Hurricane Rita. A New Reason To Blame Bush

So here we are now in the middle of this year's hurricane season. Enter Tropical storm Rita, soon to be Hurrican Rita. It's quite obviousl that this storm is going to cruise into the gulf and pick up steam. According to Noaa Hurricane Forecast the storm has a high probability of running into Lousiana. Now is it Pres. Bush's job to order an evacuation, or should the local officials run their own city. Should our president be responsible for individually running and managing each and every city in the United States? If the answer is no, then how do we blame him for the current hurricane failure?

I think that this time things will be play to perfection, look already the plans in florida all in time and to perfection.

Bush should not worry a thing but how he will have to get the money to rebuild the area if Rita prove to be as bad as the last one.

I'm not blaming the President but I sure am blaming the dorks he appoints to oversee critical agencys. Political payoffs suck when those dorks are responsible for the lives of citizens of this land. I

expect a little more from my tax dollars than web sites and huge administrative salarys. I guess I'm just an idealist but if the current trend continues; I'll echo the sentiment that we got the "best government money can buy"!

When peoples lives are at stake it's time to put aside "kissing up" ideology.
Results are the only things that matter. And if a politico, regardless of party, cant cut it then he deserves the Blame. This also applies to war, economics and domestic policy. Schools out!

[edit on 19-9-2005 by whaaa]

[edit on 19-9-2005 by whaaa]
mod edit to repair naughty word

[edit on 19-9-2005 by DontTreadOnMe]

No, here in Houston we'll be fine if the hurricane is bad. The headquarters of Halliburton and Enron are here. Tom Delay's district is here, and Daddy and Momma Bush live here. So no, we'll have prompt relief allowing no opportunity to blame Bush. That's if the Hurricane doesn't take an unexpected turn before it hits us.

All during Katrina you didn't hear anything from JEB.

I wonder if Mayor Nagin, the govenors of any Gulf states, or even Jr. did?

After last year's four, you'd think he would have been right there with a helping hand...

Or maybe he did and wished to keep it on the q-t?

Originally posted by Flinx
No, here in Houston we'll be fine if the hurricane is bad. The headquarters of Halliburton and Enron are here. Tom Delay's district is here, and Daddy and Momma Bush live here. So no, we'll have prompt relief allowing no opportunity to blame Bush. That's if the Hurricane doesn't take an unexpected turn before it hits us.

Enron still has a headquarters? What's that, somewhere for their criminal attorney's to get together over depositions?

So, how will the federal government screw this up? Will the new FEMA director just give the same advice he gave before? DUCT TAPE!!!!

Or will they actually do something to prepare for this?

It looks like they are trying to clear everyone out of the Astrodome and the Houston mayor is offering bus rides to anyone who wants to get out but can't afford it. Hopefully things will go right this time. I can't imagine the political fall-out if they mess this up. There is a chance that the hurricane will turn and give New Orleans a glancing blow. Yet another chance for Mayor Ray Nagin to mess things up again and blame Bush for the results.

Can you believe that he was considering letting everyone back into the city during the peak Hurricane season? I doubt those sandbags plugging the holes in the levies will do much against even a category 1 hurricane.

Originally posted by dbates If the answer is no, then how do we blame him for the current hurricane failure?

I'm surprised to see pre-emptive claims of pious competency for Bush, prior to another event peeling back the layers of incompetency by design . On second thought, I'm not - I'm saddened.
What exactly will it take for some of you? If such devastation to one of our country's flagship cities, with thousands dead and millions ruined, does not shake you up to wake you up, I'm mystified as to what it will take!?
Absolutely, NOLA officials are NOT coming out of this without blame, but to say that the ACE scientists & engineers recommending X number of critical projects and having the Bush Admin. undercut all of it by upwards of 80%, then to place a lawyer & horse trainer over the critical first response, is not "blame" worthy on Bush, is to go to delusional lengths of sycophancy.

That MARTIAL LAW zone once known as NOLA, where death counts & visuals are denied & cover up is assured via the barrel of a gun, should be wake up call enough, no?

I think the point is that each city is run by a Mayor, not a President. And if you want to go higher you have a Governor, state Representatives, and Representatives in Congress and the Senate who are supposed to take action. That's the way the government works. The tenth amendment to our constitution states that all powers (and responsibilities) not given to Congress resides with the states. Since it's not stated in the Constitution that "Congress shall maintain the levies in New Orleans" this is obviously a states area of government and management.

This disaster was for-seen years ago, when Pres. Bush was still managing the Texas Rangers baseball team. Why was the problem not addressed? Why didn't the state's Representatives pork barrel some more spending to fix the levies in the 90's after the Army Engineers study suggested the problem? Why? Because fixing levies wasn't winning elections for the local politicians.

You can't blame Pres. Bush for the lack of funds. Show me one spending bill he has vetoed. You can't because he's always willing to shell out the money anytime someone asks.

[edit on 20-9-2005 by dbates]

Originally posted by dbates
You can't blame Pres. Bush for the lack of funds. Show me one spending bill he has vetoed. You can't because he's always willing to shell out the money anytime someone asks.

As long as it's Bechtel, Halliburton, Exxon asking, you'd be right. No, there's been no vetos necessary - budget allocation, reductions, manipulations talked about are via the budget design of the exec. branch.
This White House specifically cut ( "vetoed" if you like ) what they siad they would or was was deemed as essential for safety by the ACE:

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them."

The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.

The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs.

There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research was needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. As the Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:

"That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount. But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said."

The Senate was seeking to restore some of the SELA funding cuts for 2006. But now it's too late.

One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer: a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday.

The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night observed, "The Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's coast, only to be opposed by the White House. ... In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana's chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local officials say they need."

Here's the thread where it was discussed.

The evacuations + the obviously intentional downgrade of preparedness by the Administration + the forced removal of people + government seizure of private land rulings + Marshall Law = something we should all be worried about.



Step back.........

Take it all in.........

Look at the threads...........

Connect the dots..............

I'll help:

The number of Americans living below the poverty line rose by one million in 2004, the fourth year in a row, bringing the US to 37 million people living below the poverty line.

+

PNAC politics will have us deployed in global hotspots for the next decade, with all out "traditional" wars being predicted by all think tanks.

+

Historic profits occurring in the Financial/Energy/Insurance/Government sectors

What does this equal for American life as we know it?