Berkowitz on DeLay

ArchPundit October 14, 2005 No Comments

I’ve been behind so I’m reaching back a bit to Jeff’s take on the choice of Blunt over Dreier and Jeff says it about as I would say it which is a potential sign of the apocalypse:

Delay may beat the Travis County indictment. It may be bogus as a three dollar bill. [See here]. He may stay a congressman. He may have influence. But, Speaker DeLay? Majority Leader DeLay? Whip DeLay? I don?t think so.

The times are a changing. And, they dictate a much different public face for the Republican Party than that of the Hammer. If I had a hammer, I?d hammer in the morning, I?d hammer in the evening. All over this land. But, I wouldn?t make the Hammer the public face of the national Republican Party. For that you want an articulate, thoughtful, telegenic conservative. Not a Hammer.

Dreier may not have been the right congressperson for the job. But?s it not DeLay and it?s not Blunt. So, the Speaker and Friends had best do a search. They need a new Public Face and they need it soon.

DeLay has been toxic for much longer than just recent months. He was hidden away during the 2000, 2002, and 2004 election for a reason–he’s nasty and caustic. That has some advantages in some cases, but if you need a public face–which Denny is not, he’s not your guy. Now, I think the guy is crooked, but even if you disagree, he gets little for conservatives. Blunt is as bad and as he has aged, his public persona has become far less pleasant than many in Missouri remember. He’s a slow Tom DeLay. He may stick around for a bit, but he won’t last–and, conservatives in the long run will be better for that. I kind of like having them around for someone to beat up, but there are a lot better choices out there for movement conservatives.

Greg points out many conservatives are moving on…which isn’t surprising to me in one sense–DeLay hasn’t exactly provided a reduction in government or anything so his usefullness in terms of the movement is pretty limited. His ties with actual Members of Congress make him stickier and promise to keep him around to kick for 2006 at least.

Next!

ArchPundit September 28, 2005 No Comments

Well, that took a couple hours.

ABC is pointing out that Roy Blunt had employs one of the indictees in the Texas campaign finance scandal . The ROYB (Rely On Your Beliefs) PAC employes Jim Ellis as a consultant and they are happy with his work.

Roy Temple has been all over this of course. Not surprisingly, ROYB had some irregularities as they say.

The case against DeLay is a tough case to make, but the case against Ellis is far more solid. There is one rule in Texas concerning campaign finance–you can’t use corporate or union money to finance election campaigns.

As the Stakeholder points out, no one is even pretending these guys are rogue operatives. In fact, they are ensuring they have ongoing jobs at least until the indictments dropped. Sort of like someone else who is now the former head of FEMA.

Everyone in this case is being “taken care of” and quite well taken care of, yet there has already been a finding in civil court against TRMPAC for violating Texas law and no matter how you add up the math, someone was funneling money to support statewide candidates with corporate donations.

Politics isn’t a way of making people’s lives better for these people, it’s just bidness.

Brownie Doesn’t Even Bother With Understanding the Louisiana Evacuation Plan

ArchPundit September 27, 2005 2 Comments

The essential order of an evacuation is layed out on the map for evacuations

During a threat of a hurricane, a phased evacuation will be based on geographic location and time in which tropical storm winds are forecasted to reach the affected areas.

Phased evacuation procedures are for traffic management purposes only. Consult your local Office of Emergency Preparedness Director for further evacuation information.

Phase I – 50 Hours before onset of tropical storm winds. Includes areas south of the Intracoastal Waterway. These areas are outside any levee protection system and are vulnerable to Category 1 and 2 storms. These areas are depicted in RED on the Evacuation Map. During Phase I there are no route restrictions.

Phase II – 40 Hours before onset of tropical storm winds. Includes areas south of the Mississippi River which are levee protected but remain vulnerable to Category 2 or higher storms. These areas are depicted in on the Evacuation Map. During Phase II there are no route restrictions.

Phase III – 30 Hours before onset of tropical storm winds. Includes areas on the East Bank of the Mississippi River in the New Orleans Metropolitan Area which are within the levee protection system but remain vulnerable to a slow-moving Category 3 or any Category 4 or 5 storm. These areas are depicted in YELLOW on the Evacuation Map. During Phase III, certain routes will be directed and the Contraflow Plan

Brown complains that no one would order the mandatory evacuation, but he misses the importance of these phases from past events like Ivan.

