Posted on 09/10/2005 9:26:22 AM PDT by Allen H
Got this from my cousin this morning. Just in case anyone didn't see it or hear some of its content, read below. This reporter really locked down a lot that happened before the storm, and most of it isn't even being touched on the net. This kind of incompetance and stupidity in a Governor and Mayor is absolutely unforgivable and inexcusable. Before I read this, I thought impeachment talk for Blanco and Nagin was just talk, but now I don't think anything short of impeachment would be enough considering the level of absolute stupidity the two of them showed before this disaster. Totally unacceptable. Please read this below and pass it on to everyone you can think of. The more this gets out, the louder the outcry will be to remove them and those who worked for them.
"This is a post from a fellow over in Merritt Is, FL, a reporter who's been researching what went on before the storm hit I think all of Nagin's pomp and posturing is going to bite him hard in the near future as the lies and distortions of his interviews are coming to light.
On Friday night before the storm hit Max Mayfield of the National Hurricane Center took the unprecedented action of calling Nagin and Blanco personally to plead with them to begin MANDATORY evacuation of New Orleans and they said they'd take it under consideration. This was after the NOAA buoy 240 miles south had recorded 68' waves before it was destroyed.
President Bush spent Friday afternoon and evening in meetings with his advisors and administrators drafting all of the paperwork required for a state to request federal assistance (and not be in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act or having to enact the Insurgency Act).
Just before midnight Friday evening the President called Governor Blanco and pleaded with her to sign the request papers so the federal government and the military could legally begin mobilization and call up.
He was told that they didn't think it necessary for the federal government to be involved yet. After the President's final call to the governor she held meetings with her staff to discuss the political ramifications of bringing federal forces. It was decided that if they allowed federal assistance it would make it look as if they had failed so it was agreed upon that the feds would not be invited in.
Saturday before the storm hit the President again called Blanco and Nagin requesting they please sign the papers requesting federal assistance, that they declare the state an emergency area, and begin mandatory evacuation.
After a personal plea from the President, Mayor Nagin agreed to order an evacuation, but it would not be a full mandatory evacuation, and the governor still refused to sign the papers requesting and authorizing federal action.
In frustration the President declared the area a national disaster area before the state of Louisiana did so he could legally begin some advanced preparations. Rumor has it that the President's legal advisers were looking into the ramifications of using the insurgency act to bypass the Constitutional requirement that a state request federal aid before the federal government can move into state with troops - but that had not been done since 1906 and the Constitutionality of it was called into question to use before the disaster.
Throw in that over half the federal aid of the past decade to New Orleans for levee construction, maintenance, and repair was diverted to fund a marina and support the gambling ships.
Toss in the investigation that will look into why the emergency preparedness plan submitted to the federal government for funding and published on the city's website was never implemented and in fact may have been bogus for the purpose of gaining additional federal funding as we now learn that the organizations identified in the plan were never contacted or coordinating into any planning - though the document implies that they were.
The suffering people of New Orleans need to be asking some hard questions as do we all, but they better start with why Blanco refused to even sign the multi-state mutual aid pack activation documents until Wednesday which further delayed the legal deployment of National Guard from adjoining states.
Or maybe ask why Nagin keeps harping that the President should have commandeered 500 Greyhound busses to help him when according to his own emergency plan and documents he claimed to have over 500 busses at his disposal to use between the local school busses and the city transportation busses - but he never raised a finger to prepare them or activate them.
This is a sad time for all of us to see that a major city has all but been destroyed and thousands of people have died with hundreds of thousands more suffering, but it's certainly not a time for people to be pointing fingers and trying to find a bigger dog to blame for local corruption and incompetence. Pray to God for the survivors that they can start their lives anew as fast as possible and we learn from all the mistakes to avoid them in the future."
Yeah, I know the media blames FEMA, but based on Major Garrett's report, FEMA was ready to go, it was Blanco who held them at bay. I know specifically what Nagin and Blanco did wrong, but I haven't heard a single specific charge against FEMA, Michael Brown or Chertoff.
Why are you talking to straw men when you can talk to me? Corruption and mis-allocating of funds in New Orleans goes back at least a half-century, probably more.
I guess you think the way to lead a relief effort is to sit in front of tv
I think the director's responsibility is to to direct, to allocate resources and make sure they arrive ASAP. How he does that is his business, his only business. He sure as hell can't do it if he doesn't understand what's going on.
