Pundita

On September 24, after more than a month of reasonably patient waiting (and with a little prodding) I met with success. An Epoch Times employee sent an English translation of their Chinese-language March 25 report about an Ebola outbreak in Shenzen, in China's Guangdong Province.

Readers who slogged through the August Pundita essays on the Mystery Illness/Pig Disease outbreak in China would not require explanation about why I considered the March 25 article a key piece of the puzzle. Without further introduction here is the translation; I invite new readers to follow along as best they can. (Paragraph numbering is my addition.)

"Ebola Emerged in China, the Authority Tightly Blockaded the Flow of Information
March 25, 2005
The Epoch Times
[Translated from original text found at:
http://www.dajiyuan.com/gb/5/3/25/n865227.htm ]

1. According to an insider from China's customhouse in Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province, Ebola virus (African hemorrhagic fever) caused several people's deaths. The authority tried very hard to blockade the flow of information.

2. According to this insider, in early January 2005, when conducting a suppressing smuggling campaign in Daya Bay, custom officials of Shenzhen City encountered a ship with unknown nationality.

3. The officials boarded the ship to investigate and the black sailors on the ship physically assaulted the Chinese officials, injuring two of them. One of the injured officials, Mr. Yang, died mysteriously in late February; his wife and son were put under quarantine immediately after his death. To date, their whereabouts are still unknown.

4. The other injured official, Mr. Jiang, is also missing after being forcibly taken away from Tianmian Garden located in the center of Shenzhen City.

5. It was revealed that the reason for their quarantine was that Mr. Yang's inamorata [*] vomited and had stomachache among with other symptoms in her residence in Buji district in early February. Two weeks after she was sent to a hospital in Buji district for treatment, she died mysteriously inside the hospital. Upon death, she had large area hemorrhage inside her body.

6. Two doctors involved in resuing [sic] her later developed same symptoms and died afterwards. Shenzhen authority immediately sealed off the hospital and took measures to prevent the outside world as well as customhouse related departments from knowing the truth.

7. According to an insider from the hospital, as a doctor with many years' experience, he had never seen such diseases [sic] before. When the patient developed this disease, her body was just like being dissolved. It was very similar to Ebola disease which recently emerged in Africa. Moreover, the route of infection is mostly through blood contact. The two doctors who died after treating the patient had had blood contacts with the patient.

8. As far as the insider knows, the other officials involved in that specific suppressing smuggling campaign don't have any symptoms yet, but they are forcibly put under quarantine.

9. Shenzhen authority had conducted a disinfection for Mr. Jiang's residence and forcibly taken away several people who had close connections with Mr. Jiang. Police had arrested and detained several inamoratas of Mr. Jiang, which might be only a partial list of his fancy women.

10. To date, several death cases have emerged and numerous people are missing as a result of this disease. Authority in Shenzhen City has issued orders to seal off the flow of information about this disease and demanded that when being asked, it should be described as AIDS. However, the authority did an investigation on epidemic prevention in several districts such as Buji, Tianmian, Gangxia, Shabutou, Xiabumiao and Badengjie. Patients who show abnormal symptoms are strictly monitored.

11. During this round of infection, the route of infection is completely via blood contacts. No cases have been seen as a result of infection via respiratory tract. However, because of the complexity of Shenzhen region and the mutability of viruses, once a variety of virus appears as contagious via respiratory tract, an outbreak of Ebola is very likely to occur.

12. A public health expert said the irresponsible approach adopted by the authority may well cause the outbreak of Ebola just like the outbreak of SARS in 2003; however, the harm brought by Ebola can be much more detrimental."

* From the report's second reference to "inamorata" it seems the translator is referring to Yang's mistress.
* * * * * * * * *
So we have another bunch of anecdotal reports related by unnamed sources to add to the pile. Is there anything of substance we can glean from the article? Yes, there is, if we study a detailed medical discussion about human symptoms of Ebola virus infection found in the Ebola article at Answers.com.

The following is an excerpt from an interview with Philippe Calain, MD, Chief Epidemiologist, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Special Pathogens Branch, Kikwit 1995:

"At the end of the [Ebola virus] disease the patient does not look, from the outside, as horrible as you can read in some books. They are not melting. They are not full of blood. They're in shock, muscular shock.

"They are not unconscious, but you would say 'obtunded', dull, quiet, very tired. Very few were hemorrhaging. Hemorrhage is not the main symptom. Less than half of the patients had some kind of hemorrhage. But the ones that bled, died."

