After the Flood

I ran across this article earlier this week and only now read it in full/

To me, the explains more fully what NOLA was before Katrina and who is to blame. Although I don't completely agree with the author conclusions, he surely sums up most of what went wrong.
Definitely worth reading. Even if you don't agree. He discusses the makeup of NOLA before the flood.

*My apologies if this is reported elsewhere.*

The most immediate failures were those of the New Orleans and Louisiana governments, which managed to surpass the low expectations of those familiar with a political culture best summed up by former congressman Billy Tauzin when he said some time ago that "Half of Louisiana is under water and the other half is under indictment."

From the incomprehensible decision to conduct a laissez-faire evacuation even while shutting down buses, trains and planes (there was no reason not to at least try to use every bus, car and train at hand to evacuate those too old, poor or sick to leave on their own before the storm hit) to the partial devolution of the nation's most corrupt police department into an armed gang to the complete inability of elected officials to establish control over the dozens of competing agencies swarming Baton Rouge, the failures of local government in the crucial time before, during and just after the hurricane did incalculable harm.

Whatever criticisms can be made of local government, the catastrophic ineptitude and misjudgment of the federal government, and above all President Bush, were more criminal in every morally meaningful sense.

www.nypress.com...&columns/marchman.cfm

I encourage discussion of this article.
Off topic rants about items not mentioned in this link should be posted elsewhere.

[edit on 16-9-2005 by DontTreadOnMe]

Brown, meanwhile, blamed the survivors, the vast majority of whom were either too poor or too weak or simply too unlucky to get out of the city ahead of the storm: “People who did not heed the advance warnings,” Brown told CNN. “I don’t make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans.” These are the men the president put in charge of defending “the homeland”—which he has, as he has reminded us again and again and again, made the highest priority of his presidency. Even if the hurricane just dropped down on New Orleans without having been covered 24/7 for days on CNN, troops still could have been in by Wednesday morning at the absolute latest. That they were not—that the New York National Guard, for instance, was not asked to mobilize until Friday—comes down to sheer, unforgivable negligence on the part of Bush and his officials. We disagree with those who claim that the orders were not given because the victims of the storm were poor and black, but we understand why they think this is so. It is probably less frightening to think the president acted with malicious racism than it is to think that he simply didn’t appreciate the scope of the disaster, and of his powers and responsibilities.

From the article you linked.

I don't support the view that it was these people's fault that they didn't get out. The affluent people got out. Those with cars got out. The poor did not get out. How could they? They had no way to get out. They needed help. Communications at large were down in New Orleans but news crews from the various news stations reported what was going on in NOLA for FOUR DAYS before any federal relief efforts were deployed. It was all over TV. HOW could ANYONE in the Federal government have missed it. The whole time the horror was unfolding after the flood, the President was praising the rescue efforts that were'nt happening. Cherfoff promised aid that took four days to show up. Brown didn't hear anything about it until Thursday, and some FEMA official on camera at a News Conference in Baton Rouge tried to down play the situation in NOLA literally saying that the water wasn't rising when the city was already totally flooded. It certainly appears on the surface to be a massive blunder on the part of state, local, and Federal officials to communicate and coordinate evacuaton and rescue. Are our leaders really this incompetent? Isn't this whole situation what the Department of Homeland Security was created to deal with?

Originally posted by DontTreadOnMe
From the incomprehensible decision to conduct a laissez-faire evacuation even while shutting down buses, trains and planes (there was no reason not to at least try to use every bus, car and train at hand to evacuate those too old, poor or sick to leave on their own before the storm hit) to the partial devolution of the nation's most corrupt police department into an armed gang to the complete inability of elected officials to establish control over the dozens of competing agencies swarming Baton Rouge, the failures of local government in the crucial time before, during and just after the hurricane did incalculable harm.

Business as usual in LA, I'm afraid. The laissez-faire attitude is evident from day 1.

Originally posted by darkelf

Originally posted by DontTreadOnMe
From the incomprehensible decision to conduct a laissez-faire evacuation even while shutting down buses, trains and planes (there was no reason not to at least try to use every bus, car and train at hand to evacuate those too old, poor or sick to leave on their own before the storm hit) to the partial devolution of the nation's most corrupt police department into ........................

Business as usual in LA, I'm afraid. The laissez-faire attitude is evident from day 1.

Is the term laissez-faire the correct idea??

maybe laisser faire...which refers to a careless attitude
in the application of a policy,
implying a lack of consideration or thought.
is more to the point about the SNAFU in New Orleans???

from the story I linked above:

The problems date back generations, and are partly endemic to the city's relation to the wider region. New Orleans' famed culture—its restaurants, jazz clubs, beautiful colonial mansions and surprisingly vibrant arts scene—is basically irrelevant to its economy, which is based almost entirely on the addictive and destructive profit centers of tourism, conventions and gambling (the dysfunction trifecta), with a bit of spillover from the region's energy economy.

These are among the most ruinous industries any city can have—apart from the crime problems associated with them, they actively discourage the development of any responsible professional class with an interest in the civic health of the city as a whole, and strongly encourage politicos to simply keep the areas of interest to outsiders relatively clean and safe and leave the rest to rot.

NOLA really didn't have a chance.
These two paragraphs illustrate how NOLA put on its face for the tourists while neglecting an increasingly impoverished core city.
I'm sure these people have lived for generations in the Big Easy in housing that only benefitted the landlords pockets.

When a city or metro area or state do not diversify their economy, they find it hard to survive calamities or sluggish economies.

The article is very good DonthreadOnMe but we have to remember that this is not only in NO but in many main cities in our country.

Most of the poor, needy and worst of the populations in this country are grouped in the parts of main cities that you don't get to see unless you manage to get into the wrong street.

I remember in DC so beautiful to visit so historical and touristic until I happen to get in the wrong street and the true face of poverty and ugliness jumps in your face every city in the nation has this areas mostly the forgoten people the ones that only make it in the news when something happens.

Then you wonder how can that be? because is history on all that, is not something that is happening now is something that has been going on for generations.

I will never blame the citizens of NO for what happen to them after the hurricane because it was to many factors involved.

Great link.