The Katrina Blame Game
I am sure I’m not alone in saying that I have been quite addicted to the coverage of the disaster on the gulf coast. Before the storm, I saw the mayor of New Orleans and many other local/state government officials talking about evacuation, etc. The news programs showed the neat graphics of the New Orleans “soup bowl” and how the levees are only built to withstand a category 3 hurricane. Is it just me, or wasn’t there a big scare just a couple of years ago when a hurricane was bearing down on them? So now, after all this, fingers are beginning to point. Most interviews I see on the news point to the federal government, many asking “Where is the help?” I agree. This is bull crap, all these people, no food, no water, the dead in the street. You would think they were in a third world country somewhere. When all the smoke clears, and the death toll from the aftermath, the “cluster”, exceeds the fatalities from the actual flooding, there will be some serious heads rolling at the national level. Sure you can blame the big shots for not responding fast enough, but I haven’t heard anything about the local officials. Everyone knew that the city would be destroyed if/when a big storm hit. Why has nothing been done to prevent this?
posted by bschneider5 @ 6:49:00 AM
7 comments
7 Comments:
I can't believe what a mess this has become. It seems that everyone threw up their hands and no one has worked together to prevent. I thought that we learned about the importance of cohesiveness from the trauma of 9/11. We must work together at the individual, local and federal level to help one another.
I'd like to see United Nations airplanes dropping big bags of rice and pallets of water over the Superdome and now the Astrodome.
That's a goo point... Lets not forget the international level!
I mean a good point... not a goo point
New Yorker article
~snip~
Just as serious, the President’s priorities, his indifference to questions of infrastructure and the environment, magnified an already complicated disaster. In an era of tax cuts for the wealthy, Bush consistently slashed the Army Corps of Engineers’ funding requests to improve the levees holding back Lake Pontchartrain. This year, he asked for $3.9 million, $23 million less than the Corps requested. In the end, Bush reluctantly agreed to $5.7 million, delaying seven contracts, including one to enlarge the New Orleans levees. Former Republican congressman Michael Parker was forced out as the head of the Corps by Bush in 2002 when he dared to protest the lack of proper funding.
Similarly, the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, which is supposed to improve drainage and pumping systems in the New Orleans area, recently asked for $62.5 million; the White House proposed $10.5 million. Former Louisiana Senator John Breaux, a pro-Bush Democrat, said, “All of us said, ‘Look, build it or you’re going to have all of Jefferson Parish under water.’ And they didn’t, and now all of Jefferson Parish is under water.”
~click link for more~
So we should all blame George Bush for this?
Now liberals like Cyn are whining about the death of the poor and the helpless, blaming it on our president. Look at her made up numbers. What a bunch of malarkee!
The only people that couldn't survive where those that were too lazy to figure it out. They had 5 days to get off the crack long enough to put one basketball shoe in front of the other and make for higher ground.
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