Showers

[Blaise (imported)]

Getting a shower helps refugees feel human again. That may seem a minor gain. It is a major boon when one is tired and disoriented. The New York Times coverage of the crisis outstanding.

We must not allow a breakdown in law and order. We must maintain our civility.

[Blaise (imported)]

I find this an interesting take on the crisis.

September 2, 2005

A Can't-Do GovernmentBy PAUL KRUGMAN

Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. "The New Orleans hurricane scenario," The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001, "may be the deadliest of all." It described a potential catastrophe very much like the one now happening.

So why were New Orleans and the nation so unprepared? After 9/11, hard questions were deferred in the name of national unity, then buried under a thick coat of whitewash. This time, we need accountability.

First question: Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive? Katrina hit five days ago - and it was already clear by last Friday that Katrina could do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you'd expect from an advanced country never happened. Thousands of Americans are dead or dying, not because they refused to evacuate, but because they were too poor or too sick to get out without help - and help wasn't provided. Many have yet to receive any help at all.

There will and should be many questions about the response of state and local governments; in particular, couldn't they have done more to help the poor and sick escape? But the evidence points, above all, to a stunning lack of both preparation and urgency in the federal government's response.

Even military resources in the right place weren't ordered into action. "On Wednesday," said an editorial in The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., "reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics. Playing basketball and performing calisthenics!"

Maybe administration officials believed that the local National Guard could keep order and deliver relief. But many members of the National Guard and much of its equipment - including high-water vehicles - are in Iraq. "The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission," a Louisiana Guard officer told reporters several weeks ago.

Second question: Why wasn't more preventive action taken? After 2003 the Army Corps of Engineers sharply slowed its flood-control work, including work on sinking levees. "The corps," an Editor and Publisher article says, citing a series of articles in The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, "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."

In 2002 the corps' chief resigned, reportedly under threat of being fired, after he criticized the administration's proposed cuts in the corps' budget, including flood-control spending.

Third question: Did the Bush administration destroy FEMA's effectiveness? The administration has, by all accounts, treated the emergency management agency like an unwanted stepchild, leading to a mass exodus of experienced professionals.

Last year James Lee Witt, who won bipartisan praise for his leadership of the agency during the Clinton years, said at a Congressional hearing: "I am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to disasters has been sharply eroded. I hear from emergency managers, local and state leaders, and first responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and worked well with has now disappeared."I don't think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the military wasn't rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same reason nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control was neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn't get adequate armor.

At a fundamental level, I'd argue, our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.

Yesterday Mr. Bush made an utterly fantastic claim: that nobody expected the breach of the levees. In fact, there had been repeated warnings about exactly that risk.

So America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can't-do government that makes excuses instead of doing its job. And while it makes those excuses, Americans are dying.

E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com

[A-1 (imported)]

Yesterday Mr. Bush made an utterly fantastic claim: that nobody expected the breach of the levees. In fact, there had been repeated warnings about exactly that risk.

Bush is so full of shit on this one!

A-1

[Christina (imported)]

It's nice to hear that some are getting the treatment they deserve and need. But it's not enough because there are many, many more who've gone far too long without any help.

[Robby (imported)]

Bush is so full of shit on this one!

A-1

A-1,

Good morning my friend... you seem to be alert and altogether. Thanks for seeing the light, there is more to come.

[Paolo]

Let’s stop and think about this one for a moment.

Our government is one not “of by and for the people”. It may have started this way, but it is now a government “of by and for the rich”.

Now, here comes the part where it isn’t going to be pretty to read.

There’s been a lot on the news here about New Orleans and those who didn’t get out. Keep in mind that I live in a small town in the Midwest, also. While I have the intelligence to realize the class split that is so obvious there, more so than even around here, many of the people I have overheard in passing lately do not. I will summarize the general attitude that I have gathered:

“They knew the storm was coming (the residents) and they stayed. They had the chance to get out, and they didn’t. They got what they deserved. And what do you see on the news? A bunch of niggers. I haven’t seen one single white person on the news clips, have you? And what do they do – start looting and killing each other when their welfare checks don’t come on time. Screw the aid, let ‘em kill each other off, hell, all they do is breed anyway.”

And believe it or not, the conversations get even uglier around here. Yesterday, I had to ask one person to please shut up or take his business elsewhere when he got on the subject as it was on the radio station at the hourly news time. “They’re nothing more than animals. They don’t think like us, they sure as hell don’t act like us. The country’s better off without them.” (Meaning, obviously, that class of people.) The topic of class-related sterilization even came up, along the lines of castration. This in the theme that the survivors in question aren’t any better than animals.

Keep in mind that these are NOT my opinions – I am repeating some of the things that have come in my door at work.

Now, when you stop and think about it, what has caused this class split, and put a whole lot of people into a socio-economic class like this? Our government. And do you think for one minute that the Fat Cats in DC remotely give a shit about thousands and thousands of non-white, poor, uneducated…(insert more adjectives here) people?

