LFTC - Letter From The Capitol

President Obama's Gulf Oil Spill Oval Office Address

Last might Barack Obama gave his first Oval Office address, on the Gulf oil spill mess....

Oil Spill II: A Cold Political Calculus of Catastrophe Prevention

Federal Judge Richard Posner explains why political leaders do not do much catastrophe prevention....

LFTC - Premature Pandemic Pronouncement; Future Flu Fears

In calling the swine flu a pandemic last week I relied on a TV report.  Bad idea.  It is not yet officially designated a pandemic.  A verbal pandemic was launched, however, by Vice-President Biden (4:13), who advised everyone to stay off public transit.  I also neglected to praise the President, who for once, instead of bashing his predecessor, bestowed praise upon him for stockpiling vaccines and putting in place the beginnings of a serious organizational infrastructure to deal with lethal pathogens.

Those slips duly noted, as Pat Buchanan writes on the risk the President is taking in declining to close the US-Mexican border, the President is putting himself into the universal health insurance business: If swine flu mutates into a lethal pathogen that kills 100,000 Americans, all the charm 44 can muster will not save him from a Katrina Moment.  Beyond that risk, there is a second potential mess facing Team Obama (also noted by PB): the toll taken by swine flu in Mexico could collapse its economy, giving the US a national security crisis of immense magnitude, right on its doorstep.

Campaign 2008: A (Hurricane) "Ike" Not to Like

Check out the NOAA projected storm track for Hurricane Ike: Gulf of Mex'co here we come....Right back where (Gustav) made land from....52 years ago Dwight David Eisenhower won re-election in a landslide over Adlai Stevenson, with "I like Ike!" all the rage.  After passing Cuba and slipping into the Gulf, this Ike not to like will, on current forecasts, spend more than 3 days over water, strengthening.  Perhaps it will hit New Orleans harder than did Gustav.  Leave us pray not.  Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal sent a letter Sunday 9/7 to the White House asking for advance federal disaster area designation, once again, 5 days before Ike is expected to hit Gulf shores; the letter is a one-pager, but a worthwhile read.  Yet again the cost of environmental extremism will be imposed upon millions, with losses in the billions.

How so?  Below I re-produce one paragraph of my 9/2 "Gustav v. Katrina" posting, on the details of enviro-madness that led to near catastrophe 3 years ago, as it was part of a very lengthy historical review posting on Katrina, and some LFTC readers may have missed it:

The 9/905 Los Angeles Times reports that in 1965, after Hurricane Betsy, a Cat 2 storm, flooded New Orleans the Army Corps of Engineers proposed to build a 25-mile barrier consisting of levees 9 to 14 feet high, plus a pair of flood gates to guard the two inlets leading into Lake Ponchartrain (from Lake Borgne).  The model: those erected by the Dutch after the disastrous 1953 North Sea Flood. The cost?  $85 million then, equal to $506,400,000 today.  So, wha' happen?  Enter the Enviro-set, in the persons of Save Our Wetlands. They filed a lawsuit to stop the project on grounds that it would harm marine life in Lake Ponchartrain, by reducing salt water flow.  In 1977 a federal judge upheld their claim, holding that marine life would be "irreparably harmed" by the project; the good judge ordered a new enviro-study.  The Corps decided endless litigation was a dismal way of life, and then spent $1 billion to improve the levee system.  George Will's 9/13/05 column alerts us that a recent $24 billion transportation bill passed with 6,371 "earmark" pork projects ("earmarks" are given to each member to parcel out), of which $540,580,200, to be precise--was "earmarked' for Louisiana's delegation.  Thus, in this porkfest alone Louisiana received 10.7 percent more than lifesaving (and city-saving) floodgates would have cost.

The costs will continue to soar, because a Dutch sea-gate solution is not in the cards.  It would cost many billions today, but would obviate the need to evacuate the Big Easy and the Gulf coastline every few years.  Over a generation it would save money in terms of gross economic loss due to Gulf storms, plus countless lives seriously inconvenienced.  The costs of environmental excess mount.  The New York Times offers a solid portrait of how much worse even a weakened Gustav might have been, had its track differed by a mere 30 miles.

Bear in mind that had Katrina stayed a 5, and not swerved eastward in the last 24 hours, New Orleans would have suffered a direct hit of a Cat 5 monster, with a storm surge of nearly 30 feet--TWICE KATRINA'S NEW ORLEANS SURGE AND MORE THAN TWICE THE SURGE OF GUSTAV.  Not only would the soup bowl in which New Orleans sits have been completely inundated, the pressure on the Mississippi River levees could well have collapsed, too.  And New Orleans then would literally have, to use Barack Obama's word, "drowned"--along with some 250,000 people.  To see what the Big Easy would then have looked like, watch the closing scene (3:01) of "Planet of the Apes," with Charlton Heston on the beach....None of this matters to the enviro-crusaders, who remain conveniently in denial about the entire post-Betsy episode.

Gustav: Post-Katrina Politics

Mr. Nice Guy.  Begin with what a former DNC Chairman, Don Fowler, said, caught on a cellphone camera on a commercial flight (within the article, click on the "gem" hyperlink): Divine Providence, it seems, sent Gustav to New Orleans just in time for the GOP Convention.  The lines were spoken before Gustav hit, when it was possible that it would be a Cat 5 monster that would demolish New Orleans.  Fowler later apologized for what he called remarks made in jest.

Performance.  Governor Bobby Jindal's leadership is in the tradition of the leadership shown by Democrats in Iowa in June; even Ray Nagin, the hitherto hapless Big Easy mayor, is actually doing his job this time, instead of grandstanding.  Politically, Jindal's performance can show what might have happened in 2005 had he been in the statehouse instead of beyond pathetic Kathleen Blanco.  Sunday evening at 6:30 Jindal gave a bravura performance detailing evacuation efforts and plans; at that time, with Gustav not likely to make landfall earlier than midnight, there were only an estimated 10,000 people left in New Orleans.  Many states assisted in the multi-day operation.  FEMA did well too, working with locals and the private sector.

Jindal did not (a) blame anyone for anything, (b) whine about the federal government not sending buses, (c) engage in a crying jag.  The concept is called competent--no, first rate--crisis governance.  Instead of waiting until 5 days after the hurricane hit to declare an emergency, Jindal declared one 5 days before it hit.  That is how one gets 2 million people out of harm's way.

Energy: This is the nation's most highly-concentrated energy region.  50% of oil refining, 25% of oil production and 15% of natural gas production capacity sits in the Gulf of Mexico; 35,000 people are involved in this industry in the Gulf area, with 4,000 offshore platforms and 33,000 miles of pipeline.  A total of 1.5 million barrels per day of oil + 10,000,000 cubic feet of natural gas daily flows from the Gulf.

Politics.  And what of the GOP Convention?  Noemie Emery lists nine reasons Gustav, by altering & curtailing the GOP Convention, helps the GOP.  Right she is.  The possible major TV event, with folks back after Labor Day, was scuttled.  The absence of President Bush makes it easier for Big Mac & Sarah to show distance from the incumbent.

BOTTOM LINE.  Americans will give credit when politicians do the right thing, and when they perform well.  Thus, Gustav should prove a modest plus for the GOP, though probably not enough to wipe out the huge minus Katrina was.

Katrina Flashback; Gustav's Landfall

Gustav made landfall, mercifully, as a Category 2 wind-speed storm on the Saffir-Simpson Scale, which grades storms according to wind speed, barometric pressure and height of the storm surge (a slow-moving rising tide of water that floods areas--not to be confused with a tsunami, which is a fast-moving wall of water); Gustav was, however, a Cat 3 in terms of storm surge.  Gustav broke up over the Gulf of Mexico in the last 24 hours, and sped up, which deprived it of a greater energy boost over water.  The eye passed over Morgan City, 70 miles west of the Big Easy; 60 miles away from the eye were maximum winds.  New Orleans took a beating, but not nearly so bad as could have happened had Gustav hung over the Gulf and landed as a Cat 4 or Cat 5, or even the 3 it was until shortly before making landfall.  In a simply astonishing performance, authorities evacuated 1.9 million people within two days.  The levees, mercifully, held despite a few mini-leaks, having been shored up since Katrina.

It Is useful to hark back to Hurricane Katrina, three years ago, when the catastrophic aftermath seriously damaged President Bush, who was blamed for the poor response.  The real story is otherwise.  While the federal government response was seriously flawed, the state and local government was far worse--indeed, unconscionable.  On 97/0/5, nine days after Katrina struck, I published a paper, Katrina: Catatonia Compounds Catastrophe, that examined the event in detail.  I re-produce excerpts, mostly verbatim, below, to give full perspective on what happened then and why it happened.  N.B., I have not recast verb tenses to reflect passage of three years, as such would have proved time-consuming; readers can gauge accordingly.  I also added material from post-9/7/05 September 2005 LFTC postings, on the true causes of the Katrina catastrophe.

The Storm.  Katrina hit with its full force east of New Orleans, along the Gulf Coast, as a Cat 4 storm. Katrina struck New Orleans as a Cat 3, quickly, upon making landfall diminishing to a Cat 2, no longer energy-fueled over the water; but Katrina, having been a Cat 5 in the Gulf, carried a Cat 5-level storm surge, despite Cat 3 wind speed.  For hurricanes, which rotate cyclonically counter-clockwise, the stronger wind side is the eastern side; thus the Gulf Coast caught the full fury, while New Orleans was spared the brunt of the storm.  Had New Orleans been hit hardest, damage would have been far worse.  And had Katrina not lost energy in its last 18 hours before making landfall, and hit west of New Orleans as a Cat 5, the city quite possibly would have simply ceased to exist.

Disaster Response. Two days before the storm struck, President Bush declared New Orleans a federal disaster area, making expedited aid possible upon state request.  Governor Blanco, at a press conference with New Orleans Mayor Ray C. Nagin, told reporters that the President had telephoned her and urged mandatory evacuation of the city.  Despite 43's having declared New Orleans a disaster area two days before Katrina hit, the state Governor apparently did not promptly request assistance.  By the time she did, the waters had cut New Orleans off from rapid emergency entry.  That is most of the reason why the feds arrived late on the scene.  A retired FEMA official with two decades of disaster experience vouchsafed to me that given a firm request for assistance from a Governor, it is inconceivable that a President would refuse aid.

