Incoming Retaliatory Strike Over Katrina, Funding, And Levees
It took the Left less than a week to fire shots at the president over the response to Katrina. Mayor Nagin was swearing up a storm over the fact that he didn’t have the 20,000 troops he was supposedly promised (which he wasn’t; those were relief and disaster aid workers). It has come out that both Gov. Blanco balked at acting, as did Mayor Nagin. The issue of blame was addressed by Marcie quite well. It was thorough. It was to the point. The simple fact of the matter is that from the top down in Louisiana, the state and local governments failed like a reactor on it’s way to melt down with no way to scram itself.
--The governor waited for twenty-four hours before making the decision to call for an evacuation.
--The mayor didn’t follow his disaster plan which called for a "precautionary evacuation" 72 hours or less prior to the storm’s landfall. He didn’t follow through with the "special needs" evacuation that was supposed to be invoked 8-12 hours after the precautionary evac. And the general evacuation which is to be called for 48 hours or less prior to landfall didn’t come until the storm was less than ten hours away.
--The emergency plan details the use of buses to evacuate residents, but the buses weren’t moved to higher ground, and still remain under about 4-5 feet of water.
--The state Homeland security office—NOT the federal office—blocked Red Cross relief supplies going to the Superdome. The Superdome, BTW, was NOT on the list of shelters outlined by the disaster plan.
--Once the storm was over, the governor refused to declare martial law in the communities struck by the hurricane the hardest, where violence and looting was already reaching a fever pitch.
--The state dragged it’s heels in evacuating those people from shelters, like the Superdome, until federal assistance arrived.
--The governor waited a full two days before asking other states for National Guard troops to help quell New Orleans, which had descended into lawlessness. Numerous rapes were reported. FEMA gear was stolen so the looters could move freely. And even the police joined in on the looting, as evidenced by the MSNBC video, which is also linked below. Also below is part of a report given by a National Guard soldier upon making a grisly discovery in the Convention Center's freezer.
http://www.zippyvideos.com/8911023771013466/countdown-looting-in-walmart/
Meanwhile, a National Guardsman showed a reporter the many bodies piled up in the New Orleans Convention Center, including in the freezer.
"Don't step in that blood – it's contaminated," Guardsman Mikel Brooks told the New Orleans Times-Picayune. "That one with his arm sticking up in the air, he's an old man."
Then he shined the light on a smaller human figure under a white sheet next to the elderly man.
"That's a kid," he said. "There's another one in the freezer, a 7-year-old with her throat cut."
Continued the soldier: "There's an old woman," pointing to a wheelchair covered by a sheet. "I escorted her in myself. And that old man got bludgeoned to death," he said of the body lying on the floor next to the wheelchair.
The Guardsmen stationed at the center say there are between 30 and 40 bodies in the freezer.
But, the Left doesn’t seem to care about any of this. They’re tossing it to the side, and calling people like me, Hugh Hewitt, Glenn Reynolds, and Michelle Malkin "right-wing propaganda machines." Well, it’s true that we’re conservative, and whereas I can’t speak for Glenn, I believe Hugh and Michelle are registered Republicans, like myself. But our political affiliation has little to do with this. We’re protecting the president because he’s not to blame for this. He can’t be because his hands are tied by the Constitution.
Marcie was going to address this, but her schoolwork forbade her from doing it, so I’ll address it briefly right here. The president could do nothing until the governor asked for help. He couldn’t send in troops because he doesn’t have that authority. He does have it if Louisiana were in a state of insurrection, but it wasn’t, and there’s no way in Hell he could have sold that one to Congress. Had he moved troops into Louisiana, without the express permission from the governor, it would be the move to play into the Left’s hands, and we’d be assured that an impeachment was on it’s way. Gov. Blanco is the only person who can order her remaining Guard units into action. (That would be some 8000 that were called up for disaster relief; more than adequate to quell the violence, and begin preliminary rescue and relief efforts.) The president has ZERO authority over those troops. Those units are there to serve the governor and the state.
