What Happens: The Sequel!
258 Responses
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James, are you able to provide a citation for your (predictable Republican talking point) assertion about Governor Blanco? According to my sources, she declared a state of emergency on August 26 and asked for full federal assistance on August 27, well before landfall. (My sources, incidentally, include the gubernatorial website and the White House website.)
Additionally, Katrina was a Category 3 storm at landfall and on Tuesday before the levees were breached, most news sites were implying that the storm was a 'narrow escape' for New Orleans. The breach of the levees, which was anticipated for years before Katrina, was the true cause of devastation after the storm. Again, the sheer incompetence of FEMA and the Bush administration both before and after the storm is blurred by these right-wing memes which point the blame back on 'the awesome power of Mother Nature' and 'state and local officials'.
Incidentally, don't assume that you're the only person here with a personal connection to New Orleans. My name is French for a reason.
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Privately US citizens are very generous in terms of aid donations (although the effectiveness of that aid is in dispute). But most government aid goes to three countries: Egypt, Israel and Columbia. Much of the aid is used to purchase munitions.
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Michael,
I couldn't agree more with you that the IMF, WB and WTO are far from perfect organizations that have made some huge screw ups (the IMF royally screwed Argentina a few years ago), but you can't tie that to one US Administration or another. Like the UN, in setting up the organizations the intent was good, but the execution in many cases is appalling. It doesn't matter what country they are in, what the language is, what the culture is, by and large bureaucracies are lousy and ineffective and routinely screw up.I am glad you like the US. By writing pro US comments here I am not saying the US is perfect or always right at all. Far from it, it routinely screws up, but so does every other country. Winston Churchill said of Americans that "they always do the right thing, after they have tried all the alternatives!!"
Try imagining the world we would be in today if the US had not existed last century. We would most probably be either be speaking Japanese, German or Russian and be "living" in a brutal fascist or communist dictatorship. I would much rather have the US as the world’s sole super power rather than Putin’s Russia, or China, or Chirac’s France (for sale to the highest bidder on an issue by issue basis!!)
Kyle,
You conveniently focus on Govt. to Govt. aid, and ignore private aid. The problem with Govt. or UN to Govt. or aid is that so much it either corrupts counties and their decision making processes and ends up in a numbered Swiss bank account or gets wasted, or as you point out, gets directed to spending that the donor country wants.If you did a "Total aid money in, vs Actual true benefit achieved" analysis of Govt. aid over the last 50 years, you would get a dismal result. Untold billions of dollars in aid has been given to Africa by so many countries over the last 50 years and the continent is still mostly a basket case. I'd be all for the US giving more Govt. aid if I thought it would work. The evidence suggests otherwise which is why I believe that private aid is a better form and measure of generosity.
US citizens, corporations and organizations such as churches give enormous amounts of aid all around the world, either in money or time and effort that is mostly given directly at the local level in different initiatives that do much more good than Govt. to Govt. aid.
Your stats also ignore the substantial contributions of the US military from time to time, such as in Indonesia after the Tsunami and in Pakistan after the earthquake in Kashmir.
I have never seen an attempt to calculate a total for non Govt. aid, I don't know how you would be able to pull together the data to do it, but in terms of actual real benefit actually delivered to the needy, it has to be a huge number.Danielle,
Your talking point about me quoting Repub talking points is rather tiresome.
Do you honestly think that Blanco would put up details of her screw ups on her website? Good one!!
Trying to pin the entire blame for Katrina on FEMA and the Administration and say the pointing out the size of the storm and state and local failures are “Republican talking points" is just silly.A few points for you to consider:
If FEMA only had to worry about New Orleans and could have concentrated all its resources there, the result of its efforts would probably have been a lot better. Instead, due to the size of Katrina, FEMA had to spread its resources out over a disaster area in LA, MS and AL that was the same size as all of New Zealand. They were stretched way beyod their capacity.
The levees that broke were built 20 to 30 years ago by the Army Corp of Engineers to a badly flawed design. How is that FEMA's or Bush's fault?
The New Orleans Police force collapsed after the storm. The Police Chief Eddie Compass had some kind of nervous breakdown and was AWOL for 2 days.
The LA National Guard’s head quarters, Jackson Barracks was badly flooded and they lost almost all of their equipment, which slowed down their reaction time.
On the Wednesday after the storm the Red Cross had a big convoy of semis loaded with food water etc. ready to go to the Superdome and the Convention Center and help the people. The LA Dept of Homeland Security denied them permission to go into New Orleans because “our plan is to get everyone out of the city, we don’t want anything that will draw more people to these locations.” Brilliant, so just let the people already there suffer.