My mistake was in recognizing that for whatever reason that we might want to discuss later, but for whatever reason, Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco were reticent to order a mandatory evacuation. And if I, Mike Brown individual, could have done something to convince them that this was the big one, and they needed to order a mandatory evacuation,

The thing is that the expected time for landfall was around 10 AM on Monday for most of the planning period. It came in four hours early. Tropical storm winds hit the City of New Orleans around 4 AM from what I’ve seen. Move that to 8 AM as the expected start of tropical storm force winds for the beginning of the process.

50 hours out starts evacuations of areas not protected at what would have been 6 AM on Saturday and we see that many of those areas were ordering those within a couple hours. The storm was only forecast to hit Louisiana with some likelihood in the late afternoon Friday–though not for certain. At 5 PM on Friday, Blanco announced a State of Emergency. So they were late by about 3 hours, but given the time of day, that probably is pretty irrelevant and any earlier had the real potential to be a false alarm

At 40 hours out, which would have been mid-afternoon Saturday places like Placquemines and St. Bernard should have been ordering evacuations. These had to start before Contraflow to avoid disruptions to traffic coming from those areas. Contraflow was begun at 4 PM on Saturday along with a call within that hour for evacuations from New Orleans that were voluntary.

New Orleans and Jefferson were supposed to wait some time before issuing mandatory evacuations because they would stop other traffic from getting out. So they are supposed to wait until 30 hours out. Jefferson essentially made that a bit early, but no one was complaining. Nagin essentially said it was a mandatory evacuation, but he didn’t think he could enforce it (stupid, but still made the point). That gave him until about 2 AM Sunday to make the order according to the timeline. He did the next morning at 9 AM. I think most would say he should have called it early in this case, but he was close to what the plan called for given waking hours.

Brown apparently was completely clueless about a plan developed with FEMA for exactly this kind of scenario. One of the reasons the evacuation from New Orleans didn’t look like Houston’s highways is that they hadn’t gotten Contraflow plans down very well after a debacle with Ivan. Without the sequencing the system doesn’t work.

The local officials other than Nagin on the Mandatory portion pretty much hit their timelines and got those out who would leave and had the means to leave in a remarkably efficient manor compared to Houston exactly because they called the evacuations as the did.

The exception is Nagin who made it pretty clear that people needed to get on the road as Contraflow opened up.

The resulting 80% that likely evacuated was the highest ever obtained by the City and to make matters worse for Brown’s point-of-view–he should have expected to have to move more people out by bus than he did.

He is utterly clueless to this day about his responsibilities and that of the federal government and about the local planning. This isn’t to say the local plan was adequate or that state and local officials didn’t make serious mistakes. I have pointed out Blanco’s mistakes with the National Guard, and I’ve now mentioned Nagin’s dithering on ordering a mandatory evacuation. All that said, the state and local authorities largely followed the plans developed between state, local and federal bodies. The Federal Government led by Brown denied the existence of those plans and apparently still doesn’t realize the grave errors made.

Does He Listen to Himself

ArchPundit September 27, 2005 No Comments

Yeah, I can’t help myself

BROWN: Let me start out by addressing the premise of the question, which I don’t entirely agree with — that what could FEMA have done in terms of the evacuation? What could FEMA have done in terms of communications, law enforcement?

Those are not FEMA roles. FEMA doesn’t evacuate communities.

……………….

In terms of communications, one of the things that I didn’t mention in the litany of things that we pre-positioned is something called a MERS unit, our mobile emergency response system. Those are vehicles that are command and control units that have satellite hook- ups, telephone hook-ups, video hook-ups, enable us to do communications.

I pre-positioned those in all three states, so that we would have communications wherever we needed it. I eventually sent one of those command units — in fact, it’s one of the largest ones we have, called Red October — I eventually sent one of those into New Orleans for Mayor Nagin to use.

In retrospect, I wish I had done that four days earlier. Had I done it four days earlier, though, guess what? It probably wouldn’t have gotten there. So I am now second-guessing myself, and perhaps I should have pre-positioned it there before Katrina made landfall.

