Hey, I never said I expect big government to save our butts. But building basic infrastructure required to protect a major city should come even before military upkeep. And yes, before the Big Dig, too (no argument there). Shafting the Army Corps of Engineers in this case was the wrong thing to do. I'm more of a libertarian than a liberal, and don't like to see my tax money spent period. But since I already paid my taxes, I'd like to see our government do work rather than make excuses. Building appropriate levees to save a major metropolis is hardly a socialist handout.
I don't think anyone has mentioned yet that FEMA (the FEDERAL disaster department) is NOT a "first responder" rescue type of organization. It is their responsibility to hand out checks, coordinate shelter resources and most of the "after the fact" work of disasters.
The governor in LA is completely to blame for the lack of Nat. Guard presence in the area. Had she pre-emptively declared the area as disasterous, the guard could have mobilized much sooner in the area. She only declared a disaster area in response from the plea of the federal gov.
Oh and this is hilarious:
http:/
First here's something else to read,note the date! http:/
Jeff,
I love it when someone bashes Rush. But I guess you have a valid complaint, after all since he came on nationally in "88" the Dem's have been on somewhat of a losing streak. Is it the message or the messenger? It is entertaining to hear some of the things that are said and go on unfiltered by the main media.
Global warming? Duh. Lets see do I have this right? Most of the topography of the northeast was formed by glaciers. Where are they now? How long have they been gone? That's right long before the pilgrims arrived. It's a cycle. Don't worry though at some point the sun will burn out(so I've read) and the ice will come back..... Can't wait! 
This post makes it sound as though New Orleans is like any other major US city when we all know that is simply not the case. New Orleans could be made more safe in the same way the Netherlands has been reclaimed from the sea. The project to strengthen the levies was expected to take several years to complete so funding it or not in fiscal '03-'04 would have made no difference for this storm so it's a moot point. More than 9000 guardsmen were available in states bordering the storm areas so the number of available guardsmen was NOT the problem; piss poor planning and communication on the part of the governor of LA was the culprit. Compare her respose with the response to hurricane Andrew (Gov Lawton Chiles-D.) and the '04 storms (Gove Jeb Bush-R.) to see what good planning and disaster response looks like.Here's a quote from the St.Pete Times article on Andrew-10 years after
So neither Florida Gov Lawton Chiles nor President Bill Clinton had any experience with a storm of this magnitude or coordinating such a massive relief effort. Neither had FEMA up to that point. But the relief effort was STILL better than what we have seen with Katrina. And Andew came along with very little warning; unlike Katrina which chugged along for nearly a week before going ashore right where they said it would.
By the time the '04 storms hit, both George and Jeb Bush had taken heed of the past mistakes of both state and federal gov'ts disaster responses WRT Andrew, and as a result the relief effort for the '04 storms was well coordinated and efficient.
So now comes the '05 storm season with Katrina and some people are now saying that W just forgot how to get a disaster relief up and running, or that maybe he bungled it on purpose to punish the folks of New Orleans??!! Hog Fu--ing wash! The governor of LA is to blame for not requesting federal aid in time, not requesting guardsmen on time and not having acquired the
means to stay in communication (we HAVE the technology!) with the federal and (neighboring) state agencies. This is a simple lack of planning. These are all lessons a COMPETENT governor would have learned by example from the experience of FL governors past, had she been paying attention.
It is good to remember that wherever you live in the USA, generally speaking, you are NOT under the everyday control of the US (federal) government. Neither is the US government responsible for you health and safety; these are the purview of the government of the state in which you reside. Furthermore, the federal govenment may not casually take control of, meddle or interfere with the affairs of the state governments unless requested by the state's governor to do so. The governor of LA failed to do so in a timely manner WRT Katrina. The president cannot simply call in federal army troops to straighten things out; that is ILLEGAL. The governor of any state OTOH, can call up state guard troops, can request guard troops from another state or even federal troops. The governors have that authority; The president does not.