Now let's return to Paragraph 7 of the March 25 article (emphasis mine):

7. "According to an insider from the hospital, as a doctor with many years' experience, he had never seen such diseases [sic] before. When the patient developed this disease, her body was just like being dissolved. It was very similar to Ebola disease which recently emerged in Africa. [...]"

So we arrive at a glaring discrepancy. According to a MD who is very knowledgeable about Ebola virus symptoms, there is no melting of the patient's body -- "melting" a term that can be used interchangeably with "dissolving."

According to a MD "with many years' experience," his reported eyewitness account is that a patient's body was "just like being dissolved" in a fashion "very similar to Ebola disease..."

According to Dr. Calain's medical opinion, the Chinese doctor could not have witnessed a symptom in the patient that was akin to Ebola virus infection.

It's possible there is an illness that causes clearly perceivable melting or dissolution of the victim's body, but this would not be Ebola. Yet why would a learned doctor deliver a misdiagnosis? For insights we return to Answers.com:

The Ebola virus was first popularized by novelist Richard Preston in his medical thriller, The Hot Zone, an exciting novel based on the Ebola outbreaks in Reston, Virginia and Central Africa.

The novel is significant because it is very dramatic and yet attempts to portray itself as a factual account of events, which has led to much misunderstanding about this virus from the general public and popular press.

It is important to note that ... Preston's novel was placed in the non-fiction section at many bookstores. [...]

Unfortunately, due to exaggerations in The Hot Zone and probably Hollywood films like Outbreak, it can be difficult for non-virologists to separate fact from fiction. Especially when the popular press compounds the problem by treating a highly dramatized story as if it were real.

Among certain biologists/virologists Mr. Preston is not highly regarded. A fifth strain of Ebola known as 'Ebola Preston' has been reported, "which attacks via print and visual media" (Ed Regis), and where "Bricks of bad information and fear-mongering set up a highly-efficient, deadly cycle of hysteria replication in the populace. The public hemorrhages, spilling hysteria to the next unwitting victim. Fear gushes from every media orifice. No one is safe from the hype." (Brian Hjelle)"

From all the above, we're left to puzzle over the Chinese doctor's account, which is not actually a description of Ebola virus symptoms. So, what type of disease presents with a symptom of a "dissolving" body along with symptoms that include vomiting, stomachache (and after death) a "large area hemorrhage inside the body?" (Para. 5) A blood-borne disease so highly infectious and lethal that within short order it killed two doctors who were exposed to the patient's blood? (Para. 7)

We also have to wonder about the sailors on the smuggler's ship -- a ship of unknown embarkation point, but manned by sailors of seemingly African origin; men who were hale enough to put up a fight with Chinese officials who boarded the ship. We don't know how long the ship was at sea before the officials boarded. Yet given the 2-21 day incubation period of Ebola, it's within the realm of possibility that a sailor in the early stage of Ebola virus infection would have enough energy to put up a vigorous fight.

However, my credulity is finally strained to the limit with a review of Dr. Wang's account. He said with certainty that the virus samples from Sichuan he analyzed in early June evidenced an Ebola strain.

So here we have an extremely rare African disease (just how rare, see the Answers.com article) but reportedly it appears in China -- first in Guangdong then in short order in Sichuan province.

One can see how those who look for biowar lab explanations for unusual disease outbreaks would seize on the Ebola virus story. But it does not seem there was an Ebola virus outbreak in Guangdong province. It seems there was an outbreak of Preston virus.

National Geographic 9/27 cover story on Avian flu. ABC World News special report on Avian flu (airing tonight). Can an interview with Diane Sawyer be far behind?

As to why Pundita is cynical, because the UN crowd knows the party is over. They know the US has wised up about corruption and waste in United Nations aid programs for the world's poorest countries. I am very concerned as to how that crowd will spin getting ready for Avian flu: the best solution is to wring megabucks out of US to help the world prepare for pandemic. And of course the UN wants to control the distribution of financial aid.

Best ways America can help the world prepare for pandemic:

1. Retain complete control over how any US aid for H5N1 outbreak preparation is applied. For scoundrels, aid money for pandemic prevention is the pot of gold at the rainbow's end.

The more the US drains the swamp at the UN, the more you will see global Do Good organizations spring up with the same cast of characters lurking in the background that the oil-for-food investigators are trying nail.