It gets worse. A Sept. 5 Newsmax posting shows: Even Friday, Sept. 2, the Governor wouldn't act, despite being urged by the Mayor to immediately request federal aid.  Worse still: Fox reports that Gov. Blanco did not sign an evacuation order until Wednesday, Aug. 31; the levee having caved Monday night, Aug. 29.  Newsmax reports:

"After days of blaming the federal officials for not responding quickly enough to the Hurricane Katrina crisis, [the mayor] praised [President Bush]--and charged that [the governor] has delayed federal rescue efforts by 24 hours.
"'I'm so happy that the president came down here {Nagin told CNN re Bush's Friday Sept. 2 visit].  He came down and saw it, and he put a general on the field....And when he hit the field, we started to see action.'
"But Nagin had harsh words for his state's leaders, telling CNN: 'What the state was doing, I don't frigging know.  But I tell you, I'm pissed.  It wasn't adequate.'
"[Nagin] said he urged Bush to meet privately with [the governor] during the visit.  The meeting took place aboard Air Force One, he said.
"After reviewing the crisis with Gov. Blanco, Bush summoned Nagin for a private chat--where, according to Nagin, Bush explained: 'Mr. Mayor, I offered two options to the governor,  I said...I was ready to move today.  The governor said she needed 24 hours to make a decision.
"Reacting to the governor's foot-dragging, Nagin lamented: 'It would have been great if we could of [sic] left Air Force One, walked outside, and told the world that we had this all worked out.'"

Federal/State Roles.  Former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating explained that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) coordinates based upon local request.  He said: "Leadership in the local area is everything."  Locals that regard Washington as an all-purpose Bailout Nanny are asking for trouble.

But state officials made some meritorious claims, too.  A Labor Day NY Times story makes clear that FEMA impeded both state officials and private companies seeking to alleviate distress.  It is incomprehensible how FEMA officials could: (a) turn back three Wal-Mart trucks loaded with water; (b) block Coast guard deliverance of 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel; (c) cut one parish's emergency communications line.  As to this last transgression, the state sheriff properly restored the connection and posted armed guards to protect it--thus inevitably diverting guards from other tasks.  Such federal failings (and surely many others) justify 43's "unacceptable" regarding federal performance.  As a Sept. 3 NRO editorial put it: "[A]n administration whose FEMA director knew less about on-the-ground conditions in the stricken city this week than the average TV viewer has a real vulnerability."  A Sept. 6 Wall Street Journal article recounts a federal blunder of monumental imbecility: Planes were delayed while the Transportation Security Administration rounded up air marshals and screeners.  TSA could not grasp that with catastrophe approaching FEMA & TSA might waive the minuscule risk of a bomb or hijacking in favor of more rapid evacuee exit. One puzzle: Homeland Security Secretary Michael Cherthoff, quoted early on as saying that there was no trouble at the Superdome, said on Fox News Sunday that state officials gave no indication of problems, but news reports told viewers what went on.  Federal laws limit the options open to the President, without local cooperation.

The legal bottom line: In a natural disaster, the President cannot lawfully move without a prior request from the Governor.  Were he to do so, he arguably violates the Anti-Deficiency Act, a law that makes it a crime to spend funds not lawfully authorized.  Only after looting rises to the level of a breakdown in civil order, might a President conceivably declare federal martial law, but historical precedent does not favor such a move.  One other potential argument: because globally televised anarchy in one of America's most famous cities is seriously harming American credibility abroad, and thus hampering our ability to fight a war on terror, there is a national security justification for federal martial law; again, this does not fit prior precedent.

Did Federal Budget Cuts Create Levee Vulnerability?  Everyone knew that the New Orleans 475-mile levee system (average height: 16 feet) was built to withstand a Category 3 storm--but only if (unlike Katrina) it was moving rapidly over the area.  One Army Corps of Engineers regional director's estimate was a $14 billion, 30-year project for full Cat 5 protection, with six years alone for a feasibility study.  A press report cites another regional Corps project manager quoting $2.5 billion for full protection.  The part of the levee that was breached (17th St.) was concrete, not earthen, and had just been reinforced.  OMB, for its part, rated the Corps Flood Damage Reduction Program "Results not Demonstrated" in 2003, for want of long-term outcome measures; OMB proposed that the Corps widen its program.  For the FY2005 federal budget, the Corps sought $105 million in hurricane & flood funding for New Orleans.  The White House cut it to $40 million and Congress approved $42.2 million.  None of the cut funding would have affected the levee breach.

A Tale of Two City Mayors.  Would Rudy have fled NYC to Albany? It is a measure of the relative character--or lack of it--of 43 versus the New Orleans mayor that while the mayor was yammering for the President to "get off his ass" the President had this to say: "Many of our citizens are simply not getting the help they need, especially in New Orleans, and that is unacceptable."  He also said: "Where our response is not working we'll make it right. Where our response is working we will duplicate it."

Mayor Nagin?  Safe in Baton Rouge, citing communications problems.  Does anyone think Rudy would have abandoned the Apple, even without communications?  Hid up in Albany while his constituents were murdered, raped, robbed and terrorized by roving wolf packs?  (Without carte blanche from state authorities, Bush was paralyzed; 43 could not risk his soldiers' lives under the command of (rightly) distrusted, incompetent, state and local leaders.)

To his credit, Mayor Nagin performed solidly this time.  Staying there, working before the storm, warning residents that looting this time would not be tolerated.  He said on Sunday that anyone caught looting would go directly to the Big House, in general population, and God pray for you.  Not like last time.

Whodnnit? There are two "smoking guns" and a few other points to be made here.

GUN ONE:  The 9/905 Los Angeles Times reports that in 1965, after Hurricane Betsy, a Cat 2 storm, flooded New Orleans the Army Corps of Engineers proposed to build a 25-mile barrier consisting of levees 9 to 14 feet high, plus a pair of flood gates to guard the two inlets leading into Lake Ponchartrain (from Lake Borgne).  The model: those erected by the Dutch after the disastrous 1953 North Sea Flood. The cost?  $85 million then, equal to $506,400,000 today.  So, wha' happen?  Enter the Enviro-set, in the persons of Save Our Wetlands. They filed a lawsuit to stop the project on grounds that it would harm marine life in Lake Ponchartrain, by reducing salt water flow.  In 1977 a federal judge upheld their claim, holding that marine life would be "irreparably harmed" by the project; the good judge ordered a new enviro-study.  The Corps decided endless litigation was a dismal way of life, and then spent $1 billion to improve the levee system.  George Will's 9/13/05 column alerts us that a recent $24 billion transportation bill passed with 6,371 "earmark" pork projects ("earmarks" are given to each member to parcel out), of which $540,580,200, to be precise--was "earmarked' for Louisiana's delegation.  Thus, in this porkfest alone Louisiana received 10.7 percent more than lifesaving (and city-saving) floodgates would have cost.

GUN TWO:  The Washington Post reports that on May 19 a computer modeler from Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center presented evidence that the Mississippi Gulf River Outlet, a 40-year old canal, would increase a storm's water surge level by 20 to 40 percent, by creating a "funnel effect" in conjunction with the Gulf Intercoastal Waterway.  The Outlet was built to bypass the winding Mississippi River and save time for commercial traffic, but an average of one ship per day uses it, while the Army Corps of Engineers spends many millions maintaining it.  St. Bernard's Parish, of whose 28,000 houses but 52 survive, was the site of this overflow, which many experts now believe was the initial levee breach.  The Outlet was the subject of an endless political struggle between business leaders who wanted it kept open and local community activists who wanted it closed.  On daily traffic volume alone, the activists were right on this one.

If true, as now seems likely, Katrina's 15-foot rise in New Orleans would have been 10.7 - 12.5 feet, below the 14-foot levee level downtown.  The modeler, Hassan Mashriki, a Bangladeshi who emigrated here after a cyclone devastated his homeland, called the Outlet "Crescent City's Trojan Horse."

NOT A GUN.  George Will also debunks an alleged smoking gun, what Democratic Senator Barack Obama, mainstream media's new liberal black superstar, called on ABC's 9/11 This Week the government's "historic indifference," "passive indifference,"  "as bad as active malice."  Will notes that "strictly defined" the US has spent over the past 40 years $6.6 trillion fighting poverty.  He cites as the social factor in persistent poverty the underclass "cultural collapse": illegitimacy, running 68.2 percent nationally for black females (twice the 34.6 percent overall number and thus more than twice the rate for white females) and 75 to 80 percent in New Orleans.  Will offers "three not-at-all recondite rules for escaping poverty: finish school, do not marry as a teen and do not have kids before marriage."

ALSO NOT A GUN.  Global warming.  As noted in an earlier posting, the 1940s were the worst hurricane decade--this was the first of three "coolong" decades that led enviros in the early 1970s to warn of an impending ice age.  Also, cyclone activity in the Pacific and Indian Oceans is not increasing, which a "global" warming trend would produce.  Further, the hurricane season (May 31 - October 31) would be getting longer if the water were getting warmer.  No sign of that yet. Nice try, Greens.  Go back to blocking floodgate projects.

At bottom the prime policy failure seems to be that state officials were unwilling to surrender authority to the federal government, but wanted the federal government to take responsibility and provide vast resources.  A fundamental managerial truth: When power is decoupled from responsibility--especially when key decision-makers lack sufficient mutual trust--the likely result is policy paralysis.

Here are six key lessons from Katrina and its aftermath: (1) prevention beats recovery as a strategy--especially when timely measures to limit damage require drastic decisions taken when whether disaster strikes remains highly uncertain; (2) lax leaders are lethal when disaster strikes; (3) in race-obsessed urban America, the politics of race can trump civil order; (4) when multiple jurisdictions must cooperate, it is essential that there be mutual trust at all levels of joint administration, plus power fully commensurate with relative responsibility; (5) when catastrophe strikes, the President gets the credit or blame; (6) in a global media age, America's credibility is on the line, always.

