Redstate

the full reasons for Josh leaving. But in his "absentee" story, there were a lot of RedStaters agreeing with him.

"George Bush has failed the country and his party in this disaster and we will all feel the repercussions."

Hang on a second, Bush has perhaps made some mistakes, it now remains to be seen what he does about these possible mistakes. Your assertion that he has totally failed assumes facts not fully established or not done so in a reasoned rational way.

Being critical of the President and demanding answers and performance is not a bad thing at face value, not quite sure how this point is viewed by the RS editorial board I would say as an aside.

There is a difference between demanding answers, demanding leadership and holding our elected officials accountable, and bashing for political reasons, which are you doing?

was just embarrasing. He's really gone downhill since he stood on the rubble of the World Trade Center.

He said in his interview that he's making sure those with operational control in the federal government are doing all they can to help.  That's all any President can do.  The problem, if there is one, is the state and local officials preparation and organization.  The military and coast guard are plucking thousands from rooftops from what I've been hearing (1st priority) and shuttling around the hundreds of thousands others who are now homeless (2nd priority).

I think everyone is doing as much as possible given the hurricane plus total flood of the city.

The federal government should refuse substantial rebuilding aid unless states can fund and assure a leavie, or move people to higher ground.

It wasn't George W. Bush who brought New York out of the ruination of 9/11.  What New Orleans needs--really has needed for a long time--is competent, uncorrupted local officials.  If the well-intentioned Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco have been "shell-shocked" up until now, now is the time for that to change.  No amount of President Bush wading into town and climbing piles of rubble with a bullhorn is going to rebuild that city.

Please remember all those who took shelter in the Superdome were told to bring 3-5 days worth of food, water and medicine and that this was a "shelter of last resort"

To quote:

Mayor Nagin said the Superdome might be used as a shelter of last resort ... he advised anyone planning to stay there to bring food, drinks and other comforts such as folding chairs. "No weapons, no large items, and bring small quantities of food for three or four days, to be safe," he said.

(St. Pete Times)

End Quote

Am I saying these folks should not get our most immediate help? Absolutely not! But they were told to bring supplies and they did not. Even when they were told there would not be supplies for them, they assumed that there would be. Yes, there is no reason they should have been left without food or water. However, had they heeded the urging of thier own mayor, they would not have been.

Please do not lay this tragedy at the feet of the national government exclusively. Those who took shelter and didn't bring what they were told to bring, and were thinking, rational adults share that blame. Unfortunately those decisions caused the suffering of children and other people that were brought to the shelter who did not have the ability to make those decisions for themselves.

"It wasn't George W. Bush who brought New York out of the ruination of 9/11.  What New Orleans needs--really has needed for a long time--is competent, uncorrupted local officials."

Amen and amen.  

It wasn't George W. Bush who brought New York out of the ruination of 9/11.

It wasn't anybody who brought New York out of ruination because there was no ruinination of New York beyond Ground Zero (and, of course, within the families of those killed).

If you look at the site of the World Trade Center, it's really remarkable that damage was so contained.  Buildings in the immediate neighborhood were damaged, and a couple have had to be taken down, but the rest mostly needed cleaning and window replacement.

To the best of my knowledge, not a single unit of housing was destroyed in 9/11 and relatively few businesses were wiped out.

In a week or two most large businesses were back to something approaching normal, even those that had to be relocated.  Small business in the "no go" zone were affected for longer and we did lose some of those -- in the low hundreds, probably.

Compare that to New Orleans where it's likely the the death toll will be higher than in New York and it sounds like hundreds of thousands of people will be left homeless and out of work.

Living through 9/11 in New York was horrible and I don't want to minimize the experience.  But what's happening in New Orleans now is on a different order of magnitude.

Interestingly the Army Corps of Engineers makes no secret of the fact that the federal/state funds that were slated to upgrade the NOLA levee system were diverted for use in infrastructure rebuilding in Iraq.

...another horse runs onto the track.

as background, I live in the Florida Keys (30+yrs) and have much knowledge of hurricanes; lived through more than a dozen here and in VA; evacuated for most. Lost home to Georges in 98. Roof damage and severe damage to our family biz in Katrina

the failure of this government, or any government to be prepared for an event of this magnitude after having spent literally billions of dollars on homeland defense is shocking and indefensible.

Shelter of last resort for many meant that they had no means to leave NOLA and/or nowhere to head to if they did leave...most of the refugees are NOT from the Superdome; most are simply poor citizens trying to do the best they can and relying on a government that tells them 'we are ready for whatver comes'...

