Almost immediately after Hurricane Katrina passed through New Orleans, Democrats began criticizing the Bush Administration for supposedly poor handling of the situation.
The so-called Mainstream Media constantly aired scenes of death and destruction while depicting heroic rescue efforts as being "inadequate" or "too little too late." As with the War on Terror, the Left is again attempting to portray President Bush as being both incompetent and uncaring. On the surface it might appear that this is simply another facet of the ongoing Democrat smear campaign against President Bush. There is, however, another reason and the double hypocrisy involved here is sickening when one takes into account the human suffering involved.
It has been my experience that when liberals collectively make an accusation against the Right, it is to cover the fact that the Left is actually the guilty party. Think back to the recent presidential election, when liberals all over the country were screaming about voter disenfranchisement, and all the while the MSM largely ignored the many findings of tampering and voter intimidation on the part of the Democrats. This is standard operating procedure for the Left's unholy triad in government, the MSM, and the Blogosphere.
Thus far in regards to New Orleans, the Left has accused President Bush of both being too slow to act and then acting improperly. They've even hauled in Jesse Jackson to make the case (on CNN of course) that the Bush Administration intentionally delayed its reaction to the New Orleans disaster because the city has a predominately black population.
The awful truth behind the Left's newest smokescreen is that it was Democrats who caused the majority of the problems with the relief effort, and they're scrambling to hide that fact.
Fully forty-eight hours before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, President Bush declared the entire region a disaster area in order to speed the process of bringing aid to the area. In a meeting aboard Air Force One, President Bush requested that Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco order a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans on August 27th, two days before the hurricane hit. Mrs. Blanco delayed making the order until August 28th, robbing those involved of valuable time to effect a proper evacuation.
During the meeting, President Bush also requested that Gov. Blanco turn over control of the LA National Guard to the federal government. This is a standard action in a disaster of this size and scope. Blanco refused, saying she needed twenty-four hours to consider the decision. All the while, Katrina was churning its way toward the Gulf Coast.
FEMA's guidelines for New Orleans specifically include the mobilization of the city's fleet of school buses to evacuate citizens and visitors without personal transportation. FEMA officials urged Gov. Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to begin the evacuation early enough to get everyone out before the storm hit the coast. Governor Blanco waited until two days AFTER the storm hit New Orleans to issue the order for use of the buses. By then, almost all of them were under water and useless.
Both Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco asked residents who were unable to evacuate to go to the Louisiana Superdome, which after the storm became little more than an island surrounded by poisonous water and floating corpses. Numerous reports of violence and even rapes have since been reported inside the Superdome as people became frustrated and angry at their situation.
In an interview with FoxNews, former FEMA Director Joseph Allbaugh stated that when he headed the agency, he refused to allow the Superdome to be used as a shelter during hurricanes. FEMA guidelines clearly state that "supershelters" should be located outside of local floodplains to avoid just the type of situation that occurred in the Superdome. Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin sent their people to the Superdome with the full knowledge that it was an unsuitable shelter.
Further evidence of hypocrisy can be found in the venemous criticism of FEMA by congressional Democrats, even going as far as demanding the resignation of Director Michael Brown. But FEMA had fourteen truckloads of food and medical supplies already staged for delivery into the city well before the storm hit. These were delivered to the Superdome between August 29th and August 30th under the supervision of the Louisiana National Guard.
After the 9/11 attack, the Department of Homeland Security issued grants for the development of full service mobile hospitals for deployment into regions struck by a natural disaster or terrorist attack. Just such a state-of-the-art mobile hospital, staffed by 100 medical professionals, was left stranded in Mississippi because Louisiana officials would not allow it to enter New Orleans. The Red Cross was also well positioned to provide needed supplies to the city, but the state refused to let them deliver, claiming that the Red Cross was not needed at that time. Huh???
Additionally, the Left is blaming President Bush for the collapse of the New Orleans flood protection systems, allowing the gigantic flood that inundated the city. Moveon.org has even bused a group of unfortunately gullible evacuees to Washington, DC to protest President Bush's alleged improprieties in this matter. According to the Left, the President cut funds that the Army Corp of Engineers needed to strengthen the seawall and the levee system. Once again, a careful examination of the facts reveals the lies behind the accusations.
