First Door on the Left

Paul Krugman…

A Can’t-Do Government

Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. “The New Orleans hurricane scenario,” The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001, “may be the deadliest of all.” It described a potential catastrophe very much like the one now happening.

So why were New Orleans and the nation so unprepared? After 9/11, hard questions were deferred in the name of national unity, then buried under a thick coat of whitewash. This time, we need accountability.

First question: Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive? Katrina hit five days ago - and it was already clear by last Friday that Katrina could do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you’d expect from an advanced country never happened. Thousands of Americans are dead or dying, not because they refused to evacuate, but because they were too poor or too sick to get out without help - and help wasn’t provided. Many have yet to receive any help at all.

There will and should be many questions about the response of state and local governments; in particular, couldn’t they have done more to help the poor and sick escape? But the evidence points, above all, to a stunning lack of both preparation and urgency in the federal government’s response…

I don’t think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the military wasn’t rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same reason nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control was neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn’t get adequate armor.

At a fundamental level, I’d argue, our current leaders just aren’t serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don’t like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.

Yesterday Mr. Bush made an utterly fantastic claim: that nobody expected the breach of the levees. In fact, there had been repeated warnings about exactly that risk.

So America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can’t-do government that makes excuses instead of doing its job. And while it makes those excuses, Americans are dying.

Click on the headline to read the entire column.

The righties will argue that this is all just bull. The evidence is showing that it isn’t. They will say that our “liberal media” is only giving us the bad news out of the disaster area and not the good news, just like they only deliver the bad news and not the good out of Iraq. That’s just a bunch of bull.

I saw Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on the television today. He said he understands what the people in New Orleans are going through. He said he knows how it feels to be stranded on your roof, surrounded by flood waters. He said he knows how it is to be without food or water for several days.

Actually, I seriously doubt that he knows or understands any of those things. I don’t think anybody could unless they have actually lived through them. Something tells me that Mr. Chertoff hasn’t. Now I may be wrong… he may have actually experienced these things. I don’t think I am wrong, though. Not many millionaires have these types of experiences in their lifetimes.

New Orleans in Anarchy With Fights, Rapes

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - New Orleans descended into anarchy Thursday, as corpses lay abandoned in street medians, fights and fires broke out and storm survivors battled for seats on the buses that would carry them away from the chaos. The tired and hungry seethed, saying they had been forsaken.

“I’m not sure I’m going to get out of here alive,” said Canadian tourist Larry Mitzel, who handed a reporter his business card in case he goes missing. “I’m scared of riots. I’m scared of the locals. We might get caught in the crossfire.”

Four days after Hurricane Katrina roared in with a devastating blow that inflicted potentially thousands of deaths, the frustration, fear and anger mounted, despite the promise of 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to stop the looting, plans for a $10 billion recovery bill in Congress and a government relief effort President Bush called the biggest in U.S. history.

New Orleans’ top emergency management official called that effort a “national disgrace” and questioned when reinforcements would actually reach the increasingly lawless city.

I would like to think that if my hometown faced a natural disaster (or terrorist attack or whatever) such as this, my government would be better prepared to handle it.

That is what I would like to think.

I don’t really think that. That’s unfortunate.

But… according to right-wing blogger Outside The Beltway, all the problems in New Orleans right now are being caused by the criminals in New Orleans. Perhaps, just perhaps, my hometown would not have as many “criminals.”

I guess that, technically, you could say that we are still paying under three bucks for a gallon of regular unleaded in Dallas, Texas today…

     

What’re you paying in your neighborhood?

Hastert says rebuilding isn’t sensible

Lawmakers have to ask themselves if it’s worth sinking possibly billions of federal dollars into rebuilding New Orleans, a low-lying city which would remain a vulnerable hurricane target even after clean up, House Speaker Dennis Hastert said Wednesday.

“It doesn’t make sense to me,” said Hastert during an interview with the Daily Herald editorial board. “And it’s a question that certainly we should ask.”

Congress’ most powerful Republican undoubtedly wasn’t the first to think such a thought, but as the man at the head of a chamber charged with approving federal disaster aid legislation, he knows the potentially taboo topic won’t go away.

“First of all your heart goes out to the people, the loss of their homes,” said Hastert of Plano. “But there are some real tough questions to ask about how you go about rebuilding this city.”

Hastert said his office worked nine weeks straight putting together the disaster relief for New York City following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. This could take even longer, he said.

“We help replace, we help relieve disaster,” Hastert said. “That is certainly the decision the people of New Orleans are going to make.

“But I think federal insurance and everything goes along with it and we ought to take a second look at it,” Hastert added.

“But you know we build Los Angeles and San Francisco on top of earthquake fissures and they rebuild, too. Stubbornness.”

