The Next Hurrah

“A Shining Example for the Whole World” – Eco New Orleans

By Meteor Blades

The tragedy wrought by Katrina provides a chance to do what Mayor Ray Nagin said George Bush told him after the head-bumping died down last week: New Orleans can be remade into “a shining example for the whole world.”

I don’t know if Bush actually said that, and if he did, it surely wasn’t an environmentally sound renaissance he had in mind. In fact, I’d be willing to bet my mortgage that, when they’re not figuring how to blame somebody else for the lethal federal foot-dragging just witnessed, many in the Administration are pondering schemes to enhance their personal assets via this disaster. “Shining” to them has a distinctly different meaning than what I’m talking about.

Needed is a new city paradigm. Call it Eco New Orleans, a place attuned to the definition of “sustainability” found in the 1987 Brundtland Commission: “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Not just the city, of course, but the other places blasted by Katrina and Dubyanocchio’s five days of indifference. New Orleans doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and the Eco New Orleans I’m talking about extends for scores of miles in every direction.

Continuity of Government

By DHinMI

In the comments to this post about the absence of any FEMA-led plan for dealing with the bodies in Louisiana (and presumably Mississippi), demtom asked this question:

If the folks who worked FEMA under Clinton had plans for things like this, and their successors don't -- can we issue a call for the predecessors to step in and take over? They can't have forgotten everything they knew in four years. And even if it takes them a while to get back up to speed, won't they be further along than a bunch of people who aren't even thinking about it?

I know; I'm starting to sound like a disgruntled street-mutterer. But that's how far this situation has reduced me. I just want to try something, anything, that will make things a little better, a little faster.

Part of me is just astounded that the Bush administration has so completely screwed up everything concerning Katrina.  I have wondered why this administration can't execute disaster relief anywhere near as competently one would have expected the Clinton administration to have (when there isn't an election at stake).  But then it hit me: of course they wouldn't continue the competence of the Clinton administration in something like disaster relief, because the Bush administration rejects everything championed or emphasized by the Clinton administration.

You Don't Expect Anyone to Have a Plan for Collecting Bodies, Do You?

By DHinMI

There are no plans for how (or even whether?) to collect all the bodies in Louisiana:

Nearly a full week after Hurricane Katrina, a rescue force the size of an invading army had not yet begun the task of retrieving the bodies Sunday. What's more, officials appeared to have no plan.

Daniel Martinez, a spokesman for FEMA working on Interstate 10 in eastern New Orleans, said plans for body recovery "are not being released yet."

Dozens of rescue workers questioned Monday said they knew of no protocol or collection points for bodies; none said they had retrieved even one of the many corpses seen floating in neighborhoods around the city as they searched for survivors.

Scores of rescue workers this week repeated the same mantra, over and over: We can't worry about the dead; we're still trying to save the living.

But as rescue teams across the city said they had checked nearly every house for survivors, the enormity of the death that lay in Hurricane Katrina's wake came into sharp focus even as the plans for taking care of the dead remained murky.

Sure, why develop a plan for dealing with the bodies.  It's not as if it's a health risk, is it?  Or it's not like there's a limited time to collect the bodies before decomposition or mutilation by vermin and stray or wild animals will make them unrecognizable, thus denying whatever solace the loved ones of the dead may get from at least being able to bury their dead. 

What's disgusting about this is that planning for dealing with the dead isn't something that has to be devised and discussed.  There should already be a generic plan in place for any such disaster.  Somebody should be able to email an electronic file, and the crisis managers should be able to start assigning tasks based on the preexisting plans.  And from the comments of former FEMA officials with the agency during the Clinton administration, there almost certainly were plans for just about every contingency presented by Katrina.  Just like how almost everything that's happened in Iraq was forseen by people expert and experienced in any of the relevant competencies or knowledge areas, almost every problem wrought by Katrina had been anticipated, and there were plans in place for addressing the problems.  The Bush administration appears to have either ignored the plans, tossed them out, or is just completely incapable of even following the plans they had been given.

