The Katrina Blame Game
Whenever a disaster happens, there are people who point out blame for the given travasty. As such, I would first like to submit this article here: http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=344 .
First, Fox News has been very critical of the state government, especially the Louisiana governor. The problem I have with that is that the state has limited resources, especially with the National Guard. A majority of the Guard has been sent to Iraq, and thus hinders their ability to respond to disasters.
Bush certainly is being hit with this. As the article points out, he has cut funding for making better levees, although it is uncertain that even if those levees were complete that would have helped much. But the one thing that people are grinding Bush about is his response time. The more I think about it, the worse his response time is. It just took the day after the storm that should have made an indication how bad the damage was, and how quickly he should have reacted.
As I had posted before, the problem stems from how many people are still there. If there was one thing I don't think anyone could have predicted was just how many had to stay for one reason or another. Some had to stay because of airlines wouldn't send deadhead flights to New Orleans.
But as it is being pointed out more and more on the news, a large majority of the people there are black, and that's because in New Orleans, blacks take up a good majority of the poverty. Those people just didn't have the resources to escape. If there was one thing Bush could have done before Katrina hit, it was to get National Guard from outside the state to help those people out.
But then again, that's a problem with reactionary politics, foresight is limited. Hopefully, this disaster will give both Bush and all governments, from the local level to the federal level, better foresight so it doesn't happen again anywhere.
First, Fox News has been very critical of the state government, especially the Louisiana governor. The problem I have with that is that the state has limited resources, especially with the National Guard. A majority of the Guard has been sent to Iraq, and thus hinders their ability to respond to disasters.
Bush certainly is being hit with this. As the article points out, he has cut funding for making better levees, although it is uncertain that even if those levees were complete that would have helped much. But the one thing that people are grinding Bush about is his response time. The more I think about it, the worse his response time is. It just took the day after the storm that should have made an indication how bad the damage was, and how quickly he should have reacted.
As I had posted before, the problem stems from how many people are still there. If there was one thing I don't think anyone could have predicted was just how many had to stay for one reason or another. Some had to stay because of airlines wouldn't send deadhead flights to New Orleans.
But as it is being pointed out more and more on the news, a large majority of the people there are black, and that's because in New Orleans, blacks take up a good majority of the poverty. Those people just didn't have the resources to escape. If there was one thing Bush could have done before Katrina hit, it was to get National Guard from outside the state to help those people out.
But then again, that's a problem with reactionary politics, foresight is limited. Hopefully, this disaster will give both Bush and all governments, from the local level to the federal level, better foresight so it doesn't happen again anywhere.
posted by SeanM at 12:16 PM
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