But again, that’s not the role of the federal government. That’s Mike Brown Monday morning quarterbacking, having seen everything that took place and trying to figure out, OK, now seeing everything that did not work in Louisiana, if I had known it beforehand, what could I have done?

I hate to break it to Mikey, but Communications probably is considered a federal issue given the problems with communications during 9-11.

The commission’s report will note that lawmakers, facing opposition from the broadcast industry, have not established a unified emergency communications system by dedicating a portion of the broadcast spectrum to medical and disaster responders.

As on Sept. 11, when malfunctioning radios contributed to deaths in the World Trade Center, public safety officials in New Orleans have reported widespread communications problems.

“The fact that Congress has chosen not to do something about this is a national scandal that has cost lives,” Kean said.

There was a big report by the folks on that commission. Maybe Brownie has heard of it.

Tried to Get them Out of the Ice Business

ArchPundit September 27, 2005 1 Comment

Poor, poor clueless bastard

BROWN: Can I address ice before you move on, do you mind?

JEFFERSON: Go ahead.

BROWN: I just want to state publicly that ice was one of those commodities that I feebly attempted to get FEMA out of the business of ice, because ice was originally intended to be only a life-saving commodity for baby formula, medications for hospitals and that sort of thing. And ice is one of those commodities that the demand for has just grown and grown and grown.

And so while I have tried to limit something, I failed miserably in that regard.

(UNKNOWN): Would the gentleman yield?

BROWN: Everybody wants ice.

JEFFERSON: Yes, I yield.

(UNKNOWN): Because I think this is really interesting, Mr. Brown.

Have you ever been through a hurricane?

BROWN: No, but I’ve been through disasters where I haven’t had power for a long time and I know that the refrigerators go on the blink and food spoils, et cetera. But I don’t think that’s a federal government responsibility to provide ice to keep my hamburger meat in my freezer or refrigerator fresh.

(UNKNOWN): Well, if it goes bad and, as you said, people should — you first said just a little while ago, people should be prepared to feed themselves for two or three days…

BROWN: With nonperishable…

(UNKNOWN): … if I may.

So now you’re saying, OK, they’re trying to feed themselves for two or three days. We have a low-cost alternative to feeding them; we should just give them a couple bags of ice to keep that stuff from going rotten.

BROWN: No, because they can’t cook it.

(UNKNOWN): Now you’re saying you shouldn’t do that.

But let me follow up.

What else do they do with the ice, Mr. Brown?

BROWN: Pardon?

(UNKNOWN): What else do they do with the ice?

BROWN: I assume…

(UNKNOWN): Because I think we have a serious disconnect and I think I’m really beginning to realize why you were removed from this job.

What else was that ice used for?

BROWN: Ice should be used for life saving, to keep baby formula fresh and for medications. And I think that’s what it should be used for.
(UNKNOWN): How about keeping the dead corpses from rotting in the…

BROWN: Because you can’t use it to keep…

(UNKNOWN): … sun?
BROWN: … hamburger meat because you can’t cook the hamburger meat. That’s why we say, have provisions for two or three days of nonperishable items.

And I think it’s wrong for the federal government to be in the ice business, providing ice so I can keep my beer and Diet Coke cool.
(UNKNOWN): How about the need to keep bodies from rotting in the sun?

Had you visited Hancock County, which you didn’t, you would have met a gentleman named Edmund Faise (ph). He was given the grisly task of trying to preserve the bodies. They were stacked up at his local mortuary. He had no power. And he literally came to me, tears in his eyes and said, You have got to find me a freezer truck because these bodies are rotting in my driveway.

BROWN: And we had refridge (ph) trucks available throughout the region to store…

(UNKNOWN): Two days later.

BROWN: … bodies.

(UNKNOWN): Two days later, sir.

Again, Mr. Brown, the more I listen to you, I’m thinking you’re probably a great attorney, but you were way over your head in your capacity at FEMA.

JEFFERSON: I reclaim my time for a moment here.

The ice is also used not for the dead, but to keep people from dying. In nursing homes, one of the major reasons that old people just suffered and died is because there was no ice, there was no way for them to refresh themselves and the heat was suffocating.

