If we can't agree on bigger government vs. smaller government,
why not opt for COMPETENT government?
rev12Sept05, 22Aug06
"Bureaucracy
has murdered people in the greater New Orleans area. So I'm
asking Congress, please investigate this now. Take whatever idiot they
have at the top of whatever agency and give me a better idiot. Give me
a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same
idiot."
--Aaron Broussard, President of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, on CBS's Early Show, 6Sept05
--Aaron Broussard, President of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, on CBS's Early Show, 6Sept05
"The President said an hour ago that the Gulf Coast looks like it has been
obliterated by a weapon. It has.
obliterated by a weapon. It has.
Indifference is a weapon of mass destruction."
The New Orleans levees were designed, funded, built and maintained for Category 3 storms, as the head of the Army Corp of Engineers will gladly tell you.
WE ALL BET ON LEVEL 3 AND LOST
Our society made
a decision to protect New Orleans from a Category
3 storm. A more powerful hurricane would -- by our design
and choice -- send water over the levees and, in doing so, possibly
breach them. A breach inundates a city that sits below sea
level. You can call it a pact with the Devil or shrewd cost-benefit
analysis, but either way, going for Level 3 is the decision by
which we live or die.
Here is the plan:
- Level One -- city OK
- Level Two -- city OK
- Level Three -- city OK
- Level Four -- city partly destroyed, perhaps uninhabitable
- Level Five -- city greatly destroyed, totally uninhabitable
Start counting, and when you get to four or five, you have lost your bet.
Our leaders do not pay their bets. They weasel out of the them.
"WE
COULDN'T SEE IT COMING"
Both President
Bush and Dept. of Homeland Security Secretary
Michael Chertoff have said that the scope of the New Orleans disaster,
caused by the levee breach and city-wide flooding, could not be
foreseen.
On the September
1 broadcast of ABC's Good Morning America,
President Bush acted as though the breach of the levees was an
unforeseeable fluke occurrence: "I don't think anyone anticipated the
breach of the levees."
He added, "Now
we're having to deal with it, and will."
Homeland Security
Director Michael Chertoff called Katrina an
"ultra-catastrophe" that exceeded the worst expectations of disaster
experts. Chertoff said he couldn't think "of another incident, even the
tsunami, that presented this combination of events ... And that perfect
storm combination of catastrophe exceeded the foresight of planners,
and probably everyone's foresight."
This man is the leader of the Cabinet-Level Department of Homeland Security. He shares responsibility for the deaths of thousands of American citizens. Something is wrong in the Department of Homeland Security if an outfit designed to protect citizens places them in harm's way and they die. Something seems to be wrong with FEMA also (the Federal Emergency Management Agency).
"WE COULDN'T SEE IN COMING ON 9/11"
Hey, remember this? Seems to me, we've been here before.
The Whistle Blower
Civilizations that can't face their problems could teach us a lot, except that they aren't here any more.
MAKE THE BIG DECISION NOW
You and I should make the big decision now -- Category 5 for New Orleans.
Yes, we -- the Bush White House, really -- took away money that others wanted to spend on levee and pump maintenance, and on wetland renewal (let the Mississippi River raise the ground level). But it really doesn't matter -- let the politicians back-stab over it.
Let's you and I make the Big One now: New Orleans gets Category 5 protection. That's the decision we have to make and the rest is chicken feed. Cat 5 for the Big Easy.
Actually, even the Big One is chicken feed. too
When we made our pact with Devil and went for Category 3 in 1965, the Devil won and thousands died. Category 3 protection was chosen because Cat 5 would have been too expensive compared to the very slight chance of ever having a Cat 5 storm.
The week after a Cat 5 storm hit New Orleans, Congress approved 52 billion dollars in relief aid. ($10.5B was approved the week of the storm, and $51.8B the week after, on Thursday, 8 Sept05).
The Army Corp of Engineers did not choose to build Cat 5 protection because the cost was too high. They estimated Cat 5 would take $2.5 billion. Just reverse the digits and multiply by 10. One cost is 2.5, the other is 52, and that's just the downpayment.
The week after Katrina hit New Orleans (Cat 5 at landfall, 5 AM; Cat 4 over the city), the Federal Emergency Management Agency was spending two billion dollars a day. It was $500 million a day for food, water and evacuations, but, as contracts for temporary housing construction were let, the run rate climbed to $2B/day.
Let's build Cat 5 now. These idiots can't count to five, they can't remember what level of protection they chose and act surprised later, and you could just die waiting for them to help you.