It’s obvious that the government realized what could happen in this scenario. If they knew that long ago, they KNEW this would play out just as it has. And why has it taken so long for help to arrive? It is arriving? Is it helping? You can bet that those in power just sat there for days and thought “yep, things are going according to plan – bodies everywhere, looting, people killing each other…good for the economy!” Conspiracy theorists take note – this one is painfully obvious. Probably a bunch of Kerry-voting Liberals down in The Big Easy, you know

I’d also wager that if this were a tragedy affecting a predominantly white upper class urban area in a Bush-state, the help would be pouring in before the “rain even stops” and things would be getting done. Hell, if were a disaster in China or Saudi Arabia, the whole f*cking world would be rushing in to help.

Sad but true.

Think about it.

[Taylor (imported)]

I agree that the situation is horrendous and the lack of timely response is shameful.

(Not comes the "however" part)

However, why is it suddenly W's fault? People immediately bitch abut Big Brother looking over their shoulder and telling them what to do and then bitch when Big Brother isn't there telling them what to do.

Jesus Christ on roller skates! It is irresponsible and flat out wrong to lay the blame at the President's feet. Hell, a couple of decades ago I predicted that New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen. Every governor of Louisiana and every mayor of New Orleans has know it wasn't a matter of "if", it was a matter of WHEN.

None of them took the action they should have in order to protect the citizens of New Orleans because it was easier to just twiddle their thumbs and hope for the best.

The situation would have been a lot less severe by several magnitudes if the levees had not failed. Let's see, was there any effort by the state of Louisiana to improve, strengthen and raise the flood capacity of the levees? NO.

Even if the President had ordered improvement in the levees years ago the project wouldn't have been completed in time for this disaster. Besides, it's not the President's job, it is the elected officials of LOUISIANA and NEW ORLEANS. They are the ones that should be the target of anger.

The truly sad part is that nobody is going to learn. Americans didn't learn from Mt. St. Helens, Americans didn't learn from 9/11 and people won't learn from New Orleans. It's interesting that Americans immediately blame someone else and then expect someone else to take care of them.

My heart goes out to the good people in New Orleans stuck in a bad situation made worse by the animals that walk among us. My prayers go to them.

[Paolo]

And just why would the leaders of New Orleans waste that state and local money on something so obvious as levee work, and the like, when they can be stealing it and putting it in their own pockets?

And why pick on the President?

The plain fact is that George W. Bush has more than made an ass of himself on this crisis with his ridiculous showings and insane comments. Then what does he do? Run around and waste fuel travelling in doing so.

The governments at ALL levels knew that this could happen someday.

They KNEW this was coming, WELL in advance.

Everybody in power saw the radar images.

And what does the President do? Bemoan the loss of his buddy's beachhouse?! Talk about Jesus Christ on roller skates!

It's amazing that his own guards didn't shoot him for that one, or at least, pop him in the mouth which he desperately needs. Hell, a good kick to the shin might have helped too.

What you have here is a government-planned genocide at all levels, and with things in New Orleans going exactly as planned, while the rich who are in power sit back and laugh. It's less benefit checks they have to write this month and next, with more of that class who die, and a perfect excuse to raise gas prices and go cavorting around with the Arabs who are laughing up their sleeves at us.

Big Brother? Yeah, this is concrete proof that he's watching...watching like a mean kid with a magnifying glass on an anthill.

Frankly, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a couple of neutron bombs dropped on what's left of the city in the middle of the night.

Given the intentional dilly-dallying and ineptitude in delivering aid, not to mention the fact that nothing was done from the get go before the first rain drop ever fell, what they're doing now is similar to bombing the city. It will just take longer to kill off the undesireables of Society who were unable to leave.

Now, Taylor, this is not an attack upon YOU personally. It is a nonviolent and "verbal" attack upon the incompetent government that exults in murdering its own people that don't fit the 'imagined' image of class of those in charge.

But what YOU and everyone else here needs to realize is this:

If this had been - say, an earthquake that levelled Beverly Hills - or a storm that ravaged an affluent part of a large Texas city - nothing like this would have happened there. The aid would have been there at once, and things would have been happening in such a rush to rescue the survivors.

Everything for the 'right' people, and the rest of you be damned.

[A-1 (imported)]

Tayor.

On these boards I have been one of the staunchest defenders of George W. Bush.

His actions in the wake of this disaster are indefenseable.

Simply put,

The SILLY FUCKER IS A RAVING LUNATIC.

Where in the HELL is DICK CHENEY?

Don't we have a Vice President?

Is he dead, or is he so ashamed of George W. Bush that he has went into hiding?

If this had been - say, an earthquake that levelled Beverly Hills - or a storm that ravaged an affluent part of a large Texas city - nothing like this would have happened there. The aid would have been there at once, and things would have been happening in such a rush to rescue the survivors.

Well, maybe Texas. But if it was Beverly Hills or especially Hollywood George W. Bush would probably still be laughing...

A-1