Criticism of Gov't Response

[cmotherofpirl]

Rescue efforts start at the bottom, not at the top. The local people are the ones to call the shots because they are on the scene. They screwed up big time. How many years have they had to realize that New Orleans was one day gonna take a direct hit or close to one.? Were they ready?

No.

Its the Federal government's job to help the State whose job it is to help the local government.

The Federal response should have started the minute it realized the incompetence of the lower officials. That was their mistake.

[Nathan]

As for the government's handling of the situation...

I hate to say it, but things would have most definitely been handled much better if the majority of victims were white, middle-to-upper-class citizens instead of poor black ones. I just know it. The government dawdled because these people do not matter.

[jasJis]

[quote name='Nathan' date='Sep 4 2005, 08:10 PM']As for the government's handling of the situation...

I hate to say it, but things would have most definitely been handled much better if the majority of victims were white, middle-to-upper-class citizens instead of poor black ones. I just know it. The government dawdled because these people do not matter.
[right][snapback]711037[/snapback][/right]
[/quote]This is one of the meanest and nastiest things that can be said. You don't know that. The Government isn't made up of souless evil people. It's people like you and me that have bosses, rules, procedures, etc. I deal with all sorts of Government agencies, counties, cities, State, Federal, etc. every day. As bad and difficult and 'impossible' as my dealings have been, they weren't evil.

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='Nathan' date='Sep 4 2005, 09:10 PM']As for the government's handling of the situation...

I hate to say it, but things would have most definitely been handled much better if the majority of victims were white, middle-to-upper-class citizens instead of poor black ones. I just know it. The government dawdled because these people do not matter.
[right][snapback]711037[/snapback][/right]
[/quote]
THat is BS.
When you respond to a disaster you don't give a beaver dam what color or creed the victim is, you care about saving their life.

The only time you get anrgy is when they start shooting AT
you.

[Dreamweaver]

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' date='Sep 4 2005, 10:26 PM']The only time you get anrgy is when they start shooting AT
you.
[right][snapback]711195[/snapback][/right]
[/quote]

Ah, I agree with that! I'm sure evacuation efforts would have gone a lot smoother if they didn't have crazy gunmen shooting at helicopters and police in the streets. I don't see how their "shoot at the helicopter to get rescued faster" logic works.

I think there's a little bit of blame to go around for everyone. The feds, the state, local gov't, and the citizens themselves. No point in blaming who's fault it is now. We can only learn from these mistakes to be better prepared for the next big disaster. Well, things could have been easier if the power didn't go out. The police and other rescue personel didn't really have a way to communicate with one another afte their radio batteries died out.

[toledo_jesus]

did you guys see the president of Jefferson Parish? man, what a leader he was. bawling like a child on television. If that's the best local gov't has to offer, no wonder it's so bad down there. what was he talking about anyway? the FEMA guy's mom drowning?

[IcePrincessKRS]

Hey, I don't blame the man for crying. I've shed tears over this disaster myself and I don't even know anyone who lives in NO. I (perhaps rather cowardly) have stopped watching and reading coverage of this because every time I heard something about babies/children sick or dead it killed me inside. It was hard enough to see adults in that situation, and the ruins of the city. I can't say I disagree with Don John, he's expressed much of what I have been feeling.

[MichaelFilo]

Any one from NO can tell you abotu the government there. Liousiana (sp?) itself doesn't have the best leaders and sadly, the state government there is a bit racist (don't shoot me, I only say what I hear from people who actually lived in the area). However, the racist part doesn't figure into the mess since they would help someone if they were dieing. I just find it sad that these kids feel the need to take to arms.

On a side note, my former racist self must wonder, why is it that blacks are the large majority of people who are currently carrying out these crimes. I don't think oppression ever made the oppressed stop people from helping them. So, I have to wonder, why it is that this AFrican American sub-group in Lousiana (they are very different from African Americans elsewhere in the states, as I've had the pleasure of finding out first hand) to be compelled to act like this. I could say it's the rap, but umm, rap is gang vs gang, not gang vs food stuffs. Oh well, I just await the return of M. Sigga and those who live there to help explain what is happenin and why it is happening.