Jimbo
Though in my memeory the H. Andrew releif was a Bill Clinton affair (it went on for a few years), he actually inherited that situation from the lame duck presidency of George H W Bush. Either way, STILL better than the present!
Jimbo
Ok, Jimbo, all that may explain LA. What about Mississippi? Does the ex-chair of the RNC and Bush's '00 campaign not know who to call for help? And if the Feds really are powerless to help in an emergency, then they should be equally powerless to hinder. But I'll let the president of Jefferson Parish speak to that.
Watching this thing unfold reminded me a lot of the place I work at. We used to be a small family owned business with about 200 employees when I started there 8 years ago. We are known in our industry as being, by far, the most responsive to problems (which we pretty much created - but still). To get things done in our plant, you pretty much took a project and had cart blanche to cross department lines to talk to whoever and get it done. As a Field Service Manager, I could collaborate with my field techniciangs, draw up a part in the computer myself, take it to a CNC or Laser programmer and have the finished stainless steel or aluminum part in my hand within about two hours and on a flight to that location in another hour. We've since grown to nearly 500 employees over those eight years and our department lines are becoming harder to traverse. Our documentation of things still looks like it does when we were 20 people sitting in the same room working together - so we sometimes don't document enough. In other ways, getting things done takes more and more time, involves more people, and gets screwed up a lot more. This is a hard transition but we're working through it.
Obviously, our government hasn't recently doubled in employees - but what I saw in response to Katrina reminded me a lot of what I have to deal with daily. WHY in the WORLD does the state governor have to ask for troops before they will mobilize? EVERYBODY saw this hurricane coming. WHY would these people in charge sit there and ignore a serious situation because they haven't received a phone call from the right person (now THIS is like what I work with). Why wasn't that Navy hospital ship mobilized out of Norfolk as soon as we saw Katrina building like crazy in the gulf?
How long did it take us to get a Hospital ship to the Tsunami vicitims in the Pacific? I would say that our response to an international disaster is probably better than one on our own shores.
All good questions, Jake, and I'm sure someone in one of the many hearings on what went wrong will ask those very same ones. I think it's too soon to tell what went wrong and what went right. One of the questions I want answered is, "If you are governor of a state that has a major hurricane bearing down on it and you have been told as long ago as 2001 that your state is in the top 3 of potential disasters in the country if a major hurricane hits WHY DON'T YOU SCREAM FOR FEDERAL ASSISTANCE THE SECOND JIM CANTORO BOOKS HIS AIRPLANE TICKET? That means declaring state of emergency, calling out the National Guards (they should be called Louisiana State Guards by the way), pulling out of storage all the water and food kits you should have stockpiled and shipping them to the Superdome if that was in your survival plan etc. etc. etc.
It is in The Governor's Handbook 101, page 1 that the governor of a state controls everything in an emergency. We have that all the time up here in the frozen north when a blizzard or ice storm is coming. They have plans in place to handle everything. I see no evidence they had a plan for anything related to the potential disaster they have been lving with. Wait until the lawyers get a hold of this one!!!!! "Have you been injured in the Hurricane? Call the law offices of ......"
Also where was the media on this one? Why weren't they screaming from 2001 on that this was a disaster waiting to happen? Maybe they were there and we just didn't hear them? Plenty of questions but it won't be for quite some time before we get answers...
From my understanding, the cities, states, and disaster planners all had been saying for a long time that this was a disaster waiting to happen, and the predictions of magnitude were along the lines of what has been seen. Anybody paying any attention to this from last year's season would know the info was there, in the media and otherwise. The same thing is known about the Tampa/St. Pete area, and they also dodged a major bullet last year. After the close calls last year, they did start revising the plans, and the fact that things (evacuations and such) have gone as well as they have is testament to that, in other words it could have been much worse. Certainly not perfect, but consider the magnitude of the problem. One problem with the evacuations is that not everybody had the means to get out.
