A Failure of Government in These United States

[KenH]

I think we now must admit that our government has utterly failed us.

1. The flooding of New Orleans was preventable. The governmental leaders have known for decades that what has just happened was possible. And they knew it could be engineered to prevent it. Yet they failed to do so and instead tried to get by on the cheap and rely on luck. Now we have a major American city that is dead. This didn't have to happen. It was preventable.

2. We have had no rational energy policy in this country. We haven't increased the CAFE standards to better our gas mileage but instead have allowed them to be eased so people could basically drive "tanks" that guzzle gasoline. We haven't allowed drilling in places rich with oil and gas in this country. We haven't built new refineries because of environmental restriction and the Not-In-My-Back-Yard(NIMBY) attitude. We haven't enacted a common sense energy plan such as http://www.setamericafree.org/blueprint.pdf . Now we are having gasoline and natural gas and heating oil prices go up, up, up and up. This didn't have to happen. It was preventable.

This cuts across party lines. This cuts across all levels of government. Frankly, I think it's time to throw ideology out the window. I think the Democrat and Republican Parties are the responsible parties in this. And the minor parties are too narrowly based ideologically to save the day. What we need is a political movement that is practical in its orientation. I wish a leader would arise that would be a true problem solver instead of merely looking toward the next election, next political contribution, and rewarding his political friends. Both of the major political parties are guilty of this in spades.

Therefore, we can all keep debating each other over our ideologies and continue to see things deteriorate by arguing over who gets to sit in the deck chairs while the ship goes down, or we can dump our ideologies and get to building America and working to solve our problems.

I choose to do the latter. I am optimistic that other people will do the same once they realize the gravity of the situation.

 

[LadyEagle]

I think the Democrat and Republican Parties are the responsible parties in this.

For once we agree, Ken. Our Government continues to fail us, even on the Local and State levels. We are not prepared for the next major terrorist attack.

I find it incredible that with Rescue Operations going on, there are two hospitals sitting in 6 feet of water in New Orleans that have been without any power since Sunday night & this is Wednesday, and no rescue operation has thought to evacuate the hospital staffs and patients - there are 1000 in one hospital alone. One hospital has called in several times to MSNBC, but still no word on evacuation from authorities. I just find it beyond belief.

I find it incredible that the Navy ships weren't dispatched until today.

I find it incredible that no one really seems to know how to organize the evacuation process and plan for these things ahead of time, for the worst case scenario, with all the millions of tax dollars being thrown at different agencies.

The NOLA experience and heart break we are seeing now is the result of government failure, not heeding the possible scenario that was predicted by experts for a long time. Sadly, innocent lives are ruined because of the apathy of politicians.

One would think our leaders at all levels would have their ducks in a row in planning for catastrophic events of all types, but it is quite evident they do not.

 

[Joseph_Botwinick]

I agree with both of you.

I thought Bill O'Reilly made a lot of sense tonight in his talking points about where we should go from here to handle this disaster which could have been prevented (but now that we are there, let's deal with it). Check out his talking points on the website on Fox News.

He also illustrated the truth of your point in his interview with a retired General from the Army corps of Engineers tonight when he asked him why, when they knew they could have got a cat. 5 hurricane, did they build the levies to only withstand a cat. 3 hurricane. The guy just sat there with a deer in the headlights look on his face.

Joseph Botwinick

 

[Old 33]

Here's at least some explanation:

"No one can say they didn't see it coming"
By Sidney Blumenthal
Aug. 31, 2005 | Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has left millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter and hundreds to thousands reportedly dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated city of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature.
A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.
The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: "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."
The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised "no net loss" of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.
In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. "There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection," said one of the report's authors. The chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study as "highly questionable," and boasted, "Everybody loves what we're doing."
"My administration's climate change policy will be science based," President Bush declared in June 2001. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection Agency submitted a study on global warming to the United Nations reflecting its expert research, Bush derided it as "a report put out by a bureaucracy," and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its first comprehensive "Report on the Environment," stating, "Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment," the White House simply demanded removal of the line and all similar conclusions. At the G-8 meeting in Scotland this year, Bush successfully stymied any common action on global warming. Scientists, meanwhile, have continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising temperature of the oceans, which has produced more severe hurricanes.
In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, warned in a statement, "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking": "Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ... Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle ... The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease." Bush completely ignored this statement.
In the two weeks preceding the storm in the Gulf, the trumping of science by ideology and expertise by special interests accelerated. The Federal Drug Administration announced that it was postponing sale of the morning-after contraceptive pill, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its safety and its approval by the FDA's scientific advisory board. The United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa accused the Bush administration of responsibility for a condom shortage in Uganda -- the result of the administration's evangelical Christian agenda of "abstinence." When the chief of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Justice Department was ordered by the White House to delete its study that African-Americans and other minorities are subject to racial profiling in police traffic stops and he refused to buckle under, he was forced out of his job. When the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting oversight analyst objected to a $7 billion no-bid contract awarded for work in Iraq to Halliburton (the firm at which Vice President Cheney was formerly CEO), she was demoted despite her superior professional ratings. At the National Park Service, a former Cheney aide, a political appointee lacking professional background, drew up a plan to overturn past environmental practices and prohibit any mention of evolution while allowing sale of religious materials through the Park Service.
On the day the levees burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered a speech in California comparing the Iraq war to World War II and himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt: "And he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability to the region was by bringing freedom to Japan." Bush had boarded his very own "Streetcar Named Desire."

