September 14, 2005

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by Bob Newman

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I can’t find Bo, Keith, Mrs. Johnson, the Rogers clan or any of my other friends in southern Louisiana. I’ve tried and tried but to no avail. I’ve no idea if they are dead or alive. I pray each night they are safe and that they have yet to join Owl Bayou’s Mr. Charlie at the big crab-n-crawfish boil in the sky.

I want to go back to the bayou just off Lake Maurepas to the west of Lake Ponchartrain and run Pawpaw’s trot lines, hoop nets and bird lines, pulling catfish from them for dinner at Pawpaw’s bayou camp. I want to sip "worm buckets" at the Prop Stop and cavort with the Cajuns arranged thereabouts in their eclectic array of watercraft, ranging from weathered pirogues and glittering "hawg trawlers" (bass boats) to throaty "cigarette" boats, little aluminum skiffs and unmistakable airboats. I want to run out to Bayou Barataria and down to Grande Isle to throw flies at redfish and spotted seatrout in the spartina marshes and at yellowfin tuna and cobia around the oil rigs.

It’s been just over two weeks since Katrina’s crashed the quasi-endless party in the "Big Easy" and staved up 90,000 square miles of coastline from Alabama to Louisiana. Hundreds of people are dead and the death toll could go into the thousands. Thousands upon thousands of homes and businesses are gone. The fiscal damage will be tallied in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The Gulf of Mexico’s ultimate bitch, Katrina, paid us a visit we will never forget.

And we knew for decades she was coming and coming with a vengeance.

The storm hadn’t even passed when the Democratic Party of the United States smelled the stench of opportunity on the humid Gulf Coast wind. The fetid bouquet of rotting bodies would soon fuse with the tang of political prospect, but the vile odors of both would only serve to whet the appetites of the cruising bottom-feeders and sleazy sharks patrolling New Orleans’ pestilential pond. If they could trick enough Americans into believing racist conservatives were to blame for the mess, and with the gleeful assistance of the liberal media, the Democrats could substantially reduce what’s left of George Bush’s political capital, thus prepping the zone for 2006 and ultimately 2008, when Hillary will charge onto the battlefield armed to the teeth with every weapon she can get her mitts on. She’ll use deceit, lies, treachery and especially guile to generate the fog of political war from which she will strike. Like a potent aphrodisiac, the odoriferous aroma that would make ethical Americans gag will fill her nostrils and spur her forward. Her generals–Dean, Pelosi, Jackson, Sharpton, Kennedy and their ilk–will sense promotion and retribution in the fracas. Atop the bodies of the dead being used as parapets, these political pugilists will direct their engines of war against truth and fact.

But the Bush administration also went astray, primarily with a display of political amateurism that demonstrated how adrift the White House’s public-relations skills truly are by not communicating to the country that the Bush team took the hurricane serious enough to prevent Condi Rice from shopping for trendy shoes as people were about to die, and get the president and vice president into highly visible positions instead of being on semi-vacation or, in the case of Dick Cheney, being the invisible man for 10 days after the hurricane struck. Such bonehead mistakes are supposed to be the realm of political novices, not seasoned pros.

These errors were compounded Tuesday when President Bush accepted responsibility for any federal shortcomings. This silly move made it seem as though the federal government made major mistakes in responding to Katrina and that the feds failed to carry out their primary assignments. Was the government supposed to be the first responder to Katrina? No, the states and cities were, at least according to their own plans. Is FEMA supposed to be a giant rescue outfit? No again. FEMA’s job is to provide certain types of assistance that the states and cities can not provide at the specific request of the leaders of those states and cities, and those states and cities are supposed to coordinate with FEMA the activities they know they can’t handle on the local or state level, which New Orleans and Louisiana never did.

As FEMA’s name reflects, its mission is to manage emergencies at the federal level with direct guidance from states and cities, who are now and always have been the primary responders in instances of natural disasters. If a state or city fails, FEMA can step in and, in this case, did precisely that when it became clear that New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco were bumbling buffoons who failed to follow their own emergency plans. FEMA, despite the sudden realization that Nagin and Blanco were panicky dolts trying to steer a sinking ship they had piloted into a well-marked reef, managed to get more aid into the region faster than with Hurricanes Andrew, Hugo, Iniki and every other major hurricane of late. Bush saying he accepts responsibility for FEMA not saving everyone in New Orleans is like the commandant of the Marine Corps saying he takes responsibility for a lance corporal showing up 10 seconds late for duty. I am shocked that the Bush communications "experts" told the president it would be clever to fall on his sword.

