Holding Politicians Accountable
Dean
For a lot of people, looking to throw blame at politicians in times of national disaster seems tawdry and nasty. Nevertheless, the question has been raised recently by critics of the current administration in Washington why they didn't do more to prevent this, or trying to blame certain policy decisions they made for it.
In their defense, many point out that it is entirely fair to hold elected officials accountable when things go wrong. Some of the same people harshly criticizing the administration have also, interestingly enough, gone after the Governor of Mississippi. Strangely, the only thing I can find in common between the President and Governor Barbour is their party affiliation--and these critics going after the President don't mention any other Governors or elected officials. Hmm.
Very well. We can point to the White House, and to that Governor, for things they did or didn't do. However, if we're going to get into that kind of thing, it's only fair to note other politicians of whom serious questions should be asked. Here's a few to consider who I haven't seen mentioned much:
Congressman William Jefferson, representative of the House district covering New Orleans. So far as I can tell from Louisiana's congressional district maps, Congressman Jefferson represents virtually the entire New Orleans disaster area, although I may be misreading the map--let me know if so. In any case, since he was first sworn in in 1991 to represent New Orleans, did he ever propose Federal funding to build walls around New Orleans that would withstand Category 5 hurricanes? I note that his party held both houses of Congress from 1991 until 1995, and the White House for much of his time in office. Not that we should be blaming one party or the other, but, you know, there it is.
Senator Mary Landrieu, currently the Senior Senator from Louisiana, member of that body since 1997, and a New Orleans native herself. Would it be fair to ask when and where she specifically proposed to build dikes around New Orleans that would be guaranteed to stand up to at least category 4 if not category 5 hurricanes? Note: I don't mean studies of feasibility. I mean, when and where has she said, "let's get this done for my state and make it our top priority?"
Senator David Vitter of Louisiana. In fairness, Vitter has only been a Senator since January of this year, but, let's not have any excuses. He's had 8 months in which he could have proposed spending billions to immediately build walls that could withstand Category 5 hurricanes. Has he? He could have taken the initiative even if others before him hadn't, right?
Since Vitter's still so green, we might also want to ask the man he replaced: Senator John Breaux, who served as Louisiana's Senator from 1987 until January 2005, and was Louisiana's Senior Senator until just this year. He served under four Presidents and in nine congressional sessions--did he ask any of them to give New Orleans money to build walls to withstand Category 5 hurricanes? Did he ever make that his top priority, or publicly castigate any of those four Presidents for turning him down? (Not that Presidents control spending--they don't, congress does--but you know, if we're going to go after Presidents, it would seem fair to mention all the Presidents involved since he took office.)
Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, who served as Lieutenant Governor for that state since 1996, and Governor since 2004. She has had it in her power for almost a decade to try to raise tax funds, float bond proposals, or petition Louisiana's Congressional delegation to build walls in New Orleans to withstand Category 5 hurricanes. Has she done any of that in the last 8 years?
Speaker Joe Salter of the Louisiana House of Representatives, who has served in that body since the 1980s. As the Speaker of the House, he has the power to put through legislation to raise taxes or float bond proposals to pay for walls to withstand Category 5 Hurricanes. He can also get ahold of Louisiana's congressional caucus--the Senators and Congressman at the Federal level--to ask for their help in raising such funds. He could get ahold of the New Orleans Mayor and City Council to work with them too. When and where did he? He's had more than a decade, including time periods when his own party controlled the entire state legislature, the House, the Senate, the Governor's mansion, and the Presidency.
Louisiana State Senate President Donald E. Hines, member of the Louisiana state Senate since 1993. Everything I just said about Speaker Joe Salter applies to this man who heads Louisiana's state Senate. All of it. When and where did he go wrong? Or did he?
New Orleans Mayor C Ray Nagin, mayor of that great city since May 2002. As mayor, he had the power to work with his city council to float tax and/or bond proposals to raise money to build Category 5-proof hurricane walls, to petition the Governor and the state legislature for assistance in same, and to petition Louisiana's congressional delegation for further assistance. Did he? When and where? Was this ever a priority for his administration, or for the city council?