Source - Edited to fix link

[ August 31, 2005, 10:17 PM: Message edited by: LadyEagle ]

 

[Old 33]

Makes you wonder what else we're dropping the ball on...

 

[KenH]

More Bush bashing won't solve the problem. There is guilt all over the hands of both major political parties. Their interest is only about who is in power and gets to call the shots. Period.

 

[JGrubbs]

Originally posted by Joseph_Botwinick:
He also illustrated the truth of your point in his interview with a retired General from the Army corps of Engineers tonight when he asked him why, when they knew they could have got a cat. 5 hurricane, did they build the levies to only withstand a cat. 3 hurricane. The guy just sat there with a deer in the headlights look on his face.

The natural role of a floodplain is to carry excess water during periods of heavy runoff, but when the floodplain is walled off behind levees, the artificially narrow river must rise higher to compensate.

Levees built by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers guide the Mississippi River and its silt through a narrow shipping channel to the Gulf of Mexico. Now, when the wetlands are eroded by storms, there's no dirt to rebuild them. "We now have a levee system to nearly the edge of the continental shelf, so the sediment gets dumped off ... into the deep part of the Gulf, and it doesn't build land any more," says Stephen Nelson, a professor of geology at Tulane University, so the barrier wetlands are disappearing. "We're losing our protection from hurricanes, and the biggest worry about flooding around [New Orleans] comes from hurricanes."

Source: http://whyfiles.org/107flood/4.html

They were talking about this on the news the other night, and saying how by building the levees they have caused the city to "sink" below sea level which has made it more of a danger zone during hurricanes.

 

[Joseph_Botwinick]

Originally posted by Joseph_Botwinick:
I agree with both of you.

I thought Bill O'Reilly made a lot of sense tonight in his talking points about where we should go from here to handle this disaster which could have been prevented (but now that we are there, let's deal with it). Check out his talking points on the website on Fox News.

Apparently, Fox has not updated their videos for today, but when they do, be sure to check out Bill O'Reilly. He makes a lot of sense.

Joseph Botwinick

 

[LadyEagle]

A reporter on MSNBC just said that there is "no one in charge" at the Super Dome and it is a very unsafe place.

Who is supposed to be in charge? The Mayor? The Governor?

This is NOT supposed to be happening in America, Folks! The military was deployed IMMEDIATELY to the tsunami victims.

 

[KenH]

Originally posted by Joseph_Botwinick:
The guy just sat there with a deer in the headlights look on his face.

I saw that, too. It was several seconds before he tried to attempt an answer. It was clear he didn't have a clue how to answer. How could he? What has happened was preventable. Therefore, the lack of government action over the decades is totally indefensible.

 

[Old 33]

Originally posted by KenH:
More Bush bashing won't solve the problem.

True. But if he was told of the problem and chose to cut the funding for the solution to the problem, that's not Bush bashing. That's incompetence.

 

[KenH]

The incompetence cuts across both major party lines. We need a new political movement in this country that cares about solving problems.

 

[Joseph_Botwinick]

Here is the O'Reilly strategy:

1. Looters and other exploiters should be prosecuted to the fullest extent.

2. All Americans should immediately limit gas and oil consumption.

3. The Energy Secretary should warn oil companies not to profiteer. Profits should be cut 20%. Any oil company which doesn't voluntarily comply with that should be exposed and publicly shamed.

4. President Bush should ask OPEC to drop the price of oil and stop gouging. According to Bill, it cost OPEC $4 a barrel to produce the crude, and they are charging $70 a barrell.

5. Americans should help the Red Cross and other legitimate charities.

6. Southern hotel owners should inform authorities of vacancies. And no price gouging!

7. Over the next few weeks, the Factor will watch the powerful. We'll tell you who's helping Katrina's victims and who's hurting them. That includes you oil company CEO's. You're on notice.

 

[Joseph_Botwinick]

The retired commander of the Army COE said this:

We wish we would have invested the money into stronger levees.

That was his answer.

Joseph Botwinick

 

[JGrubbs]

From what I understand, it's the levees that have caused the dangerzone by destroying the wetlands.

 

[LadyEagle]

So why are they shipping the evacuees to Houston? Wouldn't it make more sense to put up temporary lodging, etc., in an abandoned military base?

 

[KenH]

Of course, it would, LE. But remember, this is the government calling the shots. And the government has proven, in spades, that it is incompetent.

 

[Joseph_Botwinick]

LE,

Where would you suggest? It seems as if Houston and the Astrodome is prepared and set up to take care of these folks. What's the problem with that?

Joseph Botwinick

 

[JGrubbs]

For how long? These 1 million who are now homeless and jobless will have to stay away for at least a month, are they going to live in the Astrodome for a month? I'm not complaining, I am glad to see that Houston is trying to help, I am just curious as to what a long-term solution for 1 million people will be, they are all in my prayers!

 

[KenH]

It'll take at least a month to pump out all the water according to government officials(not that I would put any stock in their words). Then everything will have to be cleaned up to a certain extent before houses and businesses are livable and usable.