Mr Bush? Your Car Is Waiting

A few general observations on the Bush second term:

Prior to the Clinton impeachment, the President was always referred to as "the President" or "President ," never, ever, as "Mister ." After the Clinton impeachment, he was alternated between "President Clinton" and "Mister Clinton" usually the second when they were discussing some legal woe. Mister Bush gets referred to once as either President Bush or as the President, but after the first one is out of the way, it's Mister Bush from then on out.

George got elected on "keeping us safe," then watched FEMA and Homeland Security bungle its way through Katrina, and is trying to avoid any kind of federal involvement on Rita, saying "we're here to help," and wondering if this isn't an activity better suited to being turned over to the active military (as opposed to the guard/reserves). I can't say ANY part of that response leaves me feeling safer.

At the rate the national debt is growing, the federal government will be doing nothing but paying interest on it.

The Bushies will let any offense dealing with money get a free pass (Enron, Arthur Anderson, Citibank, Exxon, Worldcom, Halliburton, etc.) until the public is so outraged that it can't continue, but will do its best to whip the public into a frenzy over anything not dealing with money as long as it is to their benefit (gay marriage, abortion, "family values," but not civil rights or voter fraud).

Liberal lobbyists are "radical" (Sierra Club, ACLU) but conservative lobbyists are "family oriented" (Rush Limbaugh, Discovery Institute).

Cannot get anything straight about education. "No Child Left Behind" but promote "Intelligent Design" and cut post secondary education funding. Either the goal is to prepare America for the 21st Century we live in, or prepare them to the return of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," don't say one and do the other.

They screamed that "Nation Building" is not something we should get involved in during the 2000 campaign, screamed "regime change" in the 2002 elections, then went into the "Nation Building" business in 2003. By 2006 it appears that they will be out of this business, failed and bankrupt just like all of the other businesses Mister Bush has run.

Dick Chaney had anyurisms in BOTH LEGS? Huh? How does that one work?

If nominating Roberts is going to go like this (Democrats divided, Republicans saying if Bush sends up another candidate like him they'll vote against), what chance does a nominee replacing O'Connor have? He can't nominate a centrist, or "conservative light" as his own party will rebel, but if he nominates a super conservative (Scalia jr?) the Democrats would consider the nuclear option but won't have to when the centrist Republicans jump ship and join to vote him down.

What's going to happen if Cheney simply has a massive coronary and keels over? How does he manage to get the senate to approve anyone? Who will run the country? Karl Rove?

The head of OMB spending just got indicted with fingers pointing at Jack Abramoff as the next domino to go. Bill Frist is under investigation now for insider trading. Haliburton subsidary KBR is feeding at the dual troughs of Iraq and Katrina. Tom Delay is still under investigation in Austin, Texas. Is this going to be a controlled fire that only does light damage or is it spreading beyond the firewall and about to consume everything in sight?

Those are just a few thoughts.

Houston? We have a problem.

No, today's rant isn't about NASA (although that is a topic that is still out there) this one is about the nightmarish evacuation of Houston. The plan was, Houston had been divided into three "groups" for evacuation. The outlying areas would be Group A, clearing the path for Group B in the closer areas to go roughly 8 hours later, and then Group C in the middle would go last.

What moron came up with this plan? Have they never been to an airport? All the airlines try to board planes this way and it works about as well there. What they end up with is a clogged line at the gate as people try to be first in line for their group, then a clogged line in the jetway as people line up at the bottleneck of the door, then a clogged line in the aisle as people wait for people to actually plant their fat asses in seats that are too small. ANYONE could have told them that this wouldn't work worth a damn, and lo and behold, it didn't.

And to make matters worse, this was an orderly evacuation, with days worth of lead time. What would this look like in an actual "right now" emergency? Here's a better question, what would constitute a "right now" emergency? Bio-war? Chemical attack? Maybe it's a good thing that the evacuation plans are so screwed up. In the event of a chemical attack, it is likely it would be over before anyone know what was going on. In general, chemical attacks last a few minutes, and then they're over (at least the immediate effects, things like dioxin will still kill, but that takes years). In the case of a bio attack, the fact that evacuation fails so badly could mean that the effected area can be cordoned rather than the panicked flight spreading the attack all over.

