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43 Outdoes 41, Again [barfer]
the left coaster ^ | Sep 11, 2005 | unsigned

Posted on 09/13/2005 7:17:48 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion

Sunday :: Sep 11, 2005

43 Outdoes 41, Again

George W Bush wanted to avenge the disrepect his father received at the hands of the American people. And even more, he wanted to outdo his dad. Dubya was never going to wear the label "wimp" nor was he going to let someone like Saddam thumb his nose at the Bushes. Yet as with the runup to the war with Iraq, the disastrous reaction to the deadly hurricanes tie these two administrations together and people are noticing the eerie similarities.

George HW Bush was not taken down by his role as Commander in Chief in the execution of the first war against Saddam as after his successful rout of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, he had extraordinarily high poll numbers. Rather, he was undone by Hurricane Andrew which stripped the American public of any expectation that he was a competent leader. With Papa Bush, Hurricane Andrew exposed the bankruptcy of the Republican claims to good governance and fortunately for the American public, it came before the election in 1992.

His son has been bolder, taking the war into Baghdad, and luckier, obtaining the big prize: a second term, yet the problems that plague this dynasty are striking and the Bushes' reactions are telling about their reigns.

And now, one thing that is clear, Dubya has been recreating his father's administration biggest failures. In fact, outdoing his dad, Dubya has succeeded in making FEMA even more a symbol of the worst of Republicans which will haunt the nation for a very long time. (After all, Americans can now see that this is a Party that disregards ordinary Americans suffering and delights in promoting the festering hatred that would rather have the poor and helpless die than let them into their communities.)

Hurricane Andrew, 1992: Rarely had the failure of the federal government been so apparent and so acute. On August 24, 1992, Hurricane Andrew leveled a 50-mile swath across southern Florida, leaving nearly 200,000 residents homeless and 1.3 million without electricity. Food, clean water, shelter, and medical assistance were scarce. Yet, for the first three days, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is responsible for coordinating federal disaster relief, was nowhere to be found. And when FEMA did finally arrive, its incompetence further delayed relief efforts. Food and water distribution centers couldn't meet the overwhelming need; lines literally stretched for miles. Mobile hospitals arrived late. In everything it did, FEMA appeared to live up to the description once given to it by South Carolina Sen. Ernest Hollings: "the sorriest bunch of bureaucratic jackasses I've ever known."

Under Dubya, we see it could be genetic, because the same complaints and the same bureaucratic delays were evident again. Republicans sure hate bureaucracies when they interfer with bizness, but can't seem to get enough of it if it concerns helping regular Americans.

Andrew: One of the most maddening problems with FEMA, the critics said, was the constant bureaucratic delay. FEMA workers would routinely hold up vital aid requests because the proper forms were not filled out or certain signatures had not been included. "If we had asked for a certain resource this way we could have gotten it," said Kate Hale, director of the Dade County Emergency Services of her experience after Hurricane Andrew, "but FEMA would say that we hadn't framed the question properly.... FEMA's employees appeared to be terrified at making a mistake, so they'd rather do nothing than make a mistake because a mistake could cost them their career."

Katrina: Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard's statement is to the point: "Bureaucracy has murdered people in the greater New Orleans area. And bureaucracy needs to stand trial before Congress today. So I'm asking Congress, please investigate this now. Take whatever idiot they have at the top of whatever agency and give me a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same idiot."

FEMA was not just bureaucratic, but led by incompetent political cronies.

Andrew: The red tape was aggravated by old-fashioned incompetence. FEMA was, in the words of former advisory board member and defense analyst Lawrence Korb, a "political dumping ground," a backwater reserved for political contributors or friends with no experience in emergency management. President Bush, for example, appointed Wallace Stickney, head of New Hampshire's Department of Transportation, to lead FEMA. Stickney's only apparent qualification for the post was that he was a close friend and former next door neighbor of Bush Chief of Staff John Sununu. Throughout his time there, Stickney was nearly invisible, except for regular trips to Capitol Hill to defend the agency against its many critics.

Because FEMA had 10 times the proportion of political appointees of most other government agencies, the poorly chosen Bush appointees had a profound effect on the performance of the agency. Sam Jones, the mayor of Franklin, Louisiana, says he was shocked to find that the damage assessors sent to his town a week after Hurricane Andrew had no disaster experience whatsoever. "They were political appointees, members of county Republican parties hired on an as-needed basis.... They were terribly inexperienced."