Be aware that the thieves caught red-handed in the UN Oil for Food scam are just like the gangs in the American Old West. Run them out of Dodge City, they go to Abeline. Run them out of Abeline, they high-tail to Tombstone. Run them out of Tombstone, they turn up in Nogales. Run them out of Nogales, they skittle back to Dodge.

America, this is your life during the coming decade: Chasing varmits in circles. Get used to it.

Bright side: It costs the US less to chase varmits in circles than it costs the varmits to keep setting up shop. Sooner or later, they run out of moola -- provided US aid programs don't keep replenishing their coffers.

2. Continue dealing with our local, state and federal inadequacies with regard to disaster preparation and keep this is in the news as much as possible.

Never before has so much international television coverage been given to such issues. People in poorer countries don't see much if anything about their own disasters on TV. But the drama of Katrina (and the fact that it made the US look bad) has meant unprecedented TV coverage in poorer countries -- even those with very repressive regimes.

As with the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, which also received TV coverage in countries with repressive regimes, widely publicized US mistakes and how Americans deal with them provide invaluable lessons to peoples in countries with repressive regimes.

America is the world leader but too much of our leadership has been lecturing and attempting to buy agreement with our views. Nobody in the world questions that America is the leader. However, what people everywhere expect from a leader is guidance by example. Showing the rest of the world how Americans deal with our mistakes is real leadership. It has the ring of truth.

Speaking of disaster preparation, Pundita stumbled across very instructive observations (published September 1) about Industry, Redundancy, and Coping with Hurricane Katrina at a blog called Indus Valley Rising:

It looks like fully industrialized societies may not be much of an improvement over societies that have not fully industrialized. In engineering (mechanical, software, etc.), when critical services that other system services depend on are concentrated in a single component or single center or operation, if that component or service fails the rest of the system goes down with it. That is called a "single point of failure."

Systems that have multiple failover mechanisms and redundant components are, however, considered more reliable because if one or more components go down, then the other redundant components for a time can assume the extra load. The system is strained, but it doesn't go down.

The cost of redundancy is high, but the cost of system failure is higher -- even if it rarely happens. Like any other system that depends on highly specialized components but lacks redundancy, a highly industrialized society is similarly fragile because critical services become concentrated with a small number of people or agencies. If small but important social components fail on account of sabotage or disaster, the effect on the rest of society can be disproportionately catastrophic.

Continue reading the essay (link above) for observations on the vulnerability of America's food supply in a time of disaster.

Redundancy, redundancy, redundancy: the more backup systems, the better the chance of surviving disasters. Because authorities neglected to stock up on diesel fuel for backup generators in key installations, New Orleans was thrown into chaos during Katrina's wake.

The unacceptably high price of neglecting backup systems is perhaps the biggest lesson we can take from Katrina. And, I might add, the critical lesson to apply in preparing for pandemic. Redundancy.

Hat tips: To Bruce Kesler for alerting me to the National Geographic story. To Dymphna at Gates of Vienna for mentioning my coverage of Katrina to the Indus Valley blogger, which by a long way around is how I happened across the essay about redundancy.

Before getting to the topic of this post, I want to pass along a letter I received from a reader in Alaska in response to yesterday's Don't Tread on Me post:

"The 72 hours cities are supposed to be able to hold out on their own is 72 hours until help starts arriving. As many people clobbered by Katrina can testify, just because the help is arriving and helping someone, does not mean it is helping you. I'd strongly recommend personal supplies for at least a week. Minimum."

Last night Margaret Warner at PBS NewsHour examined what she termed, "the call by some members of Congress for a review of the use of active military in domestic disasters."

Her guests were Lawrence Korb, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower and Personnel during the Reagan administration, now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank; and Gene Healy, an attorney and a senior editor at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Specifically, they discussed whether the US military be given a more prominent role in responding to natural disasters, whether the military should be used on American soil only as a last resort, the role of FEMA/Homeland Security, and which governing official has the authority to call for help from federalized troops.

(The last issue was touched on by Michael Brown in his testimony yesterday before the Katrina congressional hearing, which Democrat representatives are boycotting; they're calling for an independent commission.)

Gene Healy in particular repeated concerns expressed by Dan at Riehl World View, which I mentioned in yesterday's post. The NewsHour discussion is interesting if you're closely following the issues. Yet perhaps the most interesting thing about the discussion is that never actually addressed the question President Bush raised, even though his question was prominently featured in the introduction to the discussion.

