9-21-05

Ecclesiastes 3 (Part 3)
If you haven't read the first two parts of this rant, read them now here and here.  Don't worry, we'll wait for you.  To recap (cause I know you didn't go look), last Wednesday, we discussed the question of when the time comes to discuss blame in a situation like the one in New Orleans earlier this month, we also talked about who was innocent of any real blame for the problem; Monday, we looked at the root causes, that is, what created the crisis.  Today I've got out the Whacking Stick of Blame, and we're going to hunt down everyone who was responsible for turning a crisis into a catastrophe, and for almost turning that into a tragedy.
Evacuate means Evacuate
          So the way to turn a crisis into a catastrophe is—by negligence, incompetence, or blind bureaucracy—to cause a total failure of the systems set in place to handle the crisis and ameliorate any difficulties caused by it.  In Biloxi and Mobile, which both took more initial damage than New Orleans, everything was done as well as could be hoped, and the death and damage tolls were kept to as little as could be expected in the face of such a storm.  What Happened in New Orleans?
          Mayor Ray Nagin has been quoted as stating that the New Orleans Evacuation Plan never intended to evacuate New Orleans residents, but merely to send them to high ground within the city to await Federal response.  So, here's the question:  is he really that mind-bogglingly stupid, or is he just so arrogant that he feels like he can bareface his way out of his responsibility to the people who directly elected him to his office?  In what freakish parallel universe does the word "evacuate" mean "strand indigents and invalids in either of two ill-equipped arenas and leave them to fend for themselves"?  As I write, Galveston island is completing its full evacuation for Hurricane Rita.  Other cities on or near the Texas Gulf Coast have been beginning or completing their Mandatory Evacuation Plans since six this morning.  These plans, which use every resource available to the cities in question involve evacuating the citizens well-inland and out of harm's way.  Mind you, the Texas Gulf Coast is, for the most part , above sea level.  The only levee in or near Houston is the Addicks Flood Control Reservoir, and that serves to defend the city from downflow floods pouring through our three rivers and several major bayous.  We don't have a tradition of burying our dead in crypts because wells aren't quite as deep as a coffee cup.  And yet, following a twenty-year-old plan, Texas officials somehow managed to interpret the word evacuate to mean just that.
          It also would have been nice if he had ordered the evacuation of the city and mandatory evacuation of low-lying areas and special-needs citizens on Saturday night when the NHC reported Katrina to be a Cat 3 hurricane aimed at New Orleans with a high probability of strengthening rather than waiting until his legal team got back to him to tell him it was okay to fulfill his responsibilities under the law.
          And then there's the question of the buses.  Never used, never moved to high ground so they could be used.  Wasted.
          Let us not forget Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco.  Unlike the President, who is limited by Federal Law and the Constitution in what ways he can respond to an emergency, Governor Blanco was fully within her rights and responsibilities to over-ride Mayor Nagin, to demand a mandatory evacuation when there was still time to make one, and to ensure that the evacuation was, in fact, an evacuation.  The National Guard troops activated in the area were under her direct control, and the local emergency services personnel were hers to command, as well.  Why did she not use these forces to encourage residents to evacuate early on and to enforce the mandatory order when it was (finally) given? 
          Last but not least under the question of evacuation, a big solid whack or twenty go to whoever had the bonehead idea to strand thousands of people on bridges, overpasses and at the concrete island surrounding the New Orleans Convention center.  Mind you, I'm not using the stick on any of the hundreds of tireless volunteers who rescued people from the rising waters and took the refugees where they were told.  This is directed at the idiot(s) who though that it would be a good idea to jam people in locations where they had no supplies and almost no access from the outside to receive supplies.  What the fuck were you thinking?  Did you expect hurricane elves to show up bearing gallon bottles of Ozarka every night?
Making Bad Worse
          Okay, let's get back to Governor Blanco.  When it became apparent that the forces in place were overwhelmed and unable to maintain order and continue relief efforts, why did she not declare martial law?  Why did she never hand over control of the relief and order efforts to the Feds?  Why were all of her measures and declarations half-assed and late in occurrence?  What the hell good is it to have a governor who neither has the resolve to interdict when city officials prove inadequate nor has the humility to allow Federal intervention when her own resources prove inadequate?
          Of course, those resources would not have been inadequate if a small number of people hadn't decided to pillage the town, fire weapons at relief helicopters, and generally act like idiots, thus making what was already a bad situation a horror for those of their friends and neighbors who were trapped with them.
          Speaking of helicopters, let's save a few good whack for every idiot politician, actor, singer, reporter, commentator and performance artist who decided the best way they could help out was to commandeer a helicopter, fly in, and make a great big publicity stunt out of other people's misery.   If you ask me, there should have been a no-fly zone over the entire damage zone, except for emergency and relief planes and helicopters, which brings us to
          The US Department of Homeland Security, which is, in my opinion the hugest waste of taxpayer dollars and bureaucratic energy ever invented and which has done nothing in its 4-year existence but undermine US preparedness for an emergency and render almost every one of the functions it has usurped from existing Departments and Agencies either impossible or pointless, or both.  Way to go guys.  Between raping FEMA and the INS, failing to use your power over the FAA to declare no-fly and control zones, and utterly failing to work coherently with anyone including yourselves, you managed to make the Feds look almost as incompetent and idiotic as Mayor Nagin, and that's a trick.
Opportunism of the Damned
          There is nothing wrong with reacting to natural stresses of supply and demand with  business acumen.  When, for instance, a corn crop is bad, prices rise all the way up the line:  the farmer must now pay his fixed bills and debts with a reduced harvest, the resellers, from wholesaler up to you grocery store, must now accommodate the initial price increase with a means of maintaining their profit margin.  This is simple (and probably at least partially erroneous) economics.  However, responding with opportunistic avarice to an emergency or crisis, extending profits at the expense of the public weal, is not okay.  It's profiteering, and it's horribly horribly wrong.
          The suppliers of emergency equipment and housing who charged the government full price and still managed to force upgrades on existing customers.  Fuck you.  You should lose your licenses to operate in the United States.  You know who you are.
          The Hotels who charged their legal limit (and especially the ones who managed to forget that their legal maximum room rate is posted on every door of every room right next to the fire escape plan).  Not every hotel did this.  Most, in fact reduced their rates to accommodate the refugees.  The ones that did gouge are bastards.  If I had a list, I'd post it.
          The gas companies that, despite record profits over the last five years, decided to respond to the crisis by immediately increasing pump prices—even before the price of crude began increasing—by up to 300 per cent.  Besides you bastards, I have a bone to pick with President Bush, who released the strategic reserve and still let you sons of bitches charge whatever you want.  Why does that piss me off?  Because the minute he released the Reserve, he should have placed price ceilings on gasoline.  That's his right and responsibility under certain provisions of the Federal Trade Acts.  Did he think an acknowledged shortage was going to result in all those companies saying, "Well gosh...if it's for the country...of course we'll put aside our psychotic binge of profiteering and monolithic pricing."?  Seriously, Dubya, what the fuck were you thinking?  Federal response to crisis works like this:  Offer assistance to the locals, find the money to give them full support, declare reasonable price ceilings to prevent profiteering.  I'm not even in the business of running a country, and I know that much.  Read your history.  I'm pretty sure you can still find the Carlton Classic Comics that do a good job of presenting it.

Whew!  That was tiring.  Okay, the floor is now open for individuals with blame sticks of their own.  Click the "Casual Discussions" button above.  As always, the Casual Notes forum is a public forum, so feel free to sign in as guest and say your piece.