Re: After Katrina Fiasco

Posted by Juan Oskar on 10/28/07

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I'm not a fan of the federal government but when do
teachers, citizens, mayors, governors, congressmen,
senators, students, lawyers, or shoe shine boys take the
blame for anything?

"Disastrous federal response"...If your kid was in the
national guard would you want the prez to run him into the
middle of a level 5 hurricane? JEEZ...

I agree. It's time for W to leave but there will still be
hurricanes, California fires, and radical Muslims when he's
gone. Again I agree, there is lots of waste with Homeland
security but....what government program is there no waste?
The Department of Education?


On 9/12/05, Time For Bush To Go wrote:
> After Katrina Fiasco, Time For Bush To Go
>
> By Gordon Adams
>
> September 8, 2005 WASHINGTON - The disastrous federal
> response to Katrina exposes a record of incompetence,
> misjudgment and ideological blinders that should lead to
> serious doubts that the Bush administration should be
> allowed to continue in office.
>
> When taxpayers have raised, borrowed and spent $40 billion
> to $50 billion a year for the past four years for homeland
> security but the officials at the Federal Emergency
> Management Agency cannot find their own hands in broad
> daylight for four days while New Orleans and the
> Mississippi Gulf Coast swelter, drown and die, it is time
> for them to go.
>
> When funding for water works and levees in the gulf region
> is repeatedly cut by an administration that seems
> determined to undermine the public responsibility for
> infrastructure in America, despite clear warnings that the
> infrastructure could not survive a major storm, it seems
> clear someone is playing politics with the public trust.
>
> When rescue and medical squads are sitting in Manassas and
> elsewhere in northern Virginia and foreign assistance
> waits at airports because the government can't figure out
> how to insure the workers, how to use the assistance or
> which jurisdiction should be in charge, it is time for the
> administration to leave town.
>
> When President Bush stays on vacation and attends social
> functions for two days in the face of disaster before
> finally understanding that people are starving, crying out
> and dying, it is time for him to go.
>
> When FEMA officials cannot figure out that there are
> thousands stranded at the New Orleans convention center -
> where people died and were starving - and fussed
> ineffectively about the same problems in the Superdome,
> they should be fired, not praised, as the president
> praised FEMA Director Michael Brown in New Orleans last
> week.
>
> When Mr. Bush states publicly that "nobody could
> anticipate a breach of the levee" while New Orleans
> journalists, Scientific American, National Geographic,
> academic researchers and Louisiana politicians had been
> doing precisely that for decades, right up through last
> year and even as Hurricane Katrina passed over, he should
> be laughed out of town as an impostor.
>
> When repeated studies of New Orleans make it clear that
> tens of thousands of people would be unable to evacuate
> the city in case of a flood, lacking both money and
> transportation, but FEMA makes no effort before the storm
> to commandeer buses and move them to safety, it is time
> for someone to be given his walking papers.
>
> When the president makes Sen. Trent Lott's house in
> Pascagoula, Miss., the poster child for rebuilding while
> hundreds of thousands are bereft of housing, jobs,
> electricity and security, he betrays a careless
> insensitivity that should banish him from office.
>
> When the president of the United States points the finger
> away from the lame response of his administration to
> Katrina and tries to finger local officials in New Orleans
> and Baton Rouge, La., as the culprits, he betrays the
> unwillingness of this administration to speak truth and
> hold itself accountable. As in the case of the miserable
> execution of policy in Iraq, Mr. Bush and Karl Rove always
> have some excuse for failure other than their own
> misjudgments.
>
> We have a president who is apparently ill-informed,
> lackadaisical and narrow-minded, surrounded by oil baron
> cronies, religious fundamentalist crazies and right-wing
> extremists and ideologues. He has appointed officials who
> give incompetence new meaning, who replace the positive
> role of government with expensive baloney.
>
> They rode into office in a highly contested election,
> spouting a message of bipartisanship but determined to
> undermine the federal government in every way but defense
> (and, after 9/11, one presumed, homeland security). One
> with Grover Norquist, they were determined to shrink
> Washington until it was "small enough to drown in a
> bathtub." Katrina has stripped the veil from this mean-
> spirited strategy, exposing the greed, mindlessness and
> sheer profiteering behind it.
>
> It is time to hold them accountable - this ugly,
> troglodyte crowd of Capital Beltway insiders, rich
> lawyers, ideologues, incompetents and their strap-hangers
> should be tarred, feathered and ridden gracefully and
> mindfully out of Washington and returned to their caves,
> clubs in hand.
>
>
>
> Gordon Adams, director of security policy studies at the
> Elliott School of International Affairs at George
> Washington University, was senior White House budget
> official for national security in the Clinton
> administration.
>
> Copyright © 2005, The Baltimore Sun

Posts on this thread, including this one

• After Katrina Fiasco, 9/12/05, by Time For Bush To Go.
• Re: After Katrina Fiasco, 10/28/07, by Juan Oskar.