But that isn’t the only thing the Left is complaining about. It now seems that they want to point the fingers at the president over the levees. Now, let’s think straight here. The president is responsible for the levee breaks. I was unaware that he and Katrina were working together. Of course, the DailyKos kids have already presented the argument that the president sat on his hands because he hates black people. (Funny that stupidity as Colin Powell, Condi Rice, and Rod Paige have all served in his administration, and Janice Rogers Brown was a judge he wanted confirmed.) But yes, he allowed the levees to break. He didn’t appropriate the right amount of money. Ladies and gentlemen, enter Michelle Malkin, today:
In Katrina's wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large. Much of that Louisiana money was spent to try to keep low-lying New Orleans dry. But hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state's congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate.
The above comes from a WaPo story today. Below is more from that story.
But overall, the Bush administration's funding requests for the key New Orleans flood-control projects for the past five years were slightly higher than the Clinton administration's for its past five years. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the chief of the Corps, has said that in any event, more money would not have prevented the drowning of the city, since its levees were designed to protect against a Category 3 storm, and the levees that failed were already completed projects. Strock has also said that the marsh-restoration project would not have done much to diminish Katrina's storm surge, which passed east of the coastal wetlands.
The Senate's latest budget bill for the Corps included 107 Louisiana projects worth $596 million, including $15 million for the Industrial Canal lock, for which the Bush administration had proposed no funding. Landrieu said the bill would "accelerate our flood control, navigation and coastal protection programs." Vitter said he was "grateful that my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee were persuaded of the importance of these projects."
Louisiana not only leads the nation in overall Corps funding, it places second in new construction -- just behind Florida, home of an $8 billion project to restore the Everglades. Several controversial projects were improvements for the Port of New Orleans, an economic linchpin at the mouth of the Mississippi. There were also several efforts to deepen channel for oil and gas tankers, a priority for petroleum companies that drill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Overall, Army Corps funding has remained relatively constant for decades, despite the "Program Growth Initiative" launched by agency generals in 1999 without telling their civilian bosses in the Clinton administration. The Bush administration has proposed cuts in the Corps budget, and has tried to shift the agency's emphasis from new construction to overdue maintenance. But most of those proposals have died quietly on Capitol Hill, and the administration has not fought too hard to revive them.
In fact, more than any other federal agency, the Corps is controlled by Congress; its $4.7 billion civil works budget consists almost entirely of "earmarks" inserted by individual legislators. The Corps must determine that the economic benefits of its projects exceed the costs, but marginal projects such as the Port of Iberia deepening -- which squeaked by with a 1.03 benefit-cost ratio -- are as eligible for funding as the New Orleans levees.
So, the Left’s talking points aren’t washing too much. To quote the "Ragin’ Cajun," James Carville, "That dog won’t hunt." The president was doing what he could to make sure that such measures were dealt with. Congress appropriated the money necessary to maintain the levees. There has always been an effort by the federal government, and the Army Corps of Engineers, to ensure that places like New Orleans are taken care of the best they possibly can. But Michelle’s not done. Oh no, she finishes the arguments with a shot to the jugular of the Left.
…The national Sierra Club was one of several environmental groups who sued the Army Corps of Engineers to stop a 1996 plan to raise and fortify Mississippi River levees.
The Army Corps was planning to upgrade 303 miles of levees along the river in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas. This was needed, a Corps spokesman told the Baton Rouge, La., newspaper The Advocate, because "a failure could wreak catastrophic consequences on Louisiana and Mississippi which the states would be decades in overcoming, if they overcame them at all."
But a suit filed by environmental groups at the U.S. District Court in New Orleans claimed the Corps had not looked at "the impact on bottomland hardwood wetlands." The lawsuit stated, "Bottomland hardwood forests must be protected and restored if the Louisiana black bear is to survive as a species, and if we are to ensure continued support for source population of all birds breeding in the lower Mississippi River valley." In addition to the Sierra Club, other parties to the suit were the group American Rivers, the Mississippi River Basin Alliance, and the Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi Wildlife Federations.