Katrina: But nothing can restore FEMA's full functionality so long as the agency's incompetent director, Michael Brown, remains at the helm. Brown, a patronage appointee with no previous disaster management experience, embarrassed himself last year with his attempts to justify FEMA's waste of more than $31 million in hurricane relief given to areas not affected by a hurricane. After a South Florida Sun-Sentinel investigation exposed the waste, the newspaper called for Brown to be fired. It now repeats that call.

This year Brown embarrassed the whole country. Three days after Katrina struck, he admitted to being surprised to learn that thousands of people were suffering without food or water in New Orleans' convention center. This from the man who was supposed to be in charge of federal relief efforts.

Brown is in over his head. If FEMA is ever to become effective again, his dismissal must be the first step.

For both father and son, the compromised agency expected the states to manage the crisis and ask for help if they found they needed more than they could do themselves. Yet, in the face of the deadly hurricanes local and state agencies were overwhelmed before even knowing what to ask for.

Andrew: FEMA saw its main responsibility as distributing federal loans and grants to help rebuild an area after a disaster. It would not issue direct aid to a state--or even prepare to deliver aid--until it was given a specific request by the governor. That may seem reasonable--why give help that isn't asked for?--but, as Hurricane Andrew made clear, this wholly reactive interpretation of the agency's role was at the root of many of its difficulties.

In Florida, the hurricane so overwhelmed state officials that they didn't even know what had happened, let alone what help they needed. Initially, Andrew was expected to hit Miami. But when the hurricane hit 20 miles south of the city the morning of August 24, most Floridians breathed a sigh of relief. "The storm surges were not as bad as anticipated," said one spokesperson for Governor Lawton Chiles. One National Guard major issued this report the day after the hurricane: "Florida has not requested any support from other states or federal agencies, nor do we project a need."

Florida was slow to realize its own dire straits because many of its emergency workers were among the storm's victims. Half of the members of the Dade County Police and Fire Departments had lost their homes. Most of the area's fire and police stations were destroyed. Like their fellow southern Floridians, disaster management workers were looking for food, water, shelter, and medical care. The state was unable to issue specific requests for aid because it had no one available to assess the damage.

Katrina: Instead, the crisis in New Orleans deepened because of a virtual standoff between hesitant federal officials and besieged authorities in Louisiana, interviews with dozens of officials show.

Federal Emergency Management Agency officials expected the state and city to direct their own efforts and ask for help as needed. Leaders in Louisiana and New Orleans, though, were so overwhelmed by the scale of the storm that they were not only unable to manage the crisis, but they were not always exactly sure what they needed. While local officials assumed that Washington would provide rapid and considerable aid, federal officials, weighing legalities and logistics, proceeded at a deliberate pace.

...But Richard A. Falkenrath, a former homeland security adviser in the Bush White House, said the chief federal failure was not anticipating that the city and state would be so compromised. He said the response exposed "false advertising" about how the government has been transformed four years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

...FEMA's deference was frustrating. Rather than initiate relief efforts - buses, food, troops, diesel fuel, rescue boats - the agency waited for specific requests from state and local officials. "When you go to war you don't have time to ask for each round of ammunition that you need," complained Colonel Ebbert, the city's emergency operations director.

Telephone and cellphone service died, and throughout the crisis the state's special emergency communications system was either overloaded or knocked out. As a result, officials were unable to fully inventory the damage or clearly identify the assistance they required from the federal government. "If you do not know what your needs are, I can't request to FEMA what I need," said Colonel Doran, of the state office of homeland security.

One thing that is clear is that Bush Sr was a more pragmatic man and willing to admit that it was necessary to "change course" in the face of the unrelenting crisis. When it was clear FEMA was unable to handle the damage and even further that the state didn't realize how serious the problem was, Bush Sr demanded that something more needed to be done.

Andrew: Finally, as the full extent of the damage--and the lack of federal action--prompted heavy criticism, President Bush circumvented FEMA and formed a hurricane task force led by Secretary of Transportation Andrew Card. Card and the task force flew down to Florida to assess the damage. As the Department of Transportation airplane passed over southern Florida, the members of the task force were stunned by the extent of the damage. "This eerie silence came over the plane as we flew over mile after mile of pure devastation," remembers Shelley Longmuir, the task force's chief of staff. "You got the feeling that you were no longer in the United States, but in some far away, mystical place because there were none of the reference points of civilization.... It looked like Beirut."