Records obtained by Cybercast News Service from the US Senate's Energy and Water Development Subcommittee show that under the Bush Administration, Louisiana leads the nation in federal funding for Corps of Engineers projects. The state received nearly two billion dollars of the Corps' most recent $22.9 billion budget. That's half a billion more than second-place California even though California has seven times Louisiana's population.
A Washington Post article reveals that the Army Corp of Engineers had launched a $748 million dollar project at the New Orleans Industrial Canal (the one that flooded the city). However, this project had nothing to do with flood control. The project's aim was to build a new lock for the canal to accommodate increased barge traffic even though barge traffic in the canal has been decreasing for more than a decade. Further analysis shows that the existing lock could have been rebuilt at a fraction of the cost of building a new one. It's worth noting that the levee broke very near the location of this questionable lock project.
Another pork-barrel project involved deepening the waters at the Port of Iberia at a cost of $194 million. This project initially failed a Corp of Engineers cost-benefit analysis, but Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu (a Democrat) sneaked language into an unrelated spending bill ordering the Corp to redo its calculations. The Corp also spends in excess of ten million dollars per year dredging little-used waterways for barge traffic that has never been as busy as forecasted by state officials.
It gets worse. In December of 1995, long before the presidency of George W. Bush, the Orleans Levee Board, a local government agency in charge of the construction and maintenance of floodgates and levees, stated in a Times-Picayune article that state officials had obtained over $60 million in flood control funding. This money was intended to fund the launch of a $140 million flood-control campaign including 41 separate projects. The board promised New Orleans residents that the "few manageable gaps" in the levee system would be "sealed within four years, completing our circle of protection."
A few months later, the Levee Board was mired in a scandal regarding the violation of a number of state bidding laws. Legislative Auditor Dan Kyle was quoted in the Times-Picayune that he had "repeatedly faulted the Levee Board for the way it awards contracts, spends money and ignores public bid laws."
Kyle further stated that the Board was nearing bankruptcy and should not be allowed to refinance any bonds or issue new ones until an acceptable plan for reaching solvency had been submitted. This blatant mismanagement of funds resulted in the Levee Board being unable to spend the matching federal funds and thus the projects lay dormant.
Want more? In 1998 the Louisiana government had a $2 billion construction budget but only $1.98 million of that money was earmarked for flood control projects. During that same period however, the state was able to spend $22 million to build a new State Supreme Court Facility and $35 million on an expansion of the New Orleans Convention center.
In 1999, the Louisiana legislature appropriated $49.5 million for improvements to the levee system, but the State Bond Commission gave the projects a "Priority Five" ranking, grouping it with minor projects that had little chance of getting full funding.
In recent years the Bush Administration has attempted to shift the emphasis of Corp of Engineers projects in Louisiana from new construction to needed maintenance, but has had only limited success. Louisiana's representatives in Washington and local officials have been far more interested in pork-barrel spending projects that kept their approval numbers high while doing little to ensure the safety of the city of New Orleans.
Now those chickens have come home to roost, and those same state officials, both elected and appointed, are circling the wagons to protect themselves from any culpability in the massive loss of life and utter destruction of a beautiful city. New Orleans isn't a victim of alleged incompetence by the Bush Administration. It's a victim of decades of vote-buying, mismanagement, and criminal negligence by a pack of self-important politicians and bureaucrats who have for years ignored a growing danger to the people they're sworn to serve.
Now those people who survived Katrina are rightfully angry and they're demanding answers to uncomfortable questions. Will we see honest answers from Mary Landrieu, David Vitter (a Republican), Kathleen Blanco, Ray Nagin, and others? No. What we're seeing is a typical group of irresponsible politicians seeking to heap the blame on their perceived political enemies. And they do so even while those same enemies are bending over backwards to help the people whom their state failed to protect.
Sources:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/07/AR2005090701986.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/07/AR2005090702462.html?nav=hcmodule
http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/09/04/katrina.sick.redtape.ap/index.html
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200509/NAT20050907a.html
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200509\NAT20050909a.html
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050909-121037-6314r.htm
http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20050907-121729-5097r
Alan Burkhart is a freelance political writer, cross-country trucker, and proud citizen of the reddest of the Red States - Mississippi. You can reach him via e-mail at: alan@alanburkhart.com or by visiting his website: www.alanburkhart.com.