It’s awfully hot down there, as you know, and it just wasn’t there. And for other people who are out of the sun all day, the Superdome was hot (inaudible) people came outside, and it was still hot there.

Absolute critical need for people to stay alive as much as it was for anything else. And so it wasn’t a luxury to preserve hamburger meat. It was really a necessity to preserve life.

Dumb as a rock. Complaining about people wanting cool diet coke and beer while the Congressmen are talking about dead and dying people.

Brown Doesn’t Even Know What his Own Agency Does

ArchPundit September 27, 2005 No Comments

More from the Times transcript

THORNBERRY: OK. Now, obviously, if you’ve got an evacuation center, you’re going to have to figure out — you can’t just leave those people there. You have got to have some way to get them out.

And, according to some of the press reports, as early as Friday, before the storm hit, there were discussions at FEMA headquarters in Washington about the need to have buses in order to get people out.

What can you tell us about the plans and preparations for getting people out of the shelter once the storm had passed and that was possible?

BROWN: Headquarters had begun a planning process to bus people out of the Superdome. I don’t know whether they’ve actually gotten to the stage of contracting and collecting those buses, but they had planned to bus people out of the Superdome either to New Orleans International Airport or to other places to get them out of harm’s way.

That plan completely broke down when downtown New Orleans began to flood and the levees broke and you couldn’t get buses in there.

So that plan, obviously, went by the wayside.

THORNBERRY: You couldn’t get buses in or out?

BROWN: You couldn’t get buses in or out at that stage.

THORNBERRY: Now, my understanding further is that, by Tuesday, the day after the storm, the state folks started looking around trying to figure out how they were going to get people out there, started trying to put buses together, particularly school buses but the local officials were resisting that because they didn’t want their buses going down into this area where there was crime and violence.

Did you hear some of those conversations? Can you tell us what was happening then?

BROWN: I didn’t hear those conversations.

BROWN: But I did have that same general impression, that that was their concern, that the two concerns were: One, we can’t find a way to physically get the buses there because of the flood waters, and obviously school buses aren’t Humvees so you can’t move them into flooded areas; and, two, they were expressing concern not only about the reports of the violence and the anarchy but the unwillingness or the inability to find people willing, even if they could get there, to go into that area to take people out.

THORNBERRY: And what I’m trying to understand, I guess, is to what extent that was the city and the state’s job, to find buses to get in there and get those people out, and to what extent FEMA participated in it and could have done something else or more to get those people out.

BROWN: Well, we actually did do something else because we recognized that they could not. It’s their responsibility, but they could not do it.

And so that’s when we undertook the mission assignments to the Department of Defense to begin the airlift capability — not only the airlift capability of taking people out of the Superdome, but being able to treat them when they landed wherever they landed, whether it be New Orleans International or some other staging area.

But we would take those people out. And in fact, my first conversation with General Honore on Wednesday evening, that was probably the first topic that we discussed, was…

THORNBERRY: I’m sorry. Which evening?

BROWN: That was Wednesday evening.

THORNBERRY: So, Wednesday evening, the first topic you had with him is: How can we get people out of the Superdome?

BROWN: Yes. Not so much — let me rephrase it. Not so much how can we get people out of the Superdome, but that is one of our top priorities. I mean, you guys should have General Honore in here because it will be hugely entertaining.

I mean, Honore is — I got him on the phone; he was coming in and he’s a bull in a china closet — God love him. And I just had to sit down and say: OK, General, now, what are you willing to do? And just let me know what you’re doing so that we’re all on the same page here.

And I know that in the course of that conversation, the evacuation of the Superdome was one of the priorities.

THORNBERRY: My understanding is that, eventually, the governor signed an executive order that required parishes to turn over their buses to be available to take people out of the city of New Orleans. Is that true?

BROWN: I’ve heard that. I don’t know for a fact if it’s true or not.

THORNBERRY: My understanding, also, is that at some point FEMA stepped in to assemble a fleet of buses — about Wednesday — and within a couple of hours of a FEMA request, Greyhound put a bunch of buses together and could get them going toward the city.

Does that sound about right?

BROWN: That sounds right. And — yes, that sounds right.

The number of questions coming from this exchange are numerous.
Originally from the Trib by Andrew Martin and Andrew Zajac
First, if it’s not FEMA’s job, why do they have a contract with Landstar?

