Posted on 12/15/2005 2:07:59 PM PST by LdSentinal
Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s testimonies in front of the House committee investigating the hurricane Katrina disaster and the aftermath featured a tug of war of sorts, where the testifiers seemed to have one agenda, while the questioners had another. While some may call it political posturing, that misses the point that its leaders living in denial makes the state a poor risk in the investment in its recovery.
Testimony from Blanco and Nagin, both Democrats in front of a committee on which the House Democrat leadership has prohibited its members to serve (but permitting them to make kooky inquiries or grandstanding requests), primarily sought to put their governments’ behavior in the best light possible as a prerequisite to being given funding by the federal government, while simultaneously shifting blame to the federal government. Their Republican questioners stuck more closely to the committee’s actual purpose, which is to study the development, coordination, and execution by local, state, and federal authorities of emergency response plans and other activities in preparation for Hurricane Katrina; and the local, state, and federal government response to Hurricane Katrina.
In particular, Blanco’s testimony (her actual testimony differed in small but significant ways from her pre-hearing published remarks, such as with her lie about not taking “executive privilege”) should be reviewed relative to that of Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour’s the week before. The Republican Barbour made hardly any mention of justifying his state’s response to the storm largely because he didn’t need to. By contrast, Blanco came off as very defensive, and especially in her answering of questions petulant and demanding.
So when Barbour asked the federal government to do more and more quickly for Mississippi, he got a largely favorable response from the committee. By contrast, both Blanco and Nagin received withering questions and comments. Blanco in particular seemed convinced that one can catch more flies with vinegar than with honey, by the pugnacious tone and words of her responses to queries about evacuation plans not followed, communications breakdowns, and failures to act in a timely fashion, bringing in partisan political attacks (such concerning the war in Iraq) at times.
(Nagin, now widely seen as an eccentric with no chance of reelection, further cemented that reputation by indulging racist conspiracy nut Rep. Cynthia McKinney’s fantasies about racial discrimination in response. The condemned enjoy special dispensation to say or do whatever they can get away with.)
But Blanco’s intemperance didn’t stop there. She also found openings with which to whine about having to pay Louisiana’s relatively small share of reconstruction costs (and managed to tell another lie in the process). And she’s doing it outside of the committee was well, such as in today’s letter to Sen. David Vitter where she complains of a double standard between treatment for Louisiana and Mississippi.
Clearly, Blanco neither is informed of the Golden Rule, nor does she begin to grasp that Congress has legitimate concerns about handing over huge sums to money to a political administration and legislative majority whose past record more often promotes politics rather than performance. She cannot understand this because she is so thoroughly part of that ethos. And if nothing else, the tone of the hearings should serve as another wake-up call that “donor fatigue” is present precisely because a growing segment of the country understands this fundamental dysfunction of Louisiana’s noxious mix of liberalism and populism that infuses its government at all levels – a notion she did nothing to dispel, by her words or demeanor, during her appearance.
Given the state’s ills of political patronage to ill-advised spending priorities and everything in between, the last thing Blanco needs to be doing is casting critical and misleading stones at her presumed benefactors when she lives in such a thoroughly glass house to begin with. It shows a desire to continue to live in denial, to stay stuck on stupid, and does not exactly build confidence in the state with the rest of the country.
It’s been a bad week for Blanco, who looked partisan in accepting the recommendation to push back elections in Orleans Parish (even as they will be held on time in even more-devastated St. Bernard Parish), like an opportunist with her watered-down version of levee governance reform, and ineffective in front of the committee in both coping with Katrina and in encouraging federal government assistance after the storm. I’m afraid it’ll be up to more capable folks outside of the Blanco Administration to provide the leadership to help Louisiana recover.
Her performance yesterday cost LA big bucks. IMO
Dam hell dam where are all the Roops, shut up - dam hell dam - we more roops and we need them right now - dam hell dam.
Thank you Mayor for your testimony
If Blanco doesn't retire, I think she has more to fear (electorally) from her fellow Democrats than from the GOP in Louisiana.
It is up to the people of Louisiana to clean house -- if they still want these liberal corrupt maggots (the so-called governor and mayor) to continue to destroy their state, THEN LET THEM PAY THE FREAKIN' BILLS --- not the rest of the U.S. taxpayers!!!!
