Hurricane Poses Problems For The GOP

It now looks like the Republicans have dodged a bullet. Hurricane Isaac will not directly hit the part of Florida where they are holding their convention (Tampa). There will still be some bad weather, and the delegates will probably be getting wet, but now that the hurricane has shifted its course to the west the Republicans will be able to get on with their convention. For a while, there was speculation that the convention might have to be called off, but that won't happen now.

But while the GOP has dodged one bullet, there are a couple more that could also cause them serious damage. One is that the convention will not be able to completely hog the news as was hoped by the Republican Party. In a normal election year, the week of a party convention (by either political party) is dominated in the news by what is happening at the convention. And Willard Mitt Romney (aka Wall Street Willie) really needed that to happen this year. He is not liked by most Americans (even some of his supporters), and he needed the opportunity at the convention to redefine himself and try to make himself more likable.

But this year that's going to be harder to do, because the convention will be happening at the same time that Hurricane Isaac in making landfall. And much of the news-time that would have been spent covering the convention will now go to hurricane coverage -- both the storm and its aftermath. The Republicans will be lucky to get half the coverage they would have gotten if Hurricane Isaac did not exist (or did not threaten the United States).

The second is that Hurricane Isaac is now headed for the worst possible landfall location for the Republican Party -- the New Orleans area. It has only been seven years since Hurricane Katrina hit that area with devastating consequences, and the images of Katrina have not faded from the American consciousness. And another thing that is vividly remembered (to the embarrassment of Republicans) is the totally incompetent way the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was handled by the Bush administration -- with many storm survivors having to wait for days to get any help at all.

Right now, it doesn't look like Hurricane Isaac will cause the same devastation that Hurricane Katrina did (although that could change). But even so, the American people will be watching to see how the government reacts this time -- and comparisons of that reaction to the Bush failure of Katrina are inevitable. If President Obama is smart (and I believe he is), then he already has FEMA, the Coast Guard, and others ready to spring into action as soon as they know where they are needed. And any competence the Obama administration shows will make the Republican Party look bad by comparison.

The Republican Party certainly did not need this hurricane to happen at this time. It bears nothing for them but an ill wind.

Is The U.S. Ready For A Natural Disaster ?

Right now the Japanese people are trying to deal with the aftermath of an 8.9 magnitude earthquake and the tsunami that resulted from it -- not to mention the possible "melt-down" of one to three nuclear power plants. Living in an earthquake-prone country, the Japanese government was probably about as well-prepared as they could be for a natural disaster, but even they are being overwhelmed by the scope of this disaster.

And this is certainly not the only major disaster that has struck recently. New Zealand is still trying to dig out of a major earthquake that struck in a populated area, and we are just a little over a year past the catastrophe that occurred in Haiti, just to name a couple of others. It is a reminder that Mother Nature is no respecter of nations, whether they are poor and undeveloped or rich and developed. Natural disasters can strike anywhere and anytime and on an unexpected scale.

This brings me to what I have been recently thinking about. Is the United States prepared for such a disaster to strike in this country? Just a few years ago Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and quickly exposed the disaster relief program in this country as a deeply flawed program -- and although very serious, it was not a catastrophe on the scale of Japan or Haiti.

Still the U.S. program, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), was very slow to respond to the destruction caused by Katrina and even when it did respond it did a very poor job. Lives were needlessly lost while the government showed its incompetence and unpreparedness. Has this been fixed? We are told that it has, but I have serious doubts -- especially in light of all the budget-cutting and paring-down of all kinds of necessary government agencies.

This is not an area where saving money should be a prime consideration. I want FEMA fully-funded, and maybe even over-funded to take care of an extraordinarily large catastrophe (like the once-in-a-thousand-years Japanese disaster). Once a natural (or man-made) disaster has occurred, it is already too late to talk about funding.

After being fully-funded, I expect the agency to be able to demonstrate a supreme level of competence. I don't want to see news organizations getting to a disaster faster than FEMA (in  the case of Katrina it was several days faster and that was inexcusable). I want FEMA, at least an advance team, to be on the spot almost immediately (and in the case of a predictable disaster like Katrina they should be in place before-hand).