FEMA would have seen as much--had it bothered to look. Because of its reactive posture, it had never sent a team of damage assessors to survey the wreckage. Not until Card and the task force flew to Florida did the federal government have a true sense of the storm's impact.

Upon landing, Card met Chiles in the Miami airport to offer federal aid. Chiles initially declined, saying that Florida could handle the emergency. It is more likely that the governor did not want to have to pay the required 10 percent of the recovery costs. Unlike the FEMA officials who took Chiles at his word, Card insisted that the damage was beyond Florida's response capabilities, and pressed Chiles to accept massive federal aid to be delivered by a large U.S. Army presence.

After some pushing, Chiles eventually agreed. That day, Bush signed the order to send in Army troops to build shelters and provide food and medical care to the victims of the storm. The next day 3,500 troops were in southern Florida, the first of 17,000 that would eventually serve. Almost immediately, Hale says, the situation changed. "The first thing that happened was the morale improved the minute that people felt they weren't alone, they weren't abandoned.... You could just see people find the strength to go one more day when they were at the point of collapse."

Katrina: As New Orleans descended into near-anarchy, the White House considered sending active-duty troops to impose order. The Pentagon was not eager to have combat troops take on a domestic lawkeeping role. "The way it's arranged under our Constitution," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld noted at a news briefing last week, "state and local officials are the first responders."

Pentagon, White House and Justice officials debated for two days whether the president should seize control of the relief mission from Governor Blanco. But they worried about the political fallout of stepping on the state's authority, according to the officials involved in the discussions. They ultimately rejected the idea and instead decided to try to speed the arrival of National Guard forces, including many trained as military police.

Paul McHale, the assistant secretary of defense for homeland security, explained that decision in an interview this week. "Could we have physically moved combat forces into an American city, without the governor's consent, for purposes of using those forces - untrained at that point in law enforcement - for law enforcement duties? Yes."

But, he asked, "Would you have wanted that on your conscience?"

For some of those on the ground, those discussions in Washington seemed remote. Before the city calmed down six days after the storm, both Mayor Nagin and Colonel Ebbert lashed out. Governor Blanco almost mocked the words of assurance federal relief officials had offered. "It was like, 'they are coming, they are coming, they are coming, they are coming,' " she said in an interview. "It was all in route. Everything was in motion."

One more similarity in the way the two Bush's handled their hurricane crises: they both decided to suspend the prevailing wage laws in light of the disaster. When faced with the massive cleanup and reconstruction needs of the damaged communities, the Bushes have perfected the goal of enriching their crony friends on the backs of the unfortunate victims who they believe should be happy to have any work at all. Besides which, if you have to pay workers prevailing wages, Halliburton's profits and Joe Allbaugh's friends winnings would be smaller than Bush thinks is seemly.

For Americans, Dubya has once more proved that the Bush administrations could be clueless, incompetent and could care less about the domestic problems facing Americans until it affected their poll numbers.



TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: andrew; bush41; bush43; bushhaters; katrina; p41; p43
mabelkitty pointed out similarities in the recent/current behavior of Louisiana Gov. Blanco to that of Gov. Chiles in 1992 after Hurricane Andrew.
1 posted on 09/13/2005 7:17:50 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion
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To: mabelkitty; fporretto; walford; rwfromkansas; Natural Law; Old Professer; RJCogburn; Jim Noble; ...
Ping.

2 posted on 09/13/2005 7:20:37 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion (The idea around which liberalism coheres is that NOTHING actually matters but PR.)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion

Sounds like a script from Michael Moore ---


3 posted on 09/13/2005 7:20:56 AM PDT by EagleUSA
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion

Yup, I remember the first time I had too much to drink too.


4 posted on 09/13/2005 7:21:48 AM PDT by minerboy (Proud to be banned by the DU.)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion
I love how the left compares FEMA under Clinton to FEMA under Bush.

They claim that FEMA did wonderfully under Clinton.

But let's look at the scale of hurricanes under Bush 41 and Bush 43, versus those that hit during Clinton's tenure:

Andrew used to be the damage yardstick with $34 billion in total damage.