…In 2000, American Rivers’ Mississippi River Regional Representative Jeffrey Stein complained in a congressional hearing that the river’s "levees that temporarily protect floodplain farms have reduced the frequency, extent and magnitude of high flows, robbing the river of its ability … to sustain itself."
Isn’t is interesting that it’s always the extremists on the Left that don’t want to do what is necessary to protect the people and our cities, but when something bad happens, they spin their culpability away, and point fingers elsewhere.
The retaliatory strike coming back to slam the Left in the face is being led by the bloggers now. We are the ones that have uncovered the majority of information the MSM doesn’t want to address. That would be the points that I cited above. The culpability that is evident is in the state government, not the federal government. People can argue that enough money wasn’t earmarked for better preparing Louisiana for such a disaster, but that doesn’t lie at the feet of the president. That lies at the feet of the Congress. They appropriate the money. They pass the legislation. The president merely signs it. He can’t include anything that wasn’t approved by Congress, and he has no line-item veto to remove pork barrel projects in budgets and appropriations.
And here are a couple of side notes. First, I’m not ignoring the other communities that were affected by this hurricane. However, those in Louisiana are the ones that have been hit the hardest, and have lost the most. Yes, many small communities are gone—wiped off the map completely. However, those communities will either be rebuilt, or they won’t. New Orleans doesn’t really have that choice. It is an economic and social hub in the south. It must be rebuilt, and hopefully, it will be with new levees that can withstand a storm greater than a Category Three hurricane.
Second, for those that are playing the blame game with FEMA, I’d like to remind them that FEMA is not a "first responder" to such disasters. They coordinate efforts. First responders are firefighters, police, rescue workers and the National Guard. FEMA has approximately 2500-3000 people under it’s banner. The Louisiana National Guard has more people working right now in relief and recovery efforts than FEMA has in it’s entire department. I stated it last night with my post that somebody has some explaining to do. Those people are Gov. Blanco, Mayor Nagin, and the state department of Homeland Security. And that’s just my short list. The list is sure to grow in days ahead. One thing is for sure: The Left is gaining no ground in attacking the federal government. A poll taken yesterday by USA Today shows that 13% of Americans blame the president and his administration. That’s a telling number. What is even more telling is the point the fingers game that those most culpable are playing.
Publius II
ADDENDUM: This comes from NewsMax. For those that have seen the photos of the school buses under water, Mayor Nagin has finally responded to why he didn’t use those buses, as per the disaster plan he refused to follow.
Turns out, Nagin turned his nose up at the yellow buses, demanding more comfortable Greyhound coaches instead.
"I need 500 buses, man," he told WWL. "One of the briefings we had they were talking about getting, you know, public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out of here."
Nagin described his response:
"I'm like - you've got to be kidding me. This is a natural disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans."
While Nagin was waiting for his Greyhound fleet, Katrina's floodwaters swamped his school buses, rendering them unusable.
Another telling point about the mayor. He was looking for a more luxurious way to remove the poor and destitute, rather than looking to get his people out of harm’s way. Greyhounds are not called for in the disaster plan. Vehicles, in general, were called for. Tow trucks were to be at pre-positioned areas on the interstates to remove any broken down or disabled vehicles. Buses were to be utilized to remove those that had no way out of the city. As a matter of fact, Tim Saler, from RedState.org crunches the numbers for us:
Perhaps Mayor Nagin, if he was so concerned about evacuating the city of New Orleans and save all the poor black residents who people like Randall Robinson, Jesse Jackson, and Kanye West believe were slighted by the President and the Republican government, he would have used the over two-hundred school buses at a depot in New Orleans. It is estimated that each bus could have carried around sixty-six people. At a round number, if there were two-hundred buses that could carry sixty-six people at a time, that's 13,200 people evacuated to safety -- on just one trip. Now those buses are under water and are mostly useless.
Mayor Nagin, you dropped the ball, not the government, not any other state. You did. You failed to execute your disaster protocols, and your city and her citizens suffered for it. Don’t point the fingers at anyone other than yourself. Be a man already, and accept the responsibility of your inaction.