What then is a scenario that would require emergency evacuation? Union Carbide in Bhopal, the worst chemical accident in history. That's a good example. Chernobyl is another. Those however, are not the sorts of things that we see "Homeland Security" dealing with. Blowing up some miscellaneous landmark will frighten people, "Oh no, they took out the Chicago courthouse!" But the damage is relatively minor. A small number of people killed and injured, some lost records, and that is all. But what would be the result if they decided to go after something that isn't even considered a target anymore, like a decommissioned nuclear plant? How about an exploding gas tanker leaving a regional chemical plant? The things are everywhere, and would create circumstances where an evacuation would be needed.

Failing to take into account the human reaction is a sure way to fail. It's time to be smart about how to make these things work before someone else figures out how to use them against us.

Not So Fast New Orleans

Rita
Above you will see the current projection for Tropical Storm (and likely soon to be Hurricane) Rita. Mayor Nagin, Governor Blanco and Mr. Shrub, I hope you are paying attention. Given current gulf conditions which haven't changed a great deal over the past three weeks, you are about to get hit by another major storm.

It was a good move to delay people going back to New Orleans. After all, there isn't electricity or drinkable water, so showing up now would be asking for trouble. A better question might be, can the levees and other systems (none of which are at full capacity currently) handle another major storm? I guess we'll have to wait and see.

If this is a second direct hit though, the question will not be whether to rebuild, that question will be gone. The new question will be where to build.

Just in case though, hurricanes don't discriminate, the center of the projected path? Galveston/Houston. Maybe god is trying to tell us not to burn so much oil by taking it away?

Unintelligent Design

Once upon a time, there was nothing. Then God said, there needs to be something and made it all. This is creationism and it got chucked out of schools because it's not scioence, it's religion, and there is no place in public school for teaching dogma.

So, the new version of this is, "Once upon a time there was nothing. Then somebody said there needs to be something and made it all." This is intelligent design. I'm sorry, but I fail to see the big difference here. Why should this pile of crap be taught? What does it explain? Well, gee, we think life started like this and there is no explanation? I can get a better description of the origin of life from a four year old. At least that one has a potential for humor.

The people pushing ID are liars and hucksters of the worst kind. They point to the theory of evolution and say that there is disagreement, and that because of this, their idea should be taught too. Never mind the fact that there is absolutely nothing to support the idea. Never mind that there is an entire world of data that supports it (literally, it's called "The Earth"). They want us to think that because there are arguments between the scientists, that their pile of garbage is too.

It is not. It is anti-science.

Science is about finding explanations for things in the natural world, and every bit of it is always being looked at. Everything. Gravity, how electricity works, light, chemistry, all of it is always being re-examined. ID says we don't know, and can never know, so stop looking.

Evolutionary science has all sorts of arguments going on. Is it a slow steady process, or does it happen in leaps? Is Gould and Eldredge's "punctuated equilibrium" idea right? Why did sharks survive but other aquatic dinosaurs not? These are all valid questions. ID wants all of those to just stop.

This is the same argument that Gallileo and Copernicus had hundreds of years ago, fighting against the church. Hundreds of years later, we have now sent things to those places that they were looking at in their telescopes, but none of that would have happened had they not asked questions. Intelligent Design is about not asking questions. It is about being and staying ignorant of the world around us, and it should be burned and interred with the rest of history's failures as one more gasp from the quacks who would suppress truth.

Venezuela?

Lat night Hugo Chavez said that the US is planning to invade Venezuela. Now I can see where this looks more than a little nuts, but...

The first issue here is the attempted coup a few years ago. Was that us? Maybe, maybe not. Was it us that set the whole thing up? That's a different question. Did we get involved in trying to make it work? Yes. We're the ones who sent a plane down there to "give him an out" so there isn't any question that on some level we were involved.

Were we involved in the Haiti coup? I think most people would say yes we were. We're the ones who flew Aristide out of there, and the ones that he screamed set him up. Did we overthrow the Taliban? Yes, that was us. Did we overthrow Saddam Hussein? Yes, that was us too. There's a history of these sorts of things from the current administration, so maybe the assertion isn't so nuts after all.

Let's try this in a different light. Do we have plans to invade Venezuela? Probably. We've got plans for all kinds of weird crap (remember Ollie North and the REX plans for creating American concentration camps?) so is it possible that we have plans out there to invade Venezuela? I would say not just possible but likely.