Before moving to Bush's question, here's part of the panel discussion where it picks up on the issue about authority:

"WARNER: [...] on whose say-so should federal troops go in? And the question is: Do you wait for the governor to ask for the help, or should the circumstances be widened under which a president could just, on his own or her own authority say, we're activating American active duty forces?

KORB: Well, I think it's the president's judgment. He has to decide whether in fact the state is up to the job. Now obviously it works better if the state asks them to send the troops in, then you don't have any constitutional issues, but the fact of the matter is the president has to make that judgment.

If, in fact, the state is not up to the job or if the National Guard troops are deployed overseas, for example, as they're being used now, I think this is important for the Pentagon to be planning ahead of time so that when the president makes the decision, they know what to do.

I agree we ought to use National Guard when we can. But remember National Guard troops are trained in the same way active forces are. They're used very much. So the idea that they're under state control doesn't change the way that they've been trained.

WARNER: Is it constitutional, I mean, just under our current system, for a president to usurp the governor's powers in this regard?

HEALY: Well, under -- the Constitution seems to prefer in Article 4 Section 4 that there is a request from the state government -- the Insurrection Act does have a provision that allows even over the objection of the state governor that allows the president to send in active duty military. The president --

WARNER: A certain class of citizens isn't being protected?

HEALY: Well, it's actually when the law -- federal law cannot be enforced. This is what Eisenhower used in Little Rock. I don't think it's something we want to -- the way the law draws a line now is the president should think twice before he does this.

He still has the power in an extraordinary circumstance, but I think there are legitimate reasons that we would want the president to think twice before going in militarily over the objection of the sitting state governor. I think federalism matters here.

WARNER: The final question that came up at this hearing. If homeland security and FEMA were on top of their game in terms of coordination, would we even be having this conversation? Or would it obviate the need for having the military take charge?

LAWRENCE KORB: Well, someday they may be but it's clear to me they're not now. I mean, four years after Sept. 11, the Department of Homeland Security was supposed to be planning for 15 different scenarios. And it's clear to me that they can't handle it. Maybe at some point they might. But I think we don't have time to wait because you could have not only just another natural disaster, another terrorist attack and I would prefer that when the president makes this judgment -- however the circumstances may be -- that it goes quickly and we save more lives.

WARNER: [Gene] What's your view on that?

HEALY: I'm just concerned, you know, after we've seen another instance of colossal government failure on the state, local and federal level and too often the rush to judgment is, well, how can we centralize more power and, you know, use the military to carry out some of these goals?

I'd rather see some examination of what went wrong here and how they can use -- state, local and federal officials can use their considerable powers to deal with disaster relief without having a militarized, you know, federal war on hurricanes which seems to be what a lot of the talk in Washington is centering around."

The last comment got a titter from Warner and her other guest, but whatever "Washington" is making of the issues coming out of the Katrina response, President Bush is asking a highly focused question:

"Is there a circumstance in which the Department of Defense becomes the lead agency? Clearly, in the case of a terrorist attack, that would be the case. But is there a natural disaster which... of a certain size that would then enable the Defense Department to become the lead agency in coordinating and leading the response effort? That's going to be a very important consideration for Congress to think about."

Just so there was no misunderstanding about what Bush meant, Donald Rumsfeld chimed in:

"The reality was that the first responders at the state and local level were, in large measure, victims themselves, and, as such, somewhat overwhelmed by the catastrophic nature of the Hurricane Katrina and the floods that followed. So we had a situation that was distinctively different than the normal situation, which works pretty well for a normal natural disaster or even a normal manmade disaster. And the president's point was that there are some things that are of sufficient magnitude that they require something to substitute for the overwhelmed first responders at the state and local level. And that is the issue that he's thinking about."

That's clear. It's just that Bush's question seems to be getting lost in the shuffle of other questions and considerations. He's looking for an idiot-proof list of conditions. This is the same thing Pundita is looking for -- and I think anyone with sense wants to see. This is because one governor's emergency is another governor's disaster.

Ditto for how different US presidents and mayors would see crisis situations. So how can the military get a clear idea that they're going to be called up for a particular situation, if they have to guess how a particular governor might be thinking?

