Posted on 09/10/2005 9:26:22 AM PDT by Allen H
Boy that guy Ebbert needs to be nailed to the wall with a rusty nail too.
If anyone can use this, it's a link I started with a list of 239 media email addresses. So if anyone emails the media to fuss at them, here's the url: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1481187/posts . If you have any that are not on that list, please reply and add them. I'm always looking for more. Thanks
Thanks for the link. The link below (from September of 2003) also lists these two guys primary responsibilities and how they supposedly had the city prepared for any disaster. I think we'll be hearing more about these two in the future.
http://www.securitymanagement.com/library/001489.html
Yeah, and from that stand point, Brown being removed is annoying. If he had skipped some of the bureaucratic red tape or taken short cuts, all we'd of heard for a week is how Brown is a cowboy just like Bush and ran roughshot over States rights, doing things that weren't even totally legal, and didn't follow the established rules of protacol you have to follow after an emergency. It's the same old story. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Though a couple of his comments were a little silly. I can forgive him for not knowing what was going on at the Coliseum though. For him to know, him or some of his people would have had to been watching tv for a while, and I'd like to think they were doing anything but watchin tv. There was lots of work to be done.
As I understand it, there are also restrictions on who FEMA may hire to help out with the relief, like requiring five years experience and diversity training. The "volunteers" are also being paid $24/hr.
I suppose you'd have forgiven Bush if he'd said he didn't realize how bad things were in N.Y. while TV was showing the towers falling...which means party loyalty means more to you than anything else.
Brown has a lot of explaining to do. How could he not know? Was his department really that removed from reality? Was he playing bridge? Counting strawberries (a la Capt. Queeg)?
Everyone has relatives and friends who can't get or hold jobs on merit so everyone understands patronage. But appointing someone who can't read as library chief is a lot different than appointing an incompetent Defense Secretary. When incompetence and patronage are exposed by a disaster of this magnitude no one escapes.
The Republicans might not be blamed because the Democrats were even more compromised...but it'll be a close thing.
Well, somebody thought of it - ten trucks of food and water were delivered on Sunday the 28th. I think the National Guard brought them because their guys on the ground reported that there was no food. The city had told people to bring their own food and water to last 3-5 days. (Nice plan...)
Here's another tidbit: "Sunday night, the military delivered 360,000 meals-ready-to-eat to the 30,000 people using the Superdome as a shelter. Hot food was served Sunday night and Monday morning by workers with the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office." Source
As always, none of this is meant to excuse the city's poor planning, but it's something to keep in mind when people like Jesse Jackson say the Superdome was "like the hull of a slaveship." That's 12 MRE meals per person, and two hot meals, and the evacuation of the Superdome began on Wednesday, the 31st. And yes, the Federal government helped with that.
I had to make a phone call and didn't see your post until just now. There is a dramatic difference between the POTUS and FEMA Director. I didn't say he shouldn't have been pulled out of there, I said I can forgive him for not knowing exactly what was going on inside the Coliseum, because he should have been doing his job in the field, not watching tv to see what was being reported. If you look at that in an unbiased way, you would agree. I mean, it took A MONTH before FEMA got into the Carolina area that Hurricane Hugo hit, and there wasn't this shrill demand from the liberal left for the FEMA director head, because clinton was president at the time. FEMA was in LA, MS, and AB within three days of the hurricane hitting despite the corrupt democrat Governor of LA doing all she could to keep control and not cede any relief authority to the federal government. The fact that you even think that Browns culpability even approaches that of Blanco and Nagin and all of those that work for them, really shows that you are liberal Larry. democrats in this fiasco have gotten a near complete pass by the msm. They'd be off the hook altogether if not for the blogs, talk radio and FOX News. If not for that, the mainstream democrat lapdog lib media would be ending its second week now of brainwashing their loyal zombie democrat viewership that Bush and only Bush is to blame for this. Thank God we're in the year 2005, where the truth actually gets to the American people, NOT some liberals version of the truth as they wish it was.