It took the Left less than a week to fire shots at the president over the response to Katrina. Mayor Nagin was swearing up a storm over the fact that he didn’t have the 20,000 troops he was supposedly promised (which he wasn’t; those were relief and disaster aid workers). It has come out that both Gov. Blanco balked at acting, as did Mayor Nagin. The issue of blame was addressed by Marcie quite well. It was thorough. It was to the point. The simple fact of the matter is that from the top down in Louisiana, the state and local governments failed like a reactor on it’s way to melt down with no way to scram itself.
--The governor waited for twenty-four hours before making the decision to call for an evacuation.
--The mayor didn’t follow his disaster plan which called for a "precautionary evacuation" 72 hours or less prior to the storm’s landfall. He didn’t follow through with the "special needs" evacuation that was supposed to be invoked 8-12 hours after the precautionary evac. And the general evacuation which is to be called for 48 hours or less prior to landfall didn’t come until the storm was less than ten hours away.
--The emergency plan details the use of buses to evacuate residents, but the buses weren’t moved to higher ground, and still remain under about 4-5 feet of water.
--The state Homeland security office—NOT the federal office—blocked Red Cross relief supplies going to the Superdome. The Superdome, BTW, was NOT on the list of shelters outlined by the disaster plan.
--Once the storm was over, the governor refused to declare martial law in the communities struck by the hurricane the hardest, where violence and looting was already reaching a fever pitch.
--The state dragged it’s heels in evacuating those people from shelters, like the Superdome, until federal assistance arrived.
--The governor waited a full two days before asking other states for National Guard troops to help quell New Orleans, which had descended into lawlessness. Numerous rapes were reported. FEMA gear was stolen so the looters could move freely. And even the police joined in on the looting, as evidenced by the MSNBC video, which is also linked below. Also below is part of a report given by a National Guard soldier upon making a grisly discovery in the Convention Center's freezer.
http://www.zippyvideos.com/8911023771013466/countdown-looting-in-walmart/
Meanwhile, a National Guardsman showed a reporter the many bodies piled up in the New Orleans Convention Center, including in the freezer.
"Don't step in that blood – it's contaminated," Guardsman Mikel Brooks told the New Orleans Times-Picayune. "That one with his arm sticking up in the air, he's an old man."
Then he shined the light on a smaller human figure under a white sheet next to the elderly man.
"That's a kid," he said. "There's another one in the freezer, a 7-year-old with her throat cut."
Continued the soldier: "There's an old woman," pointing to a wheelchair covered by a sheet. "I escorted her in myself. And that old man got bludgeoned to death," he said of the body lying on the floor next to the wheelchair.
The Guardsmen stationed at the center say there are between 30 and 40 bodies in the freezer.
But, the Left doesn’t seem to care about any of this. They’re tossing it to the side, and calling people like me, Hugh Hewitt, Glenn Reynolds, and Michelle Malkin "right-wing propaganda machines." Well, it’s true that we’re conservative, and whereas I can’t speak for Glenn, I believe Hugh and Michelle are registered Republicans, like myself. But our political affiliation has little to do with this. We’re protecting the president because he’s not to blame for this. He can’t be because his hands are tied by the Constitution.
Marcie was going to address this, but her schoolwork forbade her from doing it, so I’ll address it briefly right here. The president could do nothing until the governor asked for help. He couldn’t send in troops because he doesn’t have that authority. He does have it if Louisiana were in a state of insurrection, but it wasn’t, and there’s no way in Hell he could have sold that one to Congress. Had he moved troops into Louisiana, without the express permission from the governor, it would be the move to play into the Left’s hands, and we’d be assured that an impeachment was on it’s way. Gov. Blanco is the only person who can order her remaining Guard units into action. (That would be some 8000 that were called up for disaster relief; more than adequate to quell the violence, and begin preliminary rescue and relief efforts.) The president has ZERO authority over those troops. Those units are there to serve the governor and the state.