As for deploying their Guard units - it would be interesting to know just how much they had to deploy, given that a lot of guard units are fighting full time in Iraq. Not a political statement, just one of truth.
I also think that at the federal level, watching the storm come in and saying "gosh, nobody has asked for help in the correct fashion so they must not need it" as a ways to justify response is wrong. People at that level needed to be thinking a couple of moves ahead as well.
Jimbo is right on the money here. The Fed has no right to do anything unless asked by the state. Remember that we are the United STATES. That is 50 states that united together independent of eachother.
Here is a good web blog from inside NO during the disaster. http://mgno.com/
There is one person to blame and that is the Governor of LA. She needed to take quick and decisive action to ask for help quickly and direct rescue operations.
Here is a good read on the disaster written prior to Katrina posted by John W.
http:/
There were a few disasters waiting to happen in the US. This was one of them. Another is a San. Fran. Earthquake and yet another is a Hurracane in NY City.
The Mayor didn't exactly help the situation either. He could have done more but I blame his inexperience in the job.
Mike Hill
www.stlouiscats.com
disaster
(noun) 1 : a sudden calamitous event bringing great damage, loss, or destruction; broadly : a sudden or great misfortune or failure; 2 obsolete : an unfavorable aspect of a planet or star
To that add natural.
I wonder if all the people that want to place blame have taken the time to think about the total area that was destroyed. The amount of people that have been affected. All the cities and towns. Use Google Earth to fly the whole area. Do you really think that anyone has the resources or manpower to fix it overnight? Do you really think a few thousand more N. Guards were going to make the difference? I guess it's just easier to stomp your feet and yell I want it now,now,now. Instead you should look at how much has been done in a week. I think it's incredible.
In this disaster a week is like overnight.
Even if the response hasn't been perfect, it's hard to claim that *nothing* is being done. Regardless of who's in charge, let's let them do their jobs... it's all we can do now.
My finger-pointing wasn't at the damage-control efforts now, but towards the bozos who thought they could make steep cuts to the corps of engineers to pay for our budgetary deficiencies in the "War on Terror". My post wasn't intended as a Bush-bash, though I do blame his uncontrolled expenditures for the cuts to begin with. The government wastes a lot of money on utter crap (yes including the Big Dig, but also $10 billion on highway expansion in Utah to encourage exurban sprawl - and don't even get me started on federal handouts to the energy industries). There are few areas in which I approve of federal spending. Securing New Orleans is one of them.
If we actually want to talk about Bush-bashing... here goes. When Republicans in Congress in the 90's called for fiscal responsibility, I applauded them (and was not a big Clinton fan, either). I was actually hopeful when Bush took office in 2000. But these past 5 years have been filled with a few disasters, some tough talk, mostly bad leadership, and plenty of excuses. Just because I prefer the pseudo-libertarian ideology of the Republican party to the largely-dead socialist mentality of the Democrats, doesn't mean I approve of how the Republican majority has abused power and weakened our nation.
Through all this the one thing I haven't heard mentioned is the thought of another storm hitting the area. Hurricane season is not over, here's hoping that doesn't happen.
No kidding. It's hard to imagine it getting much worse on the south gulf coast, but if a major hurricane trashed Florida and we had 2 disaster areas at the same time, that would really hurt.
But there's a big difference between cities above sea level and cities below sea level with inadequate levees.
Here's a check-in on reality. The Gulf coast Hurricane Season is just beginning. Prime time is mid Sep thru mid Oct. It's far from over. Have y'all seen the huge wave coming off the Africa coast now? It's at a favorable latitude for development.
Bob
I can't imagine another hurricane in N.O., I don't think they could handle a light drizzle for quite some time 
.
Keith, What have you been reading? First page, fourth down.
Also we have Ophelia cooking off the east coast.
utah:
the local LA government did not take advantage of funds available to them for levee maintenance and upgrades.