In fairness to the relatively new mayor Nagin, we might also inquire about former Mayor Marc Morial (who now heads the National Urban League) all those questions, since he served for almost a decade before Nagin--and by golly, he even served during a period when his political party (I won't say which one) held the entire city council, the Louisiana House and Senate and Governorship, the majority of its congressman and both its Senators, the majority in both the U.S. House and Senate, and the White House! If party affiliation is so significant (it isn't if you ask me), why on Earth did he not make building walls that could withstand Category 5 hurricanes his top priority instead of, say, bringing NBA basketball to the city?
Let me tell you something: the reason a lot of people find discussions like this distasteful is because certain people appear more interested in bashing parties or politicians they dislike rather than advocating any positive agenda for reform. I could, for example, go through all the politicians I linked above and tell you their party affiliation. But I won't. Because that's just stupid and pointless.
I don't mind people who want to criticize certain politicians for staying on vacation, for it does seem tacky to stay on vacation during major disasters. But that seems trivial compared to bigger questions--like where we went wrong, how far back we went wrong, and what we can do to avoid something like this in the future. The problem being that if some people are more concerned with bashing politicians they dislike rather than putting forward constructive proposals, it's kind of hard to have that discussion isn't it?
What do people want? Another excuse to kick around politicians they don't like? Or to actually, y'know, make a difference?
* Update * I just heard Mayor Nagin on the air on a radio interview practically in tears asking for more help from the Governor and from the President. That I can't argue with.
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"Chances are they saved the taxpayers from the cost of an engineering band-aid that could not be guarenteed to work in all cases. Most of New Orleans sits in a deep land-bowl which in some places is more than 10 ft beneath sea-level. All that is needed to destroy New Orleans is for a breach in any such wall to fail at any point anywhere in the system. Then a half-million people must be evacuated, the stragglers erupt in violence and looting, and costs of urban repair, cleanup, social rehabilitation for the refugees escalates to some $50 billion dollars. Which does include the costs of the proposed new protective sea-walls.
Instead, what should be done is raise to use the power of eminent domaine to remove the population from any parts of the city that are below sea level, demolish the unprotectable strucures, turn these neighborhoods into permanent floodways which can be used for recreation during dry seasons.
Then bring in landfill to create permanently high places in the city on which it is safe to construct and human habitations. In all such cases, the ground levels underlying these parts of New Orleans must and shall be above the level of Lake Pontchartrain, the part of the Mississippi river that passes around New Orleans, and the gulf of Mexico."
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And if that had been their decision taken in time, then everybody in and around the new New Orleans would have had especially good reason to thank all the elected officials cited above for their wisdom.
Conversely, if all they do now is blast $50 billion simply to push the flooded water back into Lake Pontchartrain, dry up the city, clean up the mess, rebuild some hundred thousand or more houses on the concrete slabs at the bottom of a gigantic urban fishbowl, then all this horror will be repeated again and again and again. And future generations of Americans will probably curse their names and their folly.
And if you live long enough, you personally will have reason to go bananas over all this. Again and again and again. Which accomplishes nothing for anybody, and is probably bad for your health, since you personalize other people's pain so greatly. Maybe a little less altruism and a little more logic would improve your spirit.
Because the surface of our planet Earth is water, including all the interconnected oceans. And because there is no power available to mankind to control oceanic windstorms that can push gigantic tidal waves up against low coastlines, destroying low-level cities and massively disrupting the lives of their inhabitants and those on higher and drier ground who are then called upon to care for them.
There is no answer and there can be no answer for what happened to New Orleans last weekend, other than to permanently raise any parts of New Orleans that the USA, Louisiana and the people of the city wish to save, and let the ever-present flood waters run freely through the rest.
Because as the now-broken levees of Lake Pontchartrain should have told you and the rest of the world, a city situated next to an ocean, a massive river, and an oceanic lake, in a sunken bowl some 10 ft or more below sea level, is a city inviting its own destruction and the massive drowing of many or most of its inhabitants.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
What I *am* upset about, and what I think we should be holding people accountable for, is the slowness of the response, both in spinning it up, and how long it takes to spin up. This is simply not acceptable, at least to this taxpayer. It's now 4 days later, and the hospitals have STILL not been evacuated. There is no excuse for that. None.
