News about Katrina to discuss:

Can we also keep in mind the problem that federalism poses in this instance? A lot of people have compared this disaster to 9/11, as it is the only thing on a similar scale in this country that we can really understand.

Comparing the state leadership in these instances, you're invariably going to come up short on the Louisiana side. But a large reason for that rests in one invariable truth: Louisiana has far less money than New York. Regardless of whatever was done pre or post hurricane, Louisiana doesn't have the state resources, because they do not collect as much tax revenue, because their citizens do not make as much money. Want evidence of this? Look into what it costs to rent a luxury apartment in downtown New Orleans, and compare it to say - Arlington, Virginia. Or if you really want some evidence, contrast it with Times Square.

Mandatory evacuations, etc take enormous resources - we're seeing that now. Louisiana simply doesn't have it. And from day one, Louisiana asked for help, knowing that this was the case.

Yes, local and state legislators didn't do much to prevent this tragedy, but tell me what could they have done? They worked closely with FEMA officials who have given them direction on what to do. The governor and mayor are not experts on hurricanes or disaster relief - officials at FEMA are. And they're staffed to respond to these situations when state and local leadership asks for help. If you think that Nagin and Blanco weren't in touch with FEMA prior to the hurricane, you're insane.

Here's why I blame the Feds more:

Blanco and Nagin were on TV and radio pleading for help and annoucning the devastation, pretty much from the first day. At least they got how awful this was.

When Bush got there two days later, he basically said, on national television:

"I love New Orleans and have fond memories from being here in my younger days. Probably over-indulged here at times too." (he then sort of snickered)

"Trent Lott lost his house, I'll enjoy sitting on his porch one day again soon".

Imagine if Giuliani had stood at Ground Zero and said, "I used to go to Windows on the World and, well, hee hee, kinda got drunk there sometimes. I'll miss the place."

Completely inappropriate. And Michael Brown and Michael Chertloff, the two guys in charge at FEMA….they were so clueless.

"I have not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don't have food and water." -Chertloff, as the images are being broadcast around the world.

These are supposed to be the people in charge. Even if the local and state officials were completely incompetent (which they weren't), the Feds totally fell down on the job. Bush is talking about getting drunk in his youth? That's our President? I expect better from our President than I do from the mayor of New Orleans.

Originally posted by callat703:
Yes, local and state legislators didn't do much to prevent this tragedy, but tell me what could they have done?

New Orleans had considered what to do in case a "catastrophic" storm were heading for them. The plan acknowledged that only like a quarter of residents owned private vehicles and that buses (city as well as private) would have to be used to evacuate those without their own transportation. Instead of doing this, Nagin designated 12 pick up locations and moved everyone to the Superdome.

Nagin also told the Times-Picayune a couple days after the storm that his plan consisted solely of "moving people to higher ground and hoping supplies could be air-lifted into them." In other words, he completely abandoned the hurricane plan.

Despite its name, the "National" Guard is actually run by the state government, not the federal. It was the National Guard that told everyone to go to the Convention Center. It was also the National Guard (acting on the request of the Louisiana Dept of Homeland Security) that consistently refused to allow the Red Cross into the city.

Also, FEMA usually takes over when the state authorizes them to do so. As of this past weekend, Blanco still had not authorized them to run the show. She has even gone so far as to hire her own advisors to come in and run things.

FEMA and the U.S. Dept of Homeland Security have the tools to tell the state and local authorities to fuck off. They clearly should have used them. FEMA deserves the blame they are getting. Brown's an idiot and should resign/be fired as soon as practical. The point is that this situation was screwed from the beginning; first by Nagin who implemented a half-assed, improvised preparation (probably as a way of avoiding the political embarassment that would have come if he had implemented a hugely expensive evacuation and the city didn't get flooded); and then by Blanco who has simultaneously tried to keep political authority over the situation while expecting the feds to do the work.

In the end, the blame should go to the fact that all those involved acted like what they are - bureaucrats and politicians who are most concerned about protecting their little fiefdoms of power and keeping up appearances.

While I don't disagree with you entirely, I'd like to raise a separate question. While you're right that the National Guard generally answers to the state government, this changes when the President federalizes the National Guard, thus making it an instrument of the federal government.

From the National Guard website:

"During peacetime each state National Guard answers to the leadership in the 50 states, three territories and the District of Columbia. During national emergencies, however, the President reserves the right to mobilize the National Guard, putting them in federal duty status. While federalized, the units answer to the Combatant Commander of the theatre in which they are operating and, ultimately, to the President.

