Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
I've been stunned by the news reports coming out of New Orleans and Mississippi. Every time I turn on the news, it's worse. The Times-Picayune is running breaking stories from reporters here. While we're getting lots of reports from New Orleans, Gulfport, and Biloxi, we aren't hearing much of anything from all the little towns in between that are even harder to reach, so God only knows how high the death toll really is. This is a very poor part of the country already and now perhaps as many as a million people just became homeless and had their jobs destroyed. Enormous refugee camps will have to be established and these people will be wards of the state for a long time.
Meanwhile. And then there's this:
When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA. Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.
Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars. [...] In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain.
You know what we could really use right about now? That quarter-trillion dollars we already spent on Iraq. And a bunch more National Guardsmen and their equipment. And lots of helicopters. And much less "humor" from Jonah Goldberg. But I'm off on a tangent. All major cities have evacuation plans, but this has pointed up a serious problem: big cities have enormous populations without automobiles. How do you get all those people out in an emergency? In New Orleans, it doesn't even appear that they tried (though, given the normal functioning of the municipal government, that shouldn't be surprising). If you were too poor to drive out and find a hotel, your choices were apparently hope you don't die in your house or tough it out in the Superdome.
TrackBackYeah mate, a good public transport system would come in handy, wouldn't it?
And $1/4 trillion would come in handy for anything else besides blowing people up.
As much fun as it is to blame everything on Bush, including acts of God and their aftermath, the rescue and relief efforts are not suffering from lack of funds or Guardsmen.
From that evil neo-con screed, the New York Times:
More than 5,000 National Guard troops were called up over the weekend to assist in relief operations, despite the burden of providing troops to support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tens of thousands more may be called as the extent of the damage becomes clear, officials said.
Besides, if you're going to argue that frivolous spending has left America unable to handle serious emergencies, there are billions and billions of dollars' worth of needless pork-barrel projects and wasteful government programs you could hold up as Exhibit A, none of which ever had even the potential to benefit us as much as success in Iraq would.
Or, if your point is that America shouldn't be frittering away its money overseas, maybe that $950 billion we earmarked for Indian Ocean tsunami relief should have been kept at home.
Anyway, what really would have made a big difference would have been not more relief funds or more troops, but (as you correctly note) an earlier and more comprehensive evacuation program.
Posted by: Gaijin Biker at August 31, 2005 06:15 AMOh, and speaking as a guy who often finds Jonah Goldberg entertaining, I agree that his attempt at Hurricane Humor was lame and tasteless.
Posted by: Gaijin Biker at August 31, 2005 06:25 AMI think maybe Apostropher's point is that shoring up our vulnerable points is more important than replacing a dictator who isn't a major threat to peace with an Islamic theocracy and a hotbed of terrorism. Of course, none of this works if you still buy Bush's line and ignore the news (or pretend that the news is false).
Posted by: John Johnson at August 31, 2005 08:23 AMMore than 5,000 National Guard troops were called up over the weekend
It remains unclear how many troops this is going to require, just to try to maintain order, much less deliver humanitarian aid. I suspect it will be substantially more than 5,000. We currently have roughly 78,000 NG troops overseas, along with countless tons of heavy equipment.
billions and billions of dollars' worth of needless pork-barrel projects and wasteful government programs you could hold up as Exhibit A, none of which ever had even the potential to benefit us as much as success in Iraq would.
While those do exist, they don't really compare - as line items or in aggregate - to the long-term price tag of somewhere in the neighborhood of a trillion dollars for Iraq. And given the success rate so far in Iraq, I think that's a bit like saying that it couldn't compare to the benefit of achieving immortality. Behind the stay-the-course rhetoric, every serious person knows we are eventually going to bug out, leaving a failed rogue state behind, because it's the only option left.
that $950 billion we earmarked
Um, that would be $950 million, not billion, which is less than we spend in a week in Iraq.
Posted by: apostropher at August 31, 2005 08:43 AMGaijin,
You are explaining. You are losing.
There was money budgeted to shore up and increase the size of the levies, which were sinking. Bush slashed that budget. The levy work was not even started.
Now a levy breaks and allows the flooding of New Orleans. This is going to cost all of us, make no mistake. Lost lives, lost wealth, lost refinery time.
Bush is a reckless 'live for today' gambler who has yet, in his whole life, had a gamble pay off. Because of his family name he has been allowed to fail upwards. Eventually he failed upwards to the Presidency in good part because he had the same first and last name as his father.
He is without wisdom and has made reckless choices. Sadly, we are all going to pay the price for this. We all are living in a family with an alcoholic father who keeps going to the casino.
Posted by: Tripp at August 31, 2005 09:14 AMUm, that would be $950 million, not billion
Oops.
Posted by: GaijinBiker at August 31, 2005 09:25 AMEventually he failed upwards to the Presidency in good part because he had the same first and last name as his father
...who was so popular that he only made it into office on Reagan's coattails, after which he lasted a single term. I'm not sure how much of an asset that name was.
Posted by: GaijinBiker at August 31, 2005 09:28 AMBiker,
The name and family connections. Or maybe you think a candidate like you or I could have been elected?
I think you are simply being contrary. The sad fact is that while Bush couldn't control the weather he certainly could control disaster readiness. He gambled and lost.
But go ahead and grasp at straws.
Posted by: Tripp at August 31, 2005 09:42 AMGoing back to -- ahem -- the original post: New Orleans actually has, or had, a decent bus system. I haven't been able to find out to what extent, if any, buses were pressed into service for evacuation, but I do know this: Evacuating greater New Orleans would have taken a minimum of 72 hours, and 72 hours before landfall, Katrina was still over South Florida and a Category 2 storm.
Posted by: Lex at August 31, 2005 10:07 AMAlso, Gaijinbiker: After Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the elder Bush sent in 25,000 soldiers to help keep the peace ... and that turned out not to be enough, at least initially.
Knowing that history, could the current president not have put military units on alert late Saturday when Katrina strengthened and turned toward New Orleans?
Y'know, hurricanes hit our country every year, and yet we somehow seem not to improve our recovery performance. And there's plenty of blame for that to spread around.
Posted by: at August 31, 2005 10:12 AMHey GaijinBiker, read this:
"Missing the personnel is the big thing in this particular event. We need our people," said Lt. Andy Thaggard, a spokesman for the Mississippi National Guard, which has a brigade of more than 4,000 troops in central Iraq. Louisiana also has about 3,000 Guard troops in Baghdad. Mississippi has about 40 percent of its Guard force deployed or preparing to deploy and has called up all remaining Guard units for hurricane relief, Thaggard said.
But what does Thaggard know? He's just a spokesman for the Guard, and you're ... um ... some guy on the Internet.
Posted by: lemuel pitkin at August 31, 2005 12:35 PMHe's just a spokesman for the Guard, and you're ... um ... some guy on the Internet.
Yeah, I'm some guy on the Internet...
...quoting the New York Times...
...interviewing people like Lt. Col. Robert Horton of the Alabama National Guard:
"We are prepared to respond to any natural disaster and to support the war on terrorism," Colonel Horton said. "We just have to deal with both missions."
And Tripp, no, maybe you or I couldn't have been elected in 2000. But that Gore fellow certainly seemed to have a fair shot at it. Bush's victory would not have been possible without a monumental choke by the Gore campaign, no matter who his daddy is.
Posted by: Gaijin Biker at August 31, 2005 11:51 PM