But that isn’t the only thing the Left is complaining about. It now seems that they want to point the fingers at the president over the levees. Now, let’s think straight here. The president is responsible for the levee breaks. I was unaware that he and Katrina were working together. Of course, the DailyKos kids have already presented the argument that the president sat on his hands because he hates black people. (Funny that stupidity as Colin Powell, Condi Rice, and Rod Paige have all served in his administration, and Janice Rogers Brown was a judge he wanted confirmed.) But yes, he allowed the levees to break. He didn’t appropriate the right amount of money. Ladies and gentlemen, enter Michelle Malkin, today:
In Katrina's wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large. Much of that Louisiana money was spent to try to keep low-lying New Orleans dry. But hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state's congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate.
The above comes from a WaPo story today. Below is more from that story.
But overall, the Bush administration's funding requests for the key New Orleans flood-control projects for the past five years were slightly higher than the Clinton administration's for its past five years. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the chief of the Corps, has said that in any event, more money would not have prevented the drowning of the city, since its levees were designed to protect against a Category 3 storm, and the levees that failed were already completed projects. Strock has also said that the marsh-restoration project would not have done much to diminish Katrina's storm surge, which passed east of the coastal wetlands.
The Senate's latest budget bill for the Corps included 107 Louisiana projects worth $596 million, including $15 million for the Industrial Canal lock, for which the Bush administration had proposed no funding. Landrieu said the bill would "accelerate our flood control, navigation and coastal protection programs." Vitter said he was "grateful that my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee were persuaded of the importance of these projects."
Louisiana not only leads the nation in overall Corps funding, it places second in new construction -- just behind Florida, home of an $8 billion project to restore the Everglades. Several controversial projects were improvements for the Port of New Orleans, an economic linchpin at the mouth of the Mississippi. There were also several efforts to deepen channel for oil and gas tankers, a priority for petroleum companies that drill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Overall, Army Corps funding has remained relatively constant for decades, despite the "Program Growth Initiative" launched by agency generals in 1999 without telling their civilian bosses in the Clinton administration. The Bush administration has proposed cuts in the Corps budget, and has tried to shift the agency's emphasis from new construction to overdue maintenance. But most of those proposals have died quietly on Capitol Hill, and the administration has not fought too hard to revive them.
In fact, more than any other federal agency, the Corps is controlled by Congress; its $4.7 billion civil works budget consists almost entirely of "earmarks" inserted by individual legislators. The Corps must determine that the economic benefits of its projects exceed the costs, but marginal projects such as the Port of Iberia deepening -- which squeaked by with a 1.03 benefit-cost ratio -- are as eligible for funding as the New Orleans levees.
So, the Left’s talking points aren’t washing too much. To quote the "Ragin’ Cajun," James Carville, "That dog won’t hunt." The president was doing what he could to make sure that such measures were dealt with. Congress appropriated the money necessary to maintain the levees. There has always been an effort by the federal government, and the Army Corps of Engineers, to ensure that places like New Orleans are taken care of the best they possibly can. But Michelle’s not done. Oh no, she finishes the arguments with a shot to the jugular of the Left.
…The national Sierra Club was one of several environmental groups who sued the Army Corps of Engineers to stop a 1996 plan to raise and fortify Mississippi River levees.
The Army Corps was planning to upgrade 303 miles of levees along the river in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas. This was needed, a Corps spokesman told the Baton Rouge, La., newspaper The Advocate, because "a failure could wreak catastrophic consequences on Louisiana and Mississippi which the states would be decades in overcoming, if they overcame them at all."
But a suit filed by environmental groups at the U.S. District Court in New Orleans claimed the Corps had not looked at "the impact on bottomland hardwood wetlands." The lawsuit stated, "Bottomland hardwood forests must be protected and restored if the Louisiana black bear is to survive as a species, and if we are to ensure continued support for source population of all birds breeding in the lower Mississippi River valley." In addition to the Sierra Club, other parties to the suit were the group American Rivers, the Mississippi River Basin Alliance, and the Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi Wildlife Federations.