Even when not federalized, the Army National Guard has a federal obligation (or mission.) That mission is to maintain properly trained and equipped units, available for prompt mobilization for war, national emergency, or as otherwise needed."


My question is: who had control of the National Guard at this point in time? The President, as a result of his mobilization of the National Guard for deployment to Iraq; or the state government?

here's why the feds get the blame: no one in virginia/dc/maryland/northern california voted for nagin or blanco. sure, everyone dropped the ball, but the rest of the county can't vote out those two jokers. plus, its federal money that's going to bail out new orleans. if mothernature wiped dc off the map, would you feel safe with williams in charge?

i'm sure these could have helped evacuate people in new orleans- as the city's evacuation plan imagined.

<img src="http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/ap/20050901/capt.flpc21109012015.hurricane_katrina_flpc211.jpg?x=380&y=235&sig=NbUvEfVIaferkxoZTiys0Q--" alt=" - " />

also, they could have sold them and started to pay for levee improvements

Originally posted by callat703:
My question is: who had control of the National Guard at this point in time? The President, as a result of his mobilization of the National Guard for deployment to Iraq; or the state government?

I don't know the exact answer, but my sense is that the Defense Department only controls those National Guard troops that have been "called-up" while the state retains the authority over those that remain in the state.

<img src="http://www.joe-ks.com/archives_oct2004/RunawayOstrich.jpg" alt=" - " />

From the Washington Post Website The Debate section:

Facts and Rumors: Federal Power in a State of Emergency
First, a note to all the Debaters: Ordinarily, Wednesday would mark the beginning of a new week for The Debate – it's the day a fresh topic would be introduced for discussion until the following Tuesday. But this is no ordinary week. So we're bending the rules to make room for a few more days of Hurricane Katrina, and we'll introduce next week's issue, the Roberts nomination, on Monday – just in time for the start of his hearings.

But for now, we're still talking about the hurricane, and all the false assertions that have been floating around with regard to who had the power to do what in Louisiana have got to be put to rest. Please allow me to use the text of federal laws and some other reputable sources in order to set the record straight. (My very basic conclusions based on those facts appear in parenthesis.)

Fact: Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco declared a State of Emergency for her state on Friday, Aug. 26. Full disclosure: The Post reported last week – erroneously, it turned out – that Louisiana had not issued such a declaration. A correction was published on Sept. 5.

Fact: President Bush declared a State of Emergency the next day Saturday before Hurricane Katrina hit.

Fact: Presidential declarations of emergency are made after a request from "the governor of the impacted state, based on finding that the disaster is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the ability of the state and affected local jurisdictions."
[Update: The link above doesn't seem to be working anymore, so here's a copy of the page as it appeared on Aug. 14, 2004, courtesy of archive.org's Wayback Machine. The page does not appear to have changed between when it was archived and when I looked at it yesterday.]

Fact: Blanco sent a letter dated Aug. 28 to Bush – via the FEMA regional director – requesting that he "declare a major disaster," and Bush responded by wisely declaring an emergency. There is a very slight difference, funding-wise, between declaring a major disaster and declaring an emergency – the difference is explained here – but both authorize "emergency protective measures."
[Update: Thanks to the astute anonymous reader who provided the link to the letter.]

Fact: A declaration of emergency "unleash[es] the support of any or all of 27 federal agencies. It also authorizes reimbursement of emergency work, such as debris removal and emergency protective measures."

Fact: There is a FEMA program called the National Urban Search and Rescue Response System (US&R) – now part of the Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate (EP&R) of the Department of Homeland Security. According to federal legislation, it "provides specialized lifesaving assistance during major disasters or emergencies that the President declares under the Stafford Act. US&R operational activities include locating, extricating and providing on-site medical treatment to victims trapped in collapsed structures, victims of weapons of mass destruction events, and when assigned, performing incident command or other operational activities."

(I think we can all agree that such teams would have been immensely helpful on the two to three days immediately following the hurricane. The Coast Guard did a great job, it would seem, of airlifting people out of drowning homes very soon after the flooding happened, and New Orleans police devoted a great deal of time that to performing search and rescue as well. Yes, some deserted, but others stayed and did everything they could to help the city and its residents recover. Perhaps if more search and rescue professionals had been sent in in the immediate aftermath, the police could have spent that time maintaining order in the city.)

Fact: In the Rules and Regulations section of the US&R legislation, "emergency " is defined as "any occasion or instance for which, in the determination of the President, Federal assistance is needed to supplement State and local efforts and capabilities to save lives and to protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in any part of the United States."

