Analysis

Let's face facts: when headlines are saying "Desperate" or "Chaotic" and the mayor announces "SOS", you've got to ask what's going on...

A very close friend of mine sent me this:

It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.

-- Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 8, 2004...

The district has identified $35 million in projects to build and improve levees, floodwalls and pumping stations in St. Bernard, Orleans, Jefferson and St. Charles parishes. Those projects are included in a Corps line item called Lake Pontchartrain, where funding is scheduled to be cut from $5.7 million this year to $2.9 million in 2006. Naomi said it's enough to pay salaries but little else.

"We'll do some design work. We'll design the contracts and get them ready to go if we get the money. But we don't have the money to put the work in the field, and that's the problem," Naomi said...

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...

One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer: a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday.

Here's an additional link to a Post op-ed about the budget cuts...in FEMA:

...the advent of the Bush administration in January 2001 signaled the beginning of the end for FEMA. The newly appointed leadership of the agency showed little interest in its work or in the missions pursued by the departed Witt. Then came the Sept. 11 attacks and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Soon FEMA was being absorbed into the "homeland security borg."

This year it was announced that FEMA is to "officially" lose the disaster preparedness function that it has had since its creation. The move is a death blow to an agency that was already on life support. In fact, FEMA employees have been directed not to become involved in disaster preparedness functions, since a new directorate (yet to be established) will have that mission.

FEMA will be survived by state and local emergency management offices, which are confused about how they fit into the national picture. That's because the focus of the national effort remains terrorism, even if the Department of Homeland Security still talks about "all-hazards preparedness." Those of us in the business of dealing with emergencies find ourselves with no national leadership and no mentors. We are being forced to fend for ourselves, making do with the "homeland security" mission. Our "all-hazards" approaches have been decimated by the administration's preoccupation with terrorism.

And James Wolcott is even more blunt:

No, this is the time for politics, none better, because I can tell you just from being out of NY a few days that a lot of people in this country are shocked and sobered by New Orleans, but they're also worried and pissed off. They're making the connection between the money, manpower, and resources expended in Iraq and how raggedy-ass the rescue effort has been in the Gulf. If you don't say it now when people's nerves are raw and they're paying full attention, it'll be too late once the waters receded and the media-emoting "healing process" begins.

Thankfully, Paul Craig Roberts is ignoring the pleas for sotto voce commentary in a time of tragedy.

"Chalk up the city of New Orleans as a cost of Bush's Iraq war.

"There were not enough helicopters to repair the breached levees and rescue people trapped by rising water. Nor are there enough Louisiana National Guardsmen available to help with rescue efforts and to patrol against looting.

"The situation is the same in Mississippi.

OK.

Now, of course that WON'T get anyone out of the city, nor will it stop the looting, or close the breaks in the levees--but I think it's high time we began looking at overall, long-term priorities, particularly when the country is spending huge amounts of money on, ahem, 'other' projects that aren't exactly bearing fruit. Additionally, as (sarcasm alert) an up and coming blogger named Atrios points out, this government DELIBERATELY and WITH FORETHOUGHT (and, I might add, on a BIPARTISAN basis) passed a bankruptcy bill that, in the absence of corrective measures, will be a further slap in the face to storm victims (at least Congress announced they were planning a "Katrina exemption", which Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee tried to add back when the bill was being considered--the amendment failed along party lines). In other words, the "elected" representatives were so busy catering to the only constituents they truly serve--big, fat-cat donors--that they're now having to scramble before their law kicks storm victims while they're down.

As for the anarchy in the streets (and, according to WWL, it's pretty awful), well, if I remember right, that's generally quashed by timely call-up and deployment of National Guard troops to affected areas. Oh, wait, that's right...most of the LNG isn't here. And now Murph's reporting that Dennis Hastert is basically saying "throw the city to the wolves". Like Murph, I don't remember people writing off Iowa and Illinois back in 1993. Thanks for nothing, Mr. Speaker.

Katrina is a national catastrophe that's still playing out. But we need to look closely at our national PRIORITIES, and make some serious decisions. I'm not saying that prior planning would have stopped the storm, or that everything subsequent to the storm's passing could have been or would have been avoided...but we can't simply chalk this up as "one of those things"--unless we want to see a repeat of this catastrophe. I'd like to think we don't.