And the FEMA workers should be trained well enough to recognize needs quickly and direct their resources to where they are needly without delay. It should never take days to get adequate resources to the affected area. This is a case where too much is a lot better than not enough.

But one of the main changes that needs to occur is to stop using the top job in FEMA as a reward for political cronies. That was what happened in the Bush administration, and once Katrina hit it didn't take long to discover that "Brownie" was not only incompetent, but didn't have a clue as to what to do to handle the situation. Frankly, I don't care what political party the head of FEMA has. He/She can be a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Socialist or anything else -- as long as he/she is a good leader and an expert is disaster relief. I can assure you the people affected by the disaster will care only about their competence, not their politics.

We have been told that the agency has been approved, but when Hurricane Rita hit there were still a lot of complaints about FEMA's response and competence. I wish I felt more confident that the agency's problems had been resolved, but I don't. I think it is more likely that the problems have just been covered over -- to be exposed once again when the next disaster hits (and it will hit us, there is no question of that -- the only question is when).

Are we ready? What do you think?

Bush Still Doesn't Understand

As you may know by now, George Bush's book Decision Points is to be released very soon now.   We already know that he confesses to breaking U.S. and international law by confessing to ordering torture be used.   Now he reveals that he still doesn't understand the terrible mistakes he made in his administration's failure to adequately respond to Hurricane Katrina.

To promote his book, Bush did an interview with Matt Lauer of NBC.   The interview will be aired on November 8th (Monday), but portions of it have been released (to try to get people interested in seeing it).   In the interview, Bush talks about the picture above (which shows him viewing the destruction of New Orleans from thousands of feet in the air as he flies over on his way back to Washington).

Bush says the picture was a mistake.   He says he was wrong to allow the picture to be taken or released to the media because it made him look "detached and uncaring".   He told Lauer:

“It's always my fault. I mean I was the one who should have said, A, don't take my picture, B, let's land in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, C, let's don't even come close to the area. Let's - the next place to be seen is in Washington at a command center. I mean, it was my fault.”

Bush also admitted it was a mistake to publicly tell FEMA director Mike Brown he was "doing a heck of a job".   Bush said,   "I knew Mike was under pressure and wanted to boost his morale.   I never imagined those words of encouragement would become an infamous entry in the political lexicon."   He complained that "critics turned my words of encouragement into a club to bludgeon me."

Even years later, this fool doesn't have a clue.   He thinks his only mistake was in not adequately controlling his public relations!   Someone needs to tell him that even though his public relations were terrible that was not what made the American people so mad.   He wasn't punished for a silly picture or inane statement.  

His mistake was much larger than that.   His mistake was the total failure of his administration to get help to people who were clearly in a desperate situation, and his own failure to rectify the situation when it became obvious to everyone that Brown and others were incompetent failures who had no idea of what to do.   His mistake was in failing to take charge of the situation and get something done.

And there was no excuse for it.   How is it that every news organization in the world could get there immediately, but it took FEMA days to make even a feeble and inadequate effort?   There is no excuse for the Bush administration's complete failure after Hurricane Katrina, and Bush's belief that all he did wrong was make a public relations goof just shows he still doesn't understand anything at all.   No one would have cared about the picture or the stupid statement if Bush would have just seen that help got to New Orleans quickly -- but he didn't.

Bush also said in the book that his feelings were hurt when rapper Kayne West said,   "George Bush doesn't care about black people."   Too bad.   Sometimes the truth hurts.

Lessons From Katrina

It's been about five years since the devastation of New Orleans and the surrounding area by Hurricane Katrina -- a disaster made even worse by the incredibly slow reaction to it by the Bush administration. The city of New Orleans is still trying to recover from that storm and its aftermath.

As we mark the fifth anniversary of the hurricane, it seems appropriate to ask if we are better prepared for another storm like this. Have we learned any lessons from Katrina? Over at Where's The Outrage, Errington C. Thompson has listed five lessons that Americans (and the American government) should have learned from Katrina. I like his list and think he's absolutely right. I hope these lessons have indeed been learned and we never have to witness that kind of massive incompetence again.

Here are the lessons that should have been learned:

* There should be no political considerations when doling out aid.

* Experts are experts for a reason. They should be in charge of planning and resource management.

