Orin Hatch on Water Skis
(With a nod to FZ...)
Just heard Orin Hatch on "This Week" dodge the questsion of blame for the Federal Gov't and their response (or lack thereof) to Katrina. He went on and on about how now isn't the time to assign blame, and how there would be plenty of blame to go around. He even managed to divert blame from the Feds and place some back at the State and City Gov't by saying "they're 10 feet below sea level, they should have been prepared for this". Well, I'm pretty sure it's 7 feet, but I'm sure it's hard to guage when you have your HEAD UP YOUR ASS!!!!
In one second he's saying this isn't the time to assign blame, and the next second he's assigning blame. What a freaking bitch!
He said now was the time to find solutions. Just remember, this is the Republican Party, the party of personal responsibilty, the administration that promised to restore accountability to Gov't. Oh, I see. Except for when something goes wrong. Then, it's never the time for blaming anyone. I'm sure it's hard to be accountable when you're at the tail end of a 5 week vacation. You know how it is when you come back to work, it takes a few days to ramp up, get going again. Plus, I think Shrub left his BullHorn in NYC a few years ago.
I've got news for you. Now is ABSOLUTELY THE RIGHT TIME TO ASSIGN BLAME. The response was LOUSY. I'm watching May Landreau right now honestly assess the dimensions of this tragedy. This is a disaster of HUGE human proportions, and enourmous economic proportions. We are about to enter into the closest thing to a depression since the 20's. Gas prices are going to kill this economy. The situation in New Orleans, the damage to the infrastructure, is going to cause unimaginable economic problems that will reverberate throughout the country. I heard at one point that they estiamte 500,000 jobs will be lost because of this. You have no idea how bad this is going to be.
It's amazing that they can blame the people who didn't evacuate the city - as Rush BlowHard said, "Why don't they have cars?". Yes, of course, let's blame the poor people for being poor. But let's not blame the Federal Government for being slow to respond. They had planned and run models of what would happen if a storm of this magnatude hit N.O. They knew. When the weather services started screaming over the weekend about how this was going to be a huge storm and a direct hit on New Orleans, they should have prepared whatever National Guard in the area on standby. I know that the news loves to go all Chicken Little on us with the "Storm of the Century of the Week" all the time. But this was THE nightmare scenario that everyone had imagined.
There's a difference between blame and responsibility. This administration is not taking responsibilty for their action - including cutting the funds for reinforcing the levees. And of course, for their "day late, dollar short" response to it after the fact.
Kanye West was probably right when he said "George Bush doesn't care about black people".
www.redcross.org
posted by vm @ 6:15 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Kanye West was probably right when he said "George Bush doesn't care about black people". !!!!????
What an ridiculous statement !
Also:
Corps officials: Funding levels not to blame for flooding (Chicago Tribune)
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday that a lack of funding for hurricane-protection projects around New Orleans did not contribute to the disastrous flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina. In a telephone interview with reporters, corps officials said that although portions of the flood-protection levees remain incomplete, the levees near Lake Pontchartrain that gave way--inundating much of the city--were completed and in good condition before the hurricane.
However, they noted that the levees were designed for a Category 3 hurricane and couldn't handle the ferocious winds and raging waters from Hurricane Katrina, which was a Category 4 storm when it hit the coastline. The decision to build levees for a Category 3 hurricane was made decades ago based on a cost-benefit analysis. "I don't see that the level of funding was really a contributing factor in this case," said Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the corps. "Had this project been fully complete, it is my opinion that based on the intensity of this storm that the flooding of the business district and the French Quarter would have still taken place."
Strock also denied that escalating costs from the war in Iraq contributed to reductions in funding for hurricane projects in Louisiana, as some critics have suggested. Records show that corps funding for the Louisiana projects has generally decreased in recent years.
[...]
A project to build up the levees to withstand a Category 3 hurricane was launched in 1965 after Hurricane Betsy and was supposed to be completed in 10 years, but it remains incomplete because of a lack of funding.
In recent years, funding has dropped precipitously, which some officials attributed in part to the escalating costs of the Iraq war. Funding for a drainage project in New Orleans went from $69 million in 2001 to $36.5 million in the current fiscal year, while funding for such hurricane-protection projects as levees around Lake Pontchartrain declined from $10 million in 2001 to $5.7 million this year, according to figures provided by the office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.).
Funding for these projects has generally trended downward since at least the last years of the Clinton administration. Congressional records show that the levee work on Lake Pontchartrain received $23 million in 1998 and $16 million in 1999. It was not clear how much the drainage project received in 1998, but records show it received $75 million in 1999. Neither the White House nor the Corps of Engineers would confirm the numbers, nor would they provide funding levels dating to previous administrations
The Washington Post reports the Bush administration has granted the corps more funding than the previous administration over a similar period and that Louisiana has received far more money for civil works projects than any other state. The paper says much of the funding has been spent not on flood control, but on lawmakers' pet construction projects, including a brand new $750 million canal lock in New Orleans unrelated to flood control.
Environmentally Friendly?
Neither the administration or its critics are saying this, but one reason anti-flooding measures failed to stop Katrina from inundating New Orleans is that some environmental groups successfully resisted new flood control projects. The Sierra Club (search) and other groups sued the Army Corps of Engineers to stop a 1996 plan to raise and fortify Mississippi River levees because the plan would jeopardize Louisiana forests.
And the New Orleans Times-Picayune has reported that "Save our Wetlands" successfully sued the corps of engineers three decades ago to stop construction on floodgates to block storm surges from the Gulf of Mexico into Lake Pontchatrain (search), saying they were too damaging to the lake's eco-system.
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