FEMA Used to Help Bush Win Florida in 2004

By DHinMI

In considering FEMA's disgustingly inept performance in dealing with the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, it's worth comparing its performance with previous natural catastrophes.  Earlier this evening Meteor Blades mentioned this article from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and it jogged my memory about a post I wrote last March about FEMA disbursing tens of millions of dollars to unconfirmed applications for federal assistance in the aftermath of the multiple hurricanes that swept through the crucial election state of Florida prior to the 2004 election:

Was FEMA Buying Support for Bush in Florida?

Let's Brainstorm The Problems...And Come Up With Some Solutions

By DHinMI

I've been incredibly impressed by so many of the comments on The Next Hurrah over the last few days.  Not to be too arrogant, but a collection of our readers and contributors, stuck in a crisis center for a couple days, could probably be much further along at recognizing the scope and depth of this catastrophe than the Bush administration has been to date.  It's clear that all the attention on "homeland security" was misguided, botched or just plain not matched up with any actual policy achievements. 

Reading the posts and comments here, and emails between friends, it's obvious to me--and most folks reading this--that there are almost innumerable consequences to this catastrophe that haven't even dented the conciousness of the public, or probably most federal officials.  We're starting to hear the media talk about one consequence I wrote about a few days ago: the biggest domestic refugee crisis this country has faced since the Civil War.  But get past the immediate concerns about housing people currently spending their fifth day without a roof over their heads, and start trying to think about some of the implications of them not having a roof over their heads:

Where does their mail go?

What happens to their creditors when they can't find them, or when they do and the debtors can't pay their bills?  Will there be bank collapses in the region?  Will the mortage lenders prominent in the area go under?

How do people replace all their identifying paperwork all at once, with tens or hundreds of thousands of others doing the same thing?  For instance, where will they go to get replacement birth certificates?

What about money owed by an employer, say for a partial workweek; how does the employee find the employeer and vice-versa?

Will people who've lost everything be able to get emergency loans?  What will they list as their residence?

Will the utilities in the area go bankrupt?

What happens to kids nearing graduation?  Where their academic records saved electronically somewhere?  How will they apply to college?

Are special needs children being attended to?  Will the parents of autistic or severely and multiply disabled children be able to find care for their children if they're moved to Texas or Arkansas or Tennessee?

I could sit here for hours asking these questions.  But I'm asking you.  Let's put our heads together, and brainstorm the problems that need to be addressed.  If we can start getting a fuller picture of all the problems ahead--for families, for the local infrastructure, nationally with the economy, for what it says to potential terrorists about our vulnerabilities, for long-term environmental damage, for energy production, for shipping, for whatever you can think of--we will be better able to know what should be our policy priorities over the next months and beyond.

So, what have you thought about that isn't being talked about in the media, and may not be getting addressed by the crisis managers? 

Where are the Troops?

By DHinMI

My dad served with a Band of Brothers. He never jumped out of a plane, he never enlisted, and he was never drafted. But for a few days in July of 1967, he served with the Screaming Eagles of the 101^st Airborne Division. It’s too bad folks in New Orleans don’t have the same opportunity today. And the reason they won’t is the war in Iraq.

In 1967 Detroit experienced what was probably the worst of the 1960’s riots (or, if you prefer, urban insurrections). When the riots hit, my dad drove a truck delivering meat, including to most of the hospitals on the east side of the city. As a botched raid on a speakeasy on the near west side erupted into widespread destruction and the deaths of 43 people, driving in the city, especially with an easy target like a truck full of meat, became a dangerous endeavor. But since the hospitals to whom my dad delivered needed that meat to feed their patients, his truck needed to get through. So, when after a few days of mayhem, Lyndon Johnson finally sent in the 101^st Airborne Division to help restore order, my dad was told to make his deliveries, and that he would be accompanied by an armed escort of soldiers.

Wouldn’t such an arrangement be great this morning in New Orleans?

Good News: No Blood for Oil. Bad News: Blood was for nothing.

by Kagro X

From the "Safer at Home Thanks to War in Iraq" Department, USA Today informs us that "Gas [is] busting budgets across USA:"

• In Atlanta, the city has already burned up its 2005 budget of $3.5 million for fuel and is running a deficit, says Chuck Meadows, budget chief for the city. "We haven't yet started altering routes for police officers, but that may be something that we have to consider."

