Posted on 09/09/2005 10:21:38 AM PDT by Libloather
Fault Lines
Ibd
Thu Sep 8, 7:00 PM ET
Katrina: Hillary Clinton says FEMA was more effective when her husband was president. The victims of Hurricane Floyd might venture a different opinion, and it wasn't FEMA that kept supplies from the Superdome.
During a post-Katrina conference call with reporters, Sen. Clinton said, "Helping localities do what they needed to do to mitigate damage -- that philosophy governed FEMA during the Clinton administration. It obviously was rejected by this administration."
Does that mean Clinton's FEMA was the model of government efficiency and effectiveness? Or was it closer to the DMV and post office? Just ask the tens of thousands of people left stranded up and down the Eastern Seaboard by Hurricane Floyd in 1999.
"We're starting to move the trailers in," said then-FEMA director and current Hillary favorite James Lee Witt, nearly a month after Floyd first hit. "It's been so wet, it's been difficult to get things in there" -- an explanation that sounds familiar.
Witt was also a guest on Jesse Jackson's CNN show, "Both Sides Now," in Floyd's aftermath. Jackson complained then that "bridges are overwhelmed, levees are overwhelmed, whole towns underwater. ... (It's) an awesome scene of tragedy."
Gee, where have we heard that recently?
Many have called for the head of FEMA Director Mike Brown. But Bill Clinton's choice to be Southwest Regional FEMA director in 1993 was even less qualified, earning his job handling disaster recovery of a different sort.
Raymond "Buddy" Young, a former Arkansas state trooper, got his choice assignment after leading efforts to discredit other state troopers in the infamous Troopergate scandal. If a storm like Katrina struck the Big Easy back then, Young would've been in charge.
Former House Speaker Tip O'Neill used to say all politics is local. Forgotten in the Katrina disaster and its aftermath is that so is most law enforcement and disaster preparedness.
Why does Hillary think Houston's Astrodome was all set up to receive thousands of refugees? It was because Houston and Texas authorities planned for it to take thousands of refugees from Galveston, where a hurricane in 1900 killed 8,000 people.
Totally clueless about their duties were officials at Louisiana's -- not Washington's -- Homeland Security Department. They blocked a convoy of Red Cross trucks filled with water, food, blankets and hygiene items to the New Orleans Superdome after Katrina struck because it would have encouraged refugees to stay there.
The Red Cross Web site says: "The state Homeland Security Department had requested -- and continues to request -- that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane." The ARC was told its "presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city."
On Aug. 27, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco was asked at a press conference what could be done to avert disaster. Her pathetic answer was, "We can pray hard that the intensity will weaken." That was Louisiana's disaster-recovery plan.
Freedom starts with self-reliance, and the closer we get to that the better.
... when the most ethical Admin in history had its Assistant Attorney General indicted, convicted, and jailed
... when a high White House staffer committed 'suicide' in Ft Marcy Park and other staffers cleaned out his office before the police could search them
... when over fifty American citizens died in Waco as a result of tactics and actions of the Clinton DoJ
..... when a boy, whose mother died bringing him to the US, was returned to his biological father is a Communist dictatorship hell-hole
...when the military was deployed over forty times on peace keeping and policing missions, some of these missions still running to this day (e.g. The Balkans)
.... when the President was more concerned with getting 'serviced' in the Oval Office than with any need or issue facing the people of this country
.... and ad infinitum.
I was going to bring up Floyd but the writer beat me to it.
Never heard much about Floyd in the news at the time.
Most excellent !!!
Damn right it is. More effective at covering up terrorist attacks by presenting the fictional "lone wacko" theory and the massacre at Waco...
...DOH! I thought that's what she meant by "effectiveness"! My bad.
Another way to look at it is that FEMA was more effective before Hillary was a senator. But I doubt she brought that up.
Hillry is one evil witch.
I don't think Clinton ever had to face problems like this. Clinton had it easy. So, he had nothing better to other than womanizing
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