Posted on 09/09/2005 8:56:30 PM PDT by neverdem
At last there is a light in the darkness. Washington was slow to respond to Katrina's victims, but now Congress has finally sprung into action. It has bravely promised to investigate the situation.
Unfortunately, the members haven't figured out exactly how, because Democrats want it to be done by outsiders. They say the Republicans will turn it into a cover-up. But why does that bother the Democrats so much? Shouldn't members of both parties want to cover this up?
Suppose, for instance, investigators try to find out who had the brilliant idea of putting the Federal Emergency Management Agency inside a new department with an organizational chart modeled on the Soviet Ministry of Agriculture and Food Economy. One Democrat, Hillary Clinton, did question whether FEMA would suffer, but the idea was originally championed by her colleagues, particularly Joe Lieberman.
Mr. Lieberman joined Mrs. Clinton this week in calling for a "re-examination" of FEMA's status, but he was against independence before he was for it. After the Sept. 11 attacks, he helped lead the charge to create the Department of Homeland Security.
Republicans first resisted, as the Democratic National Committee pointed out during the presidential campaign last year. Its radio advertisement declared: "John Kerry fought to establish the Department of Homeland Security. George Bush opposed it for almost a year after 9/11."
Or suppose the investigators try to find out why the Army Corps of Engineers didn't protect New Orleans from the flood. Democrats have blamed the Iraq war for diverting money and attention from domestic needs. But that hasn't meant less money for the Corps during the past five years. Overall spending hasn't declined since the Clinton years, and there has been a fairly sharp increase in money for flood-control construction projects in New Orleans.
The problem is that the...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
L
All right how did you hack into the NY Times computers and can you make a headline that says Andrew Sullivan is a FLAMING idiot for me before they boot you out?
The New York Times has surprised me the past 2 days.
hehehe
your = you're
Tierney is excellent. I disagree with him on abortion and, I presume, the homosexual agenda. But he skewers liberal myths like no one else. The Times showed some cahones in taking him on.
Wow! Great read!
So9
This is one circus that's not coming to town. The one bit of intrigue is how Hillary will quash it while simultaneously pretending to demand it.
THIS IS NOT TRUE!!! The claim that the federal response was slow is now the media template, but it is not true.
Heres a logon for the NY times
yoink
forty
is one circus that's not coming to town. The one bit of intrigue is how Hillary will quash it while simultaneously pretending to demand it.
Demand the Comission be Independent. If the Repbs call her bluff whoever the Repbs put up to chair Dem Media scream cover up. Only prob we have a Bullet Proof Monk. Rudy G. Even the LIBERAL pundits were screaming for him last week. Going to be pretty tough to change tracks after builing Rudy up. "Conservatives" should be screaming of an Independent Comission headed by former Prosecutor and Mayor Rudy G to investigate the WHOLE Disaster Response system. Local,State and FED. Rudy G. gots the guts for it and the rep for it. Let's really tear the lid off this system for once. No more partisan grandstanding if Repbs have dirty laundry bring that out too. Hillary made a CRUCIAL mistake by running out and calling for an "Independent" Comission. She has painted herself into a corner. She got no manuevour rooms. If the Repbos have the guts to snatch the opportunity this is giving them, this could be fun as heck to watch.
But CNN and MSNBC will quote it until the cows come home to roost.
The problem is that the bulk of the Corps's budget goes for projects far less important than preventing floods in New Orleans. And if the investigators want to find who's responsible, they don't have to leave Capitol Hill.
Most of the Corps's budget consists of what are lovingly known on appropriations committees as earmarks: money allocated specifically for members' pet projects. Many of these projects flunk the Corps's own cost-benefit analysis or haven't been analyzed at all. Many are jobs that Corps officials don't even consider part of their mission, like building sewage plants, purifying drinking water or maintaining lakeside picnic table
snip
But she (Mary Landrieu) and others from the Louisiana delegation have been shortchanging the levees themselves. As Michael Grunwald reported in The Washington Post, they've diverted large sums to dubious Corps projects aimed at increasing barge traffic, not preventing floods. Ms. Landrieu forced the Corps to redo its calculations when a project to deepen a port flunked its cost-benefit analysis.
Would Congressional investigators focus on these pork-barrel projects?
******
Is John Tierney of the New York Times the father of Congressman John F. Tierney of Massachusetts?
I have no idea. This author grew up in Pittsburgh, IIRC. He was a NY Times metropolitan reporter for quite a while before he got this OpEd column.
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