Brownie points . . .

. . . to everyone but himself, when appearing before the mostly Republican "bipartisan" committee assembled, it would seem, to offer him an opportunity to shift blame --- er, explain himself. It was the Governor. It was the Mayor. It was a failure of communication between the Governor and the Mayor (Brown's contribution to resolving that problem, from his own lips, was to tell them to communicate). It was that Louisiana was dysfunctional. Oh, yes, and there was a problem of inadequate funding of FEMA and its decimation from above, but that was sort of a toss-off.

What Michael Brown and his friends in the administration — and others who would defend him — fail to appreciate is that Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco, by virtue of their very jobs, are generalists. They are not trained exclusively to manage emergencies, as the FEMA director is expected to be.

Mayors and governors have responsibilities from a to z, including having a certain level of knowledge about how to handle emergencies, whereas the job of FEMA director is that of a specialist; Mr. Brown was paid to know how to manage the emergency. Period.

He was supposed to manage the emergency, not tell others what he thought they should do and go home to watch television.

Cindy, Cindy!

I've been a cheerleader for Cindy Sheehan's effort since she first began to speak out many months ago, have lauded her stakeout in Crawford, and applauded her march on D.C. Even though I don't support immediate pullout, I've been glad someone is so publicly calling for an end to it.

HOWEVER, when I tuned in today to C-Span and the first person I heard was someone complaining about how 10% of all Arabs were under occupation by "the U.S. and its allies" (and we know just who is meant by that), followed by someone connecting Bush with the President of the Philippines, I despaired. It went on from there, as ANSWER and UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE did their usual "drag out all the issues" number on the gathering.

I marched against the war in Vietnam, and remember too clearly how the protest events were co-opted by people with all kinds of other agendas, eventually driving away crowds of people. I wish that Cindy and the good people who support her effort would realize how damaging it is to allow the hangers-on to grab the microphone and in doing so obliterate her message.

I doubt very seriously that UNITED and ANSWER really have Cindy's question to the President at the top of their agenda; they come with their own.

And if either of them can marshall a huge demonstration on their own, I say more power to them, and I might even listen.

As for me, my efforts as a public critic of the Bush administration have now been complicated by the fact that I need to digress in order to explain why what I'm writing has nothing to do with politics in the Philippines.

Ark time?

What I don't understand is this: Why haven't those good Christian folks, like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who so quickly and with such certainty blamed us atheists, along with "the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians, . . . the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America" for the events of 9/11, figured out that these hurricanes might just be a message from God.

As in: "You idiots are ruining the planet, and unless you change your ways you're going to find yourselves dealing with another Flood!"

Stuck on stupid

"Don't get stuck on stupid," warned Lt. Gen. Russel Honore to a reporter who persisted with questions about Hurricane Katrina during a press conference called to warn people about Hurricane Rita.

General Honore, Mayor Ray Nagin and Vice Admiral Thad Allen were meeting with reporters for the express purpose of getting out the word that people needed to evacuate from the area, that the Mayor's plan to bring people back into New Orleans was suspended, that busses were assembled to carry folks to safety.

When the reporter persisted, the General barked again, "Now, see, you are stuck on stupid! We are here to talk about where we are going — we need your help here and now to get the word out to people now; there will be plenty of time later to talk about where we've been!" [I paraphrase]

George Bush stood at a podium in front of a lovely cathedral to promise, "We will do whatever it takes" to rebuild New Orleans. Never mind that he has seized the opportunity to set aside wage, affirmative action and environmental regulations: he has promised billions of dollars for the effort.

This week, pressed to tell where the money would come from, the President has insisted that he will not increase taxes, will impose no new taxes, will pursue his tax cut agenda, and will veto any effort by Congress to delay implementation of the horrendously expensive and mostly unworkable Medicare prescription drug program. He sees no need to modify his agenda. But he will do "whatever it takes" to provide for "the good folks" of the Gulf Coast.

Stuck on stupid.