This year's list ends with Wilma. I wonder what they will do if it goes beyond that. Maybe add Xavier, Yvonne and Zach? And then what do they do?
Mary, they then go to the greek alphabet.. Alpha,Beta,etc..
PIC of wave Bob mentioned.
With all due respect, Keith, I don't think the tax cut was the reason the levies weren't built better. I think that point has been made by other posters better than I could make it. I can only add that every serious economist predicts, and every example tried, shows that tax cuts lead to increased revenues. This has been proven multiple times here in the US as well as overseas in Iceland, Ireland, Estonia (I think; one of the Baltic republics has surged ahead in their economic development by lower taxes, establishing strong rules of law regarding business and getting the government out of business.)
And who would have been responsible for correcting the deficiencies? Would one not start with the mayor and govenor? Our federalist structure should have called for that as the starting point. If these levies were not sufficient for a Cat. 4 or above storm, which seems to be what everyone says, then wouldn't you, as mayor or govenor, be fighting, lobbying, yelling, politicing for the funds to get them built to a safer level? And wouldn't you fight to get the funds at the state and federal level? I'm positive you would done such.
David
H20
With all due respect, Keith, I don't think the tax cut was the reason the levies weren't built better. I think that point has been made by other posters better than I could make it. I can only add that every serious economist predicts, and every example tried, shows that tax cuts lead to increased revenues. This has been proven multiple times here in the US as well as overseas in Iceland, Ireland, Estonia (I think; one of the Baltic republics has surged ahead in their economic development by lower taxes, establishing strong rules of law regarding business and getting the government out of business.)
That is simply not true. Neither the "every serious economist" bit or the "tax cuts lead to increased revenues" bit. There's the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (paper on "revenue increases") and my personal favorite, The Concord Coalition (essay on fiscal responsibility) It's as absurd as saying that all serious scientists agree that global warming is true. Also, there are about 7 trillion pieces of evidence that have popped up against the supply side theory since it was first tested, so calling it a slam dunk is rather silly.
With all due respect, Keith, I don't think the tax cut was the reason the levies weren't built better. I think that point has been made by other posters better than I could make it. I can only add that every serious economist predicts, and every example tried, shows that tax cuts lead to increased revenues. This has been proven multiple times here in the US as well as overseas in Iceland, Ireland, Estonia (I think; one of the Baltic republics has surged ahead in their economic development by lower taxes, establishing strong rules of law regarding business and getting the government out of business.)
And who would have been responsible for correcting the deficiencies? Would one not start with the mayor and govenor? Our federalist structure should have called for that as the starting point. If these levies were not sufficient for a Cat. 4 or above storm, which seems to be what everyone says, then wouldn't you, as mayor or govenor, be fighting, lobbying, yelling, politicing for the funds to get them built to a safer level? And wouldn't you fight to get the funds at the state and federal level? I'm positive you would done such.
David
H20
As for the tax cuts being the source of the only recently raised revenue, I've read there is a split on that. Other events, such as deadlines for certain businesses declaring certain revenues have come due, also adding to the amount. Also, given the timetable for the tax cuts the benefits have taken longer to materialize, which might make some question whether they are directly responsible. Analysts who don't have an agenda to push say more time needs to pass to see what the source is and the effect. Analysts on the left will say no effect frorm tax cuts. I tend to go with the need more analysis approach. The red ink is still substantial, and the deficit predictions do not include the conflict in Iraq. So, will the revenue increase the cuts produce be equal or more than the revenue they removed from the system? I guess we'll see. But the level of pork being added to just about any bill these days doesn't help either. You can still have my tax cut - more because I know it hasn't changed my spending habits (ie no extra benefit to the ecomony from me), and I'd rather have it go to infrastructure needs that this country has. BTW you seemed to blame the Big Dig..
