Let Them Rent Limos

Houston Chronicle ^ | Sept. 4, 2005 | Rick Casey

[RichInOC]

A lot of New Orleanians were poor. The city government was strapped, but not that poor. A lot of New Orleanians couldn't afford vehicles. The city government (including NORTA and the public school system) sure could. A lot of New Orleanians are laid back. The city government, with all its faults, was capable of snapping out of it and "gettin' 'er done" reasonably well in stressful, high-traffic, time-sensitive situations without the city blowing up (Mardi Gras, anybody?). So the idea that the city government was capable of handling that logistical nightmare, but completely unable to fire up their own municipal bus fleet to get their people out of the way of the nastiest hurricane to hit town in years, an event that is to hurricane country what The Big Quake is to California, except with more advance warning...when thousands of lives were on the line, that just doesn't cut it. And to suggest that pointing that out is equal to saying "let them rent limos" is stupid and dishonest.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Obviously Rick is an incompetent reporter. Or maybe he is not a reporter, but a left-wing propagandist.

You really think there's a difference?

Cindy Sheehan, Rush Limbaugh, and CBS
August 22, 2005 | conservatism_IS_compassion

[BeHoldAPaleHorse]

Any way someone could overlay a street route from the bus yard to the Superdome, along with the mileage involved?

[Right_in_Virginia]

It is no accident that the poor weren't included in evacuation plans

Why isn't the author of this article asking Nagin why left his poorer constituents to fend for themselves?

[HHFi]

...this is a statement, not a plan. Who's in charge of making it happen? How do they communicate with each other and with the potential clients. How is it going to work. If an architect tells me my house will have bathrooms, that doesn't make it happen

This is almost staggering in its lack of logic. There is a plan. I've read it myself; it's on the Internet. And it spells out how the evacuation will be carried out (using the buses) and who is responsible. As for the inane architect analogy, if you pay an architect to build a house for you, and give him more money than he's worth for year after year, I would think it reasonable to expect that, yes, you would have a bathroom available when an emergency arose.

[Ima Lurker]

Incredible! No one is bashing the poor, but the sad truth is that a welfare state encourages, no decreees, that we all become dependent on the nanny State. NO like many other places has generations entrapped in that failed ideology. Are their helpless people everywhere? Certainly. And it's the responsibility of families, friends, neighbors and even total strangers,not the government, to take care of people.

Well said! It bares repeating.

[patton]

Nagin's navy = yellow submarines

(sorry, could not help myself)

[BadAndy]

"Obviously Rick is an incompetent reporter. Or maybe he is not a reporter, but a left-wing propagandist."

In his article this idiot also equates looting with free markets, deregulation and Enron.

[OldFriend]

There was no flour for bread. She thought cake flour would do, hence the statement, let them eat cake.

[Jack Deth]

Nagin stated he couldn't use the busses because they had no seat belts, were cramped, and didn't have bathrooms.

Of course not, they're School Buses.

You have GOT be be kiddin' me, OldFriend!!!!

Did the the survivors in the commandeered and loaded bus that made it to Houston have any complaints?

If that's going to be Nagin's story. He's already climbed the gallows and stuck his neck in the noose.

Pull him out of the Toaster... He's done!

Jack.

[texgal]

Nagin stated he couldn't use the busses because they had no seat belts, were cramped, and didn't have bathrooms.

One has to wonder how many of those school buses that, in the end, evacuated the citizens of New Orleans did have seat belts and or bathrooms?

It was a matter of life or death to get out of path of the storm. The mayor knew it! He thought it was a situation dire enough to send his own family out of the city on Saturday.

He knew it because the director of the National Weather Service, Max Mayfield, called Mayor Nagin at home on Saturday night to tell him that he must call a mandatory evacuation and to, as Mayor Nagan put it, "put the fear of God in me". Why then did Mayor Nagin wait until Sunday afternoon, LESS than 24 hours before the storm hit, to order the mandatory evacuation AND open the contraflow lanes to the west?

Mayor Nagin is responsible as is Governor Blanco and every politician from the parish level to the levee board.