The Head of the Red Cross’s response in LA described the state of Louisiana’s disaster preparedness as “abysmal”. He would be a good person to pass judgment on the subject.
One of the things that makes New Orleans a fun place to live, is its "let’s eat good food and listen to good music and let le Bontemps Roule”. That attitude doesn’t mix well with hurricanes and disaster preparedness.
There were 4 big hurricanes in Florida in 2004 and FEMA and the Admin did what was needed of them effectively. Why did it go better in Florida? Smaller storms but also Florida’s emergency management is several orders of magnitude better than Louisiana’s.
Many of the people who were at the Superdome and Convention Center had made a conscious decision to stay in New Orleans. By choosing to stay (far too many people always ignore evacuation orders) in a city that is by the coast and below water as a category 5 hurricane was heading in for a potential direct hit, they played Russian Roulette, and they lost. Don’t you think that they contributed to their unfortunate situation just a little? How is their irresponsible decision making anyone else's fault? If the only people that needed to be rescued were the elderly and the sick, it would have been a much smaller and faster job.
Katrina is the first major media event I have been involved. The media did not show the whole story or get what they did show all correct. They were in “Ambulance chaser” mode from very early on and seem to be focused on sensationalism and whom to pin the blame on, even while thousands of people were making heroic efforts to rescue people and help the situation. A good friend of mine works for the same company as the head of the Louisiana National Guard, he and his fellow National Guardsmen worked their butts off non-stop for a week and rescued thousands of people and he feels completely shafted by the media coverage of their efforts, “I hate those bastards, what they put on TV wasn’t even close to what was going on”. His word, not mine. And media reporting is most of the information that you and everyone else who thinks "it is all FEMA's and Bush's Fault" are basing your opinions on. The Head of the Louisiana National Guard who was in the middle of Katrina for a week, or you. Who do you think is more likely to be correct in their understanding of the Katrina?
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James,
I agree with you that American corporate and private citizens are very generous (third in the world in terms of GNI I believe) but in that they are not alone. The gap between the top giving nations is not that large and when you add in governmental aid (and, arguably remove the billions to Israel, although even without that being deducted) the USA does not look that generous, sinking to 19 in the overall picture in 2005.The contribution to the Asian Tsunami by your military is noted but many, globally, gave very generously there and the aid was somewhat tempered by the need of the US Aviators to undertake practice bombing runs without permission over Indonesian sovereign territory. It wasn't a clever thing to do and very threatening. As siad many gave and it is indictive of the vaccum that the US seems to exist n that there is seemingly a belief in the US that you carried much of the burden. You helped but you were part of a bigger picture. The Cuban government medical teams were incredible in both the Pakistani and Javan earthquakes too, some 90 teams operating across the region. I saw no mention of these in the US media anywhere whilst CNN carried live on the spot reports of the Navy and Marines on the spot.
As to whether we would be speaking whatever language you specify if it hadn't been for the security blanket provided by the US...please...
I'm not going to dismiss the immense and crucial contribution made by your nation in defeating the Axis, not only militarily but as an industrial powerhouse. but you did not defeat Germany, the United Nations and Allies did that. The two most important battles of the European war arguably were El Alamein and Stalingrad neither of which had any US involvement. The invasion of Europe on 6 June was of course very important, although it too was a multinational operation but its importance was absolutely secondary to the events in the east where the European war was being fought and won by the Soviets..the west was a distraction. Even without lendlease it has been often argued that the Soviets could have defeated Germany without D-day or even the US involment. That's debatable and we will never know. What is not debateable is that the US & the Commonwealth could not have won without Soviet Russia, conventionally of course.
As the cold war. The US and the Soviets were equal protagonists in this. I'm glad I don't live under a Soviet or Communist regime but I have no doubt that the many millions who died under the guise of the US protecting their freedom would rather have lived. It was LeMay who tried to provoke a nuclear war throughout the late fifties, it was the US that continually overflew Soviet territory and placed missiles on its borders. You overthrew democratic regimes (as did the Soviets) ran death squads, torpedoed elections in Vietnam that would've saved the lifes of millions there. You were not, as a nation, the guiltless good guys in this war, saving the world from a great evil, despite the way it was portrayed and I think many of us are eternally grateful that Gorby forced the issue (after the Nato powers said no) and said he didn't want to play anymore. To my mind he was the true hero of the cold war, the one who stopped the pointless nonsense that had dominated lessor statesmen for the previous decades.
