Posted on 09/14/2005 3:56:26 PM PDT by InDissent
For the sake of today’s column, we’ll say institutional racism played a very large part in what went wrong in New Orleans. Question: How do we identify this racism? In other words, how will we know it when we see it again? Jim Breslin offers a definition – “If whites were in trouble in New Orleans, I trust that this government would have been there early” – meaning that in any disaster-ridden city where the majority population is black (or Hispanic, or simply un-Caucasian), Republican-lead government will take its sweet time about getting to work. Still, having to explain Breslin’s point makes it unnecessarily vague, so we’ll settle for Paul Krugman’s proposal: “The federal government’s lethal ineptitude wasn’t just a consequence of Mr. Bush’s personal inadequacy; it was a consequence of ideological hostility to the very idea of using government to serve the public good.” In this case, “the public good” is code for “black residents.”
In short order our little dragnet catches Michael Chertoff and all of Homeland Security, which has direct oversight of FEMA and its former director Michael Brown, who we now call “former” for reasons unrelated to his resume irregularities. Earlier this year, FEMA announced its integration into Homeland Security would be seamless when people needed it most … Katrina was that time, and the agency failed spectacularly. (And even though his is basically a mop-up job, you might as well throw Thad Allen in there, just in case.) Don’t forget the president if, as Democrats have been screaming for a few years now, the Other Truman Doctrine (“The buck stops here”) is something we take seriously. (Well, for anyone not named Clinton, anyway.) But come on … State and local governments also made very serious mistakes – a few of which are elaborated upon below – and shouldn’t be given passes.
If not for Louisiana’s “Emergency Operations Plan,” Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin could honestly say they were caught off guard by Katrina’s ferocity and did the best they could. Most people would end up nodding; it wasn’t as though they had a plan or anything. But there it was, a meticulous outline of what had to happen if New Orleans was to responsibly and successfully evacuate the poor, the infirm, those with “special needs.” It was, as David Brooks described it Sunday, “a masterpiece of bureaucratic thinking.” (He doesn’t mean that in the same way Senator Kennedy would mean it.)
The Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) plainly states the “primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles may be used to provide transportation for individuals who require assistance in evacuating.” Yet the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported earlier this summer that city officials were giving up the fight before it even began. Hundreds of DVDs were distributed to the poorest neighborhoods, informing the residents that even though some school and city buses would be made available for their escape, “you’re responsible for your safety.” How, exactly? If they were poor enough to need buses in the first place, how did New Orleans expect them to get away?
EOP also calls for the establishing of custom shelters for those with “special needs.” Reports the Houston Chronicle: “People who called for information on special needs shelters Saturday were directed to sites in Alexandria and in Monroe, La. – cities 218 and 326 miles away. … ‘There were transportation systems in place to take people out of New Orleans, which was the preferred solution,’ said Kristen Meyer, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Hospitals. But she’s not sure how many got out. … In New Orleans, many people with special medical needs ended up at the last resort shelter in the Superdome. … As Hurricane Katrina approached Sunday morning, New Orleans officials advertised city buses would be used to pick people up at 12 sites to go to the ‘last resort’ shelters. It’s unclear how many buses were used. Planners decided not to use any of the New Orleans school buses for early evacuation, [Louisiana State University civil engineering professor Chester] Wilmot said,” even though hundreds were available. We should also wonder whether these 12 pick-up points were conveniently placed for those without cars.
“[Mayor Nagin] knows the city. He knows the danger,” explains Charles Krauthammer. “He knows that during Hurricane Georges in 1998, the use of the Superdome was a disaster and fully two-thirds of residents never got out of the city. Nothing was done. He declared a mandatory evacuation only 24 hours before Hurricane Katrina hit. [Some engineers previously suggested something closer to 40 hours may have been necessary.] He did not even declare a voluntary evacuation until the day before that, at 5 p.m. At that time, he explained that he needed to study his legal authority to call a mandatory evacuation and was hesitating to do so lest the city be sued by hotels and businesses.”
