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Another Perspective for all the Bush Haters to read!
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| Steven Hays |
I received this e-mail today:
How About This....Katrina: From a different perspective!
In case you aren’t familiar with how our government is SUPPOSED to work: The chain of responsibility for the protection of the citizens in New Orleans is:
1. The Mayor
2. The New Orleans director of Homeland Security (a political appointee of
the Governor who reports to the Governor)
3. The Governor
4. The Head of Homeland Security
5. The President
What did each do?
1. The mayor, with 5 days advance, waited until 2 days before he announced a mandatory evacuation (at the behest of the President). The he failed to provide transportation for those without transport even though he had hundreds of buses at his disposal.
2. The New Orleans director of Homeland Security failed to have any plan for a contingency that has been talked about for 50 years. Then he blames the Feds for not doing what he should have done. (So much for political appointees)
3. The Governor, despite a declaration of disaster by the President 2 DAYS BEFORE the storm hit, failed to take advantage of the offer of Federal troops and aid. Until 2 DAYS AFTER the storm hit.
4. The Director of Homeland Security positioned assets in the area to be ready when the Governor called for them, before the flooding.
5. The President urged a mandatory evacuation, and even declared a disaster State of Emergency, freeing up millions of dollars of federal assistance, should the Governor decide to use it.
Oh and by the way, the levees that broke were the responsibility of the local landowners and the local levee board to maintain, NOT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. The levee board has collected taxes for decades
and spent the money on buying a casino, and a private airplane for their use. You haven't heard much about
that in the news, but watch for it, as it's going to have to come out sooner or later.
The disaster in New Orleans is what you get after decades of corrupt local and state government going all the way back to Huey Long. If you don't remember him, he's worth looking up.
Funds for disaster protection and relief have been flowing into this city for decades, and where has it gone, but into the pockets of the politicos and their friends. (See "levee board", further down)
Decades of socialist government in New Orleans has sapped all self reliance from the community, and made them dependent upon government for every little thing, or a small welfare state of loyal voters.
Political correctness and a lack of will to fight crime have created the single most corrupt police force in the country, and has permitted gang violence to flourish.
The sad thing is that there are many poor folks who have suffered and died needlessly because those that they voted into office failed to protect them.
For those who missed item 5 (where the President’s level of accountability is discussed), it is made more clear in a New Orleans Times-Picayune article dated August 28:
NEW ORLEANS (AP) ? In the face of a catastrophic Hurricane Katrina, a mandatory evacuation was ordered Sunday for New Orleans by Mayor Ray Nagin.
Acknowledging that large numbers of people, many of them stranded tourists, would be unable to leave, the city set up 10 places of last resort for people to go, including the Superdome.
The mayor called the order unprecedented and said anyone who could leave the city should. He exempted hotels from the evacuation order because airlines had already cancelled all flights.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding.
The ball was placed in Mayor Nagin's court to carry out the evacuation order. With a 5-day heads-up, he had the authority to use any and all services to evacuate all residents from the city, as documented in a city emergency preparedness plan. By waiting until the last minute, and failing to make full use of resources available within city limits, Nagin and his administration dropped the ball.
Mayor Nagin and his emergency sidekick Terry Ebbert have displayed lethal, mind boggling incompetence before, during and after Katrina.
As for Mayor Nagin, he and his pathetic police chief should resign as well. That city’s government is incompetent from one end to the other. The people of New Orleans deserve better than this crowd of
clowns is capable of giving them.
If you’re keeping track, these boobs let 569 buses that could have carried 33,350 people out of New Orleans in one trip get ruined in the floods. Baton Rouge is not that far up the road, so they could have made multiple trips. Whatever plan these guys had, it was a dud. It probably would have worked if they’d bothered to follow their emergency preparedness plan, already in place.
As for all the race-baiting rhetoric and Bush-bashing coming from prominent blacks on the left, don’t expect Ray Nagin to be called out on the carpet for falling short. You want to know why? Here’s why:
It’s more convenient to blame a white president for what went wrong than to hold a black mayor and his administration accountable for gross negligence and failing to fully carry out an established emergency preparedness plan.
To hold Nagin and his administration accountable for dropping the ball amounts to letting loose the shouts and cries of ?Racism!?. It’s sad, it’s wrong, but it’s standard operating procedure for the media and left-wing black leadership.
Mark my words: you will not hear a word of criticism from Jesse Jackson Sr., Randall Robinson, the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP, or Kanye West being directed toward Clarence Ray Nagin Jr. Why? Because he is just another black politician, instead of a responsible elected official who happens to
be black. In the mindset of more-blacker-than-thou blacks, black politicians who are on their side can do no wrong.
John Gedney III
Vice President Sales
E. L. Wagner Co., Inc.
101 Noroton Avenue
Darien, CT 06820 |
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| Q5echo |
| more perspective: In the last five years this administration has funded the Louisiana Army Corps of Engineers more than any other administration in history, to the tune of $1.9 billion. compare that to California's $1.4 billion with six times the pop. |
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| Steven Hays |
| Why doesn't this thread generate as much response as the others? |
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| Trancer-X |
MR. RUSSERT: Hold on. Hold on, sir. Shouldn't the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of New Orleans bear some responsibility? Couldn't they have been much more forceful, much more effective and much more organized in evacuating the area?
MR. BROUSSARD: Sir, they were told like me, every single day, "The cavalry's coming," on a federal level, "The cavalry's coming, the cavalry's coming, the cavalry's coming." I have just begun to hear the hoofs of the cavalry. The cavalry's still not here yet, but I've begun to hear the hoofs, and we're almost a week out.
