Blanco demands Katrina probe

2theadvocate.com ^ | 01/23/07 | GERARD SHIELDS

[Ellesu]

WASHINGTON — Gov. Kathleen Blanco called on Congress on Monday to create a bipartisan commission to see if Republican Party politics factored in the federal response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Blanco’s call comes just days after former FEMA Director Michael Brown said the White House considered politics while planning to deal with Hurricane Katrina.

Brown said Friday that the White House was considering federalizing Louisiana because Blanco was a Democrat. Similar measures were not considered for Mississippi, which was headed by Gov. Haley Barbour, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, he said.

On Monday, Brown wouldn’t name who made those comments.

“But I was on Air Force One when this all was being discussed,” he said.

Brown said Blanco was on Air Force One that day, but was in a different part of the presidential jet and didn’t hear the conversation. The plane was in Louisiana during one of President Bush’s trips to the state after the storm.

Blanco’s statement Monday presses the issue of White House politics.

“All of us were sickened to hear that while thousands of our citizens were suffering during Hurricane Katrina, political operatives in the White House were playing party politics,” the statement says.

To allow for “a full recovery and more adequately respond to future disasters,” Blanco called on Congress to:

Create a bipartisan commission to investigate the immediate and long-term federal response to what she called “the largest and most-catastrophic natural disasters in U.S. history.” Investigate the role of the White House political advisers throughout the two hurricanes. Buffer the Federal Emergency Management Agency from “political agendas and partisan politics.” Achieve parity in distribution of federal recovery dollars through standard criteria based on actual damage and need. Blanco and U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., who also has called for an independent commission, have complained about recent federal funding allocations to the state.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that the state would receive $86.6 million or 49 percent of the money available for hospital and health care grants. Neighboring Mississippi received 38 percent. Landrieu noted that Louisiana suffered 70 percent of the damage.

Likewise, state delegation members complained last month when FEMA proposed that almost 70 percent of the $388 million in money available for alternative disaster housing go to Mississippi while Louisiana suffered three times the housing damage.

But Blanco and Landrieu are unlikely to get their commission hearings.

U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., has said he will not pursue White House documents sought last year in the 21 Katrina hearings held by the committee he now chairs, the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

The panel accumulated more than 820,000 pages of documents, heard testimony from 74 witnesses and interviewed 290 more.

Likewise, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Cal., isn’t likely to create a special panel, instead allowing each of her committees to conduct what her spokesman Drew Hammill called Monday “necessary oversight.”

For example, the House Financial Services Committee already has announced that it intends to look into insurance coverage in the wake of the storms.

U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., dismissed Brown’s comments over the weekend, calling him “an idiot and a failure.”

U.S. Rep. Charles “Charlie” Melancon, D-Napoleonville, sat on the House Katrina Task Force, which also held dozens of hearings on the federal government’s response to the storms.

Melancon would like to see more probes into how the government handled the emergency.

He is “not looking for a witch hunt or to assign blame,” Melancon’s spokeswoman Robin Winchell said Monday. “He just wants to find out what went wrong in the federal response to Katrina so it doesn’t happen again.”

[Paige]

I'm revising history but I have sent you accurate data and web sites with the historically accurate data? Yep, I was correct from the beginning and as they say in Latin.... try to get knowledge for Scientia est potentia.

I bid you adieu.

[fieldmarshaldj]

She needs even more people to point out the fact she is the most grossly incompetent Chief Exec in LA in recent memory ? She may earn the moniker as the stupidest person in politics today.

[redstates4ever]