Is it likely we are getting ready to implement those plans and invade? No. First, the military is already stretched beyond our ability to maintain. The current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are about the limit of what we can do right now. We might be able to pull of something else, but it is not likely. Second, there is no UN anything under which we could get away with it. Were we to invade Venezuela, the rest of the world would see they are not safe from US predation and cut us off at the knees. Japan, Europe, and China would all dump sanctions on us, and right now, there is not one thing you can do that doesn't involve international trade.

Is Chavez right to be paranoid? Absolutely. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.

A Line in the Sand

For the past two years we have seen why the United States did not invade Iraq 15 years ago. It has nothing to do with our troops being wounded or killed, it is because Iraq in the cold war world was run by one strongman after another, holding the country together by force of will and force of arms. That meant oppression for the groups not in power, but that is nothing new around the world.

Iraq is roughly 20% Kurdish, 20% Sunni, and 60% Shi'a. Under Saddam, the Sunni minority ruled, and the Shi'a and Kurds got the short end of the stick. We have now removed Saddam, a dictator we helped create, and the result is Iraq is ready to Balkanize, just like, oddly enough, the Balkans following the death of Tito. There is of course a problem with that. No one wants to let the territory of any of the others go (except maybe the Kurds, who would be happy to create a Kurdistan). The Shi'a want one big country, because one big country is safer than three samller ones. The Sunni's want one big country because if is partitions, all they get is where they are, and the only thing where they are is sand. The Kurds don't really give a damn. One big country or three little ones is all the same to them, because either way, they're making an autonomous Kurdistan, and whether it is its own country or an independant part of an Iraqi Federation, they don't really care.

The Kurds and Shi'as areas have oil. The Sunnis have sand. Whatever the result of their attempts to form a government, whether we stay or not, Iraq promises to be an unstable wreck for years to come.

A Medical Accident

Today's topic: Health Care. Medicine in the United States costs more than in any other country in the world. In fact, the average for the rest of the developed western world (which basically means us, western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and maybe Japan) is about half the cost per capita. What does all of that money get us? It gets us one of the lowest life expectancy rates of the entire group. It gets us higher infant mortality than Cuba (yes, you read that right, Cuba, home of Fidel). In other words, the current system of health care in this country is a pathetic joke.

How did it get this way? Malcolm Gladwell has a rather persuasive argument about this in the August 29th New Yorker. The basic idea is this, Bob has something that he should probably go to the doctor for, but doesn't, because he doesn't have insurance, or doesn't want to, or can't afford the co-pay if he does. Instead, three days later he's in the ER with a much higher bill. Fundamentally, the health care system is designed EXACTLY LIKE the prevention system that failed so miserably in New Orleans two weeks ago. Prevention doesn't happen because the system is geared to keep people away from the doctor to avoid "frivolous" costs.

This presumption utterly fails because of one simple fact. Even if going to the doctor were "free," the vast majority of people don't want to go. The added incentive of having to pay, just makes it even less likely. Net result, care that should be done is not, resulting in increased illness (people don't go to the doctor when they have something other people could catch and get those people sick too) more serious illnesses (people don't go until they absolutely have to meaning they now have something harder to treat) and the added stress this causes shortens life expectancy.

At this point comes the argument, "Well what about the people who always have something they think is wrong but nothing is?" This argument completely misses a significant point. If you eliminate the personal cost of health care, the hypochondriac goes in a couple of times, the general practitioner realizes there is an issue and refers them to a psychiatrist. Because that is also under a "non-pay" system, they actually go, and the problems that had been showing up at the clinic stop because their actual problem (some variety of mental illness) is now being treated.

At the same time that this is going on, HMO's and insurance companies are both working to maximize profit. Everyone has heard the horror stories about the person whose HMO gave them the run-around for treatment to the point that, what would have been easy to deal with if caught early is now crippling.

It is time to change what we do now

Mister Roberts

This past afternoon, Chief Justice nominee John Roberts had his confirmation hearings begin. From the transcripts, Mr. Roberts gave an introduction more like Mr. Rogers than what is normally seen from a nominee. I guess that will have to wait until the question and answer sessions over the next few days.