God bless,
Mikey

[avemaria40]

we shouldn't criticize the ppl who didn't evacuate in time, maybe they didn't have money to leave, maybe if the population is mostly poor, they didn't own a car or have money for gas. and think of ppl who lost parents, who lost children, their lovers, their spouses, their whole family! their best friends! the last thing they need is to hear they were idiots not to evacuate in time. Btw, i was absolutely shocked that Canadian mounties made it down there faster than the Fed. Gov't

[philothea]

[quote name='avemaria40' date='Sep 5 2005, 05:44 PM'] Btw, i was absolutely shocked that Canadian mounties made it down there faster than the Fed. Gov't
[right][snapback]712326[/snapback][/right]
[/quote]

[IcePrincessKRS]

I have to disagree [i]to a point[/i] about not criticizing people who didn't evacuate in time. Yes, a certain percentage couldn't afford to leave, but on the other hand (before I stopped watching the news) I saw a report about a teenage boy who "commandeered" a city school bus and drove to Houston, picking up fellow refugees along the way. This teenage kid took the initiative to get transportation and get outta Dodge, why couldn't some of those other people do the same? I'm not laying blame, I just don't understand.

[Guest pitcher]

[quote name='hierochloe' date='Sep 4 2005, 05:18 PM']Whoever thinks there aren't that many poor people in NO has either never been there or I dunno what....
[right][snapback]710895[/snapback][/right]
[/quote]

Right, but WHY are there so many poor people in NO? It's surrounded by oil resources and refineries, and it's one of the busiest ports in the entire world. Given the economic climate that's left the rest of the country awash in prosperity the last 25 years, how come NO is full of badly-educated, underemployed poor people?

It's been painfully obvious to me from the beginning of this disaster that NO has an inept and corrupt police department, and similarly corrupt and incompetent politicians. I won't dignify them by referring to them as 'political leaders.' They did not lead. They sat on their hands and did nothing.

Consider this: NO has a violent crime rate 10 times higher than the national average. No wonder so many NO residents said they wouldn't evacuate because they were afraid of looting. They were right to be afraid.

At any rate, it looks to me like the kindest thing that could be done for these folks who have had to leave NO is to help them make permanent homes elsewhere, as far from NO as possible.

[cmotherofpirl]

From this morning's Drudgereport.com

Before residents had ever heard the words "Hurricane Katrina," the New Orleans TIMES-PICAYUNE ran a story warning residents: If you stay behind during a big storm, you'll be on your own!

Editors at TIMES-PICAYUNE on Monday called for every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency to be fired. In an open letter to President Bush, the paper said: "Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That's to the government's shame."

But the TIMES-PICAYUNE published a story on July 24, 2005 stating: City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give a historically blunt message: [u]"In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own."[/u]
Staff writer Bruce Nolan reported some 7 weeks before Katrina: "In scripted appearances being recorded now, officials such as Mayor Ray Nagin, local Red Cross Executive Director Kay Wilkins and City Council President Oliver Thomas drive home the word that [u]the city does not have the resources to move out of harm's way an estimated 134,000 people without transportation."[/u]
"In the video, made by the anti-poverty agency Total Community Action, they urge those people to make arrangements now by finding their own ways to leave the city in the event of an evacuation.

"You're responsible for your safety, and you should be responsible for the person next to you," Wilkins said in an interview. "If you have some room to get that person out of town, the Red Cross will have a space for that person outside the area. We can help you."

I did the underlining

[cmotherofpirl]