Besides, it's cheaper. (return to main photos) (other political photos)
This man is the leader of the Cabinet-Level Department of Homeland Security. He shares responsibility for the deaths of thousands of American citizens. Something is wrong in the Department of Homeland Security if an outfit designed to protect citizens places them in harm's way and they die. Something seems to be wrong with FEMA also (the Federal Emergency Management Agency).
"WE COULDN'T SEE IN COMING ON 9/11"
Hey, remember this? Seems to me, we've been here before.
THE EXCUSES
"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people
would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, that
they would try to use an airplane as a missile - a hijacked airplane as
a missile."
National Security
Advisor Condoleeza
Rice, May 16th, 2002.
"David, look, let me just say it again: Had I known there was
going to be an attack on America, I would have moved mountains to stop
the attack. I would have done everything I can. My job is to protect
the American people."
President George W. Bush
White House news release available here.
President George W. Bush
White House news release available here.
THE REALITY:
The Phoenix Memo
On July 10, 2001, an FBI agent in Phoenix sent a memorandum to FBI
headquarters in New York listing evidence that Osama bin Laden was
helping his operatives in the U.S. attend flight training schools.
Presidential Daily Briefing
Title line: bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US
August 6, 2001 Page 1 of 2
(Declassified and Approved for Release: April 10, 2004)
The Whistle Blower
Coleen Rowley was FBI Special Agent and Minneapolis Chief Division
Counsel in Minnesota.
In a 13-page memo to FBI Director Mueller in May, 2002, Rowley
documents that, before 9.11, higher-ups at the agency wantonly
disregarded intelligence about suspected high-jacker Zacarias Moussaoui
and missed a real opportunity to prevent the attacks. Rowley is running
for Congress in 2006.
Civilizations that can't face their problems could teach us a lot, except that they aren't here any more.
MAKE THE BIG DECISION NOW
Congress
in 1999 authorized the corps to conduct a $12 million study to
determine how much it would cost to protect New Orleans from a Category
5 hurricane, but the study isn't scheduled to get under way until 2006.
It was not clear why the study has taken so long to begin, though
Congress has only provided in the range of $100,000 or $200,000 a year
so far.
Al Naomi, senior project manager in the corps' New Orleans District, said it would cost as much as $2.5 billion to build such a system, which would likely include gates to block the Gulf of Mexico from Lake Pontchartrain and additional levees. If the project were fully funded and started immediately, Naomi said it could be completed in three to five years.
--Chicago Tribune, 1 Sept 2005
Al Naomi, senior project manager in the corps' New Orleans District, said it would cost as much as $2.5 billion to build such a system, which would likely include gates to block the Gulf of Mexico from Lake Pontchartrain and additional levees. If the project were fully funded and started immediately, Naomi said it could be completed in three to five years.
--Chicago Tribune, 1 Sept 2005
You and I should make the big decision now -- Category 5 for New Orleans.
Yes, we -- the Bush White House, really -- took away money that others wanted to spend on levee and pump maintenance, and on wetland renewal (let the Mississippi River raise the ground level). But it really doesn't matter -- let the politicians back-stab over it.
Let's you and I make the Big One now: New Orleans gets Category 5 protection. That's the decision we have to make and the rest is chicken feed. Cat 5 for the Big Easy.
Actually, even the Big One is chicken feed. too
When we made our pact with Devil and went for Category 3 in 1965, the Devil won and thousands died. Category 3 protection was chosen because Cat 5 would have been too expensive compared to the very slight chance of ever having a Cat 5 storm.
The week after a Cat 5 storm hit New Orleans, Congress approved 52 billion dollars in relief aid. ($10.5B was approved the week of the storm, and $51.8B the week after, on Thursday, 8 Sept05).
The Army Corp of Engineers did not choose to build Cat 5 protection because the cost was too high. They estimated Cat 5 would take $2.5 billion. Just reverse the digits and multiply by 10. One cost is 2.5, the other is 52, and that's just the downpayment.
The week after Katrina hit New Orleans (Cat 5 at landfall, 5 AM; Cat 4 over the city), the Federal Emergency Management Agency was spending two billion dollars a day. It was $500 million a day for food, water and evacuations, but, as contracts for temporary housing construction were let, the run rate climbed to $2B/day.
Let's build Cat 5 now. These idiots can't count to five, they can't remember what level of protection they chose and act surprised later, and you could just die waiting for them to help you.
Besides, it's cheaper. (return to main photos) (other political photos)