Katrina

I'm shocked and amazed by the developments down in Louisiana and Mississippi. Not only is this the worst natural disaster in US history, it's showing that there truly is a fine line between "civilized" and "uncivilized". The fact that armed thugs are running through the streets (I guess there are some places you can walk) looting, assaulting, and raping is just not something you expect in the US. That's the sort of thing out of The Lord of the Flies or some post-Apoptalyptic sci-fi film. All the responsible parties should be rounded up, imprisoned, and forgotten. The human race should be better than that.

But even beyond that, two things are very clear: 1) The Federal Government failed to provide adequate funds to prepare for this type of emergency, both for the region and in general; and, 2) It's shocking that there was not an immediate Federal response.

I'll start with the second one as it requires less research. We've all seen the footage of Bush listening to a teacher read a children's book for 7 long minutes after it was clear that the US was under attack on 9/11. Some of us may have forgiven him because 9/11 was so unprecedented and it was the first crisis of his presidency. Now, however, we have a situation where the Federal government was needed immediately, and has a codified legislative duty to be the primary responder in these types of situations, but has very slowly mobilized to aid the rescue and relief operations. There are a lot of reasons for this, some of which I'll detail later, but it's utterly shocking to me that the FedGov didn't immediately swoop in and provide supplies, airlifts, communication and coordination, and shelters. This, of all crises, is certainly a prototypical case where the Feds are 100% necessary.

The other, perhaps more informative, point is that the FedGov deprioritized disaster relief in two critical ways. First, they defunded the levee and pump projects in New Orleans. Since I'm too lazy to look up the actual articles with the full financials, I'll summarize from memory. Basically, for the past five years, the Army Corps of Engineers budget has been reduced to the point that the majority of the 05 budget was spent paying for services that were performed in 04. The last figure I saw was that of the requested $25 million (roughly), only $2.5 million was actually allocated. There are surely a lot of reasons for this type of budget slashing (the perceived low risk of a category 5 storm, for example), but the bottom line is that they could have prepared for this event and saved some portions of the city and they didn't.

The other, more risky and pervasive factor is that the Bush administration has slowly been working to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for quite some time. This is partially because the response to 9/11 prioritized terrorism preparedness at an extremely high cost. Dollars can only be stretched so thin and FEMA took the hit. I think they envisioned that FEMA's tasks would ultimately be folded into a yet unnamed replacement organization under the umbrella of Homeland Security, but they just haven't gotten there yet. Instead, they've slowly reduced FEMA's budget and mission, critically impacting the agency's ability to respond to this latest crisis.

The other factor, more subtle, is that the Bush admin and conservatives generally believe in the power of private contributions and assistance to those that need it. The FedGov shouldn't have to provide services because charitable orgs can do the job, is the claim. This type of argument is rife throughout the Libertarian literature and has some standing in the Bush ideology. Sadly, this is not a case that can be remedied by charity orgs like the American Red Cross. Certainly those groups can provide long term support in terms of resettlement and they can provide short term support like medical supplies, blood, food, and temporary shelter. But they have little, if any, ability to get people out of a flooded region, establish the necessary security against hoodlums and fools, or provide the communication infrastructure necessary to coordinate such a wide-scale and devastating disaster relief effort. Only the FedGov (military) can provide that type of assistance.

Some people are using this disaster to score political points. That's not my effort here. I'm not a vested political force. I don't "win" jack sh*t by pointing out the failures of funding, prioritization, and response. No, my point is, that at some point, questions are going to be asked and we, as a nation, have a responsibility to not allow the incredibly gifted political taskmasters that run the White House to sweep this under the rug. The President should be made to answer the really tough questions, not to skewer him, but to understand why FEMA was gutted, to understand what his intent is for future disaster relief missions, and to prevent these types of situations from getting out of hand. We need to ask why it was decided that budgets couldn't support upgrading the levee's in New Orleans. We need to ask why the FedGov didn't respond immediately to this disaster. All of this, from my perspective, is to improve policy and to prevent massive loss of life in future situations.

Of course, I'm not such a blind policy wonk to ignore that there are clear political implications to the answers to those questions. That goes with the job. So don't accuse me or anyone else of "trying to score political points" because our motives (for the most part) are pure. It's just impossible to ask those questions without a political impact. That's the nature of presidential politics and any more statements from that total jackass of a press secretary accusing the media of "politicizing" the issue should be summarily ignored. In fact, the media should continue to harass him ceaselessly just for fun (since we all know that Fleischer isn't going to answer any questions).

FYI: The White House response up to this point has been to use the old "don't politicize the issue while people are dying in the streets" tactic. That's an explicit realization that they're looking at the political side and are worried.