By comparison, the four costliest hurricanes during the Clinton Adminstration - Georges, Floyd, Fran, and Opal - caused just over HALF the total damage of Andrew - $18 billion. The Clinton Admin FEMA team never faced anything remotely resembling the test that Andrew posed - and still had trouble with Opal and Floyd.

Last year, four hurricanes - Charley, Ivan, Frances and Jean - caused $42 billion in damage. In one year. FEMA handled the events reasonably well - perhaps too well, with checks being written to folks outside the affected areas. But that happens with large government programs.

Now we got hit by a hurricane that dwarfs them all. Just in the amount of money approved by Congress to date, Katrina has matched the damage for the three previously most costly storms - Andrew, Charley and Ivan. If current damage estimates hold up, Katrina will probably have caused more damage than the next ten storms, including Andrew, COMBINED.

So Katrina represented a disaster that was AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE above anything we've experienced before.

But FEMA partners the Red Cross and the Salvation Army had food and water aid ready to go into NOLA two days after the storm hit and one day after the levee breach flooded the town. The state government turned them away.

But FEMA was incompentent here?

5 posted on 09/13/2005 7:34:06 AM PDT by dirtboy (Drool overflowed my buffer...)
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To: EagleUSA
mabelkitty's point is that there is a pattern of reportercrats systematically exploiting hurricanes to embarass Republican presidents. Lawton Chiles delayed asking for federal assistance after Andrew hit, and reporters criticized Bush 41 for being slow to provide help, thirteen years before Kathleen Blanco delayed asking for federal assistance after Katrina.

And the reportercrats have been having a field day with Bush 43 just the same way.


6 posted on 09/13/2005 7:38:46 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion (The idea around which liberalism coheres is that NOTHING actually matters but PR.)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion

BTTT!!!!!!


7 posted on 09/13/2005 7:39:15 AM PDT by E.G.C.
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion

And the reportercrats have been having a field day with Bush 43 just the same way.
------
If the Repubs had any guts, they would go after Nagin and Blanco relative to the Federal monies that "disappeared" from their control...let the MSM choke on that reality -- but I don't think the Repubs have the political fortitude to do it...same old same-o.


8 posted on 09/13/2005 7:42:42 AM PDT by EagleUSA
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To: dirtboy

Facts? Day don't need no steenkin' facts!


9 posted on 09/13/2005 7:43:03 AM PDT by metesky (This land was your land, this land is MY land; I bought the rights from a town selectman!)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion
And just to show that FEMA couldn't handle Floyd, a CAT 2:

Clinton's Mythical FEMA

According to Newsmax.Com, Clinton FEMA Director James Lee Witt won high marks for hurricane preparation, but the flood that followed swamped his agency. A full three weeks after the storm had passed, Rev. Jesse Jackson interviewed Witt on his CNN show "Both Sides Now" -- and complained that flood victims were still suffering from a "misery index."

"It seemed there was preparation for Hurricane Floyd, but then came Flood Floyd," Jackson began. "Bridges are overwhelmed, levees (my emphasis) are overwhelmed, whole town's under water (my emphasis). . . [it's] an awesome scene of tragedy. So there's a great misery index in North Carolina."

When Jackson asked what was being done for the thousands of families left homeless by Floyd after nearly a month had passed since the storm first hit, Witt said Bill's FEMA was "just beginning to address the problem."

---------------

So apparently Witt's FEMA was unable to plan for the fact that ... drum roll, please ... YOU CAN GET WIDESPREAD FLOODING FROM A HURRICANE.

I guess they never heard of Agnes. Or Juan. Or even Fran, which had hit almost the same area three years previously and caused a lot of inland flooding.

Oh, yeah, Fran. The Hurricane that FEMA did such a wonderful job handling. Unless you ask affected parties near landfall: ASSESSING "PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE" OF FEMA'S RESPONSIVENESS AND EFFECTIVENESS IN THE AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE BONNIE, IN WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH AND TOPSAIL ISLAND, NORTH CAROLINA

Yet, most respondents consider FEMA in a negative light; from the comments noted in our survey, this attitude would appear to be related to their experiences with FEMA in relation to Hurricane Fran, as well as a generally negative view of federal-level bureaucracy.