*Any* landfall by a Class 4 or higher hurricane causes massive devastation. I don't think most folks appreciate the huge difference between a Cat 1/2, or even 3, and a 4/5. Once it becomes clear that we're going to take a hit by a 4 or higher, the relief troops should be spinning up, and should be in the air as soon as winds subside a little. You don't wait around for folks to decide they're going to need help, because you *know* they're going to need help.
I think it's time we looked very hard at Posse Comitatus. That was all fine in the pre-9/11 era. It's too much of a risk now. Just as we're finding out about the pre-9/11 intelligence, lawyers at the Pentagon are preventing the military from doing all they could to make us safe, and Americans are dying as a result. Yes, the lawyers are doing their jobs, so I don't blame them. It's up to the rest of us to change the laws. No one on this planet can save lives like the US military. It's time we took their legal handcuffs off and let them work to their full potential, especially when it's US citizens in need.
It seems pretty clear that having to wait around until a Governor decides to spin up their Guard, and wait further while they decide they're going to need more help than that, is not cutting it. Spinning up takes time, and so does the decision-making cycle, and time is of the essence when citizens are dying in the streets. We can cut some time from the spin-up by throwing money and effort at it (ahead of time), but shortening the decision cycle will likely save a lot more lives for less money. I propose that the President should be able to call up the Guard in any state, even for internal use.
This is not just about New Orleans. It's about our response to a major terrorist attack. What if it had been a 10kt nuke, or a large dirty bomb? What if it had been San Diego, or New York, or Seattle? It's horrifying that FEMA says that a flooded New Orleans was the "worst case" they were planning for. If we're seeing the results of their worst case plan in action, we're all in a world of hurt. 4 days later, people are dying like flies, people who's deaths could have been prevented, people who's deaths would and should have been prevented if there had been a competent plan, competently executed. THAT is something I want to hold people accountable for.
There are plenty of answers other than saying "give up".
Armed thugs running around shooting at the rescue teams, invading hosptitals, robbing and raping. That kinda thing slows down rescue efforts.
In the Netherlands, the great manmade polders face out to the North sea in only a single direction. And these lands are used primarily for agriculture. And unless I am mistaken, the major cities that country are located safely above sea level. Even so, at many times in past centuries, the ocean, pushed to extremity by the winds, have broken their great dikes of the Netherlands and flooded the polders.
You might spin that up, so to speak.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
In the Netherlands, the great manmade polders face out to the North sea in only a single direction. And these lands are used primarily for agriculture. And unless I am mistaken, the major cities that country are located safely above sea level. Even so, at many times in past centuries, the ocean, pushed to extremity by the winds, have broken their great dikes of the Netherlands and flooded the polders.
You might spin that up, so to speak.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Worst of all though is the entire communications infrastructure is shot. No one seems to have anticipated that at all. State, Federal, AND city people need to be held accountable for that--they should have been asking the military to help them figure out how to deal with that, or been talking about satellite phones, or something.
There's going to be a lot learned from this. Obviously the system just wasn't ready. There's some attempt to affix blame at efforts to push responsibility back down to the local level for these things back a few years ago, but honestly, there's enough blame to go around for everybody. We need to fix this, and learn from it.
Frankly they were too late - by decades. New Orleans shot the dice just one time too many.
US Army Corps of Engineers Riverside (Sept.-Oct. 2004 issue).
www.mvn.usace.army.mil/pao/Riverside/Sept-Oct 04 Riv.pdf
I *am* shocked that we didn't have a plan that would involve mobilizing massive quantities of food, water, and medical supplies on Tuesday. Even if we didn't know the levees would breech, it was understood that there were going to be lots of refugees in the superdome waiting out the storm, and the fact that the city / state governments hadn't put together a plan to provide for them is simply incredible.
I'm also shocked that, given that the mayor ordered everyone out on Sunday, there wasn't a plan for getting people without cars out of the city. The city government was criminally negligent on that score (and this isn't a post-facto judgement; they said *on Sunday* that they thought there was a severe risk of this happening).
I am disappointed, but not shocked, at the slowness of the federal response. There really isn't an excuse for the failure to have a massive mobilization of manpower and resources on Wednesday.
I have been particularly impressed by the politicians and mid-level bureaucrats of the state of Texas, however; the way they have been welcoming refugees has been amazingly impressive.
