Sunday

Spent the morning watching some local updates and part of the Stephanoupolis show--missed Thad Allen, but caught Barak Obama, and he was, quite honestly, disappointing. The "roundtable" was more of a right wing, with the inevitable blaming of local and state officials...Newt Gingrich made mention of "2,000 buses under water," which got me thinking. Lucky enough, the Pic blog sets the record straight--even if it shows that some displaced New Orleanians are very different from others.

Nagin just bought a house in Dallas...must be nice to have that kind of cash lying around.

However, he also refuted Gingrich's assertion re: city buses:

Federal officials have faulted Nagin's administration for not marshaling its Regional Transit Authority buses and those of the School Board to start ferrying the tens of thousands of evacuees stranded at the Superdome and the Convention Center out of town.

Nagin said perhaps some of the criticism is fair. But he said there were various logistical hurdles that made it hard to use that equipment, and the buses would have hardly created a dent in the size of the crowds anyway.

"It's up for analysis," he said. "But we didn't have enough buses. I don't control the school buses, and the RTA buses as far as I know were positioned high and dry. But 80 percent of the city was not high and dry. Where would we have staged them? And who was going to drive them even if we commandeered them? If I'd have marshaled 50 RTA buses, and a few school buses, it still wouldn't have been nearly enough. We didn't get food, water and ice in this place, and that's way above the local level.

"Our plan was always to use the buses to evacuate to the Dome as a shelter of last resort, and from there, rely on state and federal resources."

And, coincidently, Ray and I were on the same page as to another issue--he pointed out that the entire State budget for Louisiana is $18 billion dollars--not an insignificant sum--but one that pales in comparison to federal resources...doing some quick math, that's less than one day's worth of total federal spending, or about three weeks worth of, say, total military spending (less if you include supplementals). NOLA resources will be less still.

It's also been reported that Gov. Blanco couldn't reach Bush by phone the day the storm hit, and was reduced to leaving a plea for help with a "low-level advisor."

In the end, I think there will be plenty of blame for officials at all levels--for instance, consider that the storm WASN'T a direct hit...and, good god, can anyone imagine what would've happened HAD it been? Forget about "vertical evacuation," the "shelter of last resort," etc.--a direct hit from the hurricane and we wouldn't be talking about months or years of rebuilding--because there would be nothing left to rebuild.

But the fact remains that the federal government was and is the only entity capable of the sort of effort needed to deal with a disaster of this sort--and, the fact is that this administration has predicated its entire raison d'etre on its ability to "protect" the public...an assertion that's proven horribly wrong. While there might be differences between, say, a terrorist attack, and a natural disaster, those differences merely amplify the failure. Memos entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside US" aside, and the ridiculous defense from people like Condoleezza Rice, the hurricane was PREDICTED--time, place, level of destruction--and without trying to sound maudlin, this was an ultimate real-time, real-life scenario to test the "security" administration. In the end, they've been reduced to playing the blame game themselves. Hardly the sort of thing anyone would point to as an example of effectiveness, resiliance, steadfastness, or any of the other attributes asserted by this administration come election time.

And as more revelations continue to trickle out--about the parking of Bush cronies at FEMA, for instance--it will be impossible to defend the wholesale looting of government resources that's been a hallmark of this administration. Even the wingnut panel on the Stephanoupolis show engaged in much clearing of throats and hrummphing about the difference between "big" government and "effective" government--which hopefully made Grover Norquist choke on his Pop-Tart. Government, like it or not, is here to stay (duh--even an amateur with little economic background like myself can recognize this)--and since it IS here, it might as well be put to work for ALL Americans...not just those think their campaign contributions amount to ownership.