--------------------------

I guess the Dems think this stuff goes down the memory hole. And that's why they keep getting spanked.

10 posted on 09/13/2005 7:47:26 AM PDT by dirtboy (Drool overflowed my buffer...)
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To: dirtboy
the four costliest hurricanes during the Clinton Adminstration - Georges, Floyd, Fran, and Opal - caused just over HALF the total damage of Andrew - $18 billion. The Clinton Admin FEMA team never faced anything remotely resembling the test that Andrew posed - and still had trouble
All your points are excellent, and well stated. To which we can add,
". . . and did the governors of the affected states try to show up President Clinton?"
Not that I recall.

11 posted on 09/13/2005 7:48:27 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion (The idea around which liberalism coheres is that NOTHING actually matters but PR.)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion

I couldn't get past the second paragraph. That looks like way too much pure garbage to even try to process.


12 posted on 09/13/2005 8:07:54 AM PDT by Elyse
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion
mabelkitty pointed out similarities in the recent/current behavior of Louisiana Gov. Blanco to that of Gov. Chiles in 1992 after Hurricane Andrew.

Perhaps that is an indicator you are pursuing the wrong premise. Maybe the culprit is the concept of FEMA itself, that the federal government has an obligation to make things whole for everyone after a natural disaster.

I find this a more fitting role for the government than National Public Radio or the Endowment for the Arts, but I still don't see it as a legitimate function of government.

On top of that, the only people with experience in disaster relief are the NGO's like the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and some church groups. Because FEMA has an ambiguous role and a nebulous authority it is to be expected that screwups will happen. It is a federal bureaucracy, for pete sakes.

Positioning survival supplies all over the country just to be ready in case something happens is the only way to be ready, in general. You can't put supplies in the area of destruction or they will be destroyed, duh. In most cases the destroyed area cannot be entered immediately because of the destruction, duh. It is also necessary to assess the area before barging in so that you know what to bring and where to put it. So delays are unpreventable, not the shortcoming of some administration.

Finding similarities between the two Bush administrations may seem a catchy plot twist but it is flawed. All administrations have problems with all disasters. It is the nature of the beast. FEMA is no different from any other government bureaucracy but they face problems that are more immediate and more challenging than most others. (I consider the military a different kind of bureaucracy.)

13 posted on 09/13/2005 8:45:47 AM PDT by Mind-numbed Robot (Not all that needs to be done needs to be done by the government.)
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To: Mind-numbed Robot
Perhaps that is an indicator you are pursuing the wrong premise. Maybe the culprit is the concept of FEMA itself, that the federal government has an obligation to make things whole for everyone after a natural disaster.
I agree with your post, but plead "not guilty" to being the one who is "pursuing the wrong premise."

The "wrong premise" is of course the idea that journalism is impartial; journalism exists to find fault, and the Democratic Party abandoned anything but the pretense of doing anything else but faultfinding when they nominated Flip-flop Kerry (and certainly the Clinton Administration was a leadership-free zone). So what we now have are the Republican and the Reportercrat parties.


14 posted on 09/13/2005 9:17:25 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion (The idea around which liberalism coheres is that NOTHING actually matters but PR.)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion

I plead guilty to ceasing to read after about a third of your post. Knowing your basic premise to be the non-objectivity of the media I should have known you were going there. I guess I jumped the gun.

I understand your flogging the bias of the media. They have become the voice of the DNC, no different than Pravda was for the USSR, and they are run by people with the same political philosophy. Were you to care to, you could trace the current situation from the early 1920s, into the FDR administration beginning in the thirties, and on into the present to follow the Communist influence we see reflected in the DEemocrat Party and the MSM today.

As far as your assertion that none of us are, or can be, objective I agree. Since we are only aware of the world through our senses, the world, by default exists only to us. That basic fact negates objectivity. All is personal and all is self-centered, by nature.


15 posted on 09/13/2005 10:06:05 AM PDT by Mind-numbed Robot (Not all that needs to be done needs to be done by the government.)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion
"Hurricane Andrew exposed the bankruptcy of the Republican claims to good governance and fortunately for the American public, it came before the election in 1992. "

Where can I get some of the drugs that this author is on?

16 posted on 09/13/2005 2:36:36 PM PDT by Radix (I survived Katrina, but my Tag Line was seriously damaged.)
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