bye, Rudy. Nice knowing ya

Re: RE: Is the base fleeing?

Would you PLEASE elucidate as to how it will be better under Hillary?

WHAT competent executive is going to accept that job at that pay?

HOW does that competent executive get rid of the leeches and nincompoops in the lower ranks?

Passing off blame for the locals as 'elected' is truly mind numbing. THEY know the local systems and players, THEY GOT ELECTED for their supposed leadership.


Instead all we got from them was soundbites

 

RE: Re: RE: Is the base fleeing?

pettyfog. <sigh>
1. Your average City Fire Chief from a top 20 city or state EMA director would have sufficient experience and yes, FEMA chief makes enough money, and has sufficient prestige, to make it a worthy job of taking.
2. Getting rid of Federal employees is no tougher than getting rid of state employees. Any of those listed in #1 would have the experience to handle the situation.
3. It would be better under Hillary for no other reason than it can't get any worse. Besides, Hillary is smart enough to learn for Bush's mistakes.
4. There is more to running an emergency situation than leadership. You need experience and knowledge so no, I don't expect elected leadership to do more than:
...a) put competant people in charge of the details
...b) say the things they are supposed to to keep the people calm and following the directions of the people in a)

So, of the 3 elected officials involved, I give the following grades:
Mayor: C
Governor: D
President: F

Mayor gets a C because he had more limited resources to work with and was at least actively communicating both internally to the city and externally to the state and FEMA. [no, I don't like his methods, style, and approach either, but I'm trying to be objective]

 

I'm thinking that Andy is right on the "F" simply because emergency management was supposed to be handled by the governer and that power was absorbed by the president as part of the homeland security departments birth.

The system simply sucked.

I support the republican idea that each of the issues, should be handled by the state and only assisted financially by the federal govt.

Central gov't is bad... very bad...

Oh, since i may have personal knowledge of this: its pretty hard to fire a gov't employee especially union emps... non union emps (management) often get reasigned to another place they can screw up. Gov't officials dont get paid a whole lot, so they tend to want to keep a career alive to feed families and such. not everyone is a billionaire.

 

WHAT!!!! That had nothing to do with it... competent or not! FEMA deployment is STILL at the pleasure of the Governor!!!

Blanco waited 24 hours to respond to Bush on deploying FEMA!

I dont understand WHAT part of the previous scenario changed, if ANY.

Thank you.. I was about to respond to the 'no harder than firing a state employee' You did that quite nicely.

But sorry.... so we must excuse incompetence at lower levels because they have to 'feed their families' but not at upper levels?

What immediately comes to mind is that many people think of those who have attained some status and position as somehow 'better and more qualified' than they are, thus they take any foible or shortcoming as an affront to their senses, unless of course he's a functionary in the 'other party'.

 

petttyfog. You'll find that I attack members of both parties equally; i.e., on their individual merits, or lack thereof.

as for the 24 hour delay, FEMA should had pre-positioned what they needed, in anticipation of the call. They didn't (at least not in near sufficient quantities).

 

Equivocate all you want... and I think you will agree I am as harsh or harsher on weasels in my near-political neighborhood.. it is NOT FEMA's part of the plan that was ignored in the critical early days.

I wonder exactly what it is you are trying to avoid in discussing the issue. Are you saying you have lost trust in the Federal Government because of that?
Do yoou want to feel that voting for the most qualified or trusted LOCAL official isnt important?

Nagin was over his head and it showed in word and deed. Blanco is a pure political hack. I KNOW a hack when I watch one.. we had one as Governor in Ohio. He happened to be Republican.

The cavalry is NOT always gonna get there on time and that delay was IN THE PLAN!!!!

 

<sigh> People vote for Mayors because of current, local issues, such as crime, housing, education, etc. Emergency Management capabilities doesn't even enter the equation.

People vote for Governors for current, local issues, such as the state's economy, housing cost, and higher education. While emergency management capability might enter the minds of some, especially in places like Florida, voters tend to have short memories and tend to focus on the here and now.

The President, more so than any Mayor or Governor, is elected on his ability to appoint qualified people and to communicate and lead in times of emergency (emergencies do, after all, occur on the national level quite often). Experience and leadership ability in a crisis is a common talking point during Presidential elections.

This is why many people hold Bush to blame more than Nagin and Blanco; Bush had higher expectations. Is if fair? Probably not, but that's the way life is.

