assassinated for having taken his backroom politics a bit too far, even he must be skeptical of the job his contemporary counterparts are doing to uphold the tradition of self serving manipulation, their partisan politics having killed people...
(Excerpt) Read more at rightpoint.org ...
By Frank Salvato
September, 8th--Senator Huey “Kingfish” Long, who once boasted that he bought legislators “like sacks of potatoes” and “shuffled them like a deck of cards,” must find the actions of his Democratic Party, both in Washington and his home state of Louisiana, ironic. Assassinated for having taken his backroom politics a bit too far, even he must be skeptical of the job his contemporary counterparts are doing to uphold the tradition of self serving manipulation, their partisan politics having killed people.
The shriekers of the mainstream media and the liberal left must have stopped by the “unlooted” stores of their hometowns for brand new batteries for the bullhorns because the hate-Bush, “let’s blame him for everything” crowd is more shrill than ever. Perhaps they should have picked up some unbiased reading material in the form of the New Orleans disaster plan or the Standard Operating Procedures for FEMA. Being educated on how a disaster response is set-up to work would have been a brilliant idea before the pointing of the liberal finger of blame.
If all politics is local, disaster response is even more so. From the smallest fire department to the most rural chapters of national aid organizations, disaster response is first and foremost the responsibility and jurisdiction of local authorities. Because no one knows a location better than those who live there, primary disaster response and emergency management fall under the authority of local governments. That is why local governments are charged with putting in place plans that make sense for their communities.
Because interjecting politics into disaster response situations is the most ridiculous, foolish and dangerous thing that can happen, disaster response authority works against the grain. If a town floods or a hurricane hits, the request for emergency management moves up the chain, not down. Mayors ask for help from the state authorities (sometimes the county) and then in the event of a major tragedy - as in Hurricane Katrina - the state asks for help from the federal authorities. Until assistance is requested, the authority - and responsibility - for managing and executing emergency operations rests upon the shoulders of the more local levels of government. That’s just the way it is.
In the case of Hurricane Katrina, the elected officials at the helm of the local and state authorities failed miserably. There can be no other way to look at this issue. If the local and state governments would have performed for their people at an acceptable level more people would be alive today.
Local government - read New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and his staff - were poorly prepared to carry out their emergency management plan. Not only had they not prepared for the flood scenario of a Category 4 or 5 hurricane - which is leaving hurricane evacuation experts all over the country scratching their heads - they didn’t utilize the resources that were available to them up until the very the last moments before the disaster occurred.
Evidence to this negligence can be seen in the unutilized New Orleans school buses, now submerged where they were parked. They remained idle while the limited number of municipal buses rushed to ferry most of the poor from Jefferson Perish to the “last resort” shelters, which are those not set-up to provide food or water to their occupants.
Nagin’s biggest failure, however, is the fact that he was delinquent in calling for the evacuation of New Orleans until time was already running out. Even after a phone call from Max Mayfield, the director of the National Hurricane Center, at 8pm on the Saturday before Katrina’s landfall confirming the dangers of the approaching storm, Nagin, citing “legal complications,” waited until 10am Sunday to order the evacuation of New Orleans, a city of 500,000-plus. Katrina hit New Orleans at 6am Monday.
Bill King, a former mayor from the Houston-Galveston Area who has been integral in that area’s hurricane and disaster preparedness called Nagin’s evacuation order delay “negligence.”
President Bush, in preparation for the devastation that Katrina was predicted to leave in her wake, declared the three state area a federal disaster area two days before landfall and ordered FEMA to move truck loads of supplies to within safe distances from where experts said the most damage would occur. But because Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco feared political blame from the Bush Administration for any acts of incompetence she didn’t cede authority by requesting federal assistance. FEMA resources and other federally coordinated assistance sat idle, thwarted by the Louisiana Department of Homeland Security.