Not much traction with the abuse
By Wesley Pruden
Published September 6, 2005

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
George W. finally gets it -- in more ways than one. The tardy president was back on the Gulf Coast yesterday, bucking up the spirits of the damned and stiffening the resolve of the slackers.
He's getting it as well from his critics, many of whom can't believe their great good luck, that a hurricane, of all things, finally gives them the opening they've been waiting for to heap calumny and scorn on him for something that might get a little traction. Cindy Sheehan is yesterday's news; she couldn't attract a camera crew this morning if she stripped down to her step-ins for a march on Prairie Chapel Ranch.
The vultures of the venomous left are attacking on two fronts, first that the president didn't do what the incompetent mayor of New Orleans and the pouty governor of Louisiana should have done, and didn't, in the early hours after Katrina loosed the deluge on the city that care and good judgment forgot. Ray Nagin, the mayor, ordered a "mandatory" evacuation a day late, but kept the city's 2,000 school buses parked and locked in neat rows when there was still time to take the refugees to higher ground. The bright-yellow buses sit ruined now in four feet of dirty water. Then the governor, Kathleen Blanco, resisted early pleas to declare martial law, and her dithering opened the way for looters, rapists and killers to make New Orleans an unholy hell. Gov. Haley Barbour did not hesitate in neighboring Mississippi, and looters, rapists and killers have not turned the streets of Gulfport and Biloxi into killing fields.
The drumbeat of partisan ingratitude continues even after the president flooded the city with National Guardsmen from a dozen states, paratroopers from Fort Bragg and Marines from the Atlantic and the Pacific. The flutter and chatter of the helicopters above the ghostly abandoned city, some of them from as far away as Singapore and averaging 240 missions a day, is eerily reminiscent of the last days of Saigon. Nevertheless, Sen. Mary Landrieu, who seems to think she's cute when she's mad, even threatened on national television to punch out the president -- a felony, by the way, even as a threat. Mayor Nagin, who you might think would be looking for a place to hide, and Gov. Blanco, nursing a bigtime snit, can't find the right word of thanks to a nation pouring out its heart and emptying its pockets. Maybe the senator should consider punching out the governor, only a misdemeanor.
The race hustlers waited for three days to inflame a tense situation, but then set to work with their usual dedication. The Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, our self-appointed twin ambassadors of ill will, made the scene as soon as they could, taking up the coded cry that Katrina was the work of white folks, that a shortage of white looters and snipers made looting and sniping look like black crime, that calling the refugees "refugees" was an act of linguistic racism. A "civil rights activist" on Arianna Huffington's celebrity blog even floated the rumor that the starving folks abandoned in New Orleans had been forced to eat their dead -- after only four days. New Orleans has a reputation for its unusual cuisine, but this tale was so tall that nobody paid it much attention. Neither did anyone tell the tale-bearer to put a dirty sock in it.
Condi Rice went to the scene to say what everyone can see for himself, that no one but the race hustlers imagine Americans of any hue attaching strings to the humanitarian aid pouring into the broken and bruised cities of the Gulf. Most of the suffering faces in the flickering television images are black, true enough, and most of the helping hands are white.
Black and white churches of all denominations across a wide swath of the South stretching from Texas across Arkansas and Louisiana into Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama and Georgia turned their Sunday schools into kitchens and dormitories. In Memphis, Junior Leaguers turned out for baby-sitting duty at the city's largest, most fashionable and nearly all white Baptist church, cradling tiny black infants in compassionate arms so their mothers could finally sleep. The owner of a honky-tonk showed up to ask whether the church would "accept money from a bar." A pastor took $1,400, some of it in quarters, dimes and nickels, with grateful thanks and a promise to see that it is spent wisely on the deserving -- most of whom are black.
The first polls, no surprise, show the libels are not working. A Washington Post-ABC survey found that the president is not seen as the villain the nutcake left is trying to make him out to be. Americans, skeptical as ever, are believing their own eyes.
Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times.

[Quietfire]

One news reporter made an excellent remark today.

She acknowledged that the majority of people affected by Katrina are poor and/or black.
She noted that many actors and country music stars have made themselves available for assistance. Even Rush Limbaugh is donating the proceeds of his upcoming Broadway (what ever it is) engagement.
She wondered where the wonderful rap music genre is at this time. Those rappers and hip hoppers who claim that people of race,color,creed are being oppressed, yet in a time of great disaster, so far only two rap artists have come foward to lend support.

So today I have a new respect for Sean *P. Diddy*.

Thank you Sean, for showing people that unless you are willing to put action along with your faith and beliefs...then your just a gong clanging in the wind.

Pax

Edited September 6, 2005 by Quietfire