George Will writes in Newsweek of Katrina's import for political factions: "Katrina has provided a teaching moment. This is a liberal hour in that it illustrates the indispensability, and dignity, of the public sector. It also is a conservative hour, dramatizing the prudence of pessimism, and the fact that the first business of government, on which everything depends, is security."

Decoupling power from responsibility poses two alternative dangers: (a) where power exceeds responsibility, reckless behavior is encouraged; (b) where responsibility exceeds power, timorous behavior is encouraged.  In the instant catastrophe, the decoupling of power from responsibility carried two terrible consequences: (1) because state power exceeded the level of responsibility state and local officials were prepared to accept, the most helpless residents of the doomed city were left to fend for themselves when evacuation was ordered; (2) because federal officials had less power than the de facto responsibility that public opinion saddled the President with, federal officials were excessively cautious, awaiting a state transfer of additional power that did not come in time to avert anarchy in the streets and shelters.  In a crisis situation where power and responsibility cannot be cleanly separated, one entity must be given full control.  Given this calamity of this magnitude, clearly that had to be the federal government.

Divided Authority: Reform Still Needed.  Because officials at all levels worked in harmony this time. my discussion three years ago of the need for more authority to be given the President may seem superfluous.  Not only officials but the locals acted far better this time.  Because at some future time there may be serious jurisdictional conflict, I reproduce the legal and policy analysis below, from my 9/7/05 paper.

State laxity raises the question: Should the President have pushed aside an ineffectual Governor, Mayor and police force, and declared federal martial law?  A threshold limitation is that under the U.S. Constitution the traditional "police power"--guarding the health, safety and welfare of citizens--is reserved to the States.  Art. I sec. 8 cl. 15 empowers Congress "to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasion."

The principal statutory Presidential disaster relief authority is per the Stafford Act, and does not provide for martial law.  The key section reads:

TITLE V - EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS

PROCEDURE FOR DECLARATION

Sec. 501. (a) Request and Declaration. All requests for a declaration by the President that an emergency exists shall be made by the Governor of the affected State. Such a request shall be based on a finding that the situation is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and the affected local governments and that Federal assistance is necessary. As part of such request, and as a prerequisite to emergency assistance under this Act, the Governor shall take appropriate action under State law and direct execution of the State's emergency plan. The Governor shall furnish information describing the State and local efforts and resources which have been or will be used to alleviate the emergency, and define the type and extent of Federal aid required. Based upon such Governor's request, the President may declare that an emergency exists.

(b) Certain Emergencies Involving Federal Primary Responsibility. The President may exercise any authority vested in him by section 502 or section 503 with respect to an emergency when he determines that an emergency exists for which the primary responsibility for response rests with the United States because the emergency involves a subject area for which, under the Constitution or laws of the United States, the United States exercises exclusive or preeminent responsibility and authority. In determining whether or not such an emergency exists, the President shall consult the Governor of any effected State, if practicable. The President's determination may be made without regard to subsection (a).

To do (b) could the President have cited the significance of the South Louisiana port complex (includes New Orleans), which is the largest in the US (more on the economics below)?  Traditional natural disaster recovery falls under (a), and thus requires a request from the Governor to trigger federal action.  Federal military power is curbed by the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, but that law specifically allows Congress to pass exceptions, which the Stafford Act manifestly is.  The President can federalize the National Guard (which consists of the Army NG and the Air NG) only in event of invasion, rebellion, or if "unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States".  Title 42 provides a broad federal role in public health and disaster relief, and perhaps might enable the President to declare a public health emergency, which may yet happen.  (An upcoming test: Will authorities cremate corpses to minimize public health risk, or instead succumb to sentimental family pressure, thus endangering public health?)

What of the National Emergency Act?  It, too, provides for executive authority, but not true martial law.  The president is strictly accountable to Congress for declarations made, actions taken and funds spent.  What constitutes a "national emergency" is left undefined.  The Congressional Research Service, in a January 7, 2005 paper (Martial Law and National Emergency) explains that true "martial law" is when civilian administration is taken over by the military.  In American history it has been declared only by President Andrew Jackson in 1814 and often during the Civil War and the Reconstruction.  Since then no true martial law has been declared.

On a number of occasions during the 20th century a form of "qualified martial law" has been declared, to quell race riots and labor unrest; on other occasions an undeclared martial law was applied a number of times in times of labor unrest.  In World War II FDR approved the Hawaiian Territory governor's declaration of martial law, and in at least one internment camp housing Japanese FDR imposed martial law.  Since 1945 no President has invoked martial law.  Whenever federal troops have been sent in to restore public order in event of civil unrest or riot, the military has operated under civilian control.  Military force to restore public order without martial law was used in 1932 by President Hoover against the Bonus Army, by Ike to desegregate Little Rock in 1957, by JFK to desegregate the University of Mississippi in 1962 and the University of Alabama in 1963, and by LBJ to stop riots in Washington, Detroit, Chicago and Baltimore in 1967 and 1968.  CRS notes that Presidential action in this area remains subject to judicial review (a precedent established in an 1866 post-Civil War case, Ex Parte Milligan, in which an Indiana prisoner was commended to trial in civilian courts, with military tribunals held permissible only in the absence of functioning civilian courts).  Presidential aversion to martial law is exemplified by JFK's instruction to a high-level emergency planning committee (not named by CRS, but presumably it refers to ExComm, the 13-member committee assembled to advise JFK during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis) that even in event of a nuclear attack "nationwide martial law is not an acceptable planning assumption."

The legal bottom line: In a natural disaster, the President cannot lawfully move without a prior request from the Governor.  Were he to do so, he arguably violates the Anti-Deficiency Act, a law that makes it a crime to spend funds not lawfully authorized.  Only after looting rises to the level of a breakdown in civil order, might a President conceivably declare federal martial law, but historical precedent does not favor such a move.  One other potential argument: because globally televised anarchy in one of America's most famous cities is seriously harming American credibility abroad, and thus hampering our ability to fight a war on terror, there is a national security justification for federal martial law; again, this does not fit prior precedent.

A Remedy: Special Presidential Authority.  Unless doing nothing is the right thing to do in a given case, most critical of all is that a crisis decision be taken within the time necessary to ameliorate the consequences of catastrophe, if it cannot be headed off entirely.  The time leaders have to decide will, in case of natural disasters, often lie outside the control of decision-makers.  Flip the famed football maxim "speed kills": In a crisis with potential catastrophic impact, undue delay kills.  One does not argue over the shape of a table if a bomb sits in the center with fuse burning.  Give the President 30 days sole executive discretion to act in emergencies that threaten life and essential national assets, free of legislative and judicial review.  Allow serial renewal for 90-day periods, subject to Congressional authorization and judicial review.  It is possible in theory to give Congress a limited time to review the initial executive decision, failing which the President may act.  But this is impractical in reality for two reasons: (1) Congress is not set up to act quickly; (2) if a divided Congress fails to approve, a President who then acts could find his authority politically impaired after a divisive debate during emergency times, when nationwide unity is a paramount societal value.

But can this reform be squared with the Constitution's reservation of police power to the states?  Yes.  First, recovering a major port that is the gateway for traffic coming down the Mississippi from many states is hardly a local matter.  Second, the Framers lived in a world where the infant federal government had no resources--an era when travel between Washington, DC and New York City took a week on horseback.  Naturally the police power had to lie with the states.  And so it should still, for local matters.  Federal assistance for purely humanitarian relief should require state consent.  But where larger issues are engaged—of substantial national or global impact—federal supremacy is essential; far less is truly local than was the case in 1787.  Third, if federal hate crimes legislation can pass constitutional muster, making recreational looting during major disasters a federal criminal offense can pass muster, too (see below).  Fourth, as the President has 60 days of  sole authority under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, a month regarding extreme domestic emergencies is reasonable.  Fifth, the proposed executive prerogative is discretionary: A President who finds local authorities highly competent (as with NYC and 9/11) can decline to exercise extraordinary emergency power.

Wherefore the intellectual rationale for such extraordinary executive power?  To begin with, the strongest executive is most needed when the worst disasters strike; add that the public in times of severe crisis inevitably looks to the President for leadership.  As power must equal responsibility, Presidential authority must be pre-eminent at times of greatest national crisis.  Finally, rest on the philosopher whose writings were the main source for Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence.  The President would, in effect, exercise what John Locke called in Chapter XIV of his Second Treatise of Government inherent executive "Prerogative" to protect society and public safety:

159. For the Legislators not being able to foresee, and provide, by Laws, for all, that may be useful to the Community, the Executor of the Laws, having the power in his hands, has by the common law of Nature, a right to make use of it, for the good of the Society, in many Cases, where the municipal Law has given no direction, till the Legislative can conveniently be Assembled to provide for it....'tis fit that the laws themselves shall in some Cases give way to the Executive power, or rather to this Fundamental Law of Nature and Government, viz., that That as much as may be, all the Members of the Society are to be preserved.  (Emphasis in original.)

Decoupling power from responsibility is bad under any circumstances.  Unifying the two by no means guarantees sound decisions, but such eliminates certain perverse incentives, and thus improves the odds that good decisions will be made.  Even when power matches responsibility, of course, there is no guarantee that the right calls will be made, but the odds are then more in favor.

An Added Remedy: Criminal Justice Enhancement.  "Looting" as a term must exclude taking food and drink or medical supplies essential to survival; this tracks the common law privilege known as "necessity" as a valid defense to legal action.  However, looting non-essential property is much more grave than ordinary theft, as it fosters social breakdown and descent into the savage depths we saw for days after Katrina.  Crimes during emergencies are an extreme form of terrorism--assaults against the very concept of civil order that is the foundation of modern liberal society.  These must not be tolerated, period.

BOTTOM LINE.  If power matches responsibility, the risk of a Katrina-style catastrophe is lessened.  The response to Gustav is encouraging, but matching power with responsibility and giving emergency power to the President can reduce the chance that in future, less felicitous cases, a decent outcome can be achieved. 

