On not having to take responsibility for yourself or your city

Starting in the 1960's, the federal government took over the business of insuring against floods. It offered subsidized insurance to people in flood-prone areas, encouraging seaside homes that never would have been built otherwise. Even at bargain rates, most people went without flood insurance - only about a third of the homes in New Orleans carried it.

People don't bother to protect themselves because they figure - correctly - that if disaster strikes they'll be reimbursed anyway by FEMA. It gives out money so freely that it has grown into one of the great vote-buying tools of the modern presidency. Bill Clinton set a record for declaring disasters, and then President Bush set the single-state spending record in Florida before last year's election.

And later:

Here's the bargain I'd offer New Orleans: the feds will spend the billions for your new levees, but then you're on your own. You and others along the coast have to buy flood insurance the same way we all buy fire insurance - from private companies that have more at stake than do Washington bureaucrats.

Private flood insurance has come to seem quaint in America, but in Britain it's the norm. If Americans paid premiums for living in risky areas, they'd think twice about building oceanfront villas. Voters and insurance companies would put pressure on local politicians to take care of the levees, prepare for the worst - and stop waiting for that bumbling white knight from Washington.

John Tierney in the NY Times.

The NY Post is taking notice

I thought I was going to be the only one who noticed that the Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin (D), and the Governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco (D), that the "Mandatory" evacuation didn't have any busses to take people out of harm's way. Power graf:

Many said the humanitarian disaster was set in motion before Hurricane Katrina even struck — because of the lack of an effective evacuation plan for people who did not have the means or the will to leave town on their own.

"That there wasn't any real plan for the government to help get people out of here when the evacuation was made mandatory was the weakest point in the scenario," said Greg Shaw of George Washington University's Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management.

"If they had gotten the majority of these people out before the real flooding happened, then it would have been a matter of dealing with a large refugee population, not fighting to pull 100,000 people out of a giant lake."

That lapse has stunned experts because officials have known for years that New Orleans would likely be entirely flooded if hit by a hurricane the size of Katrina. In 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said in a report that 1 million people could be left homeless and as many as 50,000 killed by such a storm.

And while I hear the Left screaming that George Bush "doesn't care about balck people", it only serves to make me more stalwart in my support of the President and FEMA.

Echos, anyone?

This was just posted on the National Review Online:

The fact is that the the scene on the ground is a total and complete failure of the local and state authorities having any foresight and ability to protect and defend their own constituents. The fact that the federal government has been caught flat-footed by the local authorities complete inability to maintain any kind of order is not that surprising. I don't think anybody could have anticipated the utter chaos the local authorities are not only complicit in, but completely responsible for. The failure here is on a local level, plain and simple. Simply put, it is not unreasonable for the federal goverment to expect the locals to hold down the fort for a few days until the cavalry can arrive.

It looks like that as soon as The Feds realized that the state and local authorities were hand-wringing idiots, they stepped up and things started to happen. And perhaps that's what the state and local officials thought was supposed to happen; a disaster hits and it's Uncle Sugar's job to fix everything and that they, the state and local authories, don't have to do anything more that order the Federales around like the hired help. Maybe that's the mindset we saw in action: a sort of learned helplessness that comes when you're a professional victim. They did not because they could not, at least not in their heads. The "can do" attitude was replaced by "I'm just the victim here" mindset. And everybody knows victims can't do anything to help themselves. That's ther reason they're victims.

Just a guess though.

On Rush Limbaugh's show

Right now Roger Hedgecock is ripping Mayor Ray Nagin and Gov. Kathleen Blanco. That's good coming from the former mayor of San Diego.

I think people are starting to get it

This from the NY Daily News:

Someone in authority must give the order. Who might that be? The mayor? The governor? The state police chief? FEMA? Homeland Security? The White House? Who's in charge? Not yet from the terrible shambles has there arisen any identifiable Giuliani-esque figure who appears to be calmly and confidently running the show.

They understand that the White House is last resort, not the first, and that the responsibility to provide for public safety is first the responsibility of the Mayor, then the Governor. FEMA is further up the chain and then, and only then, should the President of the United States get involved. Mr. Bush is not the mayor of New Orleans. And later...

Who's in charge? Random lawlessness went unaddressed in the early hours of Katrina's aftermath, search and rescue clearly being more pressing a concern. That was then. Today, New Orleans is spinning wildly out of control, as armed-to-the-teeth killers carve out post-apocalypse gangdoms with little fear of consequences. The critically ill are under siege in hospital beds. The elderly are driven from nursing homes. Snipers fire at evacuation points. These are budding warlords. The city must be taken back from them. The members of this lawless army need to know their own lives are in danger.

