Posted on 12/03/2005 5:40:31 AM PST by abb
E-mails detail effort to ensure feds took blame for slow response Saturday, December 03, 2005 By Jan Moller Capital bureau
BATON ROUGE -- Gov. Kathleen Blanco and the Bush administration were locked in a pitched political battle to shape public opinion about the response to Hurricane Katrina at the same time they were trying to manage the rescue operation, documents released late Friday by the governor's office show.
E-mails turned over by the state to the congressional committees investigating the hurricane response show that the governor's senior staff was deeply involved in trying to preserve the governor's political standing and make sure that the White House was blamed for the slow pace of the initial response.
"We need to keep working to get our national surrogates to explain the facts -- that the federal response was anemic and had been shortchanged by budget cuts and avoiding responsibilities like protecting Louisiana levees and wetlands," Chief of Staff Andy Kopplin wrote to senior staff on the morning of Sept. 4, six days after Katrina made landfall.
At the same time, however, the governor's staff was sensitive to any notion that the federal government was taking control of the response from state officials.
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
By the same token, why didn't the President and the administration immediately go to work on UNPINNING the tail? Why did they sit idly by without response while every charge was leveled at the Republican administration, Homeland Security, FEMA, Brown, etc. while the Louisiana governor and NO mayor got a pass?
This is a rhetorical question. Those who've been reading my posts for years have read my banging away at the pitiful and ineffective White House PR staff including the sweet but pathetic Scott McLellan.
It also doesn't help to have a President who is always turning the other cheek making it easy for him to be stabbed in the back.The New Orleans fallout-damage to the White House is already done, and no amount of truth (email evidence) coming out can change this reality.
Leni
Krauthammer and Gingrich (never having been among my favorites) need a fast lesson in federalism. They apparently believe the US should behave like a Third World country in which the tin horn leader sends in the federales to elbow the locals aside in an emergency.
In fact, in a democracy, the federal govt is most definitely not among the first responders in state emergencies.
There are key differences between a constitutional democracy and a Third World Banana Republic. States rights prevail.
The federal gov't in the person of Pres Bush was also compelled to abide by protocols that stipulate they wait til states ask for assistance.
Frankly, probably even a backwater generalissimo would not place dumbos Blanco and Nagin in positions of responsibility.
You are right on. And to think they are supposed to work for us. They are supposed to be our employees. Riiigggghhhttt!
This makes me feel total disgust for blanco all over again. These goons were plotting and spinning like this while people were still trapped in homes and attics dying? They should all be in jail.
First sentence is off base...While it is true that every democrat in LA was blaming Bush, the Bush Administration was HARDLY doing much to correct the lies being told by the LA officials and the press.
What a hoot -- the governor's staff wanted her to portray that she was calm and in control.
Had the socialists in the country not been so eager to bash this President and had Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin done their jobs and the news not been so bogus in their reporting the truth of the tangled political morass in Louisiana and what was actually happening in New Orleans, could have spared the country – nay the world, this sordid spectacle of the thoroughly corrupt Third World welfare state of Louisiana.
The lessons learned were invaluable – FEMA is NOT a first responder nor is Washington, D.C. Where ever the crisis, the STATE is the First Responder. Mississippi and Alabama were well prepared as Florida had been in the days before; all the former were hit just as hard by Katrina but followed their emergency plans.
Not to minimize the pain, suffering, and loss of the citizens of Louisiana, those people had better grow up and find a new form of Government, one where they share in the responsibilities rather than expect money for doing nothing for themselves – the Democratic party has shown their egregiousness of keeping many citizens on the Plantation for generations while reaping billions of federal tax dollars to keep the elected fat and happy when those $$ should have been fixing the levees and lifting the citizens off /out of bondage. Mary Landrieu has been on the levee board for over 25 years….whose fault is it Miss Mary?
Blanco's office scrambled to spin Katrina....send to everyone you know.
Please excuse the rant............
"This is a rhetorical question."