Gustav and Genuine Governance

On Aug. 27 Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal declared a State of Emergency 5 days before Hurricane Gustav, not yet in the Gulf of Mexico, but sure to get there by the weekend, might eventually make landfall on the coast of the United States, anywhere from the Florida Panhandle to the east cost of Texas.  Louisiana's statutory predicate for declaration includes an "imminent" emergency as well as an actual one.  The Emergency period extends 30 days, to Sept. 26.  Jindal is doing the opposite of what was done--more precisely, what was NOT done--by his hapless predecessor, Kathleen Blanco (who beat Jindal in 2003 via creative vote counting in the Big Easy and a cheap-shot ad aired in the sticks showing Jindal's complexion as darker than it actually is).  Instead of whining for federal help, he is way--way, way--out in front in preparing his state for a potentially severe weather emergency.

Tale of Three Cities

Watching the citizens of Des Moines and Cedar Rapids put their collective shoulders to the wheel brings to mind the sharp contrast with how New Orleans dealt--rather, how the Crescent City failed to deal--with the flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina.  In Cedar Rapids the river crested at 31 feet, 15 feet above flood stage, forcing evacuation of some residents from the 500-year flood plain; the storm surge peak of Katrina was 29 feet, on the Gulf Coast.  The difference was not the federal government, as it seems that once again the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) screwed up.

The differences are primarily two: (1) Iowa's state and city governments are functional, unlike the terminally dysfunctional governments in Baton Rouge and the Big Easy; (2) the residents of Des Moines (about 200,000) and Cedar Rapids (120,000) are members of a cohesive, solid community, whereas much of New Orleans is an urban underclass dystopia (forget race--a white underclass would have done the same).  No Iowan politicians dithered, blamed the feds, threatened (as Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu did) to "punch out the president"; no mayor said that there is "no federal mayor of" his city; no governor wept in public and whined about 500 buses promised by the feds, while 2,000 languished in local parking lots; no nursing home residents were left to fend for themselves; no roving packs of looters marauded the helpless; no cops fled for Las Vegas.  Nor does political party affiliation explain anything, as the Iowa governor, and the mayors of the two cities, are all Democrats.  Put simply, Iowans did not act as if they expected the federal government to do everything for them. Yet, a Wall Street Journal op-ed explains that Cedar Rapids cannot be fully rebuilt.

Prediction: Despite massive flooding, unlike after Katrina the feds will not have to invest more than $125 billion in Iowa, much of it to be skimmed off y corrupt contractors and pols.  That amount exceeded the 2005 GDP of Singapore, and represents more than $40,000 per person for the 300,000 remaining residents in New Orleans.  Biblical moral of the story: The Lord helps those who help themselves.

Hurricane Al: 2007's Top Storm

The Center for Oceanic-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (COAPS) reports that 2007 is shaping up as the weakest hurricane season in 30 years.  Which makes 2007's biggest storm Hurricane Al (Gore), a Category 12 monster (the National Hurricane Center's Saffir-Simpson Scale goes only up to Cat 5--about 200 mph winds) is that the financial impact of Al's global warming nostrums runs in the trillions, whereas Katrina will cost in the end about $150 billion.

Wildlfires: Calfornia Blazes a Trail

Columnist Rich Lowry sums up the wildfires and California's response perfectly, as the "un-Katrina."  Recall the catatonic Louisiana (non-) Governor Kathleen Blanco alternating between on-the-air crying jags and finger-pointing at the Bush administration--whining "Where are my 500 buses?" when there were 2,000  state buses languishing in water-logged parking lots.  This time, the federal government is having no trouble whatsoever coordinating with a real local partner, in the Governator.  The difference is reflected in the title given all 50 state chief executives: Governor, as in govern.

Hurricane (Mark) Twain?

Mark Twain is said to have said (it may be apocryphal): "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it."  The Daily Telegraph reports that scientists are coming closer to figuring out out to steer and weaken hurricanes, per research spurred by Katrina.  One hurdle is predictable: lawyers.  Steer a hurricane from Town A to Town B, and see the lawsuits fly.

Louisiana Gets a Governor--and Possible President

Republican Bobby Jindal defeated a field of "who" candidates to become Louisiana's next governor.  Jindal, a Republican congressman, distinguished himself by being the ONLY Louisiana official who performed superbly after the Katrina disaster.  His win Saturday is a Democratic state attests to the education of Louisiana voters in learning who can really help them.  Media commentary focused on Jindal's being the first "Indian-American governor ("Indian" refers to India, not American's namesakes).  But the real marker is that four years ago Jindal was cheated out of a gubernatorial win by the Democrats, who ran up the usual fraudulent urban vote tally in New Orleans and also scared rednecks by showing a picture of the dark-skinned Jindal as being ever darker than he actually is.  The result was the catastrophic election of epic imbecile Kathleen Blanco. Had Jindal been governor, the Katrina story would have been different.  The mainstream media don't get this, but Louisiana voters do.  To see why Jindal might one day become President, read John Fund's superb piece in the online WSJ.  Wes Pruden of the Washington Times sees trouble ahead for loudmouth Democratic Senator Mary "I wanted to punch out the President" (over Katrina) Landrieu, who will have fewer votes to over-count from New Orleans in 2008 than she had in 1996 when she squeaked in by the usual shenanigans.

Katrina + 2: Bush Betrayed

Two years ago LFTC made Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath a major topic, eventually creating a category devoted to coverage of the epic disaster and its aftermath.  President Bush was blamed, but (rightly) Jonah Goldberg sees media malpractice in the press coverage. Two years and $127 billion later, we know the result: massive federal bailout, money disappears, little progress made.  Larry Kudlow gives us the gory details.  The Wall Street Journal editors detail property tax corruption that favors politically-connected owners while jacking up rates for others, with an overall average hike of 55 percent.  Read Kudlow's piece for all the juicy morsels, but up front take this one: $127 billion equates to 90 percent of the GDP of Louisiana ($141B) and $425,000 for each of the estimated 300,000 residents now living there.  (This estimate may be low by 10 percent or more, as the 300,000 figure is the highest one I have seen for the Big Easy's current population.)  Consulting an online country GDP table reveals that Singapore's 2005 GDP was $124.3 billion.  Anyone see a resemblance between the Big Easy and Singapore?

Is there a fix?  Maybe.  If the state voters elect Bobby Jindal, the Republican Congressman who was by far the most effective local politico after Katrina, maybe things improve.  Jindal was beaten four years ago (52-48) by Democratic electoral venality--an ad that showed Jindal, of Indian descent, as being darker than he actually is, that was aired in Bubba precincts, plus the usual vote fraud in the Big Easy.  Had Jindal been Governor instead of the pathetic Kathleen Blanco, he would have acted decisively, probably even before the storm hit, to limit damage.  Electoral fraud and chicanery can carry a big price.

Above all, a lid must be placed on future financial flows.  Already, New Orleans has received 10 percent more than the inflation-adjusted cost of the Marshall Plan (averaging 1948 & 1949 numbers, $11.8B principal and $1.5B interest = $13.3B total, or $112B in 2006).  Look at it another way: One in 1,000 Americans lives in New Orleans.  Imagine spending $127 TRILLION on rebuilding the  country, a sum over 9 times US 2Q2007 GDP ($13.8 TR).  And what do we get for all that?  A city still in ruins, with a per capita murder rate treble the highest ever for New York City and about one dozen times higher today (columnist Mona Charen has details on NRO).

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), who led the revolt of the Republican base on immigration, sent a verbal wind gust at the waste of resources since Katrina:

“[It is} time the taxpayer gravy train left the New Orleans station.”  He urged an end to the federal aid to the region that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina two years ago.  "The amount of money that has been wasted on these so-called ‘recovery’ efforts has been mind-boggling.  Enough is enough."

Tancredo added: “At some point, state and local officials and individuals have got to step up to the plate and take some initiative.  The mentality that people can wait around indefinitely for the federal taxpayer to solve all their worldly problems has got to come to an end.  This whole fiasco has been a perfect storm of corruption and incompetence at all levels.”

Democrats surely will make Katrina, and the continued mess in the Big Easy, a "compassion issue" in 2008.  Indeed, a Washington Times op-ed notes that Hillary already has, calling for a Dutch sea-gate solution that would protect the city against even a Category 5 monster storm.  The cost?  A mere $40 billion.  That solution was, as LFTC noted two years ago, proposed in 1967, two years after Hurricane Betsy slammed into the city.  An environmental group called Save Our Wetlands filed suit, citing peril to marine life in Lake Pontchartrain, due to reduced water salinity.  After ten years in court and several environmental impact studies, a Carter-appointed judge called for further study.  The Army Corps of Engineers threw in the towel, and augmented the levee system to provide Category 3 protection at most (herewith the sorry tale).  The cost then: $85 million, or, adjusted for inflation, about $500 million today.)  Politically Incorrect Question: How much of the added $39.5 billion would wind up in local pockets?

Is there a Republican candidate who has the gumption to say: "My fellow Americans, if your village or city has received $400,000 per person after a natural disaster, wouldn't your community be well on the way to recovery three years later?  Hasn't the taxpayer given enough, or are local officials entitled to a blank check forever, no matter how sorry their performance?"

Probably no one will say that.  So the last best hope for ending the insane flood of relief money is if Bobby Jindal wins the October 20 gubernatorial race (or, if needed, the November 17 run-off).  As this portrait shows, if elected Jindal will start getting results immediately, and thus Republicans could say that the Big Easy can begin to rest easy, now that there is an adult in the Governor's mansion in Baton Rouge.  Jindal stands at 63 percent in the polls, with his closest challenger at 14 percent.  If Jindal wins over 50 percent in the first round he wins outright.