Back in the Chronicle, however, Kris Wartelle (spokeswoman for Louisiana’s attorney general) said State law “clearly gives the mayor the authority to ‘direct and compel the evacuation of all or part of the population from any stricken or threatened area.’” Wartelle added: “They’re not confused about it. He had the authority to do it.” Either Nagin lied or he didn’t know. Neither speaks well to his expertise.
And in the awful midst of a recovery – one which the mayor has suggested may reveal tens of thousands of bodies – Nagin is sending about 60 percent of his police force to … Las Vegas. They’ll each be given $200 in cash, free hotel rooms, et cetera. Explained Nagin when he first heard the moans of logical dissent: “New Orleans is a party town. Get over it.” Yes. By the way, this sense of frivolity at any cost is precisely what separates New Orleans in September 2005 from New York City in September 2001.
Governor Blanco (a white woman who has yet to be called a racist despite her FEMA-sized ineptitude) asked New Orleans and surrounding areas be declared federal disaster areas two days before Katrina hit (on Friday, 26 August), but failed to call National Guard troops into the city until after the levees gave way, at which point the Guard found itself unable to reach New Orleans. Why not send them in sooner? Only the governor – and in that I mean only the governor – has jurisdiction over Louisiana’s National Guard troops. By Wednesday (31 August), Blanco finally admitted there wasn’t enough security in New Orleans, but by then the city had fallen into chaos.
In the critical hours after Katrina passed, the Red Cross stood prepared to drive supplies into New Orleans. Fox News Channel’s Major Garrett reported: “They had a vanguard … of trucks with water, food, hygiene equipment, all sorts of things ready to go … [to] the Superdome and the convention center.” And? “The Louisiana Department of Homeland Security told them they could not go. … The Red Cross tells me that state agency in Louisiana said, ‘Look, we do not want to create a magnet for more to come to the Superdome or the convention center. We want to get them out.’ So at the same time local officials [and Shepard Smith] were screaming, ‘Where is the food? Where is the water?’ The Red Cross was standing by ready. The Louisiana Department of Homeland Security said, ‘You can’t go.’” Get them out? Exactly where were these evacuees going to be moved, and how were they unworthy of those supplies?
The mind swims … if Chertoff and Brown were so dramatically out of the loop for not knowing the extent of the crisis in New Orleans (Chertoff in particular was uncomfortably grilled on both Meet the Press and Fox News Sunday), so were Bennett Landreneau and Ansel Stroud (both Major Generals, both in charge of Louisiana’s Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, or LHLS & EP). Those looking to hang every organizational failure on President Bush’s shoulders, because the buck stops there, had better prepare themselves to say every State failure lands on Blanco’s desk, every city failure on Nagin’s desk, and so forth, taking great care to point out their “personal inadequacies.”
If President Bush is racist because of his so-called “hostility to the very idea of using government to serve the public good,” then what the hell do we call Nagin, Blanco and LHLS & EP’s epic fits of restraint? Certainly it’s fair to say the federal government spent all its time thinking about dirty bombs and none about Nature’s 9/11 – not unreasonably if you ask me (and you did, because you’re still reading), given the fact a hurricane didn’t knock down the World Trade Center – so it must be fair to say New Orleans and Louisiana also had their heads elsewhere, or else their performances would have risen to the occasion, or at least trumped the federal response. Truth is, State and local governments are mired in just as much pointless bureaucracy as the federal government; each can hatch beautiful schemes, never mind their operational inability (or unwillingness) to implement them. Failure doesn’t make any one person, agency or entity racist, but it can make them inept, and it’s time people start learning the difference.
Still, many need ongoing institutional racism – to help them sleep at night, to explain away their own circumstances, to fuel their ideology, to help with fundraising. Well, let it never be said I’m not here to help. Here’s your racism: The American Left believes blacks in New Orleans deserve infrastructure, food, water and decent housing more than Iraqis in Baghdad do, evident in the fact it believes reconstruction of a mostly black city is a more worthwhile cause than reconstruction of an Arab country … it cares for the aggrieved, just not the aggrieved. There’s your new cause.
agreed
"asked New Orleans and surrounding areas be declared federal disaster areas two days before Katrina hit (on Friday, 26 August), but failed to call National Guard troops into the city"
Follow the money? One opens the faucet of federal largesse; the other drains state coffers.