Judge Roberts, in his remarks, made the comment that he saw the role of the judiciary like the role of an umpire in baseball. They don't make the rules, they make sure they are applied properly. As a baseball fan, I can state categorically that this is not true. Umpires in fact MAKE rules, starting with the very most fundamental, balls and strikes. The baseball rule book says to be counted as a strike, the batter can to do a variety of things, but more importantly, it describes where that strike zone is.

For those who don't know baseball, the rule book definition for the strike zone is, laterally the area in a column above the plate, with the bottom plane at the batter's knees and the upper plane at the letters of the uniform. This is not what any umpire in baseball calls. In reality, the strike zone is more from the bottom of the batter's calf to the top of his belt (for liberal umpires it would be the bellybutton) and extending laterally from the white part of the plate on the inside, to an inch or two off the black on the outside part of the plate.

The only part of how the rule is applied as compared to the rules, is that the ball needs to be in the area of the plate.

In constitutional terms, the stike zone as called is sort of like the right to privacy. It's not actually in the rule book, but it is understood that we have a right to not have the police hanging over our shoulder when we do something like espouse our views that the war in Iraq is a clusterfuck. Mr. Roberts had best come up with a better answer on this one. Judges, like umpires, sometimes have make decisions on things outside the rules. It is a fact of life.

If Judge Roberts is confirmed, and I expect he will be, he will need to do better than his comments today.

Drugs

I've spent enough time harping on just Republican issues, time to harp on a more general one, drugs.

I am not going to say I'm in favor of drugs. I'm not, and I'm generally against drugs in sports. While I'm more against than either of those is the fact that drugs are illegal.

If Johnny wants to smoke a bong, LET HIM!

Why would any sane person think this? Here are just a few reasons. Since the "War on Drugs" started over 30 years ago, drug use has remained basically constant. Different drugs come into vogue now and then (Crack, Special K, hell horse has even made a comeback and now that the Taliban isn't interdicting it in Afghanistan anymore, supply is up, price is down and it's probably doing better than is has in decades), but overall, drug use is at about the same levels it was 30 odd years ago when ithe "war" started. Obviously the billions of dollars being spent isn't making much of a difference. That's reason #1.

Number two, money. Make the damn stuff legal and tax the stuff. Take that money and funnel it into drug education, drug rehab, drug funding (not subsidizing drugs, testing the manufacturers to make sure the stuff is being made right) and actually boosting law enforcement abilities. You want to get stoned? Fine. You want to get stoned and go for a spin? Not fine. Get more cops out there doing, of all things, traffic control. Get busted once, you get a big fat fine. Get busted a second time, you lose your car. Got the munchies? WALK to the damn store, it's good for you.

Number three, drug related crime. Remember prohibition? Banning alcohol MADE the mob. Drugs are doing the exact same thing now. I'm much more worried about getting popped in a drive by because I go out for dinner and some drug seller is sitting two tables over, but the guys that get sent out to make the hit are so stoned they hit everyone BUT that guy.

Number four, prison population. Right now the United States has more people in jail than anyone else in the world. that's just sheer number of people. Per capita, we're also number one, and drug offenders make up over 20% of that population. Make them legal, you move people out of jail and into rehab. You are no longer turning some dumb kid into a hardened criminal, because that's the thing prison is best at.

Number five, prison population redux. Right now, actual violent offenders get out because they need room for new people getting sent in. The guy who killed the two little kids in Northern Illinois last summer? He'd been released on probation after chasing family members and neighbors around WITH A CHAINSAW! Chainsaw guy should be in jail. Guys following the Grateful Dead should be left alone. Keep the people who hurt people in jail, let the stoners out.

Is this a perfect idea? No. As people like Len Bias and River Phoenix show, some drugs aren't very good for you. Drug regulation instead of restiction might help stop that. No harmful additives (like strychnine in your LSD) and maybe you don't have bad trips. No fiberglass in your coke and maybe you don't drown with your own blood filling your lungs.

I've got a whole list of other benefits, everything from improved agriculture to textiles to alternate energy, but the items above are the big negatives of the "war" now. Eliminating those problems is cause enough to end this joke of a war now.