Fact: In the supplementary information for the National Urban Search and Rescue Response System legislation, it says (I've taken out some of the extraneous numbers and some unnecessary phrases for ease of reading, but the meaning is unchanged):


Section 303 of the Stafford Act authorizes the President of the United States to form emergency support teams of Federal personnel to be deployed in an area affected by a major disaster or emergency. The President delegated this function to the Director of the FEMA under Executive Order 12148. Under E.O. 13286 of February 28, 2003, the President amended E.O. 12148 to transfer the FEMA Director's delegated authority to the Secretary of Homeland Security, and under Homeland Security Delegation No. 9100, delegated the Secretary's authority under Title V of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which includes the Stafford Act, to the Under Secretary for Emergency Preparedness and Response (EP&R).

Fact: The Under Secretary for Emergency Preparedness and Response is Michael Brown.

(So, EP&R director – the head of FEMA, the guy the New Orleans Times Picayune said should "especially" be fired – had the authority to dispatch specialized rescue squads right away. Where were they? Why didn't the president, under whose direction the Department of Homeland Security ultimately falls, insist on getting those teams on the ground – or in the air – as soon as the levees were breached and the flooding began?)

In 1995, the Washington Monthly wrote about FEMA's miraculous turnaround after its abysmal performance dealing with Hurricane Andrew. In that story was this tidbit from Jeffrey Itell, who conducted a massive study of FEMA's operations, which uncovered that FEMA had extensive powers according to the Stafford Act that, to everyone's detriment, it was not exercising:


We found that without state requests, FEMA could assess the catastrophic area, assess what assistance the state needed, start mobilizing that relief, present its recommendations to the governor, and, if necessary â?¦ get in the governor's face to force the issue of accepting federal help.

This should all still apply – unless the Department of Homeland Security nullified these common-sense FEMA powers when it subsumed the agency a couple years ago. (If it did, DHS has a lot of explaining to do.)

Again, that's without state requests. (This is not to say the the local authorities couldn't have done more. For starters, they could have taken into account the substantial number of poor Now Orleans residents who wouldn't have the means to evacuate. But they were right in the middle of it all, their resources overwhelmed, whereas the federal emergency management professionals are likely to have vastly more resources (how many helicopters did the New Orleans Police Department have? I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing not as many as the federal government.)

What's important to remember here is that misinformation is swirling, as is not unusual after unprecedented disasters. (David Brooks of the New York Times recalls the news accounts of [insert then-feared minority group here] cutting off the fingers of the dead in order to steal their wedding rings.)

Don't get me wrong, the Debate loves and encourages a wide variety of opinions. But many opinions you'll hear from pundits on both sides of the aisle are based on false assertions. Before buying into one of these logical-but-inaccurate arguments – many of which probably originated in a spin machine belonging to someone or another – it makes sense to check that the facts are solid.

By Emily Messner

for cloudie: http://bushniggas.ytmnd.com/

Originally posted by brennser:

Federal officials are unapologetic.

"I would go back and ask the firefighter to revisit his commitment to FEMA, to firefighting and to the citizens of this country," said FEMA spokeswoman Mary Hudak.

these people has brass fuckin balls, thats for sure

rolling out the old Unamerican canard - expect to hear it alot over the next few weeks as they desperately attempt to spin their way out of this

FEMA is a joke. My brother is a fireman in NC, and was asked by a hospital in Chapel Hill to assist in doing helicopter duty flying with a pilot and neo natal doctors and nurses getting babies from Texas, La, and Miss and taking them to hospitals that can take on the cases. Now he's a fireman with all the bells and whistles on his uniform. However, it took him an entire day to fill out the paperwork, fax it in to FEMA, and then another full day to get a response. Two days wasted on bureaucratic bullshit.

Originally posted by god's shoeshine:
for cloudie: http://bushniggas.ytmnd.com/

<img src="http://www.forumspile.com/LOL-Doggy.jpg" alt=" - " />

Anyone watch Nightline last night? Koppel was talking to the Chief of Police, the Director of New Orleans Homeland Security, and the army General in charge of the troops. He asked them about Nagin's statement that the city was now under martial law. They all had different definitions of "martial law" and different opinions of whether it was in effect or not.

It's pretty frightening to see that there is still nobody in charge down there. Koppel asked the Director of NOLA Homeland Security about all the outside cops who have come to give NOLA cops a break, and who oversees them. The guy just shrugged and said, "we're still trying to get our hands around that."

Originally posted by god's shoeshine:
for cloudie: http://bushniggas.ytmnd.com/

Good to know they're still playing the race card. :roll:

ytmnd clearly a force to be feared in american politics