[snip]

• In Pecos County, Texas, 14 sheriff's deputies patrol 4,700 square miles of west Texas mesas and deserts. They put 2,000 miles on a squad car in a month. With gas at about $2.50 a gallon, they're feeling the pinch.

"It's affected us tremendously," says Chief Deputy Thomas Perkins. Last year, the sheriff's department had to ask county officials for more money and probably will have to do so this year, he says.   

Bird Flu Worries Are In The Mainstream

by DemFromCT

Seen or heard anything in your area? Unlike a few months ago, it's likely that you have. Today's NY Times has (in their Metro section) a story about the NYC DPH and its efforts to deal with an overburdened health system in a time of pandemic preparedness. Not surprising, that. The NYC DPH was much better prepared (for all the good it did) in 1918 than the Feds were.

New York City health officials have been meeting every two weeks since February to develop a response plan. They hope to have an updated draft ready in the next few weeks. At about the same time, the state hopes to have its draft plan ready as well.

"It may never happen," said Dr. Isaac Weisfuse, a deputy city health commissioner who is leading the flu planning, referring to the development of the strain. "But on the scale of emergency planning, this is high on the list."

As part of their preparations, the leaders of the frontline forces of New York's disaster preparedness teams will run a "tabletop" simulation involving more than a dozen city and state departments next month that will envision the city facing a situation similar to the outbreak of Spanish flu in 1918, which left at least 33,000 dead in the city alone. At least 20 million to 40 million people died worldwide. The exercise is designed to test the emergency response system by challenging leaders to make quick decisions and seeing if and where communication breaks down or resources run out.

If a pandemic similar to the one of 1918 occurred today, as many as 2.8 million New York City residents could be infected within months, sending more than 200,000 to the hospital and clogging the morgues with 400 deaths a day during the peak infection period.

The plans being developed by the city and state are likely to include recommendations on the stockpiling of equipment and drugs. However, those decisions may be delayed as city and state officials wait to see federal plans.

There, in a nutshell, is the problem. Those decisions may be delayed as city and state officials wait to see federal plans.

Scandal Spreads, Ohio Vulnerable to Dems (If We Have Any Candidates, That Is)

By DHinMI

The scandal in Ohio keeps growing, the war in Iraq has recently hit Ohio harder than any other state, and Bush's numbers in Ohio may be his worst in the country. 

First, the latest in the scandal:

Gov. Bob Taft, who pushed for high ethical standards in his office, will face four criminal misdemeanor charges for not reporting golf outings and other events paid for by others, deepening a scandal that has rocked Ohio's Republican Party.

Taft, a member of a distinguished U.S. political family, would be the first governor in Ohio history to be charged with a crime. If convicted, he could be fined $1,000 and sentenced to six months in jail on each count, though time behind bars was considered unlikely.

Gay Rights Under Attack in Maine

This spring, Maine's legislature passed a law barring discrimination against gays in housing or employment. Gov. Baldacci signed the bill into law. Now anti-gay forces in the state are working fast to repeal the law - but you can help stop them. I know that there is a lot going on in the blogosphere and the world. Everyone is excited about political campaigns or activist movements, and how they may affect the future. But this is a one-time chance to defend basic rights that are already in law, and are in great danger of being destroyed. Please give to Maine Won't Discriminate.

Maine is not a conservative state, but the "RINO" senators and the Presidential totals tend to mislead people into how unpredictable the state may be. Maine voters repealed a gay rights law in 1997 and again in 2000. Maine's legislature is more and more narrowly controlled by Democrats with each election cycle. Last year, an anti-gay crusader tried to out any pro-gay legislators or officials, and a year later he is heading the statewide repeal effort against this simple support for gay and lesbian citizens.

I haven't heard a lot of talk about this ballot fight, and I think one reason may be wariness from some quarters since this is a "gay" issue. A lot of people seem to think if Democrats ignore gay rights issues, they will go away. But this affects far more than gay rights.