[OldFriend]

The MSM is propping him up. Putting the blame on President Bush. We shall see what his evacuated constituents have to say about him.

My guess tho, is that most people don't even realize the voted for him, probably more than once.

[tennmountainman]

What a great post with the pictures and diagrams.

The Pajamahadin has risen again to debunk MSM lies!

[wildbill]

Didn't use the buses because they were cramped and didn't have bathrooms????

So they sent them to the Superdome with non-functioning bathrooms and cramped conditions that quickly led to violence and rape?

[60Gunner]

Here is my letter to Rick (to be filed under "wastes of breath'): "Rick, I strongly disagree with your foolish and naive notion that your great God of Government is going to address the needs of the people (that is, inner-city minorities who suckled at your much-vaunted welfare teat) affected by Katrina. If any blame is to be cast, I level the full weight of blame for this human disaster on liberal Democratic ideology and the people, including you, who continue to force it on the poor in spite of its known historic failings. If you and the Democrats you represent believe that increasing the dependence of these victims on public funds and resources is the answer, you are seriously delusional. On top of all of that, you also conspicuously fail to highlight the failings of the two people most responsible for the human toll exacted by Katrina: the Governor of Louisiana and the Mayor of the late New Orleans. Why did Mayor Nagin not mobilize the hundreds of schoolbuses at his disposal and get these inner-city people out two days before Katrina made landfall? Why did he not make provisions for food and water or basic necessities when he knew more than a year previously that this would be a major issue? He could have. He should have. He did not. Why aren't you pointing this out? Why has Governor Blanco held back on her requests for aid while wasting time and resources setting up her own assistance campaign? This smacks of self-promotion. Why did she not request federal military assistance before Katrina hit? She could have. She should have. She did not. Why are you not pointing this out? Since when is it the responsibility of the President of the United States to ensure that the infrastructure of a city or state is able to handle a disaster of this proportion? It isn't. Your allusion of presidential culpability betrays your utter and shameful lack of understanding of civics. You have your glorious public schools to thank for your ignorance. But I digress... Your solution echoes that of the liberal Democratic party hacks whom you represent: the answer to everything is "more government," forcing the poor into complete dependence on the government, levying immoral burdens on taxpayers, and the extinction of the individual. America has at last beheld the human price exacted on the idiotic, oppressive, and wasteful policies your ideology has wrought over the last four decades: a city full of directionless and helpless victims of welfare enslavement who have been taught at your feet not to think for themselves, and who cast off all civil restraint when their environment collapses because your ideology has taught them to do so. Who is to blame for the misery we have witnessed? You are: you, and the toxic liberal ideology you and your Democratic masters worship. And after all of this, you are still so completely beholden to the insatiable beast of liberal government that you cannot see the lie you embrace. You are to be pitied. And more importantly, the malevolent ideology you promote in your screed must be prevented from destroying more generations, whatever the cost. To paraphrase the goddess Hillary, "It takes a liberal to ruin a village." Case in point: New Orleans. Signed XXXXXXXX

[MNJohnnie]

Yet the evacuation plan was based on private autos. There was no mechanism to evacuate those without cars, much less those in nursing homes and hospitals.

Go to the City of New Orleans Website and download a copy of their Hurrican Disaster plan that calls for the school buses and sent it to this idiot.

[BenLurkin]

Limos my eye . . .

[WideGlide]

Pictures 1 and 2, and 3 and 5 are different shots of the same bus yard. That leaves the impression that even more buses were ignored than actually were.

Even one bus left in that depot is an embarrasment to Sugar Ray Nagin. Fact is hundreds were left idle to his eternal shame.

[mvpel]

Pictures 1 and 2, and 3 and 5 are different shots of the same bus yard. That leaves the impression that even more buses were ignored than actually were.

No, not to anyone who has half a brain. It is obvious that these photos are of the same scenes. I counted 264 school buses in picture two, if each of them holds 70-80 people, that's about 20,000 wasted bus seats.

That's more than enough buses ignored to damn the people responsible for letting them go to waste.