I think I'm starting to agree

From the Times-Picayune:

House Speaker: Rebuilding N.O. doesn't make sense

Thursday, 2:55 p.m.

By Bill Walsh
Washington bureau

WASHINGTON - House Speaker Dennis Hastert dropped a bombshell on flood-ravaged New Orleans on Thursday by suggesting that it isn’t sensible to rebuild the city.

In NC, we don't allow people to rebuild their vacation houses on barrier islands if they are completely destroyed. If the house is gone, it's too bad. New Orleans is beneath sea level. Aside from from it's role as a petroleum port, there really isn't any other industry other tourism. New Orleans has become a odd sort of historical them park saturated in vice. Crime has always been bad there and the corruption is legendary. There should be a discussion. I really don't want to subsidize other people's lifestyle.

It seems like...

There are choppers going and going and going. People are starting to get rescued and taken care of. It's almost like the Feds sat back and let the Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin screw everything up, befoer they jumped in and saved the day.

Just an observation...

A special session of Congress

...will convene this weekend. This is a good thing.

Someone else has noticed:

On Wednesday, two days after landfall, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco was still trying to decide how the state would react. She had no plan for evacuating the thousands of refugees stuck in the Superdome, no plan for finding survivors elsewhere, no plan for handling corpses, and no plan for stopping looters.

That from the New Hampshire Union-Leader. Read it all here.

I just heard on Fox News...

a state senator from Louisiana admit that the local government is completely useless and the "the federal government should just come in and take over".

I have never seen such spectacular failure on the part of local and state government to do their jobs. Gov. Kathleen Blanco is a idiot and Mayor Ray Hagin is so out of touch he should probably be sedated and hospitialized. Both should be removed from office immediately. Their continued presence in office will only retard efforts to establish law and order or even attempt to rebuild the city.

I just heard on Fox News...

a state senator from Louisiana admit that the local government is completely useless and the "the federal government should just come in and take over".

I have never seen such spectacular failure on the part of local and state government to do their jobs. Gov. Kathleen Blanco is a idiot and Mayor Ray Hagin is so out of touch he should probably be sedated and hospitialized. Both should be removed from office immediately. Their continued presence in office will only retard efforts to establish law and order or even attempt to rebuild the city.

Troops have been sent to the Superdome

Or so reports Fox. About damn time the Feds jumped in. The Governor of Louisiana and the Mayor of New Orleans appear to be feckless ding-a-lings =- like Jimmy Carter during the Iran hostage crisis -- little more than hand-wringing empty suits.

Worthless.

The Germans continue to blame Bush

It's amazing but true. It's all Bush's fault. Courtesy of Sid Blumenthal, a wonderfully unbiased source. I'm not sure if teh MSM in The States will pick up on this. Sidney is radioactive.

I agree with Peggy

Shoot them now. The looters are evil and what they're doing can not be excused. The spectacular failure of Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to keep and maintain order is something I never thought I'd see in United States. New Orleans is, in reality, a Third World Country.

And, just as an aside, both Blanco and Nagin are democrats.

Another

Now Russia. Nice to know who your friends are.

Okay, there is one country

Israel has offered assistance. Not that they have experience in dealing with floods, but certainly "with collapsed buildings".

Quote of the Day 2.0:

"The people of Bangaladesh have to live in a river delta because their whole country is one. Americans, by contrast, inhabit a roomy country and do not have to put themselves in the path of catastrophes that are completely predictable except as to date and time in order to make a quick buck in real estate or enjoy the view and a nearby swim for a few or many years. We need to have a serious think about whether it's the duty of the rest of us to subsidize these choices."

Mark Kleiman asking some tough questions. The whole thing is worth a read. Hat tip to Andrew.

I just saw the Governor of Louisiana

And she looks like she's in way over her head. To this viewer, Gov. Kathleen Blanco (D) is not a very inspiring leader. I'd be scared right now if I lived in upstate Louisiana. This place may never recover. Contrast Gov. Blanco's dazed demmeanor with that of Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour's (R) who empahtically ranted that looters will be dealt with "extremely harshly". He actually seems on top of the situation because he knows he has to take charge.

But I'm sure she was elected because of her stance on abortion or some such nonsense.

Quote of the day:

Just heard from a Louisiana source in the medical industry that New Orleans hospitals were advised after 9/11 to move their generators from the first floor to the third floor -- presumably to protect them in case terrorists dynamited the levee. Obviously, they didn't do this, which is why the hospitals are evacuating now.