Let me give you just three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn't need them. This was a week ago. FEMA--we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, "Come get the fuel right away." When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. "FEMA says don't give you the fuel." Yesterday--yesterday--FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, "No one is getting near these lines." Sheriff Harry Lee said that if America--American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn't be in this crisis.
But I want to thank Governor Blanco for all she's done and all her leadership. She sent in the National Guard. I just repaired a breach on my side of the 17th Street canal that the secretary didn't foresee, a 300-foot breach. I just completed it yesterday with convoys of National Guard and local parish workers and levee board people. It took us two and a half days working 24/7. I just closed it.
MR. RUSSERT: All right.
MR. BROUSSARD: I'm telling you most importantly I want to thank my public employees...
MR. RUSSERT: All right.
MR. BROUSSARD: ...that have worked 24/7. They're burned out, the doctors, the nurses. And I want to give you one last story and I'll shut up and let you tell me whatever you want to tell me. The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, "Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?" And he said, "Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday." And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night.
MR. RUSSERT: Mr. President...
MR. BROUSSARD: Nobody's coming to get us. Nobody's coming to get us. The secretary has promised. Everybody's promised. They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For God sakes, shut up and send us somebody.
MR. RUSSERT: Just take a pause, Mr. President. While you gather yourself in your very emotional times, I understand, let me go to Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi.
Governor Barbour, can you bring our audience up to date on what is happening in your state, how many deaths have you experienced and what do you see playing out over the next couple days?
GOV. HALEY BARBOUR, (R-MS): Well, we were ground zero of the worst natural disaster ever to hit the United States. And it's not just a calamity on our Gulf Coast, which is decimated, I mean, destroyed, all the infrastructure overwhelmed. We have damage 150 miles inland. We have 100 miles inland, 12 deaths from winds over 110 miles an hour.
Saturday night before this storm hit, the head of the National Hurricane Center called me and said, "Governor, this is going to be like Camille." I said, "Well, start telling people it's going to be like Camille," because Camille is the benchmark for how bad--it's the worst hurricane that ever hit America, it happened to hit Pass Christian, Mississippi. Well, Tim, Katrina was worse than Camille. It was worse than Camille in size. It was worse than Camille in damage. And so we've had a terrible, grievous blow struck us.
But my experience is very different from Louisiana, apparently. I don't know anything about Louisiana. Over here, we had the Coast Guard in Monday night. They took 1,700 people off the roofs of houses with guys hanging off of helicopters to get them. They sent us a million meals last night because we'd eaten everything through. Everything hasn't been perfect here, by any stretch of the imagination, Tim. But the federal government has been good partners to us. They've tried hard. Our people have tried hard. Firemen and policemen and emergency medical people, National Guard, highway patrolmen working virtually around the clock, sleeping in their cars when they could sleep. And we've made progress every day.
But should I--we haven't made as much progress as I want any day. And to be honest, we won't make as much progress as I want any day because the devastation we're dealing with is unimaginable, not just unprecedented. It's unimaginable.
MR. RUSSERT: Governor, will you rebuild casinos along the Gulfport, exactly the same locations they were? And is that inviting another disaster if you do?
GOV. BARBOUR: Just this spring, our Legislature voted to no longer require the casinos to float, which had been the law that was initially passed when we legalized Las Vegas-style casinos in 1991. Our Legislature is going to have to look at whether or not we want to allow the casinos to be built on the land like the hotels that they're attached to. Nobody is going to talk about bringing them inland or anything. But the question is, should the bottoms, should the floors actually sit on land or pilings instead of out in the water. And because every one, or virtually every one of the casino barges, the casino floors were blown inland and did a lot of damage, the Legislature, I think, will do that. That's going to be my recommendation.
MR. RUSSERT: All right, gentlemen.
GOV. BARBOUR: But that's just one issue. It's one of a lot of terrible issues. That's just one issue.
MR. RUSSERT: Governor, how many people do you think have died in the state of Mississippi?
GOV. BARBOUR: Well, the official death toll is 160-something. And with the debris, Tim, that we have on the coast, which in many areas is six, eight, 10 feet tall, and because some people didn't evacuate, I think that toll will go up. I can't tell you how much, but we have so many people on the coast, they boarded up for Ivan, evacuated, nothing happened. Boarded up for Dennis, evacuated, nothing happened. Then they said, you know, "Where I am was OK for Camille." Nobody ever imagined something worse than Camille. And we have a lot of people...
MR. RUSSERT: Right.
GOV. BARBOUR: ...who may have died because they didn't believe anything could be worse than Camille.
MR. RUSSERT: Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi, Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard, we thank you very much for your own personal testimony this morning and sharing it with the American viewers.
Coming next, why were all the warnings about New Orleans ignored? And what will be the impact of this crisis on our nation's economy and our nation's psyche? Coming up right here on MEET THE PRESS.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9179790
video (.mov)
video (.mov) #2
video (.wmv)
more:
http://csmonitor.com/2005/0909/p09s02-cods.html
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090105L.shtml |
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| Trancer-X |
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| reLLik |
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| DJ Shibby |
Hey, I got an idea.
Why don't you tell me why I'm giving my hard earned money in taxes to a *federal* organization (FEMA) that is designed to handle emergencies, if apparently it is the state's responsibility (according to this pathetic article that just froths with the beginnings of sensationalistic propoganda and coverup)?
;) |
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| St_Andrew |
| quote: | Originally posted by Steven Hays
Why doesn't this thread generate as much response as the others? |
If you would have been following the other threads you would have seen most of this rebutted already :) |
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