New Orleans Sings the Crime Blues

Manhattan Institute scholar Nicole Gelinas argues in Baghdad by the Bayou that the Big Easy is doomed if it fails to get its skyrocketing crime wave under control.  To date in 2007 the city is running a murder rate of 87 per 100,000 residents that, for New York City, would produce 7,000 murders in the year.  As Gelinas notes, at the nadir of the Big Apple's crime wave, in 1990 under the hapless David Dinkins, the murder rate peaked at 2,262.  In 2,006 the Big Easy's tally was 77 per 100,000, equivalent to over 6,000 murders for New York, which saw less than 600 murders in 2006.  Read this 6-pager for a chilling portrait of the evils that supine local government can give rise to.  The ghastly mess did not cost Mayor Ray Nagin his job, but the disintegration of the city surely helped the pathetic incumbent Governor, Kathleen Blanco, to decide not to run for a second term.

Katrina Kayos Kathleen

The India Post reports that Republican Congressman Bobby Jindal (who is of Indian descent) leads incumbent Governor Kathleen Blanco 59-35 in polls, with only 7 percent of voters not already decided, and this nine months before the November 2007 race.  Seems Louisiana voters grasp what the national media, in their eagerness to hang Katrina's aftermath on President Bush, do not: Managerial incompetence at the state level far exceeded that in Washington.  Governor Blanco assailed the President the morning after he gave his State of the Union address, for not mentioning Katrina: "I guess the pain of the hurricane is yesterday's news in Washington," said she.  A Weekend WSJ front-pager details how Katrina funds are not reaching Louisiana (and also Mississippi) due to the Stafford Act, a 1972 federal anti-fraud law that erects major bureaucratic vetting hurdles to government aid; crooked local contractors must be policed to reduce fraud.  The Bush Administration has waived the Stafford Act in the past, but not this time.

The Governor is learning the hard way what one thinks would come naturally to 99.44 percent of politicians: Publicly shifting blame to the President, insulting him and doing whatever possible to damage him, is no way to win friends in any White House.  One suspects Democratic governors like Bill Richardson (New Mexico) and Ed Rendell (Philadelphia) would have known better.  So would many Louisiana Democrats of an earlier generation than the present dope in Baton Rouge.  Nor would prior Democratic Senators--the likes of Russell Long, John Breaux and J. Bennett Johnston--have been huffing right after the storm, as Sen. Mary Landrieu did re President Bush, that they "might likely have to punch him--literally."  They were adults.

Thus Katrina has separated the adults from the kiddie crowd.  Adieu, Ms. Guv, come November.

New Katreans?

The apparent best estimate of New Orleans' s population today is 191,000,and is unlikely to increase, says an NY Times front-pager.

Baghdad by the Bayou

New Orleans is America's 2006 murder capital by the proverbial country mile.  With 235,000 residents (about half the pre-Katrina total) there were 165 murders last year, a rate of 702 per thousand.  This is equal to about 386 murders for Washington, DC, a former titleholder, which had about 200 homicides in 2006 within its 550,000 population.  For New York City's 8,143,000 there would be 5,716 murders at New Orleans carnage pace, about ten times the actual rate.

The Little Easy

The latest Louisiana state government estimate for the post-Katrina population of New Orleans pegs the total at 187,525, 41.3 percent of the 454,000 estimated population before the storm struck.  Those not back yet do not figure to come back.  The city and its supporters say the total is more like 230,000 to 250,000, but who believes them?  Evacuees will by now have discovered that the jurisdiction to which they relocated has, unlike New Orleans, a functioning government and at least passable social services, decent schools and a police force generally reliable and competent.  Why return?  Perhaps more than 200,000 will eventually return, but consider 250,000 a pipe dream (like the hope of good government in New Orleans).

Hurricane 2006 Morning Line

Forecasters see the 2006 hurricane season (June 1 - November 30) having 17 tropical storms, 9 of them hurricanes (2005 saw 26 & 14, respectively).  They see an 81 percent chance that a Cat 3, 4 or 5 storm (using the Saffir-Simpson scale) will hit the continental US (CONUS); Katrina was a Cat 3 at New Orleans and a Cat 4 on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  Historically, 1/3 of hurricanes that hit the US are major (Cat 3, 4 or 5), as this table for 1851-2004 shows.  As this table shows, about 2 of every 9 major hurricanes that hit the CONUS make landfall in Louisiana.  So 2/9ths of the total percentage chance of 81 percent for CONUS yields 22 percent for Louisiana, slightly better than one in five.  Oh, BTW, experts interviewed in the article above said that there is no clear link between hurricanes and global warming.  LFTC wrote on this last year, noting that other factors such as winds, ocean currents, 40-year storm cycles and the relative weak cycle of Pacific and Indian Ocean storms belie GW as an explanation for recent intense Atlantic storm seasons.

Katrina: Blanco Bunco

See if the media give as much coverage to a new tape made Aug. 29 at noon--5 hours after Katrina made landfall and 3 hours after the first leaks in New Orleans levees--showing Louisiana's hapless Governor Kathleen Blanco assuring President Bush that the levees had not been breached.

Bush-Katrina Briefing: Non-Smoking Gun

News yesterday broke a purported "smoking gun" story that a briefing on Sunday, August 28, the day before Katrina hit New Orleans, apprised Bush that Katrina might breach the levees, the import being that Bush (a) was fully warned and (b) lied when after he said he had no inkling the levees might burst.  Two holes: (1) Bush told the Governor on August 28--the same day of the briefing--to evacuate the city, a plea the Governor ignored; (2) On Sunday the 28th, Katrina was still a Category 5 hurricane, but upon making landfall around 7 AM Monday, August 29 Katrina, in the New Orleans vicinity, was a strong Cat 3 (it was a Cat 4 east of New Orleans, along the Gulf Coast).  That a Cat 3 storm might breach the levees neither Bush nor anyone anticipated.  Per Richard Castellano in Lovers and Other Strangers (1970), "So, what's the story, Jerry?"

Katrina Kayo by Congress?

While Congress lambasted Homeland Security Secretary Cherthoff this week, the Wall Street Journal informs us that Congress specifies how 40 percent of emergency preparedness funds are spent by the Department, according to a state-specific formula that allocates the most per capita to Wyoming and then second to Alaska, with (you guessed it) California and New York last.  Cherthoff and his predecessor, Tom Ridge, had less than three years to integrate 22 agencies into a 184,000 person Cabinet department with a $40 billion budget.  WSJ wryly suggests that Jack Welch, GE CEO superstar, would have had trouble doing this.  Now, just imagine Congress running GE....

Keystone Katrina Kops

In a masterpiece of political timing, FEMA (Federal Emergency Miscue Agency) is dropping 12,000 homeless refugees off its hotel-funding rolls 24 hours before St. Valentine's Day and 48 hours before the federal government's release of a massive Katrina report.  Republicans may be thankful that FEMA is mismanaging disaster recovery and not the Party's fall election campaign. Yesterday Senators stomped all over Homeland Security Secretary Michael Cherthoff, who no doubt wishes he had stayed a federal appeals judge--after Katrina his chances of returning to the bench, which would entail a new Senate confirmation--are about the same as the chances of the Islamic world embracing Judaism.  Yesterday the House released its 520-page report on Katrina mismanagement (A Failure of Initiative), which will make for lively beach reading this August (but not in hurricane-prone coastal regions).

A 2/13 Wall Street Journal editorial warned of what it puckishly calls the Louisiana repurchase: a Republican Congressman's proposal to create a $30 billion revolving-door loan facility akin to Fannie Mae, to aid homeowner rebuilding in New Orleans, equal to, says the WSJ, some $250k per home damaged by Katrina.  This would be in addition to the $100 billion combined total of funds spent or authorized for future spending on Katrina aid.

On another note, LFTC posted a Sept. 9, 2005 LA Times story that attributed the failure of the levees to a 1967 suit filed by the environmental group, Save Our Wetlands.  The group has posted a reply on its website, which has just come to my attention.  To give them due process I am posting it on LFTC.  My view, after reading the Save Our Wetlands reply, is that LAT has the better of it.  While the federal judge did not, as Save Our Wetlands points out, block the Dutch Gate solution it did request another study.  The Army corps tired of fighting, after a decade, and sought instead a levee upgrade for Cat 3 protection.  This was a reasonable decision, in that fighting the suit--with eventual outcome highly uncertain--could have consumed more time with New Orleans even less protected than it was after the levees were buttressed, however, inadequately.

Katrina: Big Kahuna Gets Blamed

The NY Times front-pager on new facts investigators have learned re federal, state and local failures to respond to Katrina has, no surprise, a misleading headline blaming the White House.  The article is replete with examples of failings at all levels of government and thus worth a look.  However, the Times misses (intentionally, one suspects), the main point: Effective federal action was contingent upon cooperation from the state and city.  Lamentably, Governor Blanco & Mayor Nagin were concerned above all about protecting their (perceived as total) governing prerogatives--whilst suckling on the federal teat like infants, of course.  A Republican White House was not about to try to muscle in over a female Democrat and black mayor, period.

Deroy Murdock writes on NRO supporting a Congressman's plan for a revolving credit funds, arguing (probably correctly) that free markets alone can't restore New Orleans, 316,000 (69%) of whose 460,000 population reside elsewhere.  Best in his article, however, is a delicious (sorry for the wordplay) quote from super-chief & TV personality Emeril Lagasse.  Asked by NY Post columnist Cindy Adams what is cooking in the Big Easy, Emeril said "nothing."  Then he let fly:
"The mayor's a clunk. The governor is also a clunk. They don't know their [derrieres] from a hole in the ground. All my three restaurants got hit. I've reopened Emeril's, but only a few locals come. There're no tourists. No visitors. No spenders. No money. No future. No people. It's lost. It'll never come back."