Well said. Let LA figure out a way to bring private biz back into the state for reconstruction projects. No one is going to rebuild UNTIL the levees are shored up, anyway. LA right now is a very bad investment. In a few years, things will improve but not until then.
The welfare vote is strong in LA. It took years to build and it is going to pay off.
The welfare vote is strong in LA. It took years to build and it is going to pay off.
-----
Then let the state of Louisiana PAY FOR IT ALL. It is bad enough, the size of the Federal welfare state we support as well as paying for those in our own states.
This nation just seems to be backsliding into major socialism...
Their Republican questioners stuck more closely to the committee’s actual purpose, which is to study the development, coordination, and execution by local, state, and federal authorities of emergency response plans and other activities in preparation for Hurricane Katrina; and the local, state, and federal government response to Hurricane Katrina.
Predictably, local (NO) and State (LA) were totally to blame in ALL phases, while the Fed did what it could under the circumstances.
The Committee will no doubt conclude Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco were grossly negligent and derelict in their duty, response, and preparation of the entire Katrina fiasco.
I HOPE the Committee does so conclude about Nagin and Blanco, among other aspects about LA.
If the Committee does NOT, and does not include a public reprimand of the highest degree about these two, then I conclude the Committee is, also, to blame, just as are Blanco and Nagin.
I'd hardly heard a more disgusting delivery as I did hearing Blanco before that Committee. I could barely believe her total absence of manners, her presumptions so thick they reeked.
She could at least be humble in ASKING for taxpayers to fork over billion/s of dollars -- I doubt this is her intended one and only such plea, either -- but her entire delivery was so offensive in blaming everyone else, particularly the federal government...she omits entirely from her frame of references any focus on herself, on her own state and government.
Meaning, she's incompetent. She's not governing, she's using.
Meaning, she's incompetent. She's not governing, she's using."
An arrogant, incompetent taking the offensive and playing the blame-game. It's all she's got...
But that's the typical Democrat's modus operandi though, isn't it?
Try electing new leaders when the GoverNOT cancells the elections!!!!
This STATE NEEDS HELP... not financial but political... Please can we have an overthrow here like they had in Iraq??? Hell they get to vote... but since all the voting busses..oops school busses were flooded due to criminally negligent missuse of public funds to secure the levees,, Bunko cancelled our elections.... I guess she learned a thing or two when she had that nice visit with her patron Saint Chavez just before the hurricane.
ping for later
Ping for later.
bwwwwaaahhhhhaaaaaa
Exactly. And Blankie's over-the-top incompetence only feeds into that conclusion. Big-time.
First, the federal guvmint only SENDS money, Blankie. YOU and yours have to get a clue about how to get it responsibly spent. With no plans, no vision, no leadership, galaxy-sized buckets of money will do NO GOOD. PRIVATE BUSINESS WILL NOT COME.
And if the Feds HAD come in and taken over operations, as actually was necessary (though not desired or constitutionally allowed), who would have been the first to yell about a police state because a federal officer ordered buses under Nagin's "control" to be used for evacuation?
WTF I don't want a DIME of my money going to rebuild a freakin city BELOW sea level. WAKE UP PEOPLE! This is insane.
WHAT A WASTE of MY money.
grrrr
Both of these people are idiots - if this is what LA wants then let them pay for it - as they have.
What a bunch of FREAKS
"With no plans, no vision, no leadership, galaxy-sized buckets of money will do NO GOOD. PRIVATE BUSINESS WILL NOT COME."
Bingo! I think the rats' plan is to replace Blank-oh with Breaux the next gube election. At any rate, NOLA is a very long time from being a big city again. It's best hope is to limp along as a port city and get the levees shored up properly with some solid engineering. Until then, no private investors will spend a penny on that sunken mess.
Of course...
Unfortunately, the law dictated the city and state "control" their own ill-fated, ill-prepared operation and the fed abided in the official protocol.
The investigation is gonna get ever so ugly for the Dems IF the GOP chooses to exploit it for political purposes (which they have EVERY right to do to prove what a joke Dems are in "governing.")
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