Instead the agency had farmed the work out to a trucking logistics firm, Landstar Express America, which in turned hired a limousine company, which in turn engaged a travel management company.

…………….

Though it was well-known that New Orleans, much of it below sea level, would flood in a major hurricane, Landstar, the Jacksonville company that held a federal contract that at the time was worth up to $100 million annually for disaster transportation, did not ask its subcontractor, Carey Limousine, to order buses until the early hours of Aug. 30, roughly 18 hours after the storm hit, according to Sally Snead, a Carey senior vice president who headed the bus roundup.

Landstar made inquiries about the availability of buses on Sunday, Aug. 28, and earlier Monday, but placed no orders, Snead said.

She said Landstar turned to her company for buses Sunday after learning from Carey’s Internet site that it had a meetings and events division that touted its ability to move large groups of people. “They really found us on the Web site,” Snead said.

A Landstar spokeswoman declined comment on how the company responded to the hurricane.

Why does he think no one would come to help?

Unbeknownst to them, two key players who could reach the owners of an estimated 70 percent of the nation’s 35,000 charter and tour buses had contacted FEMA seeking to supply motor coaches to the evacuation effort.

On the day the hurricane made landfall, Victor Parra, president of the United Motorcoach Association, called FEMA’s Washington office “to let them know our members could help out.”

Parra said FEMA responded the next day, referring him to an agency Web page labeled “Doing Business with FEMA” but containing no information on the hurricane relief effort.

On Wednesday, Aug. 31, Pantuso of the American Bus Association cut short a vacation thinking his members surely would be needed in evacuation efforts.

Unable to contact FEMA directly, Pantuso, through contacts on Capitol Hill, learned of Carey International’s role and called Snead.

Pantuso said Snead told him she meant to call earlier but didn’t have a phone number.

Finally, sometime after 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Pantuso and Parra had enough information to send an SOS to their members to help in the evacuation.

By the weekend, more than 1,000 buses were committed to ferrying stranded New Orleans residents to shelters in Houston and other cities.

Even if the area was blocked, why were the buses not ordered for when they could get into the city? Remember, if they had been on hand, the Convention Center was directly below the only major way in or out of the City at the time. I have no comprehension of how someone wouldn’t think buses wouldn’t be useful.

Brown indicates in the hearing he was familiar with the Hurricane Pam exercise where federal authorities knew over 100,000 people would be left in the City alone. Federal officials said they could help at that exercise–why weren’t federal officials prepared then?

How could they have not gotten buses to the Superdome?

Look at the Satellite image from the 31st If you zoom down to the Convention Center–I can specifically see clear routes from the Crescent City Connector. In terms of the Superdome, you can get within a very short distance if not up to the front door. He’s still clueless about the entire situation. Here’s a dry map

How this man continues to delude himself is a fascinating story in itself.

Idiot Didn’t Even Know For What Services FEMA Contracts

ArchPundit September 27, 2005 1 Comment

From today’s committee hearing

DAVIS: We want to give you an opportunity first. Then we are going to go through the timeline and a number of other questions.

BROWN: Let me start out by addressing the premise of the question, which I don’t entirely agree with — that what could FEMA have done in terms of the evacuation? What could FEMA have done in terms of communications, law enforcement?

Those are not FEMA roles. FEMA doesn’t evacuate communities.

BROWN: FEMA does not do law enforcement. FEMA does not do law enforcement. FEMA does not do communications. But having said that, I have got to tell you in hindsight there are things that I, as the former director of FEMA, wish that I had done that maybe would address those particular areas.

First and foremost, when we started the SVTS, the video teleconferences that we do with the state and locals, I should have pushed harder to both Louisiana — particularly to Louisiana, because I, with all due respect, I do not want to make this partisan, so I can’t help it that Alabama and Mississippi are governed by Republican governors and Louisiana is governed by a Democratic governor.

That’s not an issue with me. We go to every state regardless of who the governor is and do what we can, but I didn’t have a problem with evacuations in Mississippi or Alabama. They were doing it. Jeb Bush had already ordered evacuations through the Keys as Katrina was making its way through that area.

