the Centrist

As the press tries their best to make Houston’s traffic jam the equivalent to roaming gangs of anarchists we must remember there is a vast difference between inconvenience and incompetence. I am reminded of a snow event in Buffalo a few years ago in which a short stretch of the thruway got several feet of snow in a very short time. Traffic literally stopped and that jam took over almost 3 days to sort out. Why is it that nobody blamed the President … not for the blizzard, not for running out of gas, or for that matter not for the city and state’s inability to prepare for such an event? Everyone understood that lake effect blizzards happen and we can never be totally prepared for all that nature throws our way.
The facts in post Katrina New Orleans speak for themselves. The Friday before the Category 4 hurricane hit Mississippi (not Louisiana) the President called the Governors of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana and declared a state of emergency so that funds would be available for the impending doom … as he subsequently did for Rita. He was in Crawford Texas at that time. He was slow to visit and react to the tragedy … but he did prepare and react to it.
On the other hand Louisiana’s Governor Kathleen Blanco never reacted. It was as if she either didn’t understand that the Federal Government cannot send troops into states unless they are first invited by the governor of said state or an act of congress (with the express exception of nuclear threats); or was reluctant to give up control. Perhaps it was the later, because once the president performs the action called Federalization, he is in control of the action of those troops. This is due to thePosse Comitatus Act. This act was passed in 1878 to limit the use of federal troops to control southern polling places. Posse Comitatus makes it a crime to employ “any part of the Army …to execute the laws.” It does not apply to the U.S. Coast Guard. Thus, unless invited by the state, it is illegal for any president to respond to a plea from citizens with troops. In the travesty at Waco this act was flagrantly violated.
Moreover, since Katrina made landfall at Mississippi on Sunday, New Orleans thought it had once again dodged the bullet. It was not until Tuesday that the levies broke and the city flooded. We now know that federal monies earmarked to repair the levies over several years and under several administrations had been misappropriated. We also know environmental activists had stopped much of what is now deemed ‘necessary’ for improved design to those levies. Thus, it was the increase in water volume and poor design, not Katrina or Rita, that compromised those doomed levies. As the waters flooded 87% of the city, Mayor Nagen eventually got around to asking for a complete evacuation. But he did nothing to aid an orderly and safe departure. Who will ever forget those pictures of hundreds of submerged available buses? Buses which could have saved hundreds of lives. Ironically, many of them were the same buses used by Rev. Jesse Jackson, Mayor Nagen, and Gov. Blanko to get out the vote. One might reasonably ask … was it more important to get them to the poles or get them to safety?
Furthermore, approximately one third of the New Orleans police force vacated their posts. Rather than demand that the first responders hold their positions, protect the people, and begin an orderly evacuation … the mayor ordered his indigent into an unsupplied and unsecured Superdome and Convention Center … where predictable lawlessness reined. He failed to inform the Federal Government that the Convention site was being used, as ex-FEMA Director Michael Brown complained. How did the illustrious mayor respond? Nagen, almost immediately, treated these same first responders to an all inclusive paid vacation to Las Vegas (including $200 gambling cash) … while his citizens were still in harms way. When his rational was questioned by Fox News anchor Britt Hume, he responded something like: ‘You just gotta understand, New Orleans is a party town.’
Yet the blame game continued and rapidly evolved into a feeding frenzy laying most of the blame at the feet of the President. They focused on, of all things, Bush’s vacation … as if Katrina would not have occurred were he in Washington rather than Texas. The communicatively challenged President never fired back. Yet the fact remains the overestimated rapes, murders, hospital and nursing home deaths took place, for the most part, because first responders had fled their posts and the governor failed to ask the President to Federalize the troops. When the ‘calvary’ finally did arrived (after Federalization) in the form of the National Guard even they could not evacuate the Super Dome and health facilities until they defeated the entrenched snipers.
Yet Bush did not respond with blame. He became Trumanesque stating that ‘the buck stopped here’. That statement was followed by a Roseveltian like recovery plan, proposing a recovery package which included everything from day care to mortgages. Yet he predictably received precious few accolades from the left. Rather, both the liberal mayor and governor could be seen stampeding to any available microphone. They seemed to be simultaneously shouting something like this: ‘no, no the buck doesn’t stop there … Bush is a Republican … he can’t be compassionate, the buck can’t stop there, he’s a conservative, not there, not there … after all Truman and FDR were Democrats … so the buck has to stop here.’ And eventually it will.