An Unnatural Disaster

[Sam]

From: ROBERT C CONLEY [mailto:robertccon@msn.com]

Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2005 4:26 PM

Subject: Fw: An Unnatrual Disaster

It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure

out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them,

because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on

there.

The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we

are confronting a natural disaster. If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists,

natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people

pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors,

nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and

rebuild.

Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to

do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are

suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself included--did

not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but

about rape, murder, and looting.

But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by

federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane

Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television

channel has gotten the story wrong.

The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not

happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades.

Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.

The man-made disaster is the welfare state.

For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be

confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave

in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in

other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been

saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even

what we expect from a Third World country.

When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion.

They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously

organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America.

We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative

rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen

this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic

light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and

serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and

large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).

So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?

To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a

description from a Washington Times story:

"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists,

knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and

police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.

"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen

poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....

"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened

Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill

orders.

" 'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,'

she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops

know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if

necessary and I expect they will.' "

The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article

shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on

an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of

squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks

exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.

What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for

an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to

storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers

to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack

the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome?

Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further

destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help

them?

My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a

sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News

Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She

studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in

the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes,

one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The

projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and

irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)

What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a

whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the

informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of

New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000

or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing

projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early

reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for

evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them

loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two

populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to

live in the housing projects, and vice versa.

There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the

deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people

from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected,

over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced

helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent

administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.

All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of

the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the

city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city

corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow

of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political

supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.

No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact,

some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for

example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had

drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece

from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the

chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite:

the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of

individualism.

What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of

the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is

behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the

responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond

to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome

the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the

government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a

disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.

But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about

savingtheir houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything.

Dothey worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how

theyare going to make a living? They never worried about those things

before.Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth

is away of life for them.

The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains

andencourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness

that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is

reporting.

[TDean]

Good read.

[EricW]

Am I the only person that thinks Ray Nagin attended the Mohammed Farrah Adid School of Governance?

[dajarrel]

I don't know where he matriculated from, but his and the governors lack of preperation beforehand and thier lack of leadership during and after the natural disaster were primary contributors to the manmade disaster that followed.

JMHO

dj

[scooterj]

the mayor and governor both blamed the President, looks like Louisiana politics to me.

[Merlin Orr]

the mayor and governor both blamed the President, looks like Louisiana politics to me.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I hope you don't mind. Sam. Seemed to fit the situation...

[folsoml]

the mayor and governor both blamed the President, looks like Louisiana politics to me.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I hope you don't mind. Sam. Seemed to fit the situation...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The crappy part (literally) is, now they've got to pump it back.

[carinab]

Intellectual Activist

[jtnmb77]

Message How could this happen???

Subject: FW: What REALLY Happened in New Orleans.....

In case you aren't familiar with how our government is SUPPOSED to

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). Then he failed to provide transportation for those without transport even though he had hundreds of buses at his disposal. This after decades of supposed 'planning' for 'the big one'...

2. The New Orleans director of Homeland Security failed to have

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

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 disaster in New Orleans is what you get after decades of corrupt government going all the way back to Huey Long, all who happen to be Democrats.

Funds for disaster protection and relief have been flowing into this city for decades, and too often where has it gone, but into the pockets of the politicos and their friends

Decades of a near Socialist government in New Orleans has sapped all self reliance from the community, and made them dependent upon government for 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 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 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 screwed up.

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 profile in pathetic leadership 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.

Whatever plan these guys had, it was a dud. Or it probably would have been if they'd bothered to follow it.

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 by anyone other than Black leaders would again release the loud cries of

"Racism!” And... that isn't going to happen! It's sad, it's wrong, but it's standard operating procedure for the media and the

'not-really-interested-in-anything-from-poor-blacks but-thier-vote'.... left-wing 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. Clearly, the mindset of most uninformed blacks is that black politicians are 'on their side' - - for the primary purpose of getting

them MORE money from the local, state and federal coffers... and they can do no wrong.

[bountyhunter]

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.

UH-HUH....... don't let the facts get in the way. The fact that the levees were unable to withstand anything above a CAT2 was well known and projects were underway to shore them up with the assistance of the FED.... that is, until the Bush admin strangled the money for the project.