It seems they either 1) forgot to hire someone to tie up the loose ends or 2) were overly afraid of confronting one another about unresolved problems, like where they were going to put the evacuees.
Exactly.
Ergo, since he didn't understand the big picture he wasn't doing his job.
I posted this on another thread:
Does it strike anyone else that the Louisiana democrats found a perfect puppet in Blanco, "helped" get her "elected," never dreaming their figurehead would be called upon to make life and death decisions under national scrutiny,
and that her refusal to let the feds into LA might be because they wanted to prevent the feds from seeing first-hand the Louisiana government corruption?
What you said is right on target. I mean, even the MSM said for DAYS that this was the largest natural disaster in U.S. history, but all the critics, who basically are all the same people who do nothing but sit and wish for something to blame on Bush, at the same time expect that the federal goverment could respond to it en masse as though it was just a fart in a wirlwind, not the biggest disaster in the nation's history. That kind of silly double standard is just beyond stupid. Especailly considering that the Federal Relief effort, ala the U.S. Military (as usual) responded in short order considering the magnitude of hte disaster, and the fact that federal relief is NEVER first responder. That's always been how it works. By definition, any lack of relief the first two or three days after a major disaster shows a total lack of local and State relief, not federal. Anyone trying to say differently now is just out to attack the Bush administration and has to discount over 100 years of recorded disaster relief protacols.
Your insistence on this point has got me thinking.
I think the officials in Louisiana deliberately kept truthful information from FEMA
They kept our the Red Cross, they kept out the Salvation Army. Who else did they keep out?
We also know that NOLA DHS chief Ebbert gave the AP (and thus the people of New Orleans and thus every one in the world) incorrect information when he said the flood waters were rising slowly and the levee breach would be fixed quickly. [see Is T. Ebbert [NOLA DHS chief] responsible for delay in large-scale response to levee breach?
Yep, and now the country is seeing first hand the depths of that corruption and lack of action to deal with a problem they knew was a problem for over 80 years. Louisiana is a model of complete democratic control in this country, and it's funny how MS, which was hit even harder than LA by Kartina, since MS got hit by the dirty side of the storm, didn't have the same problems that LA had. And MS and AB's Gvernor's jumped at President Bush's offer of federal aid soon as he offered it. It's amazing how liberals can look at this through such rose colored glasses, only placing blame with those they oppose politically. Typical liberalism. Blame the conservatives, give their fellow libs a pass. The only Republican they haven't attacked, is Vitter, one of the VERY few Republicans in the State, and they can't blame him, since he's only been a Senator for nine months, and in blaming him at all, you'd have to recognize the fact that if he's a little responsible, then Landrieu, DEMOCRAT is a LOT responsible, since she's been there for YEARS her father, DEMOCRAT, before her, and her brother, DEMOCRAT, is the Lt. Governor. And blanco can in no way escape any blame. She could not have done a worse job as Governor the past two and a half weeks. It's beyond incompetant. That's all about to change. I think the democrats have just guaranteed that LA politics will change, and they will be a minority in the forseeable future, like the rest of the southern States.
This is why I believe it is important for Republicans to start demanding the heads of Terry Ebbert and Jay Mayeaux...just as liberals have done Mike Brown.
Even with the obvious incompetence of Blanco and Nagin, they won't be fired as elected officials, which is the reason Brown was targeted. They can't fire Bush, so they looked to a Bush surrogate to not only take the blame for this crisis...but to distract from the local dems incompetence.
It's time people started learning about Mike Brown's democratic counterparts at the local level: Ebbert and Mayveaux. Two people who technically had even broader power and authority than Brown or FEMA within their own state.
Who was responsible for the lack of disaster planning? Why weren't the buses protected from the floodwaters and used to transport people out of the city? Why weren't shelters set up to receive them?
People in New Orleans were responsible for making and executing such plans. And state government would have been responsible for finding shelters in the countryside (I'll bet part of the reason it wasn't done was that the countryside didn't want to accept the black underclass). But who? Until we get answers we can't assign blame.
I've been watching natural disasters as an adult for a half century. I can't remember anything of this magnitude or character. Any entire first-world city evacuated and possibly largely abandoned? A first-world population exhibiting large-scale, third-world savagery and lawlessness? A totally inadequate rescue operation? Never.
