Setting the Record Straight

Governor Blanco released an enormous volume of records detailing the Gret Stet's efforts at hurricane relief in the aftermath of Katrina. These two WaPo articles--here and here, with a hat tip to Suspect Device for the latter--offer an initial summary of the trove.

The articles make one thing clear: while the Gulf Coast was obliterated, State officials did their best, under trying circumstances and with limited resources, to provide assistance. National officials, on the other hand, were playing politics.

They still are.

"We need everything you've got," Blanco is quoted in a memo as telling President Bush on Aug. 29, the day Katrina made landfall. But despite assurances from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that 500 buses were "standing by," Blanco's aides were compelled to take action when the FEMA buses failed to materialize, documents show. "We need buses," Andy Kopplin, chief of staff to Blanco, said in an e-mail to Blanco staffers late on Aug. 30, the day after the storm hit. "Find buses that can go to NO [New Orleans] ASAP."

Two days later, on Sept. 2, Blanco complained to the White House that FEMA had still failed to fulfill its promises of aid. While cloaked in customary political courtesies, Blanco noted that she had already requested 40,000 more troops; ice, water and food; buses, base camps, staging areas, amphibious vehicles, mobile morgues, rescue teams, housing, airlift and communications systems, according to a press office e-mail of the text of her letter to Bush.

"Even if these initial requests had been fully honored, these assets would not be sufficient," Blanco said. She also asked for the return of the Louisiana Army National Guard's 256th Brigade Combat Team, then deployed to Iraq.

Tensions between state leaders and the White House seemed at times near the boiling point. At 3:49 p.m. on Sept. 2, after spending three hours to appear with Bush at a Mississippi news conference, Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-La.) wrote Blanco's staff, "I am returning home to baron[sic] rouge in hoping I can accomplish something for the people I represent other than being occupied with PR."

He added that Bush's "entire effort on behalf of the federal government has been reflected in his and his people's nonchalant attitude to the people of LA. You may give him this to read."

The question of buses has been hollered over down to excruciating detail--including a post of my own back in September--and I don't think going over it again is necessary. But simple logic is plenty sufficient to realize a national government with a budget of almost two and a half TRILLION dollars will have a lot more resources available than a State with a total budget of eighteen BILLION dollars, i.e., roughly three days of federal spending. And now that we know the reason for devastation in NOLA was at least in part due to failure on the federal level to build proper floodwalls and levees...in other words, NOLA got the shaft going both ways.

The Bush administration continues to play politics, opting for a stall-and-hope-the rest-of-the-country-forgets-approach...unfortunately, this seems to be working, as I noted last week. However, chickens do come home to roost, and I'm beginning to think "let them freeze in the dark--and let their products, agricultural or otherwise, rot in place" might be the wakeup call the rest of the country needs.

As for Team Bush, well, I think their general policy of hide, stall, and blame speaks volumes, especially in comparision to Blanco's open record policy. And when the Shrub records DO see the light of day, Scooter'll have a lot of company in the cellblock...