Notwithstanding that, it seems to me that the president took care of the business at hand and absorbed the blows, probably due to the man's decency and the graveness of the situation. Imagine the outcry if he had resorted to partisan bickering at a time of great peril to american citizens. There were, after all, hundreds of people sitting on rooftops awaiting rescue.
On the other hand, those people in grave danger were not blessed with decent leadership at their local and state level. The response to their inabilities was to point fingers and call on the dependable "national surrogates."
It worked, we have no democracy with our media.
Blanco purposefully dumped these e-mails friday morning.
We knew all along Blanco's aides were left wing moonbats obsessed about the pr of blaming the feds during a disaster.
MSM kept playing up Brown's e-mails but will give not a second to Blanco's.
Blanco also dumped this news on Friday night to take away any coverage of it. She wouldn't even let Brit Hume talk about it during the Grapevine segment.
Blanco sabotaged Bush giving him no power then blaming it on everyone else. Brown took the fall when the real culprits were Blanco's staff.
Blanco beating Jindal did more damage to our party than anything else.
Tom Davis King rino of virginia let Blanco have months to release the documents while threatening subpena against the white house.
Charlie Melancon played up the brown e-mails and released them right away but he is silent for his water girl blanco.
Blanco needs to be recalled asap.
PING! This would be above the fold of every major sunday newspaper if the President was a democrat and the Gov. a republican.
Absolutely disgusting....the Pubbies better jump on this and get Blank-o on the Hill PDQ to testify to this matter.
"What a hoot -- the governor's staff wanted her to portray that she was calm and in control."
From the looks of her at those "national surrogates" conferences (aka press conferences), it appeared that she had popped too much "calm". And it makes me sick how these demonRATS were more concerned with their power and control then they were with serving the people.
Yep. Looks like a cat on steroids doing some serious back-filling.
SPIN
SPIN
SPIN
Blanco, what a sorry excuse for .....
bump
It began when Bush went on vacation... and the press bemoaned, once again, his time spent in Crawford. They then set their sights on 'Mother Sheehan' and the propaganda-mill went into overdrive.
Until the offices of the MSM are stormed by angry citizens... the propaganda will continue. They will work with the Dems... MoveOn.org, George Soros, the UN or any foreign government in order to promote their leftist, socialist agenda.
I was browsing RATS underground while Katrina was still a few hundred miles offshore. One goofball posted, "WHERE IS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT?" (My first thought was - heck, if it's smart, it's haulin' butt outta there!) I'll never forget it...
Bingo.
This is infuriating. The media is allowed to spin and lie with impunity. Sometimes I wish someone would take out about 7 of the top media figures all in one night as a warning that we're not going to accept their deception.
And firing Brown was tantamount to admitting the "sixteen words" shouldn't have been in the SOU address even though they were true.
This administration has been backpeddling since the election in 2000. Karl Rove is no genius.
Adept and professional PR people know how to counteract lies, misconceptions and spin by the other side WITHOUT having it look like "partisan bickering" or mean-spiritness on the President's part. That's why they are professionals.
Adept PR staffs know how to apply the stilleto rather than the hammer. Ari was a master at this and every subsequent embarassing press conference after he left points up the void he left behind.
Adept PR professionals know how to get the word out despite blocking and black-outs by the MSM. PR specialists on President Reagan's staff were particularly effective at reaching over the totally hostile media of the time.
If anyone can prove to me that the press relations and public relations sector of this administration is adept at anything, I'd be delighted to change my opinion.
There's a knee-jerk reaction on this forum to read any criticism of the administration's lack of effective and timely PR as a slam on Pres. Bush. This is so wrong-headed, and indeed, an example of hiding-ones-head-in-the-sand.
There are many present and former professional PR people such as myself on this forum who undoubtedly have been cringing for years at the absence of a crack PR Rapid-Response Team in the administration.
The PR field was ceded to the Dems and Libs by the administration and the RNC years ago. Too many conservatives and Republicans have grown so used to this situation that they no longer even think about it. Instead, they take the less-controversial way out by referring to any criticism of the White House PR situation as anti-Bush.
Leni
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