Fwd: Category 4 Hurricane Determined To Strike U.S.

by Hunter

Wed Aug 31st, 2005 at 17:58:43 PDT

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA [southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project] dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it coming. ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them."

The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.

The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs.

/////

Pouring guns and gold into Iraq while ignoring basic aspects of America's own domestic safety was a risk that the Bush administration was willing to take. Now the neo-cons of the administration and their tubthumping supporters have a vivid demonstration of why pumping money into Iraq combined with deficit-causing tax cuts combined with cutting basic domestic safety programs has results a bit more sanguinary than the careful spreadsheets of either Karl Rove or Grover Norquist might convey.

After 9/11, the administration was eager to put Bush at the top of the "pile", a cheap show of determination in the aftermath of disaster. Somehow, I don't think Bush standing atop one of these shattered levees and speaking through a bullhorn to the citizens of New Orleans would have the same effect right now.

[bountyhunter]

Funding for hurricane, flood protection down

By Toby Eckert

COPLEY NEWS SERVICE

September 2, 2005

WASHINGTON – Lawmakers and President Bush are being confronted by accusations that they shortchanged flood-control and hurricane-protection efforts in the New Orleans area.

New York Times News Service

A levee collapse has caused major flooding in New Orleans. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said "it doesn't make sense to me" to use federal funds to rebuild the city, as most of it is below sea level.

A key flood-control project in southeastern Louisiana has seen its federal funding steadily dwindle, from $69 million in 2001 to $32.2 million in 2005, according to congressional offices and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Bush requested $10.5 million for the project for 2006, while the Corps said $62.5 million was required.

Funding for hurricane protection, including levee improvements and pumping stations, went from $10 million in 2001 to $5.7 million this year. Bush proposed $3 million for 2006.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported last year that work was virtually halted on one major hurricane levee project for the first time in 37 years. At the time, a local official blamed a shift in resources to Iraq and counterterrorism efforts.

"It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay," the Times-Picayune quoted Walter Maestri, the emergency management chief of Jefferson Parish, La., as saying.

Liberal critics of Bush widely circulated the comment yesterday on the Internet.

Advertisement

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, "This is not a time for finger-pointing or playing politics."

"Flood control has been a priority of this administration from day one," he said. "We have dedicated an additional $300 million over the last few years for flood control in New Orleans and the surrounding area."

Commenting on Bush's overall 2006 funding request for the Corps of Engineers, Army Assistant Secretary for Civil Works John Woodley told reporters in February, "It's a frugal budget that reflects the priorities of a nation at war."

But yesterday, Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the Corps' chief of engineers, told reporters that the war did not have a major impact on the agency's budget.

"We were just caught by a storm of an intensity which exceeded the design of the project we have in place," he said during a conference call.

The political fires were further stoked when a suburban Chicago newspaper quoted House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., as saying "It doesn't make sense to me" to use federal funds to rebuild New Orleans, given its precarious geography. Most of the city is below sea level.

Hastert made the remarks Wednesday. Yesterday, he and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said they would call Congress into emergency session to provide additional funding for the hurricane response.

"In the wake of this disaster, the people of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida should know that the United States Congress stands ready to help them in their time of need," the lawmakers said in a joint statement.

Hastert later sought to clarify his comments to the newspaper.

"My comments about rebuilding the city were intended to reflect my sincere concern with how the city is rebuilt to ensure the future protection of its citizens and not to suggest that this great and historic city should not be rebuilt," he said in a written statement.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/...9-1n2funds.html

[bountyhunter]

About Those Levees

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees," Bush said.

Wrong.

Just for starters, how about Sunday's New Orleans Times-Picayune , which described a computer model run by the LSU Hurricane Center. "It indicated the metropolitan area was poised to see a repeat of Betsy's flooding, or worse, with storm surge of as much as 16 feet moving up the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet and topping levees in Chalmette and eastern New Orleans, and pushing water into the 9th Ward and parts of Mid-City."

Or Monday's New York Times , in which New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin is quoted as saying that "Hurricane Katrina could bring 15 inches of rain and a storm surge of 20 feet or higher that would 'most likely topple' the network of levees and canals that normally protect the bowl-shaped city from flooding.

And as Andrew C. Revkin and Christopher Drew write in today's New York Times: "The 17th Street levee that gave way and led to the flooding of New Orleans was part of an intricate, aging system of barriers and pumps that was so chronically underfinanced that senior regional officials of the Army Corps of Engineers complained about it publicly for years."