My mistake was in recognizing that for whatever reason that we might want to discuss later, but for whatever reason, Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco were reticent to order a mandatory evacuation. And if I, Mike Brown individual, could have done something to convince them that this was the big one, and they needed to order a mandatory evacuation, I would have done it. Maybe I could have gotten on the telephone with General Landreneau in the emergency operations center and said: General, get some of those National Guard troops out there and start driving buses and pick people up and take them out of there. Maybe we could have done something like that. That’s all speculation.

The problem with this, as I’ve stated previously, is FEMA was part of the Hurricane Pam process and knew that the plan was to get the people out after the hurricane passed–there simply wasn’t enough transportation to move everyone and everyone would not have left.

But worse than that, on the 28th, if he knew there was a problem, he could have called up the contractor FEMA had hired to provide buses for as soon as the hurricane passed.

Landstar didn’t order buses until August 30th.

Though it was well-known that New Orleans, much of it below sea level, would flood in a major hurricane, Landstar, the Jacksonville company that held a federal contract that at the time was worth up to $100 million annually for disaster transportation, did not ask its subcontractor, Carey Limousine, to order buses until the early hours of Aug. 30, roughly 18 hours after the storm hit, according to Sally Snead, a Carey senior vice president who headed the bus roundup.

Landstar made inquiries about the availability of buses on Sunday, Aug. 28, and earlier Monday, but placed no orders, Snead said.

She said Landstar turned to her company for buses Sunday after learning from Carey’s Internet site that it had a meetings and events division that touted its ability to move large groups of people. “They really found us on the Web site,” Snead said.

A Landstar spokeswoman declined comment on how the company responded to the hurricane.

Yep, the FEMA contractor called on Sunday to even find a subcontractor for buses and didn’t actually ask for them until 18 hours after the storm hit.

But Mike Brown blames the state and locals for not getting along. They certainly need to be accountable for their mistakes, but Brown needs a big dose of reality.

The Punchline: Landstar has a bigger contract now.

Who Thought Calling This Guy was a Good Idea?

ArchPundit September 27, 2005 1 Comment

Who let’s this idiot collect one more dollar of public money?

Some of the more amusing statements include that descriptions of his background were near defamatory. Strangely, the information contained in this Time Magazine piece is never actually refuted other than a declaration that it wasn’t true.

In more fun, Think Progress isolates a bizarre bit from Brown

BUYER: So I?d like to know why did the president?s federal emergency assistance declaration of August 27th not include the parishes of Orleans, Jefferson and Plaquemines?

BROWN: ?[I]f a governor does not request a particular county or a particular parish, that?s not included in the request.

BUYER: All right.

Orleans Parish is New Orleans. I was listening to my colleague, Mr. Jefferson?s, questions about when they talked about, you know, they asked for this assistance for three days and then president responded the very next day, not the day that it was made ? the request ? but the governor of Louisiana actually excluded New Orleans from the president?s federal emergency assistance declaration?

BROWN: Again, Congressman, we looked at the request.The governors make the request by?

BUYER: Let me ask this. Since you went through the exercise in Pam, was that not shocking to you that the governor would excluded New Orleans from the declaration?

BROWN: Yes.

BUYER: When that request came in excluding these three parishes, did you question it?

BROWN: We questioned it. But I made the decision that we were going to go ahead and move assets in regardless because

And as anyone who followed this would know Blanco asked for a fairly broad declaration from the President that included the New Orleans Metropolitan area

Under the provisions of Section 501 (a) of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, 42 U.S.C. ?? 5121-5206 (Stafford Act), and implemented by 44 CFR ? 206.35, I request that you declare an emergency for the State of Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina for the time period beginning August 26, 2005, and continuing. The affected areas are all the southeastern parishes including the New Orleans Metropolitan area and the mid state Interstate I-49 corridor and northern parishes along the I-20 corridor that are accepting the thousands of citizens evacuating from the areas expecting to be flooded as a result of Hurricane Katrina.

The uncharitable view is that he lied. My guess is he really was so stupid as to not even go back with his current free time and figure out what happened. He’s not even competent to cover his own butt.

Why Buyer didn’t understand that Blanco did cover the New Orleans Metro area is bizarre as well, but at least he wasn’t there.