FEMA appropriately expected New Orleans and the state of Louisiana to follow their emergency plan. For example, Louisiana’s Emergency Operations Plan states:

"The Department of Social Services (DSS) is the Department of State Government responsible for the coordination of shelter operations."

"DHH [Department of Health and Hospitals] has the primary responsibility for providing medical coordination for all special needs populations."

"DSS and DHH will coordinate the special needs shelter program throughout the state."

"[The] State of Louisiana [will]: Direct the evacuation and shelter of persons having mobility limitations, including persons in nursing homes, hospitals, group homes and non-institutionalized persons."

"[The] State of Louisiana [will]: Mobilize State transportation resources to aid in the evacuation of people who have mobility and/or health problems."

"Risk Area Parishes [will]: Assist persons with mobility limitations to find last resort refuge. Mobilize all transportation resources and request assistance from the state as needed."

The City of New Orleans Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan states:

"Conduct of an actual evacuation will be the responsibility of the Mayor of New Orleans."

"As established by the City of New Orleans Charter, the [city] government has jurisdiction and responsibility in disaster response."

"City Departments, Constitutional Authorities, and All Emergency Response Agencies [will]: Ensure personnel are trained in appropriate plans and standard operations procedures (SOP’s) for disaster operations" and "Maintain trained volunteer cadre for disaster response in areas of mass feeding, damage assessment, etc."

"The City of New Orleans will utilize all available resources to quickly and safely evacuate threatened areas . . . Special arrangements will be made to evacuate persons unable to transport themselves or who require specific life saving assistance. Additional personnel will be recruited to assist in evacuation procedures as needed."

"The person responsible for recognition of hurricane related preparation needs and for the issuance of an evacuation order is the Mayor of the City of New Orleans."

How ‘bout them apples?

Nowhere in the state’s plan, nor in New Orleans’ plan, does it say FEMA or the president is responsible for rescuing and caring for citizens who find themselves in a jam because the governor and mayor are incompetent and negligent in carrying out their assigned duties, which they both swore to carry out. And nowhere in FEMA’s charter or in the Constitution does it say that, either.

Yet despite the clarity of these plans (what part of "Conduct of an actual evacuation will be the responsibility of the Mayor of New Orleans" do many liberals not understand?), I still get calls from listeners who prefer to ignore the facts because those facts don’t mesh with their political leanings and their hatred of George Bush and conservatives in general. They allow their politics to control them, rather than them controlling their politics. None can offer any proof that Bush was negligent in any way, but that doesn’t stop them from calling and screaming bloody murder. A caller from Arkansas says Bush is a criminal because some people couldn’t get out of New Orleans. A caller from California demands Bush resign because levees broke. A caller from Texas says Bush should be impeached because only two-thirds of the Louisiana was in the state and available for emergency duty. A caller from Minnesota says Bush is a racist. A caller from Missouri says Bush is the scum of the earth and that it wasn’t Nagin’s fault at all. And on and on.

And why hasn’t the liberal media told you about the city and state plans cited above? Because they are in the business of misinforming you in order to influence you. The liberal media in general long ago cast off the annoying burden of telling you all the pertinent facts. Deep under the covers and snuggled up tight with the left, they don’t want you to know that the official emergency plans of New Orleans and Louisiana specifically state that the mayor and state are responsible for what happened with Katrina, not the president or FEMA or military.

But at least the left-wing press is dependable in their deception. I knew as I read the Denver Post this morning that I could count on that daily to withhold critical facts from its readers. An editorial suggested FEMA was responsible for the "hoodlums . . . terrorizing evacuees at the Superdome," the people who were "dead on the streets" and the "thousands of Louisianans . . trapped by floodwaters." Editor Greg Moore, who came to the Post from the infamous Boston Globe, made darn sure his readers didn’t learn in his paper that, according to New Orleans’ own Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan, Mayor Ray Nagin and his employees were responsible for the evacuees, dead and trapped. Why did Moore and the Post keep that information from you? Because the truth would have shown FEMA and Bush to have not been responsible for New Orleans’ plight, and would have shown Nagin as being first in the chain of responsibility. Nagin, like Moore, is a hard-core liberal. They are both African-American, too, and previous editorials on Katrina ordered by Moore used race baiting as an accelerant in what amounts to editorial arson by the Post.

But there’s good news as well. We now know that at least one city and state have so-called leaders who are truly inept and who will act as multipliers in the event of a major terrorist attack. Chances are there are more such politicians out there, which means the federal government must now examine very closely the emergency plans of every city, county, parish and state rather than take them at their word that they are prepared.

Of course, this means that in a troubling sort of way, we owe Nagin and Blanco for being as incompetent as they are, for their ineptitude might lead to a safer America.