Its much overused but Ike's famous comments were spot on and unfortunately the USA was, from about 1953 onwards so much in the sway of the military industrialists and it's related economy that it was never to America's advantage to kill the cold war. And if you think that your foreign policy is less for sale to that than Chirac's France you are sadly mistaken.
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Ah yes, the time-honoured 'I know a really important guy who was *there*!' argument strategy. Sorry, but no dice. It doesn't make your stance any more convincing.
Here's some rebuttal for you, in double-quick time: *FEMA* was meant to be in charge of the disaster recovery, *not* state and local officials, no matter how lame and incompetent they were; the funding for upgrading the levees was cut by the Bush administration, so *that's* how it's partially his fault; things went so much better in Florida because it was an election year in a swing state; and oh yeah, blaming a bunch of poor people without cars for not leaving the city is really classy of you. Is it their fault that they were stranded without food and water for five days, too?
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I read all these posts and think how much better informed I could be on this subject, but the truth is, I just can't bring myself to care. So I would offer only this comment. Why, regardless of their political persuasion, do so many residents of the USA persist in getting all riled up when others criticise their government? So many times, when I've had discussions with American friends about federal policies, back in the day when I gave a sh**, they get all defensive, even when they didn't vote for the government in power, as such. Me no understand. But then I don't live in the greatest democracy in the world. Heh.
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Why, regardless of their political persuasion, do so many residents of the USA persist in getting all riled up when others criticise their government?
'My husbands a loser, a gambler and a drunk.'
'He sure is.'
'How dare you say that? That's my husband you're talking about!'I think that sums up the attitude a lot of people have about foreign criticism of their native country and Americans are no exception.
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Very true, very true, danyl. And don't we all need to stop doing that? It's the old " I hate my boyfriend, he's a wanker. Oh hang on, I'm getting back with him, and you criticised him, and now you're not my friend anymore". Highly tedious.
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Darryl,
if your drunk husband leaves your house and wanders around punching other people then we have a right to criticise not only his drunkenness but the root causes of such -
Yeah, but it is a pretty bitter pill to swallow if you're meant to answer for your whole country and its horrid foreign policy. It's not only that Americans become unnecessarily defensive (they do!), but also that the people doing the discussing aren't exactly clear about defining their terms. 'Why do *you* do this?' rather than 'why does the government do this?' Plus it's quite hard to turn yourself around if you've been taught from birth that you're a member of the best, brightest 'beacon of freedom' the world has ever seen. I have nothing but admiration for my husband, who is not only able to detach himself from those kinds of myths, but discuss the problems of the US dispassionately. It shows a maturity that I lack: I'll get all het up mentally if someone's snotty about NZ, even if they're right, and then I have to force myself into a more objective, calm frame of mind. So I can empathise with them.
PS Hi Simon! :)
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Hi Danielle!
I agree, but with the much touted democracy and freedom comes a kind of collective responsibility. I understand the concept of defending ones country, of a national pride. But there are two problems here. Firstly NZ is, generally, a good global citizen. I'm proud to carry it's passport. Our policies are either benign or positive. That of course is because we are small enough not to matter. But when we do go out there, with perhaps the exception of the Vietnam War, we try to do the right thing. Although I'm well aware that if we had had a National government in 2003 there is a fairly strong chance we would still be bogged down in Iraq with the coalition. Secondly, I'm of the opinion that since 1955 or so the US has not always been that good global citizen. We have had to suffer the policies of it's various administrations as has the rest of the world. There has been much good in there, but oh so much bad. So much pain, so much death, so much greed and so much evil, all of which, to my mind has come to a head in the past half decade. And we have a right to citicise that which affects us all, and the causes of that. Rangel from NY criticised Chavez for coming to the US and criticiing Bush. Well, he's your leader (you elected him under your system at least once) and he kills people. Chavez, tinpot or not, has a right.As you say, its hard when you are fed a line from birth, to accept that it may not be true. That the US did not invent democracy (the UK was a fledgling democracy when the USA threw them out in 1776), its not the only or most free (whatever that means) nation in the world, they don't "hate our freedom" and the USA didn't single handedly save the world from any (insert variety) great evil.
But as I said elsewhere, there is quite a difference between being anti-American and being anti-Americans, and more power to your hubby for being able to see that.
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Danielle,
FEMA is not responsible for initial disaster response, in New Orleans or anywhere else. Local and state authorities are. FEMA has 2600 employees in D.C and another 4000 available to call up for disaster response (from FEMA's website). So with this number of people FEMA is supposed to be in charge of first response for every disaster in the US? Think about it, that is just not possible. If there is a huge earthquake in Los Angeles, FEMA is supposed to be in charge of initial response? It would take them 12 to 24 hours minimum just to get on site with any equipment. First response would be in the hands of the LAPD, LAFD and various state authorities, who after all, are on location and know they own patch better than anyone else.