Katrina: Smoking State Gun

So, Katrina's failed non-response to Katrina was the feds' fault? Right?  So how come the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee unearthed an e-mail exchange showing that on Aug. 27--two days before Katrina hit--the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) asked Louisiana if it needed helped evacuating hospitals and nursing homes before Katrina hit?  A senior Louisiana health official declined aid--despite the fact that the state had zero intention of implementing any evacuation plans on its own, according to evidence furnished by the State's Transportation Secretary.  HHS sent personnel to help; they arrived the night before Katrina hit, and stayed after the storm to help coordinate transportation.
Breitbart.com: La. Turned Down Feds

New Orleans "Twlight Zone"

Anne Applebaum's column today aptly captures the cognitive dissonance--the "twlight zone," as one resident put it--that afflicts the city.  An intense emotional desire to rebuild everything as before clashes with post-Katrina's harsh reality: that a rebuilt city must of necessity be smaller and different in character than the old Crescent City.  Applebaum concludes that until the reality is accepted New Orleans will stay in its suspended animation.  She is right.  In another development, prodded by a federal judge, the Governor has postponed the city's elections from 2/4 to 4/22.
Applebaum: 'It's Like the Twlight Zone'

Mayor Moonbat in the Big Easy

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has topped his previous rhetorical cannons in remarks delivered on MLK Day--one day after gunfire that left three wounded disrupted a Sunday 1/15 parade celebrating King.  Nagin had, he tells us, a chat with...God.  God (sez Ray) told him: (1) God is mad at the USA; (2) God opposes the Iraq war; (3) God wants a "chocolate" New Orleans; (4) God says black communities must take action to prevent black-on-black violence.  Nagin began:

"Surely God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it's destroyed and put stress on this country..... Surely he doesn't approve of us being in Iraq under false pretenses. But surely he is upset at black America also. We're not taking care of ourselves....It's time for us to come together. It's time for us to rebuild New Orleans-- the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans.  This city will be a majority African American city.  It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no other way.  It wouldn't be New Orleans."

Nagin continued his dialogue with God:
"I said, `What is it going to take for us to move on and live your dream and make it a reality?' He said, `I don't think that we need to pay attention any more as much about other folks and racists on the other side.' He said, `The thing we need to focus on as a community-- black folks I'm talking about-- is ourselves.'"

To his politically incorrect (especially for a liberal) credit, Nagin also asked (God):
"Why is black-on-black crime such an issue? Why do our young men hate each other so much that they look their brother in the face and they will take a gun and kill him in cold blood?"  Nagin relayed God's reply: "We as a people need to fix ourselves first."

Which leaves two questions: (1) If God opposed the US war in Iraq, why didn't he give Saddam live WMD to repel the invasion?  (Is God also mad at Saddam?)  (2) If God wanted a "chocolate" New Orleans, why didn't he send Katrina up the Atlantic Coast, to the rich folks in Connecticut?  (The 1938 Cat 4 hurricane that slammed into New England forced Katharine Hepburn to flee her house, which was swept away as Kate & family watched from a nearby hill.)

Meanwhile, the NY Times reports today that an "independent movement" among former parish residents to repopulate flooded areas has received little support from even the local government.  And today's LA Times reports that design flaws by the Army Corps of Engineers contributed to the collapse of the levees.  The Corps based its construction on the average soil strength, rather than on the weakest soil area.  Budget cuts in the 1990s--during the reign of Mr. "I Feel Your Pain," folks--caused the Corps to trim its investment in soil research.  Their investigation continues.  Perhaps Mayor Nagin will get his new-found deity-pal to supervise construction of the new barriers.
Breitbart.com: Mayor Invokes God re Black City
NY Times: At Center of Storm Destruction, Eager Few Try To Reclaim Parish
LA Times: Fatal Flaws: Why the Walls Tumbled in New Orleans

New Orleans: Fading, Fuming

The 1/12 Los Angeles Times ran a front page article detailing just what a mess the restoration of New Orleans remains.  Mayor Ray C. Nagin's new commission has floated a "Bring Back New Orleans" plan that calls for creation of a new jazz district, and for condemnation of properties in flooded neighborhoods (cost put at up to $12 billion) unless residents vote in critical mass (undefined) to return.  Residents are outraged, accusing the mayor and the elite of "Katrina cleansing."  That the mayor is black makes no impression.   The city is re-populating--slowly.  One estimate is 144,000 current residents, with 250,000 by 2008.  Eugene Robinson writes in the 1/13 Washington Post that of 38,000 historic structures in the city, 25,000 were badly damaged; 108,731 structures--half of city housing--were flooded above four feet.  There is a bright spot here and there: today's WSJ carries a front-pager (link below) on how an ex-nun principal saved her unionized public school--the city's top-rated-- by reconstituting it as a non-union charter school, thus enabling her to fire teachers not up to her standard, thus enraging (naturally) the unions, whose agenda is political power, not education.

AEI's James Glassman proposes a private-sector non-planned rebuild.  This looks off the charts--a major government role is in the cards.  And the final outcome still appears far less rosy than public or private promises call for.  Reality has a nasty way of setting in.
LA Times: A Will-to-Rebuild Deadline Proposed for New Orleans
Glassman: Back to the Future
Requiem for the Crescent City
WSJ: How a Principal in New Orleans Saved Her School

Katrina--and Truth--Kayoed

The National Hurricane Center has demoted Katrina to a Cat 3--for wind speed; but it still roiled the waters while a Cat 5, and roiled water surges even after wind speed dies down.  So Katrina becomes less elevated in the cyclonic storm hall of fame.  Meanwhile, truth was kayoed at a Congressional hearing ginned up by "Bush knew about 9/11 beforehand" loon Cynthia McKinney, returned by her imbecile constituents to Congress last year.  TAS has a neat piece by Mark Goldblatt on the outrageous charges of racism and attempted genocide aired at the hearing.  One witness claims that the levees were bombed by the military; another that a soldier trained a laser-sighted rifle at her child's forehead.  It was the same guy who kidnapped Elvis and is holding him at the North Pole....
Goldblatt: Race, Reason and Reaching Out after Katrina

New Orleans: Can the Feds Lead?

Manhattan Institute scholar Nicole Gelinas, a first-class urbanist, sees a way that President Bush can lead the rebuilding of New Orleans.  She fears that Democrats, aided by a media pack uninterested in state and local failings, will successfully use the issue in 2006 against Republicans.  Gelinas proposes that the President pony up federal funds to build Cat 5 storm protection, conditioned upon restructuring of the levee boards--staffing them with competent professionals and monitoring their expenditure of funds.

All fine and good, except for two things.  First: Local officials will never cede control--even if it means the death of the city--to a federal authority they regard as hostile to their political interests.  Second: Residents displaced by Katrina, the great majority of whom had never before lived outside New Orleans, now live elsewhere.  That experience gives them, for the first time in their lives, a real-world benchmark against which to measure life in New Orleans.  They are discovering that there are places competently governed, with quality law enforcement and better schools, plus wider economic opportunity.  There is little reason to believe that any significant number will return to New Orleans.  It is the domestic equivalent of that old saying after World Wars I & II: Once they have seen Gay Paree, it is hard to keep them down on the farm.  The President should make the offer Gelinas suggests, for the record, to put the onus where it belongs: on the locals.

Meanwhile, today's LA Times reports today that about 3 of 5 evacuees now resides within 300 miles of New Orleans, and that these are predominantly middle-class whites.  Poor residents, mostly black, were scattered farther away and are less likely to return.  The article claims no motivation behind this in noting that residents can more easily re-locate if close, and that the racial mix of the city will surely change.  Yet it is hard to see mass relocation until the levees are fixed, and repair by June 2006 is far from assured, as LFTC has noted.

But have no illusions, the New Orleans of legend is gone forever.  Figure less than 200,000 eventually settle there (compared to pre-Katrina's 462,000), creating a theme park plus small industrial port city, unless (as appears quite likely) plans are sabotaged by the local politicos, in which case figure nothing gets done.
Gelinas: A Conservative Approach to Rebuilding the City
Gelinas: Solving the President's New Orleans Problem
LA Times: New Orleans Diaspora Racially Divided

Katrina: The Big Un-Easy

Deroy Murdock reports in the 12/2 NRO on details of shenanigans down yonder in New Orleans.  Money for locals?  Trust, but verify.  In the event, if the stuff he reports about levees not being sunk deep enough is true, it's all over anyway.  No way a bottom-up rebuild can be completed by June, when storm season resumes.  That is but part of the problem. Once again, Mayor Ray C. Nagin has opened his mouth and shown how out-of-sync with reality he and his city are, in calling upon Washington, yet again, to bail his city out: "At the end of the day, We're Americans.  We have paid our taxes.  It's time for them to pay back."  Does not sound like Haley Barbour, Jeb Bush or Rick Perry, does he?

Nagin's comment came in a Washington Post piece on how his appeals to residents have been falling on deaf ears; residents, it seems, are finding better services and more opportunities in the places where they went.  Some revealing quotes from former residents in the WP piece: "Tell the truth."  "Answer the question."  "He's a loser."  "Come home?  To what?"

Communications newly revealed show state officials worried that if the President visited while the Governor was out of the state pressure might build for transfer of authority from state to federal officials.  Also, national supporters were urged to say that "the federal response was anemic" and that budget cuts to levee programs were the culprit for the disastrous flooding.  Louisiana officials saw a PR disaster for Bush.  In a front-pager today the Washington Post reports that Bush's people were accused by Louisiana pols of trying to shift blame, but that very article notes that an aide to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid told a Louisiana aide to the Governor that Democrat were "mobilizing big-time to push back on criticism of the state."

Governonr Kathleen Blanco who relied on ad hoc advice from the National Guard as to her authority, deep-sixed a Bush plan to unify command by federalizing the Guard, ten minutes before a scheduled Rose Garden announcement; the state chief executive who could not be bothered to organize a pre-storm evacuation wanted to command 40,000 federales.  Anyone think Governors Barbour, Bush or Perry thought this way?  OK, they are Republicans and so is 43, but does anyone think Louisiana Democrat (ex-Senator) John Breaux would have played his hand the way Louisiana's feckless Governor did?

Nagin's latest salvo is truly rich: "There is a very strong conservative element in Washington that is basically overly focused on the budget, and they want to sustain their presence in Iraq, and it seems as though New Orleans has been pushed to the background.  I think that's very unfortunate.  I am looking for them to honor the President's commitment.  He looked me in the eyes and said. 'We are going to rebuild New Orleans,' and we're going to hold him to that."  On top of the $60 billion already voted in Katrina relief for Louisiana, Bush now proposes to shift $17 billion for levee and road reconstruction; the state delegation asked for $250 billion, a sum that even before Rita and Wilma was simply off the charts.  The latest price tag for a Cat 5-safe rebuild of the levees is $32 billion.  Nagin wants Cat 3 by June, but the state's own levee chicanery may well preclude even this.