Defending Marriage

Here's a little joke. Two rednecks are sitting on a porch drinking lukewarm Budweiser. The first one says to the other, "Damn fags want to get married! We gotta do sumpin' bout that!" The second one comes back with, "Yer right! We don't do something bout it, they'll be screwin' an havin' fag kids and take over!"

Now putting aside the biologic problems with that whole train of thought, the point of the whole "gay marriage" argument is haplessly wrong. This is something that is going on because gay people can't get the same things that everyone else can. If I get married (again...) anything that I have gets shared with my wife. If I get insurance at work, then under most programs, because I'm married, my wife has an opportunity to get in on that. If I get killed in a car crash, Terri Schiavo notwithstanding, my wife doesn't get left out in the cold, there are "death benefits" that default accrue. If I land in the hospital, she is allowed in to see me, and if needed make the decision to pull the plug, again Terri Schiavo and her loopy family notwithstanding.

That's what the homosexuals want. They want the same things the rest of us want.

Oh my god! That will destroy the sancitity of marriage! Oh, bullshit. What sanctity? Half of the marriages end in divorce (I know, I'm part of that half). Of the ones that don't, figure some portion of those are ones that should. You've got abusers, people who get married for the money, shotgun weddings because those rednecks in the joke don't know how people get pregnant, etc. etc. The sancitity of marriage argument doesn't hold up. Catholics? Hey, if you want to hold up that argument, maybe you should stop hiding the priests who have been screwing kids for no one knows how long. Televangelists who push the point so hard? I've got three names for you, Jimmy Swaggart, and Jim and Tammy Faye Baker. Where was the sanctity of marriage when you were doing really weird shit with hookers Jimmy? And Jim? Was Jessica Hahn even legal when you had her brought up to the hotel?

Letting gay people get married does absolutely nothing to anyone else who is married. It doesn't cheapen what they have. It doesn't change their relationship in any way shape or form. What it does do is let the people who are shut out of hospital rooms in. It lets them get insurance through jobs like everyone else. It is not going to make anyone all of a sudden "turn gay." If anything it may help the national health by creating a more open environment and de-stigmatizing being gay. People who aren't trying to hide that they're gay aren't going nuts that someone might find out anymore and "ruin" them.

The numbers say that people who are happily married live longer, are healthier, and more productive than people who aren't. The only argument I can find that adds up are the people pushing against it want gays to be unhappy, get sick, and die.

Let them get married. Let it mean something to everyone. Why should gays be spared the fun that is divorce?

FDA Head Gets F on Plan B

On August 26th, commissioner of the FDA, Lester Crawford, blocked making Plan B, also known as "the morning after pill" available over the counter. In response, Susan Wood, assistant commissioner and head of the Office of Women's Health resigned in protest. Somewhere in here, something is wrong.

Plan B originally showed up in France as RU-486 in 1980. It has since undergone decades of testing. In France, where they don't have the same abortion issues that we have here, it was approved for use in 1988, and was protested by their anti-abortion groups. In the United States, it was placed on the list for testing in 1984, but blocked for the next 16 years, at one point by executive order of the first Bush administration. It was finally approved for use in 2000.

Five years later, after one of the longest testing periods in history, it was being listed for over the counter use, presumably to take its place next to boxes of Trojans and the Today sponge. That of course was not to be.

Ignoring years of research, oceans of data, and the recommendation of the approval panel, Mr. Crawford blocked approval. To what end? From the perspective of the scientists, the only answer is, politics. Mr. Crawford is toadying up to the White House and blocking approval for political reasons. In so doing, he is holding back something which could be used to diminish a public health issue, and denying an opportunity for women to exercise birth control.

Mr. Crawford argues that the drug has not had sufficient time for discussion and public comment.

Now far be it from me to gainsay Mr. Crawford's opinion, but this has been going on for twenty years. To me, that seems like a good amount of time. It also seems that his action was in opposition to every member of his approval council, and in fact they were not even consulted about it. The version they sent for approval was for anyone over 17 to have the ability to get it over the counter. Some members of the group advocated for sending the recommendation forward with no age rule at all. But they sent a more conservative version out for approval. Even that was rejected.

