Let's take a break from the joy of Bush bashing to reveal the dirty little secret of New Orleans: Its local government deserves an F for its planning and response to Katrina.
Matt was kind enough to get me a copy of the NOLA plan, which I am now disseminating. I will get back to the readership with analysis, but my early hunches are shown to be correct: the mayor and governor dragged their feet in implementing, and in most cases, plain ignored, their own disaster plan. So, therefore, how is that Bush's fault? Well, let's get on with Mr. Goodwin's commentary:
That narrative has all the accuracy of a historic novel: it takes two undisputed facts - the feds were slow and New Orleans is largely black and poor - and weaves in pure fiction to make the desired link.
The charge of racism-inspired foot-dragging isn't just nonsense. It's pernicious nonsense, as in destructive and malicious. You know that's a fact because loony Howard Dean, the Democratic Party boss, is now peddling it. He's joined by Jesse Jackson, who said the squalor in New Orleans "looks like the hull of a slave ship." Oh, please.
Yep, when Screamin' Dean and JayJay the Jet Plane get involved, you know there are lies and racebaiting coming....
let's look at New Orleans before Katrina.
Start with crime. That looters ran unchecked after the hurricane isn't surprising when you consider that criminals have had the run of the city for years.
It is a perennial contender for Murder Capital. The 264 homicides last year were a drop of only 11 from 2003 - and the first decline in five years.
New Orleans, with fewer than 500,000 people, had almost half the murders of New York, which had 570 homicides last year in a city of more than 8 million. Put another way, if New York had New Orleans' murder rate, we would have more than 4,200 murders a year.
Wow, maybe if tough as nails Ray Nagin were doing something to get law enforcement on the ball, many of the degenerates who took advantage of this tragedy would be locked up, or better yet, dead. I have no sympathy for the rapists and murderers. None. However, the author makes a point: how can a city so small have so many homicides on a continual basis? Sounds like the cops aren't getting it done, or perhaps there are problems with budgets, like too many junkets for the mayor, or too much spent on entertainment?
Nearly a third of New Orleans cops - some 500 of the 1,600 - are now unaccounted for. The department says some quit, but it doesn't know where most of them are.
The top cop, Eddie Compass, has responded by offering all officers paid vacations to Las Vegas and Atlanta. Yes, that's right - he is pulling all cops off the street, even while bodies lie in the open. Never in New York.
WHAT? This is preposterous. These men and women have a duty. That some of them have deserted is sad....
Then there's Mayor Ray Nagin, a Democrat, who has blamed everybody but himself. Maybe he has forgotten his plans for dealing with Katrina.
Last July, his office prepared DVDs warning that, if the city ever had to be evacuated, residents were on their own. According to a July 24 article in The Times-Picayune (spotted by the Web's Drudge Report), "Mayor Ray Nagin, local Red Cross Executive Director Kay Wilkins and City Council President Oliver Thomas drive home the word that the city does not have the resources to move out of harm's way an estimated 134,000 people without transportation."
"You're responsible for your safety, and you should be responsible for the person next to you," one official said of the message.
And how's this for preparation? Cops were told not to work on the day Katrina hit, one officer told The New York Times, but "to come in the next day, to save money on their budget."
By all means, let's investigate what went wrong in New Orleans. Let's start in City Hall.
Wow, the mayor realized the problem last July, but made no efforts to improve upon the situation, like you know, drafting those 200 or so buses that were left to get carried out to sea, those buses that could have been commandeered to get people out. Hmmm, and doesn't the NOLA plan provide for that? Yep. Hmmm.....interesting, then, how we can blame the President for not implementing A STATE AND LOCAL PLAN....maybe some people should take a remedial government course....
And that last comment about sending cops home during the storm to help the budget--that is borderline insanity....everyone knows you need first responders in crises. To send them home is a travesty, and is just as much a crime as any slowness of FEMA.