…In 2000, American Rivers’ Mississippi River Regional Representative Jeffrey Stein complained in a congressional hearing that the river’s "levees that temporarily protect floodplain farms have reduced the frequency, extent and magnitude of high flows, robbing the river of its ability … to sustain itself."
Isn’t is interesting that it’s always the extremists on the Left that don’t want to do what is necessary to protect the people and our cities, but when something bad happens, they spin their culpability away, and point fingers elsewhere.
The retaliatory strike coming back to slam the Left in the face is being led by the bloggers now. We are the ones that have uncovered the majority of information the MSM doesn’t want to address. That would be the points that I cited above. The culpability that is evident is in the state government, not the federal government. People can argue that enough money wasn’t earmarked for better preparing Louisiana for such a disaster, but that doesn’t lie at the feet of the president. That lies at the feet of the Congress. They appropriate the money. They pass the legislation. The president merely signs it. He can’t include anything that wasn’t approved by Congress, and he has no line-item veto to remove pork barrel projects in budgets and appropriations.
And here are a couple of side notes. First, I’m not ignoring the other communities that were affected by this hurricane. However, those in Louisiana are the ones that have been hit the hardest, and have lost the most. Yes, many small communities are gone—wiped off the map completely. However, those communities will either be rebuilt, or they won’t. New Orleans doesn’t really have that choice. It is an economic and social hub in the south. It must be rebuilt, and hopefully, it will be with new levees that can withstand a storm greater than a Category Three hurricane.
Second, for those that are playing the blame game with FEMA, I’d like to remind them that FEMA is not a "first responder" to such disasters. They coordinate efforts. First responders are firefighters, police, rescue workers and the National Guard. FEMA has approximately 2500-3000 people under it’s banner. The Louisiana National Guard has more people working right now in relief and recovery efforts than FEMA has in it’s entire department. I stated it last night with my post that somebody has some explaining to do. Those people are Gov. Blanco, Mayor Nagin, and the state department of Homeland Security. And that’s just my short list. The list is sure to grow in days ahead. One thing is for sure: The Left is gaining no ground in attacking the federal government. A poll taken yesterday by USA Today shows that 13% of Americans blame the president and his administration. That’s a telling number. What is even more telling is the point the fingers game that those most culpable are playing.
Publius II
ADDENDUM: This comes from NewsMax. For those that have seen the photos of the school buses under water, Mayor Nagin has finally responded to why he didn’t use those buses, as per the disaster plan he refused to follow.
Turns out, Nagin turned his nose up at the yellow buses, demanding more comfortable Greyhound coaches instead.
"I need 500 buses, man," he told WWL. "One of the briefings we had they were talking about getting, you know, public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out of here."
Nagin described his response:
"I'm like - you've got to be kidding me. This is a natural disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans."
While Nagin was waiting for his Greyhound fleet, Katrina's floodwaters swamped his school buses, rendering them unusable.
Another telling point about the mayor. He was looking for a more luxurious way to remove the poor and destitute, rather than looking to get his people out of harm’s way. Greyhounds are not called for in the disaster plan. Vehicles, in general, were called for. Tow trucks were to be at pre-positioned areas on the interstates to remove any broken down or disabled vehicles. Buses were to be utilized to remove those that had no way out of the city. As a matter of fact, Tim Saler, from RedState.org crunches the numbers for us:
Perhaps Mayor Nagin, if he was so concerned about evacuating the city of New Orleans and save all the poor black residents who people like Randall Robinson, Jesse Jackson, and Kanye West believe were slighted by the President and the Republican government, he would have used the over two-hundred school buses at a depot in New Orleans. It is estimated that each bus could have carried around sixty-six people. At a round number, if there were two-hundred buses that could carry sixty-six people at a time, that's 13,200 people evacuated to safety -- on just one trip. Now those buses are under water and are mostly useless.
Mayor Nagin, you dropped the ball, not the government, not any other state. You did. You failed to execute your disaster protocols, and your city and her citizens suffered for it. Don’t point the fingers at anyone other than yourself. Be a man already, and accept the responsibility of your inaction.
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 11:38 AM
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