Due to their fundamentally flawed design, the levees were a disaster waiting to happen. They breeched well before they were over topped (17th st, London Ave etc levees). No amount of maintenance could change that. I have never heard or read anywhere that insufficient or incorrect maintenance had any bearing on the levee failures.
I am not ignoring or excusing FEMA's or the Administration’s short comings before or during Katrina, not at all. I am just pointing out that to place the "blame" for Katrina on just those 2 organizations is simply just incorrect, far too simplistic.
People here place the blame on all the various local, state and federal authorities involved to various extents, but if there is one organization that is universally loathed and saddled with the majority of the blame, it is the Army Corp of Engineers. I have heard that the Corp have had to take any identification off their vehicles and are not able to wear any uniforms or identifying clothing least they be abused or harrassed, which is really unfair. The people who made the design mistakes 20 years and more ago are long retired and gone, the current Corp people are working their butts off to fix the problems, the levee breeches are hardly their fault.
There were 50,000 flooded cars in New Orleans after Katrina. A lot of the people who did not evacuate had the means to do so, and chose not to. Bad decision. The idea that those who got stuck in New Orleans after the storm were all poor with no cars is a myth (another one). I have some friends who routinely blow evacuation orders and stayed for Katrina. They had quite a story to tell about how they got out, I expect they will evacuate next time!! When I first got to New Orleans, rather than evacuate we used to buy enough beer to last 3 days and have hurricane parties!! People do some stupid things, we are all human after all. There was an article in the newspaper a few months ago with about 10 or 12 of the most remarkable Katrina survival stories. Every single one of these people had the means to get out of the city and most had friends and relatives begging them to get out. They didn’t, and almost lost their lives as a result of their own bad decision. The City Council was roundly criticized after Katrina for not having any plan to evacuate the elderly, disabled, sick or those without cars or access to transportation. The Council now has a plan to collect them and transport them to an arena in Baton Rouge. Better late than never I suppose.
Anyway Danielle, enough!! I have given it a good shot, but if by now you don’t see that there is a lot more to Katrina that “it was FEMA and Bush’s fault”, you never will!!
You can lead a horse to water …..
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FEMA is not responsible for initial disaster response, in New Orleans or anywhere else.
I actually laughed out loud when I read this. FEMA, the *Federal Emergency Management Agency*, when asked before landfall by the governer of the state to take over the disaster response, isn't actually responsible for it? Oh, OK. Silly me.
I have never heard or read anywhere that insufficient or incorrect maintenance had any bearing on the levee failures.
Well, you must have been standing with your fingers in your ears and your eyes closed saying 'lalalalalalala I can't hear you' for the last few years, then, because it was in your local paper the Times-Picayune on June 8, 2004, and widely reported in various media since the storm. With figures and everything.
But pfffft, whatever. I give up too. You're a persistent bugger, I'll give you that.
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But pfffft, whatever. I give up too. You're a persistent bugger, I'll give you that.
You have to admire his willingness to defend the administration, irrespective of mere facts and figures.
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(__tag!__)
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Simon Wrote:
if your drunk husband leaves your house and wanders around punching other people then we have a right to criticise not only his drunkenness but the root causes of such
Damn right....
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Just cross-checked the Rolling Stone list of the ten
worst Congresspeople with the results, courtesy of
Wikipedia. Only two of them, Waldron and Pombo,
were given the boot...Craig Y.
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Only two of them, Waldron and Pombo,
were given the boot...Ah yes, the system works again. </irony>
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Danielle,
This is torture. Did you note that your Times Pic article about levee maintenance etc. is dated June 8, 2004. That would be 15 months BEFORE Katrina. Since when do articles written 15 months before an event constitute an authorative description of what caused the event?
Please visit the following site: https://ipet.wes.army.mil/
It is the site of the Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force, or IPET, whose 150 members come from academia, private industry and the corps. It is THE report on the performance of levee system during Kartina.
Please select Volume 1, The Executive Summary
Please scroll down to page 10 where the "Overarching Findings" can be found. It has it all there over a few pages. It is actually an interesting read. Now I declare (on this subject, levees) , the case is most definitively closed!!
Danielle, now you can laugh out loud, again. At yourself ...
Now I will have to find something similiar to do with FEMA... Might take a day or two to get to that, I am very busy at work, and I have quite a few other posts to reply to as well.