How can the military do really good planning, if they don't have certain knowledge of the exact conditions under which a presidential order will automatically go into effect?

This is not rocket science; we've passed the point where a particular individual's reading of the Insurrection Act is the only guideline for when the president can override the opinion of a governor.

In a real crisis, there's no time to consult with constitutional lawyers and the Congress because seconds count. The president needs a list of simple questions for a governor. For example, "Have you evacuated the entire city?"

If the answer is "No," glance at the Idiot-Proof List, then put the governor's call on hold and speed-dial the Pentagon.

The Pentagon has also their Idiot-Proof list: If "No" do X, Y, Z.

None of this calls for ruminations on the nature of democracy and limitations of government. I'm really talking about performance-related issues, issues of competence and being able to do your job well under the most severe situations. You cannot expect people to do a good job, if you hand them a crystal ball and say, "Use this to figure out what I mean."

I also think that's the issue informing Bush's question.

Here's the link to the PBS panel discussion.

Last night John Batchelor read to his audience a Stratfor report indicating that background checks have revealed many New Orleans evacuees in shelters have a criminal record. That news caused Pundita to slap her forehead in sudden understanding.

Of course! There would be background checks once state and federal funds are distributed and the government becomes responsible for arranging temporary housing. People who have spent time in jail are notoriously shy of red tape.

That brings to light another reason why many of New Orleans' poorest did not evacuate ahead of Katrina. They preferred to take their chances with Katrina rather than cozy up with the Man.

Interestingly, a report published in The Seattle Times reveals that the vast majority of horror stories about rampant crime in New Orleans in the immediate wake of Katrina were unsubstantiated rumors.(1) (Hat tip: Powerline)

As floodwaters forced tens of thousands of evacuees into the [Superdome] and Convention Center, news of unspeakable acts poured out of the nation's media...The picture that emerged was one of the impoverished, overwhelmingly African-American masses of flood victims resorting to utter depravity, randomly attacking each other, as well as the police trying to protect them and the rescue workers trying to save them.

Four weeks after the storm, few of the widely reported atrocities have been backed with evidence. The piles of murdered bodies never materialized, and soldiers, police officers and rescue personnel on the front lines assert that, while anarchy reigned at times and people suffered indignities, most of the worst crimes reported at the time never happened.

What cosmic message might we glean by comparing the Statfor and Seattle Times reports?

For starters, local authorities need to use the brain God gave them when they do evacuation and quarantine planning. (Pundita hopes there is a quarantine plan for every city; reference the relentless march of H5N1.)

I think it can be gathered that only the horrific televised images of New Orleanians trapped in floodwaters, and the images of officials in Texas and other parts falling over themselves to be nice to New Orleans evacuees, convinced ex-offenders in cities such as Houston to evacuate ahead of Rita.

Those images will quickly fade from memory. So officials involved with disaster planning need to factor in the need for a special approach when it comes to the 'community' of ex-offenders. And there are parole jumpers and people evading arrest warrants residing in many cities. These would be the least likely to obey an evacuation order or mandatory quarantine.

To say, "Well we'll just shoot them on sight," if they disobey a quarantine is the Russian Roulette approach to solving a problem. How many people have they been exposed to outside the quarantine area before you see them and shoot them? How many helicopters, Coast Guard and National Guard have to be tied up rescuing people whose only reason for not obeying an evacuation order is that they fear a return to prison? Or deportation, for that matter?

Think. We need to start thinking real hard, real careful, real fast. We need to get our heads out of the political mindset and get them into the triage mindset. We need to stop acting as if we have all the time in the world to make life-and-death decisions. We need to learn to think like Americans instead of Democrats and Republicans because sure enough plague, hurricanes and Ayman al Zawahiri do not distinguish between US political party machines.

1) The Seattle Times Reports of anarchy at Superdome overstated by Brian Thevenot and Gordon Russell of Newhouse News Service.

"I think what will be happening here and across the country is people will be looking at what level official orders and evacuation or requests of evacuation. It won't be just reevaluating routes used because we only have one major north-south corridor here, I-5. On a good day I-5 is massive gridlock."
-- Gil Kerlikowske, Seattle Chief of Police

Dan at Riehl World View has expressed thoughtful disagreement with points I made in yesterday's post. I find myself in complete agreement with the spirit of his disagreement and I heartily suggest you give his thoughts consideration. In arguing against turning to a federalized military "fix" Dan notes in part:

If we abandon any hope for our civilian government to operate effectively at the Federal level and fail to shore up local governmental accountability and the possible re-kindling of some sense of a decentralized Civil Defense in co-operation with the National Guard, exempt from Posse Comitatus except when federalized, by the way -- we won't be solving anything. We'll simply be sweeping the problem under the rug and institutionalizing failure.