 

Read the posts on FEMA and Katrina and find myself having to respond. Anyone who expects the federal government to take care of you in an emergency situation in an idiot in every single sense of the word. Look at any part of this nation that has threats of national disasters (i.e California with wildfires and earhtquakes, Hawaii with tsunamis, midwest with tornados), their local governments all have detailed response plans that work. Katrina has been successfully blamed on the federal government because in this nation we grow sickenly closer every day to blaming every little or large misfortune that should befall us on the federal government. New Orleans was filled with corrupt officials and citicizens that are well-practiced at blaming someone else. The first action focused on Miss because they got the brunt of the storm. New Orleans' levies werent breached for hours, maybe even a day, after the storm went through. Where are the complaints from Miss? Where are the complaints from those poor Vietnamese residents of NO who have rebuilt their portion of the city while the surrounding areas are still in ruins as they wait for the government to do it for them. It's called doing some work for yourselves but then maybe they are all too obese from all that junk food they buy with their food stamps. The federal goverment has given billions to NO to rebuild, but much has not been used due to goverment red tape and 'cause of local indecision. People still blame the federal goverment for not declaring some sort of marshall law to get the job done. Can you blame the gov't? We all know what would happen if the goverment just came in and rebuilt NO- even more would be blamed on them (they were unfair, they didnt consider our cultural heritage, blah blah BS). There is a reason why we have a fed, state and local government. Everyone blames Bush because first he caused global warming, which caused the hurricane, and then he didnt respond b/c he doesnt care about NO. You know my puppy got sick the other day and I think that it is Bush's fault because he didnt make sure the FDA had enough people to inspect every shipment of pet food that contains ingredients from China.

Congress only makes the situation worse. They're wasting their time questioning the incompetent FEMA director that you all talk about after he has resigned and one Senator, Demo i'm sure, asks why he couldnt have made sure that all the residents of NO were given a gallon of gas so that they could get out of NO. Can you believe it? I guess everytime there is a hurricane, those in the entire swath of the predicted landfall should be issued a gallon of gas. Boy then we really would have to start wars in the the middle east over oil. Then when John Roberts is up for confirmation as as Supreme Court justice, another Democratic senator asks him "what he would do about Katrina" if he were confirmed. No words exist for the type of misguided attitudes this represents.

One last thing. This blaming and entitlement mindset has gone so far that now tons of adverts say things like "I deserve the best . . . "

 

That is BS and you know it... it has to do with the [R] and [D] behind their titles.
I guarantee... and you know it..that if those letters were juxtaposed, both Blanco and Nagin would have been forced to resign.

It has to do with the press' story lines and editorial policy.

And we ALL know how well the press performed during Katrina, dont we. Do you REALLY want to open THAT can of worms?


What you are doing is operating from feelings... same as many others. Why the hell cant you debate on logic?

- - - -- - - - - - - - - -
Mo... good one! But you're operating from your feelings. If you oppose the party line, you cant do that. Only ONE side is allowed to do that.

Also need more para breaks!
8)

 

clevelandmo. No one has a good plan in place for a once-in-a-hundred year event. A Cat 5 hitting Miami would overwhelm the local Florida officials and New Orleans, due to its low level and levee vulnerability, was more vulnerable than most to such an event.

Look, I'm not saying Nagin and Blanco did good jobs (note the C and D grades for them) and no, I really don't care what party they belong to. I'm not saying there's no corruption in New Orleans - it's famous for it. I'm not even saying that FEMA could have, or should have, saved the day and made everything great.

But, Bush was given the responsibility of appointing someone to the position of FEMA director, appointing someone who would be responsible for for coordinating and implementing the Federal Response to emergencies such as Katrina. I have heard no one, from either party, who has asserted that the appointed director was qualified to do the job. Because of that appointment, the Federal response was poor. That is not to say that even a well-planned Federal response wouldn't have been hampered by the bad decisions and lack of planning on the part of the city and state officials, but it would have been better.

Look at it this way: Bush had one part to play in handling the Katrina disaster -> appoint a FEMA director. He failed badly at that one task by appointing someone who was neither qualified nor competent.

Nagin and Blanco made mistakes, lots of them. They also did some things right. Yes, they had many more tasks to accomplish so had the possibility of getting some right and some wrong.