It's interesting to think about the massive recriminations that are going to take place in the aftermath of this storm. Not a single soul in Louisiana can say they didn't see this coming. Like everybody else in south Louisiana, I grew up hearing about the Big One that was going to hit New Orleans one day. There has been intense interest in this in recent years, with scientists at LSU and elsewhere warning precisely what was going to happen if a storm like Katrina hit the city. All of this was predicted ... but nobody made serious efforts to protect against it by strengthening the levees. That would have been difficult and expensive.

It is possible, of course, that nothing could have been done to have prevented this disaster. But the point is, we didn't really try. And now we have to pay an unimaginable price. This has got me thinking about terrorism too. One of these days, we're going to lose an American city to nuclear terrorism, and we will wail and gnash our teeth over what happened to us. NOW is the time to foresee this kind of thing, and to prepare for it as much as we can. I had in my office today an Israeli security consultant, who, talking about terrorism, said to me, "Americans are great in figuring out how to react to things after they happen. But you're not very good at preventing them from happening."

I quote from Rod Dreher of the National Review Online, discussing why New Orleans wasn't prepared, even though they saw The Big One coming for years and did nothing.

Bush to address nation, recommend energy conservation

This according to Matt Drudge. Probably a good thing. I think we all need to pull together. I may go give blood.

"America's Tsunami"

The NY Post has great perspective and narrative. Still, they don't have the guts to ask the question I asked below. I suppose they know the answer... I mean, shouldn't the UN be doing something? Guess not.

Crude below $70

... on the news that President Bush is cracking the SPR. Bloomberg has it here.

Nostradamus

Did he predict this? Surely someone will find the quatrain.

Help from the French?

Don't bet on it. Or from any other nation on Earth. Despite all the help we've given people over the course of the last few decades. What I'm seeing is a stern rebuke from German commentators. This one, from Germany's Environmental Minsiter, Green Party member Jurgen Tritten, lets you know what some Europeans think of us:

"The Bush government rejects international climate protection goals by insisting that imposing them would negatively impact the American economy. The American president is closing his eyes to the economic and human costs his land and the world economy are suffering under natural catastrophes like Katrina and because of neglected environmental policies."

I am tempted at this point to say things like: if they ever get in trouble again, let 'em sink.

And what do you want to bet that somewhere there are Palestians celebrating that the "Amerikan Isreali stooges" are suffering at the hand of Allah?

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve

President Bush is opening it. Watch the price drop, especially on the news that the oil rigs in the Gulf aren't severely damaged.

Looting

It breaks my heart to see the looting in New Orleans. It confirms my worst fears that a significant precentage of humanity are scumbags and that left to their own devices will devolve into animals. Absent religion to temper the man's baser instincts, there need to be moral men armed to the teeth to enforce the basic tenets of civilization. Needless to say, the whole world is watching via satellite TV. I'm sure they think this is a lovely portrait of America. It's Lord of the Flies time in The Big Easy.

Not all the news is bad...

From the Gulf. This piece from the Houston Cronicle details how the many of the oil rigs in the Gulf are NOT damaged. Oil companies are smart enough to know that every day they don't pump, they lose big coin. That's why they won't be offline for long.

Loony Left

This piece from Robert Kennedy seeks to imply that the Republican Governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour, is responsible for the Katrina Katastrophe. The lede:

As Hurricane Katrina dismantles Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, it’s worth recalling the central role that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour played in derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush’s iron-clad campaign promise to regulate CO2.

It goes on to quote a climatolgist that states that global warming is responsible for the severity of Katrina's impact.

As if monster hurricanes never happened before.

The Superdome starts to fail...

See it here. Let's hope that this is as bad as it gets...

This just in...

President Bush is talking about opeing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. You buyers of oil future at $70 a throw, prepare to lose...

I must confess...

This Hurricane Katrina coverage is fascinating. I vaguely remember Hurricane Camille in 1969 but the image still in my head of that storm were scary. So far, the best coverage I've seen is on Fox with Sheppard Smith, Steve Harrigan and Orlando Salinas. These dudes are brave...

About Oil futures

I said for months that oil futures are in a huge speculative bubble. It will spike today because of the hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Bet that crude tanks and tanks hard by the end of the week after trade find out that there wasn't as much damage to production and refining facilities as they thought.

Prediction

That I hope doesn't come true: the roof on the Superdome will fail.