Geeze that makes the local N.O. and LA governments look even worse. The only food and water taken there before the storm was taken by the military. How pathetic. How is it possible that nagin showed such a total and complete lack of care for his citizens being herded into the Super Dome and the Coliseum, and then has the brass to blame their hunger and thrist on the federal government and Bush. Arrogant SOB. Amazing. He couldn't have screwed up any worse than he did, and that's made worse by the fact that he stayed high up in a hotel while the storm hit and the levees broke, and then fled for Baton Rouge Wednesday. Unbelievable. And the media makes it worse with their bs reporting. I'll never forget that rabid woman at the Dome they showed, screaming and waving her arms around saying "We've been stuck here and I haven't eaten in FIVE DAYS, LITEALLY FIVE DAYS!", and that was Wednesday afternoon. I remember thinking, unless you started a fast Friday afternoon, 60 hours before the hurricane hit, you haven't gone five days without food. It's that kind of wreckless reporting and fanatical desire to politicize news that made the first week after the storm even worse than it already was. cnn and the networks proved that they're no longer news outlets, but left wing liberal commentary shows, blaming the President for everything, even back then when they knew full well, what we have only learned the past six days, that it was the LA state and N.O. city govt's fault things were such a disaster.
I don't yet know how to measure culpability since fundamental questions have not been answered (except, of course, for the obvious diversion of flood control funds to other uses). But Brown's own statements condemn him. You say he was out in the field. Doing what? What was more important to the Director than fully understanding the situation?
One reason to bring these diverse groups together was to implement the public safety wireless network (PSWN), says New Orleans Fire Chief Charles Parent. He explains that this computerized system will give different agencies the opportunity to communicate with each other during a crisis. The system is under the auspices of the fire department (the Coast Guard has a backup system), says Parent.PSWN, which went operational in July, allows any combination of agencies to connect and communicate at the click of a mouse. New Orleans is one of the first cities to implement it fully.
The system will offer "tremendous capability," Ebbert says. "It allows all agencies to talk on their own radios regardless of brand or what bandwidth they're on."
I'd like to hear how this system fared during Katrina and her aftermath and whether the Feds were allowed to communicate with New Orleans DHS people through this system.
In August of last year, Brown, himself, appointed someone else to handle FEMA duties in Pennsylvania.
Statement on Federal Assistance for PennsylvaniaRepresenting the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Michael D. Brown... named Thomas Davies as the Federal Coordinating Officer for Federal recovery operations in the affected area.
The MSM conveniently forgets that Brown was in charge of FEMA through those hurricanes of 2004 -- Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne,
The press badgered Bush on August 15, 2004, while he was looking at hurricane damage in Florida, asking the President about slow FEMA response for hurricane Andrew way back in 1992, twelve years before.
Q There was some consternation after Andrew that the federal aid didn't arrive soon enough. Can you promise that there will be a more expeditious response this time?THE PRESIDENT: It's happening now --
Q Sir --
THE PRESIDENT: Hold up for a second. We're moving a lot of aid very quickly and, again, you can ask the governor whether or not he's satisfied with how fast the aid is moving. All I can tell you is that FEMA was on the ground yesterday morning and there's a lot of supplies surging this way. [snip]
Q What about what happened in '92, with Hurricane Andrew? ....
The press has been trying to paint Bush as someone who is incompetent during crises, even when the crises are handled well.
The same question I've been asking, too.
So you agree that he should have been back in DC getting the "big picture"?
Yeah, that's an interesting article from 2003. I also noticed how they talked about the Rapid Reaction Force and the 1200 National Guardsmen who would immediately be deployed for any emergency. Interesting, since we learned that Blanco only used 300 of them for law-enforcement purposes within the city of New Orleans...still days after the storm passed.
I also noted the regional/mutual compact agreements with other localities, which meant that there should've been provisions for where to take these refugees both before and directly after the storm hit. This is important as Jesse Jackson defends the Mayor and his busses for not having anywhere to take people.
If these plans existed, than those needs should've been addressed from as early as 2003...and definitely after Ivan in 2004. Everywhere I look, I see state and city emergency plans that were in place, but never made it into practice.
Yeah, diversion of flood control funds to fund a marina and the gambling ships by New Orelans authorities. I know you meant the Bush administration doing it, but that's been debunked by the fact that the previous four years of the Bush administion gave more funding than all eight years of the clinton administration combined. Not to mention the fact that Neither New Orleans OR Louisiana's governments took advantage of tens of millions in federal funds because they simply didn't apply for them. So once again, further evidence that the LA govt's dug their own graves with this situation.
As for Brown, I guess you think the way to lead a relief effort is to sit in front of tv, wathing reports that are an hour or more behind what's going on in the moment. That sounds good when you're Monday morning quarterbacking like you're doing, but in the real world, you don't sit and watch CNN to decide how to handle a real time major chatastrophe. Nice try though. 8)
He should have been getting the "big picture" but how he did that was his business, his only business.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.