So, while it may not seem fair to compare Bush unfavorably to Nagin and Blanco for failing in his one task (0%) when they had many more tasks and could therefore get at least some of them right, there is one important factor: Bush didn't have an impending or occurring disaster happening when he had to consider and implement his ONE task, he could take his time, consult with others, etc. Nagin and Blanco didn't have that luxury. Yet, with that different level of stress, Nagin and Blanco at least got a few things right. Bush didn't.

 

That's all cool and verbose.

Let's pick ONE discussion thread.

What did Nagin do right?

What did Blanco do right?

I can tell you one thing Bush did right... he got the NAVY and Coast Guard in there close as they could be... they were essentially the First Responders.

Another thing he did right... stayed the hell away. Now remmebr how that went over?

 

Andypalmer, not to nick pick, but Katrina was a cat 3 hurricane when it hit NO and the center did not hit NO directly. So I would suggest that this was not a one in 100 year event, other than the levies being breached. Even if it was the one in 100 year event that you speak of, do you really want FEMA so large that it can insure adequate response to a one in 100 year event at a local level to an area that stretches from W Louisiana to Florida? I dont know if that is even possible, but I do know that I dont want that.

Things like this really need to be executed at a local level. You dont know where the storm is going to hit soon enough in advance to truck in enough supplies, unless you want the truckers driving through the storm. This is why people are told to evacuate or if they dont evacuate, have adequate food, water, medicines, etc. Preparation needs to be done locally. FEMA can supply funds and other support in advance but they cant have all the things needed in such an emergencey there before the storm. The geoprahical areas involved are too large. Local authorities need to be prepared in case the storm hits them.

Anyway, I'm not trying to absolve FEMA or Bush of blame. However, you make it sound like they only had one thing to do right while Blanco and Nagin had many. That hurricane season was the worst ever so FEMA and Bush's appointee (Brown?) also had numerous things to do and they also got some things right. What I didn't hear was Bush and Brown blaming others. Correct me if I'm wrong but I seem to remember both of them accepting the blame. I only remember Nagin and Blanco blaming others - selective memory perhaps. And you speak of Blanco's and Nagin's stress - do you seriously think their stress compare's to the President of the US's stress level? Especially at a time of war. Bush made the mistake of thinking that the government officials in NO, LA and FEMA would do their jobs so he could do his. After all, he had been President through numerous other hurricanes.

My post was really about blame and how it is okay to resolve people of their personal responsibility and blame others - the federal government being the most popular. Too me, Katrina was a very memorable example of that. And it sickens me that Congress only perpetuates this alarming trend by suggesting that Brown should have insured everyone in NO had a free tank of gasoline to get out of the city.

Also, I agree with Pettyfog that were the political parties reversed, Nagin and Blanco would have borne the brunt of the blame. The Bush administration spent more money to upgrade the NO levies than any other administration. How many times did you hear that reported? Also, the Bush administration initiated a massive wetlands restoration program two or three years before Katrina hit. I didnt hear anyone applauding that good foresight or asking Nagin and Blanco what they had done to to restore wetlands around NO.

 

Let's not go overboard Mo or do anything to absolve Brown. I agree with Michelle Malkin who was among the VERY FIRST to call him an incompetent bureaucratic hack.

BUT the idea that he thought he could just sit by with the existing infrastrucure in light of what had come out before re Hurricane Andrew and others, just showed how hard it IS to get good help. Especially good administration. The ORIGINAL POINT which remains valid to this day is that blaming the Federal Governemnt and excusing incompetence on locals on the basis of party... and THAT IS ALL IT IS. is ridiculous.

We in Ohio DUMPED our INCOMPETENT GOP governor who had the least bit of corruption attached to him, to hell that the Dems won because of it. How many of you Dems can say the same?

Not many... just like the spoiled brat who feels that the scam on his parents will be all over if he admits fault just ONCE, the jig is up and he'll have to act like a responsible adult instead of a whining baby.

Look, even Dems pick and choose. Isnt it amazing that when they need their state to run okay, they have to get Mitt Romney. Meanwhile they foist off Kennedy and the incompetent boob Kerry on the nation.

 

Pettyfog, I did say Brown deserved blame, as did Bush. I said they also did some things right in an effort to indicate how insignificant andypalmer's point is that Blanco and Nagin did some things right. And thank you for pointing out the re-election. Just shows how sad things really are down there.