Facts on the ground

The Bush administration is "concerned" about folks moving back into New Orleans before the Feds say it's okay. Link

This cautionary was in reaction to Mayor Nagin's announced plan to allow residents to begin returning to their homes, little by little, zip code by zip code, not only to begin their own recovery but also to fill the jobs that will be created by the reconstruction effort. Admiral Thad Allen has urged a delay, but "has stopped short of saying that the federal government would try to halt it." He plans to meet with the Mayor today.

Now, this time it's possible that my cynicism is unwarranted, but it seems to me that Mayor Nagin may have figured out that the best way to protect New Orleanians from having their property taken in some sort of grand gentrification scheme under the Administration's reconstruction plans is to have folks return, as "facts on the ground," you might say. Even Karl Rove might balk at evacuating them all over again.

Still waiting ...

When, oh when will the Democrats -- or if they continue to fail, the American people -- rise up against the blatant waste, frauds and abuses of the Bush administration? Read Frank Rich today.

Think "urgent." Our country is in deep peril.

Where's Karl?

Does it matter where Rove votes? Wayne Slater, in the Dallas Morning News, wrote about Sneaky Karl and his interesting array of residences. (Luckily Slater doesn't work for the Texas Secretary of State, for he'd probably lose his job.)

Texas law provides that residents may continue to claim property in the state as a voting residence if their intent is to return. Mr. Rove owns a house in Washington and recently built a home in Florida.

Read the whole sorry story here.

UPDATE FROM A READER:

As of 9 a.m. this morning, according to the Kerr County Central Apprasial District, NO ONE with the surname Rove owns anything in Kerr County. Nothing, Nada, Zip! Now ain't them strange beans?

President Legree?

After writing the previous post, I thought to refresh my memory of the original Simon Legree, the character created by Harriet Beecher Stowe in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Here are highlights from the character analysis by CliffsNotes:

1) If Tom’s bearing and behavior show that he is among the elect, Legree’s show quite definitely that he is not.

2) ... [A]fter he had spent some years at sea living a dissolute life, he was “almost persuaded” by his mother’s prayers to reform but instead chose sin.... Stowe’s narrator describes Legree’s critical moment as a genuine conflict between good and evil in which evil triumphs

3) Legree affects everyone near him for the worse. [Including] his “brothers” ... whom he uses as companions and henchmen, alternately punishes and rewards, and has turned into tools for draining the life and dignity from the field workers.

4) Legree is a materialist who sees human beings as nothing but material that can be used for profit.... Legree not only sees clearly what he is and what he does to others but also revels in it. ... [I]n truth, what he really wants is to exercise the absolute power of life and death—and more, the power of moral destruction—over these people.

5) What Legree wants, finally, is worship and fear; he has gone beyond capitalism and the profit motive and come out the other side.

Simon Legree redux

As his first official act in addressing the devastation wrought by Katrina, President Bush issued a presidential order waiving the requirements of the Davis-Bacon act.

From the Government Printing Office's Davis-Bacon web site:

The Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor determines prevailing wage rates to be paid on federally funded or assisted construction projects. It is the responsibility of the federal agency that funds or financially assists Davis-Bacon covered construction projects to ensure that the proper Davis-Bacon wage determination(s) is/are applied to such construction contracts(s).

In other words, Davis-Bacon requires that workers under government contract be paid the going wage in the area — and waiving that requirement almost inevitably means a pay cut.

New Orleans Mayor Nagin announced his city’s intention that the jobs in rebuilding be offered first to New Orleans citizens and businesses (as they should be), though it’s a little hard to know what power he’ll have over the purse controlled by Karl Rove.

But my point is: Who do you suppose, among those who lost homes, jobs and everything, will refuse whatever pay is offered?

It’s disgusting.

Letters and Legend

The internet is a wondrous thing, a great research tool; it’s a purveyor of news and opinion and sometimes, unfortunately, of what are called “urban legends.” An urban legend is a bit of fantasy initiated by an anonymous source; one was that “all pay phones have been tainted with anthrax,” and another “if you open an email with Jesus in the subject line your computer will crash.” Such hoaxes are almost always received from a friend — when you see that it’s a forward of a forward of a forward it’s probably a good idea to check it out.