Nagin's response to complaints about taxpayer fatigue is to ask why we are rebuilding Iraq, and why did we rebuild Japan.  Mayoral obtuseness is but one of Nagin's sins.  Summing up how pathetic New Orleans has become, here is Nagin again: "The city is broke.  We don't have any money.  We are begging and borrowing from anybody who will listen."  Yo, Ray, folks are seeing governors and mayors in the other Katrina-creamed states step up to the plate and do everything they can to minimize soaking taxpayers.  Well, Ray, what say?
Murdock: New Orleans Graft
Washington Post: New Orleans Mayor Beseeches Residents to Return
State Officials Sought to Blame Feds, Keep Power
NY Times: Louisiana E-Mails Tell Political Story
Washington Post: Katrina PR Battle
Washington Times: Nagin Decries New Orleans Funding 

New Orleans: Will Race Delay 2006 Mayoral Race?

Absent Katrina, New Orleans would surely hold its scheduled city elections as planned, in February 4, 2006.  Mayor Ray Nagin is up for re-election.  But there are calls for postponing the election, with 80 percent of the 462,000 pre-Katrina population still outside the city, and nearly300 of the city's 442 polling places destroyed or damaged by Katrina.  The argument for postponement is put starkly by a Louisiana Democratic state legislator:

"The minority became the majority, and the majority became the minority.  That changed the whole outlook of the political scene.  If you have an election right now, it is going to be some of the people voting on behalf of all the people."

Most of the 60,000 to 100,000 residents who have returned are middle-class whites, to a city that was two-thirds black pre-Katrina.  Absentee balloting would be needed on an unprecedented scale, yet it is not clear if voters who might cast ballots intend to return.  While the State has the initial decision, the Justice Department must also approve, per the 1965 Voting Rights Act supervisory provisions.

Tellingly, the NY Times article cites "racial fairness" as a consideration in whether to hold the election as scheduled.  There is, of course, an alternative to creating a new racial entitlement ("Once a city goes black, it stays black"): How about holding the election as scheduled, and if after that residents return in greater numbers they get to vote in the next city election?
NY Times: New Orleans 2006 Vote Unclear

Education: Katrina Blows Away "The Education Blob"

Today's Wall Street Journal reports that in the wake of Katrina, with private and parochial schools opening far faster than are New Orleans public schools, Louisiana--spurred by even its go-slow Democratic Governor, herself a former school teacher--are liberalizing charter school programs and showing receptivity even to vouchers.  With New Orleans' completely corrupt and hopeless public school system unable to even open, school choice is the only available educational alternative.  Seems that to reform what Reagan-era Education Secretary William Bennett called "the education blob" takes a Category 4 hurricane.  Which suggests that to get education reform in California we need another San Francisco Quake, and for Iowa we need tornadoes.  There must be a better way, such as politicians voting to expand school choice without waiting for natural disasters to wipe out the entire public school infrastructure.
Wall Street Journal: Katrina Aftermath Boosts School Choice

Hurricane Wilma Wrecks Florida

Hurricane Wilma makes a 2005 trifecta for ruinous storms.   Damage in Broward County, which includes Fort Lauderdale, is immense; Dade County, which includes Miami, did better, because after Hurricane Andrew (1992) Miami-Dade rebuilt to better codes, while Broward, which escaped Andrew, did not.  According to friends living there, rebuilding roofs may take more than a year, for want of construction material.  Well. at least they are honest in Florida.
Wilma Damage Leaves Floridians Homeless
Florida Shelter Crisis

The Big Wheezy: "No" Orleans

Reports from the LA Times and the Washington Post bring renewed force to the emerging reality: New Orleans is dead.  Call it "No Orleans."  Start with the LA Times, which reports today that Louisiana and Mississippi residents have developed a wheeze dubbed "Katrina cough," from ingesting mold and dust particles; this is especially virulent among residents of the Big Easy.  Exposure to contaminated air can lead to sinusitis and bacterial bronchitis.  And Mayor Ray wanted 80 percent of his residents back by October.  Fortunately for them, they are not as dumb as he is.

It gets worse.  Today's Washington Post reports that commission proliferation--the Congress, the Governor, the Mayor--is stalling Katrina recovery projects.  Also, while Mayor Ray says there is "no federal mayor of New Orleans" the reality is the Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."  Louisiana wants $250 billion, no strings.  Right.  To date, of $27 billion federal money, Mayor Ray has discretion to spend...$15 million.  Given New Orleans' record of epic corruption this seems about right.  Would you trust a city whose own levee board and contractors chintzed on the quality of the very bulwark that kept the city alive?

Besides corruption incompetence rears its ugly head.  Mayor Ray's Commission is pondering such things as: the exact oath for members to take, whether it is a public or private entity, whether the mayor and a city council member can legally sit on the board, how it relates to the state panel.  Next: arguments over the shape of the commission table.  Meanwhile, the NY Times reports that conflict between local and out-of-state workers is escalating, driven partly by resentment at the influx of undocumented Hispanic workers.

Ray's casino idea came up snake-eyes; landmark restaurants are re-locating; the New Orleans Saints are looking at San Antonio (where they can keep the franchise name, should they so wish), while Mayor Ray says the team can return but not the owner (if you were him...?).  And what if the levees cannot be restored to pre-Katrina strength, as rebuilding efforts run into more unpleasant surprises?  Bet on this.  Yet they still want the money now.  Brings to mind, doesn't it, Sundance's query to Butch: "Who are these guys?"

New Orleans, the article says, has become like "A Streetcar named Desire" heroine Blanche du Bois, depending, as did she, on "the kindness of strangers."  Except that Mayor Ray and Governor Dingbat and Senator Moonbat Loudmouth lack Vivien Leigh's legendary beauty and femme fatale charm--which is what it would take to get Congress to send gazillions of no-strings dollars to the Bayou, and without which the restoration of the old city is a pipe dream.
LA Times: "Katrina Cough" Floats Around
Washington Post: Who's in Charge of Rebuilding New Orleans?
NY Times: Worker Influx Causes Conflict

Wetlands On Our Side Now?

Last weekend's Weekend Wall Street Journal carried a front-pager on a proposal from a geologist to divert 1/3 of the Mississippi River to stimulate return of lost wetlands--no small task, as the Big Muddy pumps 3.7 million gallons per second into the Gulf of Mexico.  Wetlands sop up one foot of storm surge for every three miles; the loss of wetlands since 1970 allowed bigger surges into New Orleans than in earlier hurricanes.  The Army Corps of Engineers is studying the matter, which is part of the Katrina relief proposal pending in DC.

It would be nice if pro-wetlands folks help humans this time.  As the LA Times reported two months ago (and as LFTC noted), in 1967 the enviro-group Save Our Wetlands brought a lawsuit, charging that reducing salt water flow into Lake Ponchartrain would harm marine life.  They prevailed, and thus blocked construction of a Dutch sea-gate barrier that would have protected New Orleans from Katrina's wrath.  In the event, the article is engrossing, with much history of note, and worth a gander.
Weekend Journal: Wetlands Proposal for Mississippi Under Study

Levee Louses

The New York Times reports that at a Senate hearing yesterday a civil engineer, engaged by the National Science Foundation to study the New Orleans levees, testified that contractors, workers and even widows of contractors had told him levee construction in the Big Easy was shoddy, with substandard soil and shallow pilings used in the $458 million system built over 40 years (since Hurricane Betsy).  Proper construction would, according to the director of the Louisiana Hurricane Center, have contained flooding to half the area inundated, and kept water height to 5 - 7 instead of 15 feet.  More reason why not one dollar should be sent to the city or state without adult audit supervision.
NY Times: Malfeasance Might Have Hurt Levees

Naming Storms: Alphabet Atrophy

The hurricane-naming staff must have cut school when discussing the alphabet.  In their world we find no Q, U, X, Y or Z.  Hence Storm 22 is named Alpha.  The stated reason: lack of proper names.  Really?  Herewith female and male names for the Forlorn Five: Q - Queenie & Quincy; U - Ulla & Umberto; X - Xenia & Xerxes; Y - Yasmin & Yannick; Z - Zoe & Zoltan.  The numbskull namers have never heard of a lead character in Broadway Melody of 1929, the character Jack Klugman played on TV, the sexpot character in The Producers, the clam-house where Crazy Joe Gallo showed up on the wrong Saturday night in 1972; the Warrior Princess, the Persian King, Rita Hayworth's daughter by the Aga Khan, the famous French tennis player of 15 years ago, Clinton's A-G flame-out whose name is a synonym for a "nanny problem" and one of the Hargitay clan (he who married Jayne Mansfield and fathered Mariska of Law & Order SVU).

Austin Agonistes: The Lone Star State Beckons

The 10/22 Washington Post presents more sobering reality that shows why New Orleans as it was pre-storm will never fully revive.  The article, beautifully written, tells of the plight of one three-generation black family that settled in Austin, Texas, and is weighing whether to return to NO ever.  Grandparents Earnest and Dolores Smith wish to return, grandkids wish to stay and father is caught in between.  The father, Ryan Smith, is a FEMA worker now looking for work in Austin.  The boys, Deron, 10 and Tyler, 8, are enrolled at a mostly Hispanic school; the kids were placed in remedial and special ed classes, while parents of students at the school are offered parenting and nutrition classes.

Austin contrasts sharply with NO.  Austin is a boom town, NO a dying city; Austin is 10 percent black and 1/3 Hispanic, while NO was 67 percent black but only 3 percent Hispanic; Austin's population is 1/3 comprised of people who moved there, whereas NO was 85 percent comprised of permanent residents.  Of 1,000 Katrina refugees, 700 have so far decided to stay.