* We as Americans do a bad job of planning for future problems. Money was consistently diverted from the levees into projects that would give politicians "more to run on".

* There is no excuse for not getting help to everyone within 48 hours -- no excuse.

* This could happen again.

Murder On The Danziger Bridge

After Hurricane Katrina, we heard stories of a possible police massacre on the Danziger bridge. It was said that when six people tried to walk out of New Orleans, where conditions were deteriorating badly, to find the supplies they needed to survive, they were met on the bridge by police officers who opened fire on them, killing two (one of them severely disabled) and wounding four people.

The survivors had claimed the police had opened fire for no reason, but the police claimed it was self-defense. Police even showed a firearm they claimed the people had and had threatened police with. The police were charged with murder and attempted murder, but a Louisiana judge threw out all the charges and it looked like justice would be thwarted.

But the U.S. Department of Justice stepped in and took over the investigation, and it looks like the truth is finally coming out. We now know that the police had murdered unarmed innocent civilians (probably because of the color of their skin) and then planted a firearm to try and justify their heinous actions.

Yesterday, former New Orleans police Lt. Michael Lohman pled guilty to Obstruction of Justice in a federal court. Although Lohman arrived at the bridge after the shootings, he was told what had occurred and encouraged the guilty officers to lie about it, and then helped them to plant the firearm at the bridge. He will be sentenced on May 26th.

It's good that Lohman was charged and convicted for his part in the Danziger Bridge murders, but hopefully this is just the start for federal prosecutors. There are several others, both those who committed the crime and those who covered it up, who need to be convicted of the vicious actions of the police that day on the bridge.

The police are supposed to protect all Americans regardless of their race or color (or sex, age, religion, ethnic origin or sexual preference). The murderous police actions on the bridge that day has tarnished the image of good police officers across the country. That can only be rectified by bringing justice to the six victims.

(The picture above shows the FBI closing down the Danziger Bridge on September 26, 2009 to investigate the shootings.)

Army Corps Of Engineers Is Responsible

For years now, the Army Corps of Engineers has denied any responsibility for the flooding and damage caused in New Orleans during and immediately after Hurricane Katrina. It's going to be much harder for them to claim that now, because a federal judge has disagreed.

U.S. District Judge Stanwood R. Duval has issued a decision, which says the flooding in the Lower 9th Ward and in St. Bernard Parish was not due to Hurricane Katrina but was directly due to the failure of the Army Corps of Engineers to properly maintain a navigation channel known as the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet (MRGO). The judge cited the Army Corps' "insouciance, myopia and shortsightedness" in not maintaining the channel properly.

In harsh terms, Judge Duval said the Army Corps has known for over 40 years that failure to properly maintain MRGO could cause the failure of the levee protecting the affected areas, and found that they were negligent in failing to do what they knew to be necessary to protect New Orleans. The judge ordered a damage payment of $719,000 be paid to a small group that had filed suit against the Army Corps in 2006.

But that payment may be just the tip of the iceberg. Over 100,000 people have filed claims with the Army Corps of Engineers, and this judgement makes it far more likely they will eventually be paid damages also. It is possible that this judgement could cost the federal government billions of dollars.

The Army Corps is not talking and neither is the Justice Department. They just said they are "studying" the decision. They will probably appeal and drag this out for many more years, but I hope not. This has drug on too long, and these people have suffered for too long. It is time to make it right.

The United States government failed the people of New Orleans, causing much damage and loss of life. They can't take back what was done in the past, but they can stop failing them now and do the right thing -- regardless of cost.

Doing the right thing is never too expensive.

Southern California vs. New Orleans

Isn't it amazing how fast the federal government can spring into action when the disaster victims are well-to-do whites? Why is it they couldn't do the same when poor African-Americans were begging for help after Hurricane Katrina?

Bush couldn't even be bothered to interrupt his vacation to help the victims of Katrina, but he's johnny-on-the-spot for the California wildfire victims. I'm not saying the California victims don't deserve quick and effective help -- they do. But so did the victims in New Orleans.

The government will tell you that they've learned from their mistakes in New Orleans, but that's hard to believe. This administration has made a ton of mistakes and hasn't seemed to learn from any of them. Why should this be any different?

The only difference is the race, social and financial status of the victims.