When public welfare starts taking a backseat to a religious agenda, it is time to excise religion. No one is "pro-abortion." The "pro-choice" position has always been that they don't like abortion, but until people no longer feel that is their only option, then they will work to make sure that option is safe. Plan B is a good way to decrease the number or abortions, especially if it is available when it is needed, not when it has to be planned for. There is a reason they are called "unplanned pregnancies."

What I have always found strange is that the same areas of the country that are most "religious" and most anti-abortion, are also the same areas with the highest abortion rates and highest teen pregnancy rates. I think there is a reason for that, and that reason is that the "religious" portion of that population is deliberately keeping people misinformed and ignorant in order to maintain their power and influence.

Mr. Crawford blocking Plan B is simply another extension of that. As Americans it is time to put away childish things, like sacrificing knowledge on an unholy altar of personal power.

The Economic Superstorm

More than any other issue, the well being of America is based on economics. Not crazy muslims flying airplanes into buildings, not hurricanes wiping out homes and cities, not gay marriage or abortion, Money. Capital M, Money. Tom Clancy may be a bit of an odd bird in some of the things he writes books about, let's be real after all, Jack Ryan almost saves the pope? But he was dead on in his assessment that the best way to hurt America is by screwing up the economy. Not cripple or kill, because that's not what anyone wants, they want us hurt in a way that we can't respond, but that keeps our ability to make things intact while getting us out of the way.

The last twenty five years has seen our own government do more to make our ability to defend against that than anyone could have imagined. When I started writing this sentence, the National Debt Clock read $7,950,125,260, 319.04. That's a big number. Why does it matter? Let's start with one fact. The People's Republic of China (that's red china) holds the notes on roughly one trillion of that. That's $1,000,000,000,000.00. Now the way things work, those get sent out in the form of T-Bills, and the majority of those are now 10 year notes. Why? Because the rate of return on 10 year notes is better than it is on 30 year notes (which was the old standard) so people tend to avoid them meaning that more of the 10 year kind go out.

Here is the problem. The interest on the debt alone, at the lowest interest rates in decades, cost $320 Billion last year. With another month yet to go this year, the interest has cost over $335 Billion. And interest rates are rising. Which brings us back to China.

If you've been following the financial markets, there has been a big push on China to "disconnect" the value of the yuan (their dollar) from the value of our dollar. We have been screaming from the rooftops, that their price fixing is bad for economy. Well for the average Joe Sixpack, that's dead wrong. The argument is, by making the yuan "float" like everyone else's currency, it will appreciate vs the dollar (that's right) and that will bring jobs back to the US that are currently in China (that's wrong). The jobs currently in China are there because it's the cheapest place to get the work done. As the dollar loses ground against the yuan, that means the price of goods of goods from China goes up, meaning yes, it would be comparatively less expensive to make them here, but they'll still be much cheaper in Indonesia, or Portugal or Turkey, or any number of other places.

The yuan going up just means we pay more for the same thing. Its impact on jobs and income will be at very best, enough to be more than a statistic. Its impact on prices is something every person in the country that shops at Target or Wal-Mart will see. It will also have an effect that we really won't like. China will stop buying those T-bills. Why buy something that when it comes due, will be worth less than what you paid for it?

Except, someone has to but those T-bills. The guys in DC can't balance a budget any better than a coke fiend can balance a checkbook. So how does that happen? Raise the interest rates. A lot. Make them pay off so they keep getting bought. Result? Housing boom? Busts. Car sales? Dead. Home renovation and major appliances? Forget it. Hello recession? Try depression.

At that point, the government has no choice but to contract. The world turns and the global economy leaves us behind. The world's first hyper-power becomes a third world country, and it's all because we can't balance the checkbook.

By the way, the debt clock is up $58,992,878.94. What's in your wallet?

The Katrina Blame Game

"This is not a time for finger-pointing or playing politics," - White House spokesman Scott McClellan. Sept 1 2005.

"Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said." Washington Post, Sept 4 2005.

"A Sept. 4 article on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina incorrectly said that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) had not declared a state of emergency. She declared an emergency on Aug. 26." Washington Post, Sept 4 2005.

Contrary to the statements of the White House spokesman, the White House is playing the blame game. They are trying to deflect the blame onto anyone but themselves. In the spirit of that, I want to examine where the blame should go.