There are several places to check when you receive “you may not believe this but” email, such as www.snopes.com, but too many computer users don’t know about them or don't bother to check, and simply choose to believe and pass along whatever they get in the mail.

Even more unfortunately, some of those urban legends end up as letters to the editor of the local paper, causing no end of confusion about the facts.

I had already received one called "The Battle of New Orleans," so I recognized that it was the source for a local letter about Katrina. Even though the writer didn’t credit it as the source, with the exception of a few opening lines her long letter was lifted word-for-word from "The Battle of New Orleans" email. That urban legend was all over the internet last week, and was declared by snopes.com to be false.

Here, word for word, are the high points of the snopes.com posting:

Claim: New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco refused President Bush's pleas to declare an emergency in Louisiana before Hurricane Katrina struck.

Status: False.
...
According to the St. Petersburg Times, Max Mayfield of the National Hurricane Center contacted government officials in Louisiana and Mississippi on Saturday night (27 August), not Friday night.
...
In fact, Governor Blanco had already declared a state of emergency for the state of Louisiana eight days earlier (26 August).
...
On Saturday (27 August), Governor Blanco did indeed request that President Bush "declare an emergency for the State of Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina." The White House responded to Governor Blanco's request that same day (Saturday) by declaring the emergency and authorizing FEMA "to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency."

Unlike the original email or the letter- to-the-editor that plagiarized it (if plagiarism can be found when lies are repeated by copying them!), snopes.com provides sources for its findings; those sources include the Washington Post and the White House’s own web site.

So we are left to marvel that, although FEMA was authorized to mobilize as of August 27th, it wasn’t until September that help arrived.

"... let's unite and raise hell."

Molly Ivins on the sad, sorry evolution of our country under this administration:

There is no great argument over why these things are happening. None of this is the result of any immutable economic law -- it is the result of deliberate government policies.

Read it and weep. Or . . .

Surprise! (Not!)

Now, about that notion that President Bush and his administration had “not foreseen” the disaster that Katrina caused in Louisiana. The truth, it turns out, is even more troubling:

In fact the President, along with FEMA director Michael Brown and Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff, participated in a video conference briefing by the National Hurricane Center — on the Sunday before Katrina hit New Orleans. The Seattle Times has a good story on it.

You may remember that Mr. Chertoff, for some reason anxious to separate the hurricane winds from the flooding caused by breaching of the levees, told the nation that the damaging combination of hurricane and flooding was totally unexpected by the government.

But wait: According to the Times, Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, said “the strength of the storm and the potential disaster it could bring were made clear during the briefings and in formal advisories, which warned of a storm surge capable of overtopping levees in New Orleans and winds strong enough to blow out windows of high-rise buildings.”

And, finally, this: "We were briefing them way before landfall," Mayfield said. "It's not like this was a surprise. ... "

Failure of Leadership

Bob Herbert is right about the failure of leadership from the President during the horrible events in Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama.

And where are the leaders who would lead the Democratic party? Is nobody willing to point out the Emperor’s nakedness? Hillary Clinton has called for an investigation. Wonderful. But is there no Democrat willing to support Governor Blanco’s call for FEMA director Brown to be fired? How about some Democrat showing some gumption and decrying the Pentagon’s plan for self-celebration while the Gulf Coast drowns?

Who will speak out for the victims of Katrina? Who will speak for the American people?

Our own Dear Leader

“Don’t buy gasoline if you don’t need it,” was one of the things President Bush suggested the rest of us could do to help the flood relief effort. His press conference today was even more idiotic than yesterday’s. Unbef***lievable.

I suspect he didn’t impress David Brooks, either, who this morning wrote about previous major floods in this country:

Civic arrangements work or they fail. Leaders are found worthy or wanting. What's happening in New Orleans and Mississippi today is a human tragedy. But take a close look at the people you see wandering, devastated, around New Orleans: they are predominantly black and poor. The political disturbances are still to come.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/opinion/01brooks.html

Yup. Didn't see it coming . . .

This priceless gem, in Josh Marshall's fairly long and fascinating piece today on Talking Points Memo:

The president told Diane Sawyer this morning that: "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees."

You've got to read the entire post, though.