The levees have been under constant upgrade and repair for many years (30?) under the Army Corps of Engineers, until '03-'04 when the budget axe fell on it. So the local and federal authorities were aware and working on it until the money went thin. Without proof otherwise, I wouldn't presume to say that the locals did not continue to be concerned or continue to lobby to get funding and work restored. I'm also not sure what happens when locals try to barge in on Army Corps of Engineers projects, fully funded or not.
Also, not necessarily for this particular repsonse, but in general, timelines indicate that a state of emergency was declared by the governor on Friday, 8/26. States of emergencies were declared by the N.O. mayor and Mississippi governor on Saturday, 8/27. Bush also declared a state of emergency on 8/27.
Also we have Ophelia cooking off the east coast.
Mike,
I was thinking more of the general media frenzy at the time, not this thread. But also, now that we're on to page 6, I forgot your page 1 post. What was all this about again? Sorry...
Steveh,
I don't have web sites to send you to and I stand corrected that probably "every serious economist" was an overstatement. I can rely, however, on Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman as pretty reputable sources for the position I stated. I visited the sites you linked to and note that they are a bit from the left persuasion. I can only approach the issue with some basic logic that seems to follow human nature. People seem to continually want to retain as much of the fruits of their labor as possible. We have also seen (probably from the prior motivation) that the more one taxes an activity, the less of that activity you will get. Now historically there is a solid correlation between taxe cuts and increases in tax revenues. This has happened multiple times in our history. We have also seen the reverse where taxes were increased and revenues, if they didn't go down, didn't rise. People will go to great lengths to avoid having their earnings taken away from them.
For example, the lowering of the captial gains taxes created a strong surge in business acquisitions (and therefore business selling). Good for the business owner? You betcha. Good for the economy? You betcha. The business changed hands and was often driven to new levels of productivity and the business owner freed up a large amount of capital that was "frozen" in his business. Like the melting of an large block of ice, the money to flowed into the economy. It seems insulting to say it, but the way some people carry on about someone "cashing out" and getting a windfall from something they built up with their labor and brains, you would think the money gets put in a box and buried, never to do any good. The money gets put to work; it gets spent for goods and services, its gets invested, even if it gets saved, its put to work (by the bank). The money is churned through the economy and that creates more economic activity which in the end enlarges the economy. A growing economy creates more jobs and opportunity.
I've never understood why liberals want so much of their toil taken from them. I've also never understood liberal's great faith in government. Humans seem to follow the dictum that power corrupt and increases in centralizing power tend to increase corruption, but that's another long thread. We all need to give some of our wealth to the government (our "commonwealth"), but it seems to me that the less government is set up to do for me, the more freedom I will have and the increase in personal freedom (along with personal capital) is overall a good thing.
David
H20
I look at my paycheck every two weeks and pray to god a hurricane would wipe out the IRS forever.
Fair tax act PLEASE!#$!#$
Bob
We've even had a couple of December storms. It will be interesting to see if this season will be busier than '95 when we had 19 named Atlantic storms, 12 of them huricanes. There was just no relaxing in '95. 
Jimbo
This includes proper planning to ensure that the state government can continue to communicate with the outside world in thee immediate aftermath. We have the technology. This is 2005, not 1905! Where were the sattlite phones? Did they really believe that the cell phones would still work?!!
Doh! darn that 'spoils' system!
Jimbo
David,
CBPP is definitely of a liberal bent. Concord Coalition, however, is bi/non-partisan. One of the founders, along with Paul Tsongas, is Warren Rudman, of the DOA Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balance Budget Act. Seeing balanced budgets, a solvent Social Security and distaste for tax cut du jour as 'liberal' I believe is a commentary on how far afield we've gotten in the last 25 years of not-so-conservative fiscal policy. But all this is really another thread for another board and if I had saved any of hundreds I've been involved with, I'd simply answer with "Argument 4a" and be done with it.
David
H20
Bravo! I have never understood the faith that liberals have that someone else can make a better decision with your money than you can. HUH?