"For the sake of today’s column, we’ll say institutional racism played a very large part in what went wrong in New Orleans"
There is no such thing as institutional racism unless you vcount all the laws passed against the majority to lead.
We have spent 50 years watering the weeds.
I think it's a little more sinister then other's who look at what went on in the aftermath of the storm. I think Gov Blanco and Mayor Nagin were following orders from someone above them. I don't think they are as stupid as they've let on. And I think they created the slow down and most of the problems trying to hurt the President and the Republican party it's self. 2006 is coming up and the libs always start planning early. No dirty deed is beneath them.
Normally I wouldn't put anything past any political animal, but you're fixing onto the Left a level of risky forethought that's difficult to believe. Not even I believe Blanco and Nagin are dopey enough to sacrifice their people, in this way, for political advancement ...
And the headline read: Louisiana Governor Denies Food, Water for Katrina Victims
"Blanco's Blockade": Governor Tries to Starve Refugees Out of Superdome, Convention Center
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People were dying.... need anyone say more?
You can see the article at the Impeach Blanco Site
Now, if someone was willing to watch their citizens starving and dying and give the excuse that..."We didn't want them there"... then it's my opinion that they are also just as capable of doing it for political advancement.
Yes, well, you also had liberals posting headlines to their websites saying Bush moved slowly because there were blacks stranded and dying in New Orleans. Believe them?
I referenced the Garrett appearance (On "Special Report") in the essay above. Moreover, I noted that Louisiana Homeland Security refused to allow the Red Cross to move forward with food, water and medical supplies once the levee was breached. Even though I wrote Blanco should be held accountable for LHLS & EP's refusal to let the Red Cross pass to the Superdome and convention center, and even though I asked why the evacuees were "unworthy of the supplies," I have seen no direct evidence - and the impeach Blanco site you link to here does not provide any -that Blanco herself refused the Red Cross passage. Governor Blanco did not, as a matter of fact, "try to starve refugees out of superdome, convention center."
She must take responsibility for those who made those mistakes; if the Louisiana State constitution calls for her impeachment under those circumstances, then fine; impeach her. If not, well, then she's just pointless, isn't she?
Kathleen Blanco: I Should Have Called the Military
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/9/15/123648.shtml
Read that. That tells of only part of what she got caught saying. The whole thing was that Governor Blanco was caught telling her press secretary about what she had said to someone else! She got caught on tape saying, "I said we're not tolerating you asking for more military presence. But I mean, you know that I'm sayin, yer putting good people in jeopardy, potentially." Then after that she adds, "I really need to call for the military. I should have started that in the first call."
Wonder who she could have been talking about? Good little demoRat butts in jeopardy maybe? Guess we'll never know because as soon as this little got cha moment came out she suddenly took an about face, stopped bashing Bush and now she's taken responsibility on herself.
That's interesting GloriaJane. I have a link to the CNN Blanco Video on my site, but the audio is a little hard to hear. It sickens me when I see her giggle as she says, "You're putting good people in jeopardy."
You sure did, Governor Blanco.
By denying the Red Cross access to the evacuees at the Superdome and Convention Center, by not sending in the Louisiana National Guard to support the NOPD, by not evacuating the hospitals and nursing homes per the LA State Emergency Operations Plan, you put a lot of good people in jeopardy. And some of them are dead now. But don't worry. Help is on the way.
On the subject of racism in the Katrina Response I've posted an editorial by Alton Hancock that was published in the Shreveport Times this weekend. I included a short video from FOXNews showing an interview with one of the evacuees in Houston discussing the FEMA debit cards.
http://impeachblanco.org/news/0918200501.html
Your comments are appreciated.
Chuck DeWitt
http://impeachblanco.org
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