Further, Blanco - doing her best Ray Nagin impersonation - was delinquent in ordering the Louisiana National Guard to quell the looting, the raping and the violence that inundated not only the Superdome and convention center but all the streets of New Orleans, until the damage was already done. A recent story recounts how two children were raped to death, that’s right two children raped to death inside the Superdome.
Governor Blanco’s response was to hire former Clinton FEMA Director James Lee Witt to handle the catastrophe management. To this day she has not ceded power to the federal government although Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi remain federal disaster areas.
Nancy Pelosi stated, “If somebody is incompetent, has no credentials for the job that he holds…brings nothing to the table of the level of competence and accountability…” while calling for FEMA Director Michael Brown’s dismissal. Am I the only one or does anyone else believe she should be leveling those exact charges against Kathleen Blanco and Ray Nagin, members of the compassionate Democratic Party?
The big difference between Huey Long’s corrupt political tenure and that of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco’s is that Long was calculating and cunning in his political manipulation. The only thing that can be said for Nagin and Blanco is that their politics have killed people.
Related Reading:
Governor Blanco Piddles While New Orleans Burns
http://www.bayoubuzz.com/articles.aspx?aid=4934
Pelosi Joins Call To Remove FEMA Director
http://www.nbc11.com/news/4942198/detail.html
Don’t Blame Only Feds
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/344065p-293598c.html
Democrats Blame ‘Oblivious’ Bush
http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20050908-101031-8272r
Democrats Will Oppose Katrina Committees; ‘Sham and a Charade’
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Democrats_will_oppose_Katrina
_committees_Sham_and_0908.html
City had evacuation plan but strayed from strategy
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3344347
Rational people would know that Saturday evening was about the latest possible time (should have been ordered Friday night or Sat. morning) to order a "mandatory evacuation" and that delaying another 14 hours would greatly inhibit the evac process. Rational people would know that all possible buses and drivers needed to be alerted and lined up on FRIDAY, else you would have just what we saw: the drivers are all busily evacuating with their families and Mayor Nagin claims (after the fact) that there were too few driver available..... BECAUSE HE DID NOT MAKE ARRANGEMENTS IN TIME!!!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Anyone just catch the interview on FNC between the
LA Police officer and John Gbson about the LA power
failure and the cop said "Look this is the LAPD
*not* the NOPD!!..We practice this stuff all the
time!.. when the power and phones went out, all out
cops anf firemen, went on "automatic" and started
doing what they have practiced for emergency situations
time and time again! " (paraphrased)
LOL!@
We have very short memories. The most frustrating part of the Federal Response is that Governor Blanco played exactly the same cards that Governor Lawton Childs played in Hurricane Andrew in 1992. That is Childs publicly called for help, held up the guard, blamed the feds and refused to sign the authorization for Federal Aid. Like Blanco, he thought politically first and knew that no Republican President Dares use the insurrection act against a Democratic Governor. Since in more than 13 years Congress has done nothing to fix this, the games will continue. If you don't recall, the accusations were (made not substantiated) 10 weeks before the election and gave Bill Clinton a huge boost. (Those troublesome facts)
Did you see Gibson set up for a racist shot over the lack of traffic control? Gibson has been drinking the NYT Koolaid.
The leftists are trying to take over USENET with their lies that FEMA has always been so good that it would be there to rescue from day one before Bush. FEMA was always the one that came to help rebuild...not to be first on the scene to rescue.
The liberals who complain about Federal Response are pushing for the Feds to take over health care! It's time to get the truth out.
http://jednet207.tripod.com/PoliticalNewsGroups-PC.html
Yeah, that was a pretty cheap shot. He didn't
need to ut it that way if he wanted to bring it up/
You're right, I think that was a factor in the '92 election; if we only had the Web then, to get the truth out!
Hinsight is 20/20.
You're right. I was referring to the mayor not you. I should have made it clearer. No need to shout. In his case, it applied literally.
I wondered some of the same things as you.
Next time I'll be clearer in my statement. Yours was very informative and accurate. Thanks for the info.
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