The President’s declaration doesn’t seem to include the New Orleans Metro area, but I’m not certain what that means in the context.

Most Succinct Description of the Failure In Leadership

ArchPundit September 2, 2005 No Comments

I’ll keep repeating that Nagin has been remarkable in that he understood during every stage of this disaster what was coming next, but no one else seemed to have. Yglesias provides succinct analysis of the problem

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Incompetence

ArchPundit September 2, 2005 1 Comment

Feds commandeer buses and send people to the Convention Center around noon on the 1st.

12:38 P.M. – (AP): Two French Quarter hotels says federal officials have foiled their plans to hire buses to ferry guests to higher ground.

The general manager of the Astor Hotel at Astor Crowne Plaza says the hotels teamed to hire ten buses to carry some 500 guests.

But Peter Ambros says federal officials commandeered the buses, and told the guests to join thousands of other evacuees at the New Orleans convention center.

One man says he and others had paid $45 a seat for the buses, and that they were “totally stunned” when the buses never arrived. Another woman said the crowd had waited 14 hours for the buses. She says the idea of walking to the convention center scared her because of reports of looting.

The woman says it appears Louisiana officials have forgotten about tourists, and are just intent on getting their own residents out.

Michael Chertoff claims that “thousands of people at the convention center” are rumors on All Things Considered.

Brad DeLong offers up the best summation with the following

Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff claims that food and water are being provided to refugee concentrations, and that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia:

Robert Siegel: We are hearing from our reporter, he’s on another line right now, thousands of people at the convention center in New Orleans with no food, zero.

Chertoff: As I said, I’m telling you we are getting food and water to areas where people are staging. The one about an episode like this is if you talk to someone or you get a rumor or an anecdotal version of something I think it’s dangerous to extrapolate it all over the place.

[Snip]

Robert Siegel: But Mr. Secretary when you say we shouldn’t listen to rumors. These are things coming from reporters who have not only covered many many other hurricanes, they’ve covered wars and refugee camps. These aren’t rumors, they are saying there are thousands of people there.

Chertoff: I would be–I have not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don’t have food and water

Strangely, back as early as the evening of the 29th the Mayor was talking about sending people to the Convention Center (a place used as a shelter in previous hurricanes). Why do that? It’s on high ground near the primary route out of New Orleans that is still open. And it appears the Feds agreed and it was pretty much the meeting place for people not in the Superdome.

Some at the Convention Center report being sent there three days ago to await transportation out of the city. Some supplies arrived today–but much was busted up because it was thrown off the bridge–yes, that’s right, the bridge that all traffic is going in and out of is right there. In other words, there is no way to not know that the convention center has thousands of people waiting for transportation out for anyone coming in and out.

So the Secretary of Homeland Security didn’t know–perhaps he was confused.

Undersecretary of Homeland Security FEMA director Mike Brown got on both Nightline and Paula Zahn Live and proclaimed they didn’t know about the Convention Center until today.

So apparently no one in FEMA’s chain of information/command could look down from a fucking bridge or talk to the Mayor of New Orleans or even a cop or National Guard member who were sending people there. How close is the bridge? Go here for an illustration

He also made a rather pitiful attempt to blame those who stayed behind. Nevermind that many were emergency workers, infirm, trapped tourists who had cancelled flights, or too poor to get out.

Then Deputy Assclown tried to say that they were taking over from the locals after they couldn’t get answers. Fuck him. Anyone who has seen Nagin on local New Orleans feeds knows he’s been asking for very specific types of support and for since the evening of the 30th he’s been talking about problems at the staging center at the Convention Center. He has been the single most reliable soruce for identifying where people are stuck and what the priority to getting them out should lie.

There’ll be plenty of time to criticize the slow call-up of the Louisiana National Guard and the request for more help from outside the region, but right now, these guys continue to serially fuck up.

Chertoff and Brown apparently either don’t have any contact with those below them or the people below them are so incredibly fucking incompetent they aren’t telling them anything about what is actually happening.

Being wrong in a crisis is understandable, but to be wrong over several hours when 10,000 lives are at stake and not even figure out how wrong you are is a staggering level of incompetence. They were literally the last people to know, and even then insisted there was no way for them to know….