Ray Nagin, Mayor of New Orleans since 2002. Republican until literally days before the 2002 election, Nagin switched his affiliation to the Democratic Party to gain a better chance at winning in heavily Democrat New Orleans. New Orleans was a city of roughly 480,000 people and the poorest metropolitan area in the entire country with a poverty rate close to 30%. Additionally it is known as historically one of the most corrupt cities in the United States, and one of Nagin's first acts as mayor was to go after the city Taxicab Bureau and the Utilities Department (ironically, the same department that manages the pumping stations that kept New Orleans dry).

On August 27, Mayor Nagin ordered a voluntary evacuation. When Katrina increased to a cat 4 hurricane the following day he changed that to a mandatory evacuation. Unfortunately, the city's ability to actually deal with such an order was poor. Fortunately, the governor had already declared a state of emergency.

Kathleen Blanco, Governor of New Orleans since 2004. Had worked heavily on tourism as Lt Governor, and the major issue of the day was trying to keep the Saints in New Orleans, and their requests to renovate the Superdome at state expense. Declared a state of emergency asking for any aid on August 26, three days before Katrina made landfall in Louisiana, 15 miles east of New Orleans.

No help came.

While much can be made of the fact that New Orleans was remiss in its disaster planning, and many would like to lay the blame for that at the feet of Mayor Nagin, he has been mayor for a bit over two years, and maybe he could have been better prepared. Others are trying to lay the blame at the feet of Governor Blanco who has been in office less than two years.

If anyone has seen how state government works, they would see a number of things. First, every state and municipality has dozens of issues fighting for dollars and attention. Second, federal aid sent to states has decreased in the last five years, while at the same time federal demands OF states, has increased dramatically, especially when it comes to Medicaid and Medicare expenses. The current administration paid for it's tax cut (if you can call it paying for it) by cutting the payouts for especially those programs. Louisiana, being a pretty poor state, has had their costs go up, but because they are a poor state, has not had their revenue go up because the people there don't have the money for the state to bring in via taxes.

You are looking at a poor city and a poor state, being blamed for not acting on the danger of the levees.

This is unacceptable. The federal government under the Bush administration has foisted costs they used to assume, off on smaller level governments, and because of geographic disparities, some of those states are more able to deal with that than others. In this case, the state was not in a position to deal with those and everything else. While Nagin and Blanco are not faultless, they did what they were supposed to when presented with a situation they could not handle, they asked for help.

Mike Brown, prior to Katrina, was already an embattled head of FEMA. He had been pushed out as head of the International Arabian Horse Association after a series of lawsuits over failure to train judging staff of the organization. At the end of his tenure, the IAHA was so broke it folded and was absorbed by the Arabian Horse Registry of America.

His resignation at FEMA was called for after FEMA sent out $30 million dollars in relief funds to non-victims of Hurricane Frances. It was again called for after it was found that some of his damage inspectors had past records for robbery and embezzlement. And now, we have Katrina.

On August 26th, the governor of Louisiana declared a state of emergency asking for help. On August 27th and 28th, the mayor of New Orleans did the same. FEMA did not show up at all until the 1st, and was not doing anything that could be called of use until the following day, while at the same time stymieing the efforts of others in the area, such as Slidell mayor Ben Morris (as seen in an interview on WWL New Orleans TV).

FEMA had in fact "war gamed" what would happen to New Orleans in the event of a cat 4/5 storm in 2001 and knew full well what the results would be, and what happened was exactly what they had predicted.

When what happens is what you had predicted, wouldn't it make sense to pull the plans made in the intervening four years out of a drawer to see what they said? But unfortunately it seems there was no plan. An event that they had warned four years earlier was one of the three most likely disaster scenarios in the country, that FEMA had modeled to see what would happen, they had no plan for.

The ONLY job for FEMA is to be prepared to move into action in the event of a catastrophe. That happened. They didn't move.

Are the mayor and governor blameless? No, they might have been able to do more. It is time, however, to hang the scapegoat for this out to dry and remove Mike Brown. While the ultimate responsibility may not be his alone, FEMA failed utterly in its only job, and is now trying to do recovery when it should have been doing mitigation before this even hit. The death toll from this storm may be the worst disaster in the nation's history. Had FEMA been doing its job and laid plans for something they knew would, not could, would happen, then it is likely that as bad as the storm was, it would have been clean up instead of search and burial.