HOG ON ICE says

Look at the failures on the local level.



1. Locals chose not to pay for an adequate flood control system. It was well within their means, and they had THREE HUNDRED YEARS to get it done. When complaining about the President's evil refusal to foot the whole bill, and they tell us how much more money was needed, they themselves quote a figure of about sixty million dollars. Don't you dare tell me an entire state couldn't come up with sixty million dollars. They were too cheap. They preferred to risk death. Now the bill will be in the tens of billions of dollars, and thousands of people are dead. By the way, who believes that flood control improvements funded during the Bush administration would have been finished by the time Katrina arrived? Nobody except those whose careers depend on believing it.



2. After inviting disaster by refusing to pay for flood control projects, local officials failed to respond quickly enough to the threat of storm damage. Here in Florida (and everywhere else), we respond to the approach of hurricanes by notifying FEMA, setting up shelters, and issuing evacuation orders WELL in advance of landfall. The mayor of New Orleans and other local officials dragged their feet. They didn’t even open the Superdome to evacuees until noon on the day before the hurricane, and at first, they limited access to people with special needs. And the governor, who must request federal aid before Washington can come in and provide it, sat on her hands while the waters rose. Florida’s Democrat governor did the same thing after Andrew, and then he whined about FEMA’s slow response. A bureaucrat’s prime directive is “Cover your ass at all costs, and if you can blame your enemies in the process, so much the better.”



3. Local citizens refused to evacuate, ensuring that they and their children and pets would die. We’re not supposed to talk about this, because it’s “blaming the victims.” Here’s a newsflash. When a person is a victim because of his own irresponsibility, you’re SUPPOSED to blame him. Watch cable news for an hour, and you’ll see the same story over and over. A New Orleans resident refuses to leave a flooded house, days after the storm. In the driveway are one or two cars this person could have used to flee the storm. Rescuers have to argue and cajole to get the “victim” into the boat. And sometimes they still refuse to leave. This is AFTER the storm, mind you. There is no food, no clean water, no electricity, and no police protection, and these people still won’t leave. Don’t even think of telling me they behaved better when the storm was still in the Gulf.



4. The New Orleans police have disappeared. Their chief had the gall to blame the National Guard for taking two whole days to show up, and then for amusing themselves during down time by playing cards. Meanwhile, his own officers are too busy shoplifting to do their jobs. According to the National Guard, the New Orleans police department has disintegrated. I guess their French heritage is taking over. But somehow, the disorder is the Guard’s fault. Can’t you see what’s happening here? The chief’s underlings proved to be cowardly and selfish, and they abandoned their posts, and in order to avoid responsibility, he’s launching a preemptive PR strike on the very people who are now doing his job for him. It’s CYA, pure and simple.



5. Evacuation holdouts are shooting at the police and the Guard and contractors and everyone else they can draw a bead on. Call me crazy, but I think this discourages and slows down rescue efforts. Here in Miami, after Andrew, people shot looters, not the police (who stayed on the job, unlike the New Orleans cops).



Sure, the federal response could have been better. Wake up; that’s what happens when you shift your own responsibilities to the federal government. Has anyone in New Orleans or the MSM been awake during the last two hundred years? Has the federal government EVER responded to a national disaster in less than two days? The federal government is like an ocean liner. It doesn’t start and stop quickly. Local government, when it works properly, is much more responsive. You don’t call the FBI when you see a burglar in your yard. You call the local police. Similarly, you don’t sit on your ass and wait for Washington to build your floodwalls and evacuate your citizens. New Orleans had buses. It had trains and planes. There were places it could have set up temporary shelters. And the disaster should never have occurred in the first place; locals should have looked after their own flood control needs. But like I said, Uncle Sam is society’s diaper, so none of that matters.



The whole Ting'