Yes, I am a persistent bugger. I have no problem admitting I am wrong, when I am wrong, but in this case I know for a fact that I am right, so why would I give up? I wouldn't be doing anybody who reads our exchanges any favors if I did!! If I gave up in frustration (at times an appealing thought) they would all believe you, and I would be partially responsible for mis-informing them.
Why am I so confident that I am correct? Well obviously I am here on the ground and I have a vested interested in finding out what happened at all levels of the Kartrina episode. Being on the ground (as opposed to surfing the web) is obviously (to me anyway, but maybe I am strange) a better way to find about something for reasons like this: My neighbor has been an engineering contractor here in New Orleans for 25 or 30 years and was involved in preparing the IPET report and drew my attention to it a while back. I didn't know him very well at all before the storm, but as you would expect, after the storm I have sought him out and have had several most interesting conversations with him where he has laid out what caused the levee failures. He has never mentioned maintenance once. (No, he wasn't involved in the construction or maintenance of the levees with the major design flaws, so he doesn't have an axe to grind or his ass to cover) He was also involved in some of the meetings in years gone by when local experts tried to persuade the Army Corp of Engineers that parts of their designs (in this case for what are described in the IPET report as outlet canals; 17th St, London Ave etc.) were stupid and would fail. Apparently the Corp would just not listen and ended up making mistakes a first year civil engineering student would be able to identify.
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To add to my last post, most of the $ value of damage to NO was caused by the failures of what referred to in my previous post and the IPET report as "outlet canals", 17th st, London Ave etc.
I am sure there are a range of estimates, all depending on multiple assumptions, for the damage done to New Orleans by the flooding after Katrina. Without researching the issue, the figure that had stuck in my mind previously was $300 billion.
So you have close to $300 billion of damage caused by a meatheaded engineering design error!!
$300 billion, amazing!! By far the most expensive engineering mistake in human history.
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Other factors such as the CSX closure gate not functioning and <b>the maintained condition of the levees</b> were additional negative factors in the performance of the system.
- Final Report of the Interagency Performance Evaluation Taskforce
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Other factors such as the CSX closure gate not functioning and the maintained condition of the levees were additional negative factors in the performance of the system.
Final Report of the Interagency Performance Evaluation Taskforce
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Other factors such as the CSX closure gate not functioning and the maintained condition of the levees were additional negative factors in the performance of the system.
Final Report of the Interagency Performance Evaluation Taskforce
ARRRGGGHHH!!! Is that cited as a major factor or cause? NO!!!An "additional negative factor" does not equal a cause or main reason!!
Question. Based on information in the IPET, if the levees had been "maintained to perfection" would the levees still have failed? For all the numerous major reasons listed in the IPET, YES!!
It doesn't matter how much lipstick you put on a pig, it is still a pig!!
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You didn't deny it was a 'major failure' when you were being snarky to Danielle. You wrote:
I have never heard or read anywhere that insufficient or incorrect maintenance had any bearing on the levee failures.
When the very report you very pompously and condescendingly cited:
Now I declare (on this subject, levees) , the case is most definitively closed! Danielle, now you can laugh out loud, again. At yourself.
found that the maintanence DID have a bearing on the failure.
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OK, so we haven't given up then, James? Round 12! Let's come out swinging! (And I'm impressed that Danyl and Hamish are still fighting the good fight! Right on.)
Did you note that your Times Pic article about levee maintenance etc. is dated June 8, 2004. That would be 15 months BEFORE Katrina. Since when do articles written 15 months before an event constitute an authorative description of what caused the event?
I don't think you quite understand my point. The headline on June 8, 2004 says:
"Shifting federal budget erodes protection from levees;
Because of cuts, hurricane risk grows"In case that isn't clear enough for you, let me quote Walter Maestri, the emergency management chief of Jefferson Parish, who said at the time regarding the funding cuts in the budget for maintenance of the levees: "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".
Al Naomi, the Army Corps of Engineers' senior project manager, said:
"I can't tell you exactly what that could mean this hurricane season
if we get a major storm. "It would depend on the path and speed of the storm, the angle that it hits us. But I can tell you that we would be better off if the levees were raised, . . . and I think it's important and only fair that those people who live behind the levee know the status of these projects."The Corps had no budget to maintain the levees, so their horrible engineering technique, as reported by your neighbour (again with the 'I know a guy' schtick, wtf is *with* that?), is sort of irrelevant. See, what *I* was saying, and perhaps you need this explained a little more clearly than I thought, is that this disaster was predicted, in 2004 and earlier, by a bunch of people who probably know what they're talking about. And some federal preparedness to protect a truly internationally beloved city and its people... well, that wouldn't have gone amiss, I'm thinking. Call me crazy.
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