A major factor in Austin's attractiveness is that the city is hospitable; refugees were greeted with "Welcome to Austin."  Austin in recent years took in refugees from Liberia, Bosnia and Kosovo.  Good governance makes a huge difference.  One displaced man, Steve Harris, said: "If I get work, I'm not going back to New Orleans.  Why should I go back?  They left me to die."
Washington Post: Evacuees Begin to Put Down Roots

Horse Feathers in La-La Land

Gov. Dingbat knows priorities when she sees them.  Louisiana is appropriating $45 million for various state projects, including a horse arena.  The bill's supporters brushed off warnings that when asking the feds for a cool quarter-trillion simoleons this is not a smart move.  You'd think a deficit already at $1.5 billion and with a collapsing tax base that they'd think this over.  Proves once again that government is the ultimate "gift that keeps on giving."
Louisiana Sets Priorities

Nagin's Null Set; Post's Dull Set

Robert Novak wrote on 10/17 that the picture in--and future for--New Orleans looks grim.  Only 23,000 of 460,000 residents (5 percent) are living there.  Of 2,520 small business loan applications filed with the feds, 6 have been granted.  The state pols--mayor, governor and both senators--are regarded as jokes--their $250 billion grab-all will be laughed out of Congress.  Novak stayed at a small hotel in the French Quarter; there was no service and hardly any staff.  Locals wish to rebuild NO without the headline-hogging pols.  Perhaps 250,000 will live here.  Perhaps far fewer.

The 10/19 Washington Post reports: "There is concern that [New Orleans] will be much smaller, whiter, richer and more homogeneous: an anodyne, theme-park version of the Big Easy dominated by highbrow restaurants and lowbrow bars of the unflooded French Quarter."  The WP, it seems, sees inherent virtue in a marrying poverty and diversity.   Would these folks object to a blacker NO?

But there is am ethnic wild-card: Ruben Navarette, Jr. writes in the San Diego Tribune that workers flocking to NO to clean it up are disproportionately Hispanic; what was a 3 percent Latino population may become 12 to 15 percent.  Contractors are, it seems, very happy with their work.  Mayor Nagin told reporters that he wonders how he can "ensure that the city is not overrun by Mexican workers."  Imagine the media firestorm were any white leader to say that.

Today's Washington Post article also reports a slight arithmetic error by the Red Cross: Instead of 600,000 refugees due to Katrina there are only 200,000.  Would you fly in an airplane built by those folks?
Novak: New Orleans Gone
Washington Post: Economics of Katrina
Washington Post: Red Cross Miscounts
Navarette: Hispanics Move to New Orleans

Bureaucracy Cooks Up a Storm

The Washington Post reports today that federal agencies are playing Alphonse & Gaston with food aid from Great Britain, sent to help Katrina victims.  Seems a 1997 law banning food imports from the UK due to Mad Cow disease is gumming up the works.  But a Brit official points out that we requested the emergency package.  When bureaucrats get in the kitchen, expect pig slop for dinner.
Washington Post: Food Aid Held Hostage

New Orleans: Rendezvous With a Harsh Reality

The Washington Post reports that New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has embarked on a campaign to woo city residents back; they are scattered in 44 states.  Nagin implored former residents to "get back to the red beans and rice and gumbo and all those things that you love."  Hizzoner told refugees that crime is lower than it has been in a century.  This is true.  The city has a fresh recipe for fighting crime: no residents, no crime.  (Why didn't Rudy think of that?)  Top restaurants are using paper plates and cups, and offering as much as $6,000 to waiters who return.  The original mayoral estimate that half the city's residents would eventually return looks increasingly optimistic.  Yet Nagin said: "They're frustrated, they're stressed.  After a certain amount of time they'll yearn for it....It's such a unique place."

Alas for Hizzoner, here's one thing residents don't love:  smelly houses rotted by weeks of water damage.  Said Coast Guard Vice-Admiral Thad Allen, Katrina relief chief, whose grip on empirical reality has consistently exceeded that of the Mayor, restoring the worst-hit neighborhoods "will take months and sometimes longer to create a livable environment."  Allen believes that it will take 6 to 18 months to rebuild the 200,000 to 250,000 housing units deemed uninhabitable.

Which tees up the question of the day: Will the political establishment embrace reality and recognize that the old NO is gone forever?  The residents, it seems, have more sense than their politicos.  Even with better leaders than Mayor Fakin,' Governor Dingbat and Senator Moonbeam "punch out the President" Lamebrain the task would be too much.  Rebuilding the lower parishes makes no sense.  Those tragically made refugees can have better opportunities elsewhere, living in places with more diverse economies and serious governance.

A new NO is needed for three reasons: (1) workers at the South Louisiana Port Complex can live nearby; (2) the tourist trade for the old city of jazz, nightlife, fine dining, museums, etc.; (3) the symbol of renewal.  A smaller city bult only on the high points can be better managed and safer.  Less than half should return.  Katrina is an especially cruel form of urban renewal, but its handiwork cannot be undone.
Washington Post: New Orleans Evacuees Urged to Return to City

Will Louisiana Party on Taxpayer Largesse?

Wesley Pruden's Washington Times column today counsels prudence in scrutinizing the 440-page wish list Louisiana's pols sent Congress.  He offers a long list of suspect items culled from the bill by AEI's Veronique de Rugy.  Louisiana pols want taxpayers to pay up and shut up.  Fortunately, the list is so outrageous that Congress is unlikely to do so.  Stay tuned.
Pruden: Louisiana Wish List

Superhyped Superdome

More on what was hyped negatively at the Superdome--much from New Orleans phony-baloney officialdom.  The interview here is superb.  Check it out.
Superdome: Not Safe, But Not "Lord of the Flies" Either

"We Have To Think Out of the Box"

New Orleans Mayor Ray Fakin' has a new proposal to push his city's recovery: Vegas-style gambling in hotels with 500 or more rooms.  Said Mayor Fakin': "We have to think out of the box."  Yo, Ray, this is "thinkin' out of the box" in Mecca; in New Orleans this is "coals to Newcastle" (so long as there is Dixieland Jazz in the background).

With apologies to the unnamed lyric writer for the "Maverick" TV Theme:
Who is the dumbest mayor there
"Fakin' Nagin's" his name
Hustlin' the Prez is his play fair
Snowin' press is easy
Rip-offs are his game

FEMA you go to Hell
Congress make us get well
Nuttin' us locals do can pass the test
Tourists to New Orleans
E coli in bloodstreams
Fakin' it is what May'r Ray does the best
Fakin' it is what May'r Ray does the best!

Deju (Underclass) Vu All Over Again

Charles Murray writes in a 10/2 Opinion Journal op-ed that Katrina/Rita coverage and government response to the plight of the underclass is predictable--and misguided.  Murray notes that higher rates of incarceration have reduced criminality among the underclass (a linkage to which liberals seem oblivious, as they ask why we are locking so many folks up if crime is going down).  However, due to illegitimacy rates--68% among blacks, 24% among whites (34% nationwide)--underclass economic misery and social decay persist.  Programs proposed in Katrina's wake include many that were tried before without success; they will, Murray predicts, fail again.  And we will be shocked again to discover the persisting underclass next time.  I would sum his piece up by borrowing the famous gibe tossed at the Bourbons, who, it was said, "have learned nothing and forgotten nothing."  Kemp-style enterprise zones are appealing, but they presume a social cohesion that enables traditional economic incentives to work their magic.  The family factor likely will prove decisive.
Murray: It's the Family Factor

Katrina Miffs Peggy, Senate Spares Kathleen

Peggy Noonan, in a characteristically elegant Opinion Journal op-ed today, takes government and media to task over Katrina: government for wielding to much authority for its own sake--dragging a bather out of rough Texas waters as Rita approached, dragging a resident with plenty of food, water and ammunition out of his New Orleans home--and not enough responsibility--letting chaos descend on shelters.  Reminds me of Ronald Reagan's line about government being like a baby--all appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.  Poetic Peggy also hits the Media for hyping storm fears, which drives folks to accept more government authority than is healthy.  She is, of course, right on all counts.

Meanwhile, at a Senate hearing yesterday Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco was allowed to testify about rebuilding needs without answering for her pathetic paralytic performance, in stark contrast to the grilling ex-FEMA head Mike Brown got before a House panel Tuesday.  It seems that finding out about state irresponsibility that shifts liability to the feds is not a big deal for some Senators.  Thanks, folks.
Noonan: Government and Media
Washington Times: Senators Give Blanco a Pass

Backwash From Katrina; Ruins After Rita

Jonah Goldberg discusses on NRO today that much of the horrors of New Orleans turned out to be fish stories swimming in Katrina's wake.  Fair enough.  Thus some of the horror tales told by eyewitnesses apparently never happened.  Thugs ran loose at the Convention Center and Superdome, but child rape was not (thank Heaven) on the menu.  But enough happened to justify calling both places hellholes and fault government at all levels for failing to stop the thugs.

That said, the most disturbing revelation is that falsehoods originated with not only the imbecile mayor but also the newly-departing police chief.  Eddie Compass, it seems, lacks any compass at all.  He told tall tales, while 15 percent of his cops took furlough rather than help the city they had sworn to defend.  Now, buried in one report is that Eddie pointed his financial compass towards NYC, in search of a literary agent.  It will be a test of how low we have sunk culturally as to whether Eddie gets his deal.  And if so, whether anyone buys it.   Michelle Malkin has some neat quotes from Eddie, who was styling himself as a hero last week.

Meanwhile, back at Rita's ranch, turns out she was no lady in the Gulf of Mexico.  For much of her Gulf passage she was a Cat 5 storm, and inflicted more damage on oil rigs than any storm ever.
Goldberg: Hurricane of Exaggeration
Malkin: Katrina Furor Will Escalate
Rita Wrecks Gulf Rigs

Wealth Works Well

Rich Karlgaard writes at Forbes that Democratic hostility to the private sector, and resulting support for government entitlement programs was not only wrong re Katrina, where the private sector firms out-performed (not hard) government.  It is also contrary to the belief of none other than FDR, who said in 1935: "Dependence [on welfare] induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber.  To dole our relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit."
Karlgaard: Wonderful Wealth