--martial law would have been declared with forcible evacs
--looters shot
--troops and supplies would have been hunkered down in forward deployment
--and we would either follow Arnold's plan, and build a beautiful city, or build Cat 6 (if there is such a thing) dikes for next time.
I think that we have gotten used to being so very powerful that we think we don't have to be harsh anymore.
I also don't really blame individual people unless you want to toss the whole lot of them out the door. Its like blaming minor league players for losing to a major league team. But it is time to upgrade our minor league team to major league standards.
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I think that DSmith's original point about people not being willing to pay the particular insurance premium is an important one. It seems to me that one should look at this from an engineering and economic perspective first to see what is feasible, what the tradeoffs are and were. Then one can assess the performance and accountability of government officials to see how they have shaped policy.
From what I gather, IIRC, from The Control of Nature considerable expense and ingenuity has been expended keeping New Orleans where it is, when the Mississippi actually wanted to shift course. Such a course shift would decimate the economy of the city. So residents of the city, state, and country were coping with a choice between an enormously high certain cost then versus an uncertain disaster cost later.
Residents of Tokyo face a similar impending disaster - a repeat of the Canto earthquake of the early 20th century. People there know only too well that parts of the city are extremely vulnerable, being built on mud to inadequate building codes. Unfortunately the costs of picking up and moving the city are just too high.
So I can only feel compassion for the residents of New Orleans, hope that the National Guard and other relief agencies can help them, and hope that engineers and politicians can eventually help them to rebuild their lives and livelihoods in some reasonable way.
“We don’t want another Iraq where the money just goes off somewhere. This is real human need.”
Ahem. Sometimes I think politicians are all disconnected from their communities and mainly interested in their personal futures.
The blame for the New Orleans disaster, if blame must be assigned, is solely against the public records or legacies of everyone responsible for permitting construction of residences and businesses in a place largely 10ft below sea level, surrounded by an oceanic lake subject to oceanic storm wave surges and as large as Rhode Island, and by the largest river of north America, and by the gulf of Mexico, and all this subject to category 4 and 5 hurricanes.
There is no answer to any of this except to demolish the whole place, rebuild parts of it above sea level, and allow residence solely to persons residing in approved above-sealevel housing. Any other answer is a total squandering of public funds and private funds, and national sympathy.
Expanding New Orleans neighborhood by neighborhood into a swampland that lies largely 10 ft below sea-level was the original crime against these poor people. And I no give a god-damn about excuses that the officials did not know better or did not plan for just this kind of natural event.
Everybody in this world is responsible on an individual basis for every iota of everything they do. Be they unintended consequences or be they not. And nobody can escape that responsibility. Ever. And that's good, because that is precisely the way I look at life.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I was watching the refugees coming into San Antonio and I am glad to see some pretty good plans for them.
I'm with Arnold on the rebuilding but the President said earlier New Orleans will be rebuilt, and once again be the same great city.
I don't mean the logistics of the matter, either, though those are intimidating enough. I mean that it's very unlikely that anything like the historical New Orleans will ever rise again. The safety issues and costs of such a feat, intermingled with the trends in our society towards blander, "safer" tourist attractions, will almost certainly result in a very different city.
Consider, for example, 9.2.2005 6:43pm
Consider for example this disturbing reverie by Richard Lawrence Cohen. I expect that it will look extremely prescient in about 20 years or so. Any attempt to rebuild New Orleans as it was will have to deal with almost insurmountable obstacles, both socially and economically.
I just read that story writeen by Richard L. Cohen. Woah...surreal and eerie as another commentor said. Rebuild? Then what? It's not my state but it sure is my country.
Another blog found the New Orleans disaster plan on the web - and it seems big parts (like using the City and school buses to evacuate) were ignored.
Michelle Malkin had a post (yesterday?) "The Blame Game": about half-way down she had some interesting links (apparently the Chicago Trib, among others, had a big article). EG that 2004-started study on CAT5 protection - the previous study in the Sixties had looked at that but the decision was to provide CAT3 protection - not, in my opinion, really all that bad a decision - if evacuation was handled properly for CAT3/4/5. She also pointed out that funding has been cut repeatedly since at least the Sixties, and that Louisiana seldom put up enough money to qualify for federal matching funds that were available.