Hurricane Katrina: Don’t Blame Bush for Local Corruption and Democrat Incompetence

Hurricane Katrina: Don’t Blame Bush for Local Corruption and Democrat Incompetence

Will Malven:

There has been a lot of criticism of President Bush for the handling of the New Orleans disaster and the alleged diversion of funds from the work on the levee, to the Iraq war. There’s only one problem with this argument, two actually. The representative of the Army Corps of Engineers has stated that the critical Levee work was completed, that it was up to designed specs. The problem is, those specs were for a class three hurricane, not a four or five. Secondly of the funds that were transferred to New Orleans over the last decades, were diverted by the local levee boards to buy a Gambling Casino and a private marina. It would appear that the “Big Easy’s” reputation for inept governance and corruption is well deserved. President Bush has done everything within his power to take care of the disaster area. When he saw that Democrat incompetence was unable to deal with the crisis, he went down to shake things up and get people moving. Within a very few hours of his visit, massive truck convoys began entering the city carrying water and food to those in need. This morning, less than 24 hours after his visit, the buses were flowing into the city to carry people to safety. President Bush had to go down to Louisiana to do the jobs of the Mayor’s and Governor’s jobs. Okay, I know that the massive response was mostly coincidental, but if this had occurred during Clinton’s watch, the MSM would have been saying that very thing.

The President called on Mayor C. Ray Nagin and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco to order a mandatory evacuation on Saturday, 36-48 hours prior to the storm’s arrival. Nagin expressing concern about the legality of ordering people out of the city when New Orleans had some safe hurricane shelters to which they could evacuate, failed to act. National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield in Miami called Nagin at home Saturday night and told him: “Get people out of New Orleans.” Two days before the hurricane made landfall, President Bush declared the area a federal disaster area, giving the Governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama all of the resources they needed to prepare for this chaos, all of the troops, all of the supplies, all of the transportation, all were available to the Democrat Governor, the Democrat Mayor, Democrat City Council, Democrat Levee Board in Louisiana. The problems arose because Governor Babineaux couldn’t make up her mind to “pull the trigger” and begin mobilizing until two days after the storm hit. That means she lost four days before acting to begin the rescue of the people in New Orleans. It is readily apparent that Governor Babineaux was incapable of doing her job. It is also apparent that Mayor Nagin was neglectful in doing his job. New Orleans had a plan for this contingency....

A reading of the entire plan, reads like a step by step summary of what Mayor Nagin failed to do. President Bush provided the local officials every resource they needed to deal with this emergency....

There is more.