We've already discussed the ACE appropriations, scale of the defenses (Cat 3 vs Cat 5), status of the floodwall that broke (new, completed, unaffected by funding), so this isn't precisely an eye-scale-dropping revelation.

That said, I appreciate your taking hurricanes seriously and evacuating, and I hope your business is back on its feet soon. Ducking down below the political crossfire, people here and elsewhere are sharing a lot of interesting information on what happened before the storm and what's going on now. I  think there's an interesting discussion to be had.

thanks for the clarification that the funding of NOLA levees had already been discussed. Since I was replying to a previous posters comments, I had now way to know that this was so.

It is good to know that some posters to this site are interested in further participation, rather than limiting the discussion(s) to a select few horses.

Thank you for your good wishes.

coordinated at the local level.

The feds provide what they can, when requested, but it isn't FEMA's job or any other federal agencies job to create, organize or decide evacuation and shelter procedures.

In the end there will likely be plenty of blame to go around, but had New Orleans actually run the evacuation plan they had (which required a 72 hour plan, not a 24 hour one) then many of the problems the city is currently experiencing just wouldn't be there, or at least wouldn't be there at the scale it currently is.

Almost every problem currently experienced, was preventable, had the city required mandatory evacuations sooner, and had they actually followed their evacuation plan.  

People are too complacent and they didn't take this hurricane seriously enougha, and they seem to have some unrealistic expectations of government response post hurricane.

I have already said it, I have done two low cat hurricanes, and it still took several weeks to restore power and other services.

There is a good reason the hurricane flyers tell you to stock food and water for each person for three days.

Sorry if I was a little curt; the initial post had a bit of a "talking-point" air to it.

I don't think that particular example is directly relevant to this disaster; but it is fair to say that flood defenses for NO have not been a priority for the federal government. OTOH, it doesn't look like they've been much a priority at the state and local levels, either. That's not terribly surprising. New levee construction tends to draw fire from environmentalists for accelerating the degradation of the coastal marshes; contrariwise, the one pilot project trying to reverse some of the canalization and restore marshes lost a $1.3 billion lawsuit because the fresh water sent through the marsh for that purpose wiped out a bunch of shrimp farms and oyster beds.

There will, of course, be an intense bout of political manuvering following the traditional steps 3-6 of project management:

3. Panic
   
   
4. Search for the guilty
   
   
5. Punishment of the innocent
   
   
6. Rewards for the non-participants
   

with everyone heaving blame around and hoping the other guy can't get it off him. But in retrospect, I think this has exposed structural problems well beyond the capacity for any of the current political actors here to remedy:

1. Political interest in flood protection. See above. It's not as if Cat 5 storms were invented in the 1980s; but no one at any level, except maybe the Corps of Engineers, felt any particular urgency about protecting New Orleans from them.
   
2. Massive corruption and lawlessness in New Orleans. The corruption's been around since Huey Long and doubtless well before. Supposedly Nagin is actually a straight shooter, but you can't overturn something like that overnight. I can only invoke severely dysfunctional public attitudes to explain why large numbers of the NOPD deserted in the face of the hurricane and joined the looters. (Although it does make the heroism of those who stayed to fight looters, often at long odds, all the more memorable.) And at the risk of being un-PC, I don't remember farmers in North Dakota opening up with deer rifles on rescue helicopters during the Red River floods.

Points worth keeping in mind as the political circus begins.

And lo! Erick's latest Red Hot underscores the point neatly. This April, the NYT denounced the Corps plan for Mississippi flood control as "pork" and "a boondoggle", and as unscientific. (The scientific way, I suppose, being marshland restoration...which would never fly, politically, in LA, because of the aquacultural interests.) And there we go.

You've mixed up the mix up.

Eric's quote of the times says this:

"Among these projects is a $2.7 billion boondoggle on the Mississippi River that has twice flunked inspection by the National Academy of Sciences"

you said this:

"This April, the NYT denounced the Corps plan for Mississippi flood control as "pork" and "a boondoggle", and as unscientific."

The Times was referring to a specific $2.7 billion section of the bill as a boondoggle.  That section deals with the upper Mississippi and was reviewed by NAS. (See my comment here.

Also, the bill also had a $2 billion section dealing with wetlands restoration on the coast of Louisiana.

"The bill would shovel $17 billion at the Army Corps of Engineers for flood control and other water-related projects -- this at a time when President Bush is asking for major cuts in Medicaid and other important domestic programs."

I got the impression that they're displeased with the bill in general — how can you spend all this money on flood control when there are important programs to be funded? — but yes, you're correct about the boondoggle language.