The feds are at fault for the Katrina debacle, despite what jackasses say

2005.09.16 — Government | News | Hurricane Katrina | by BB Rodriquez

Even tho President Bush has taken responsibility for some of the federal government's failures ("to the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right") in responding to Hurricane Katrina, his administration is still on a day-and-night effort to rehabilitate his reputation, with help from conservatives in the news media. They're still blaming the state and local governments of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama for not adequately preparing. Here's the problem: they're three of the poorest states in the union, and large parts of their preparations were destroyed.

Local government? What local government? New Orleans was flattened and flooded. The mayor was holed up in a makeshift command center with virtually no communications. His police and fire crews were just as in need of rescuing as the rest of the city. Could the state governors provide relief? Sure, and they did... but with most of their National Guard troops overseas guarding a different nation, it wasn't so effective.

Were New Orleans' levees a problems? Sure, and everyone knew it and asked for Army Corps of Engineers help... and got their funding rerouted to prop up the foundering Iraq War. It's clear that the state and local governments were not fully prepared for a mass evacuation, but who is? No city in America is prepared for its own destruction.

Louisiana Governor Blanco may well lose her job in the next election, but Bush's cronies in Homeland Security should lose theirs now. Nagin and Blanco have a city and a state to run when they aren't planning for disaster, but the DHS's and FEMA's only job is disaster planning and relief.

This disaster needed federal aid immediately and extensively, and the feds should have known it before the hurricane even came ashore, let alone after the levees broke. Instead Bush's solution, once state and local officials begged him for help, was to try to take over the Louisiana National Guard. Blanco naturally balked, since it was the only tool she had and Bush wasn't trying to take over in Mississippi or Alabama—Republican-led states.

So now the Bushies are smarting from a normally-complacent news media suddenly lashing out at them when they saw suffering lasting for days without federal help and an apparently uncaring president only reluctantly rolling out of his vacation house bed for a shower and shave before moseying over for a photo op. So all the president's men are passing the buck to the state and local governments for not being prepared enough to manage their own emergency.

Worse, the Bushies have also tried to blame the victims of the hurricane themselves. Their attitude was nicely summarized in the grotesque language only Bill O'Reilly can actually spew without vomiting.

First, the huge, bureaucratic government will never be able to protect you. If you rely on government for anything, anything, you’re going to be disappointed, no matter who the president is.

O'Reilly likes to pretend that he's an independent, not a Republican, let alone a neo-conservative. But he gets the same talking points memos that every other right-wing media nut gets and reliably parrots them, cleverly disguised as his "Talking Points" segment. And this is the worst, foulest, most obscene right-wing rhetoric ever uttered by anyone who claimed to be a member of a major news organization. Not even the most rabid of conservative right-wingers believes that the government is of no use at all.

The fact is that promoting the common welfare and protecting the nation's populous by keeping the peace, dealing with foreign nations, and responding to natural disasters is the whole, entire purpose of a government. And big disasters require big response at the highest levels of government. The virtual destruction of an entire major city fits that description.

But O'Reilly's not done.

If you don’t get educated, if you don’t develop a skill, and force yourself to work hard, you’ll most likely be poor. And sooner or later, you’ll be standing on a symbolic rooftop waiting for help.

That's right. Not only is it not the federal government's fault, it's not the state and local government's fault either. It's the fault of every man, woman, and child trapped in the disaster zone. You don't deserve to be rescued because you are stupid and lazy, which has made you poor. There are a lot of complicated reasons that people are poor; being idle and undereducated are as much a result as a cause. But, regardless, only a world-class asshole blames the victims of a natural disaster for their own predicament.

Isn’t the Constitution in the way?

"White House shifts blame for Katrina response" points out that part of the administration's smokescreen is that federal rules and the constitution prohibited the feds from sending help, especially in the form of regular army troops (because, remember, the National Guard is mostly in Iraq). Bullshit. The purpose of FEMA is to manage national emergencies. Nothing was stopping that from happening but the feds themselves.

I've linked to Google's cached copy that I've saved rather than directly to the original Washington Post news story on MSNBC because the article is mysteriously missing now. It's supposed to be here or here. Could parent company execs Jeffrey Immelt and Bob Wright—GOP supporters and heads of major military contractor GE—influenced a shift in their subsidiaries' news policies?

Providing federal government power, reach, influence, and money to disaster areas is the whole entire purpose of FEMA. If those in charge haven't figured out how to do that immediately and within the bounds of the Constitution, they are utter, miserable, unconscionable failures.

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