WHY did the democrat dominated State and local governments fail to do ANYTHING correctly, before, during, or after the storm?
WHY did blanco not accept Bush's offers of Federal help, THREE DAYS before the storm hit, like the Governor's of MS and AB did?
WHY did nagin totally disregard his own cities plan to use transit and school busses to get people without transportation out of town?
WHY did mayor nagin totally disregard the FEMA natural disaster manual, which outlines evacuating nursing homes, hospitals, and others, not using FEMA's manual in the leasdtt! WHY did the LA. DOHS deny access to N.O. to the Red Cross AND The Salvation Army, then blame it on the Feds when it was their decision?
WHY did mayor nagin empty the convicted felons from the jails, to the streets, creating in one fell swoop the worst looting disaster in American history, then blame the National Guard?
WHY did nagin fill up the Super Dome and the Coliseum with over 50,000 low income people, making NO provisions for them for a day, much less three, placing the burden to feed them directly on the National Guard before the storm even hit?
WHY was nagin using federal funds for a marina and gambling boats, not for improving the levee system?
WHY didn't Governor Blanco use the TENS OF MILLIONS of federally offered funds to use on the levee system, and never even applied for any matching funds for the little bit the State did do? Do you have answers for any of that? Because all of that squarely sits on the corrupt democrat dominated LA government. Face it. The left side of the aisle failed miserably, and as usual, it was Conservatives and the U.S. military that has to come in and do it right and fix their screw ups. I'll tell you one thing. New England and California are lucky they don't get hurricanes, or we'd get to see how screwed up their governments are some day.
I'm almost 60, myself.
It was DEMOCRATS who founded all three eras of the KKK. It was DEMOCRAT President Harry S. Truman that was in the KKK.
It was DEMOCRATS that fought desegregation in the U.S. House and Senate.
And it was DEMOCRATS who fought the civil rights movement. Governor Wallace for example. Democrat.
And when Strom Thurmond was a racist, he was a DEMOCRAT. When he became a Christian and denounced all that racism, he became a Republican.
And as everyone well knows, it was DEMOCRAT Senator robert byrd, still in the Senate, who was in the KKK. Wonder how many lynchings and hangings he attentended.
I mean, if any party has a history of racism and hatred for black people, it's the democrat party. The past 40 years they've been trying desperately to hide all those facts, and now, they're the new "plantation overseers", creating their great wellfare state the past 30 years, which is solely responsible for the horrible poverty that half the black population of New Orleans was trapped in, thanks entirely to the DEMOCRAT dominated Louisiana government. So while the people to do in N.O. had fun with their casinos and parties and other corrupt political and business happenings, their constituancy sat in squaller, waiting for their next set of orders come every November.
FEMA did such a great job with all those hurricanes in 2004, that the rabid MSM needed to reach back 12 years to drag up FEMA'S slow response to Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
That was the only way they could put the words "slow response" and "FEMA" in the same sentence.
God Bless President Bush.
There's nothing more racist than a political party assuming that if not for them, black people couldn't make it on their own.
Trafficant, convicted, and the democrat party never removed him. Condit when being investigated for his affair with Chandra Levy's disappearance, no action taken against him. kerry and kennedy with long standing histories of womanizing and affairs, and they keep getting re-elected. Typical lack of any kind of ethical standard which rules the democrat party.
Amen. Right on. Ebbert and Mayeaux are even more responsible for the problems the week of Katrina than Brown is, because local relief efforts start immediately when the store hits, and the couple days before, and they totally failed in the six days before the Federal Relief effort moved into place. I noticed that Larry didn't have a response to the fact that a MONTH went by after hurricane Hugo, before federal relief got to parts of the Carolinas, whild clinton was President. Yes, he sure had FEMA running as a finely oiled machine didn't he?
Good point. Funny how when Florida was nailed with FOUR HURRICANES in ONE SUMMER, they didn't have these problems. And Florida's Governor and Mayors didn't have childish tyrades on radio telling the President where to get his "@ss", recognizing his own lack of action to get ready for the storm, lashing out at others because of it. Governor Bush and his Mayors rolled their sleeves up and did what had to be done. REPUBLICAN STATE in action.
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