I apologize for the heading of this post. I just could not think of another approriate one. Republicans are just so dang stupid sometimes!

What about Florida? Is not Florida a “vulnerable hurricane target?” Yet, for some reason, we continue to rebuild it.

Every city in the Midwest is in “tornado alley.” Is Mr. Hastert suggesting that we shouldn’t be building in the Midwest because the possibility exists that we may someday have to rebuild?

Every city north of the Mason-Dixon Line, and even some below it, are subject to blizzards. Perhaps we shouldn’t be building there, either.

And he’s already covered Los Angeles and San Francisco.

If we refuse to build anywhere that is vulnerable to a natural disaster, it doesn’t leave us with many places in which to build. Does it?

When I first saw this AP photo of George W. Bush surveying the damage done by Hurricane Katrina from the comfort of Air Force One, I knew it reminded me of something.

George W. Bush enjoying the comforts of Air Force One on September 11, 2001…

John Hawkins, meet August J. Pollak…

Tired, poor, huddled masses

If there is but one revelation to come from the last 24 hours of media coverage of the Katrina fallout, it is that a major percentage of America simply has absolutely no idea how another major percentage of America lives.

You know, I never really understood the magnitude of John Edwards’ whole “Two Americas” schtick during the 2004 campaign. Not necessarily his actual points, but I get the overall message now. I don’t know if it’s insensitivity or ignorance or both, but it’s there, and it’s unavoidable: [some] Americans actually can’t grasp the concept that other Americans are poor.

The Secretary of Homeland Security, as well as numerous pundits, refuse to accept the idea that there are people too poor to evacuate their homes. People are discussing that New Orleans “would be too hard to rebuild,” as if a few hundred thousand people will have their homes transplanted by magic. More than a dozen threads on Free Republic right now are about how the military should start shooting looters on sight.

Where 9/11 cast a light on the basic compassion of America in the light of a tragedy, Katrina has apparently cast a light on its hatred. In my wildest dreams I wouldn’t have thought right-wingers would start attacking impoverished citizens, let alone start demanding their deaths. The are a lot of suggestions about this, the more plausible ones being racism, class ignorance, and of course, ass-saving fervor toward lines of dialogue not related to Bush’s mistakes. I don’t really know which one, or ones, are true, if any.

What I do know is that in less than 24 hours, a media punditry that spent the last four years insisting that they’re the only people who “love America” is now discussing how much they hate other Americans.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Fights and trash fires broke out, rescue helicopters were shot at and anger mounted across New Orleans on Thursday, as National Guardsmen poured in to help restore order across this increasingly desperate and lawless city.

“We are out here like pure animals. We don’t have help,” the Rev. Issac Clark, 68, said outside the New Orleans Convention Center, where corpses lay in the open and he and other evacuees complained that they were dropped off and given nothing - no food, no water, no medicine.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the government is sending in 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to help stop looting and other lawlessness in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Already, 2,800 National Guardsmen are in the city, he said.

There is something wrong with that picture. I can’t seem to quite put my finger on it. Wait a minute… could it be that there are corpses laying out in the open and people have no food, water or medicine… yet the government’s top concern is stopping looting and other lawlessness?

God knows it is more important to protect Wal-mart’s bottom line that it is to save people’s lives.

Un-freaking-believable.

At least seven bodies were scattered outside, and hungry people broke through the steel doors to a food service entrance and began pushing out pallets of water and juice and whatever else they could find.

An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered with a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

“I don’t treat my dog like that,” 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. “I buried my dog.” He added: “You can do everything for other countries but you can’t do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military but you can’t get them down here.”

The street outside the center, above the floodwaters, smelled of urine and feces, and was choked with dirty diapers, old bottles and garbage…

“I think there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this - whether it be looting, or price gouging at the gasoline pump, or taking advantage of charitable giving or insurance fraud,” Bush said. “And I’ve made that clear to our attorney general. The citizens ought to be working together.”

New York Times editorial…

Waiting for a Leader

George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end.

We will, of course, endure, and the city of New Orleans must come back. But looking at the pictures on television yesterday of a place abandoned to the forces of flood, fire and looting, it was hard not to wonder exactly how that is going to come to pass. Right now, hundreds of thousands of American refugees need our national concern and care. Thousands of people still need to be rescued from imminent peril. Public health threats must be controlled in New Orleans and throughout southern Mississippi. Drivers must be given confidence that gasoline will be available, and profiteering must be brought under control at a moment when television has been showing long lines at some pumps and spot prices approaching $4 a gallon have been reported.

Sacrifices may be necessary to make sure that all these things happen in an orderly, efficient way. But this administration has never been one to counsel sacrifice. And nothing about the president’s demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis.

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Sometimes, the truth hurts. Spin it any way you want, the truth is that the man is an incompetent doofus.