From even before the beginning of this crisis, the Louisiana Governor, Kathleen Blanco, has treated this situation as a political issue. As I watched her last Sunday morning press conference, I was amused at how she invoked the presidents name on several occasions.
Blanco noted how she spoke to the president the day before (Saturday) and how it was Bush who called her to issue a state of emergency for the state of Louisiana. This was unusual since I know (from living in Florida) that it is usually the Governor who makes this declaration. But even more unusual was how Blanco noted that it was also the president who called her to insist and plead that she issue a mandatory evacuation.
At the time I didn't realize why she was turning all this responsibility over to the president...but than I realized why. Just a year ago when Hurricane Ivan barely missed the city of New Orleans, both the Governor and the city planners took extreme heat for the inconveniences they caused their population when hurricane Ivan didn't hit their city. Both state and local officials took criticism from all areas, including their failures to prepare for that hurricane.
Amazingly, that criticism led to the slow reactions we saw this past weekend as katrina approached the Louisiana coast. Each public official looked to the other to make the life-saving calls because they didn't want to be responsible for another false alarm. In other words, their was no leadership from the start. When President Bush called on Saturday to ask what the heck was going on, the governor finally took action because she now had her scape-goat should Katrina not hit the city.
What's outrageous about this is that we only have to go back to hurricane Ivan to see what this reluctance meant. From the beginning the mayor was warned of his inadequate city plans. This was even exposed in an AP report from September 19, 2004 by Kevin McGill titled "Ivan exposes flaws in N.O.'s disaster plans." Not only was the mayor warned about his problem of relocating the poor, homeless advocacy groups insisted he make changes.
A quote from the article notes: "They say evacuate, but they don't say how I'm supposed to do that," Latonya Hill, 57, said at the time. "If I can't walk it or get there on the bus, I don't go. I don't got a car. My daughter don't either."..."Even the ACLU criticized the mayor, noting, "If the government asks people to evacuate, the government has some responsibility to provide an option for those people who can't evacuate and are at the whim of Mother Nature," said Joe Cook of the New Orleans ACLU.
The mayor had a full year and yet nothing was done. And this is reprehensible since even the American Red Cross informed the mayor that they would no longer be setting up shelters within the city for hurricanes over category-2. They informed the mayor that is was just too dangerous and that his city was ill-prepared to handle the crisis. Others even warned that the Superdome was insufficient since it would turn into an island with thousands trapped. This all happened a year ago. Mayor Ray Nagin's spokeswoman, Tanzie Jones responded to the criticism... "Our main focus is to get the people out of the city," she said. Hmm...yet we all see the pictures of school buses siting useless in drowned-out parking lots.
The politics didn't stop there. Every state governor has a National Guard at their disposal...not to mention all the State Police and law enforcement agencies at their call. Louisiana still retained 66% of their NG for a crisis just like this. In fact, having been declared a state of emergency by the president (last Saturday), the governor not only has the power to request federal resources, she can request the NG from surrounding states. She did neither before this storm.
But what makes matters worse is that this governor failed to use her own National Guard for the purposes of law enforcment. This was a political decision because she did not want to be the person giving orders that might result in the shooting of "poor, black people." Can you imagine the outrage come election time. This was made more difficult since not only did the mayor of NO...but also her own Attorney General, begin justifying the looting shortly after the hurricane passed. Ironically, these people even had almost a 24 hour window to clean up this mess (and evacuate) after the hurricane passed...and before the levees broke. Sadly, they dropped their guard thinking they got away with another near-miss.
While we all understand the need to survive, this lawlessness broke out immediately, with people taking everything in sight. As a result, chaos ensued and the governor, for political reasons, just would not take control of a situation that would surely destroy her political chances if poor, black people were killed. You could even hear the justification by some as if these people were owed these things. The sad fact is, there was a lack of leadership from the start. Is it any wonder cops were laying down their badges and walking off the job. It wasn't Katrina that destroyed this city...it was the politicians
do you have a link to this??
BULLSEYE.
Can I borrow your tagline?
You're right about the attorney general, I saw him on one of the news channel and when asked about the looting he tried to downplay it and justify it.
I find it interesting that while there's no shortage of criticism of GWB by the MSM for the response to this disaster I have yet to hear any journalists report that since they were coming to New Orleans to report on the tragedy they had the forethought to bring food and water themselves to distribute among the needy. After all, doesn't every bit help?
I wish one of these assho!es would shove a mic in my face because that's the first question I'd ask him. Sheppard Smith of FOX said this morning he and his crew were staying somewhere an hour away from New Orleans. What makes me think he didn't haul any people out with him last night? Yet he and others have the audacity to bitch and moan that "it's just taking too long". He and others need to understand that sometimes it's just more important to do the right thing than to simply report the story.
I think you need to save this and send this after this whole mess is calmed down. It's all good. We'll need to know how things REALLY went wrong as the media will continue to play the Bush blame game well into the '06 election cycle.