Hear! Hear! However, it's late in the day to be calling for reforms of government at local levels. This kind of discussion should have been going on during the past five years. Better late than never but while we're hashing things out, forming commissions and committees and threatening to throw the bastids out at the voting both, we need to remember just how late in the day this is.

I thought of that while watching Americans stand on their roofs waiting for helicopter rescue in Katrina's wake. Reminded me of the joke about the man who drowned, then asked God on reaching heaven why He hadn't answered his prayers for help. God told him that he'd answered three times: First with a boat, then with a ladder, then with a helicopter. But the man had continued to insist that divine help be in the form of making the floodwaters go away.

Make no mistake: even with the federal military in charge, communities need to be prepared to hold out at least 72 hours before they can assume the cavalry will arrive. So all communities in this country have their work cut out for them.

In the meantime, we need the military in readiness to take charge if disaster strikes large numbers of Americans. The Indonesians got the benefit of US military efficiency in the wake of a tsunami; Americans deserve at least that much. Yet for that, we need to nail down legal questions and determine with precision the situations under which command and control automatically pass to the military.

In summary, I agree with Dan's view but I am unwilling to risk large numbers of Americans dying for principles that for decades have only been defended with lip service.

I want to make sure that lines of command and control are clearly established in a disaster; I want to be assured that every community knows exactly what they can expect from the US military when local resources for dealing with disaster are overwhelmed.

The quote I used to introduce this essay is taken from last night's PBS NewsHour. Margaret Warner gathered three officials involved with disaster planning:

> Edward Reiskin, deputy mayor for public safety and justice for Washington, DC.

> Carlos Castillo, director of Miami-Dade County's office of emergency management and the county's deputy fire chief.

> Gil Kerlikowske.

Margaret asked the panelists what lessons their cities took from the hurricanes and how this affected planning. The answers are instructive, and give a glimmer of hope that cities around the country will upgrade their disaster preparedness -- not just talk about it, but actually do it.

Click here for the NewsHour transcript; scroll down to "Discussing Evacuation Plans."

President Bush said on Sunday that Congress ought to consider giving the US military the lead role in responding to natural disasters. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) doesn't like that idea. She told CNN's Late Edition that the military has a strong role to play "but so do our governors and our local elected officials."

"I mean we do have a democracy and a citizenship that has elected mayors, county commissioners and governors particularly. I'm not sure the governors association or all the mayors in America would be willing to step aside," she said.

Okay, let's stop and think this one through, Senator. You really don't want the governor's association and all the mayors in America to be the triage authority in times of disaster, do you? Katrina hit three states in one swoop and trod on many mayors' territory. So which mayor and governor -- or which association -- should have been in charge?

Look on the bright side, Senator. Putting the military in charge would also sideline FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security. Between those agencies and the local officials, the immediate wake of Katrina was everyone running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

And from all accounts there were life-costing turf battles in the wake of Katrina between FEMA, Blanco's office and Mayor Nagin's office (well, at least after the mayor's office was able to communicate with the outside world).

Days into the wake of Katrina's strike, the complaint voiced over and over by storm survivors, volunteers showing up to help and various federal personnel was that no one was in charge. In times of sudden crisis threatening the lives of millions of Americans, there needs to be one overarching authority making the critical decisions.

But I'll tell you why we're having this discussion, Senator Landrieu; it's because of the sorry situation US party politics has wrought. Truth is, it's come to the point where the US military is the only agency Americans can trust to put the welfare of all the citizenry first.

The big legal question is the exact conditions under which authority automatically passes to DoD. So this is a good time to read (or reread) Major Craig T. Trebilcock's Plain English explanation of the Posse Comitatus Act and why this sacred cow isn't sacred anymore: The Myth of Posse Comitatus

Also, a good time to plow through the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act published on the FEMA website.

The Red River winds north through a table-flat valley to form most of the border between North Dakota and Minnesota. It spills from its banks almost every spring, but the high water usually only covers parks and yards. That wasn't the case in the spring of 1997, after record snows buried the region. A blizzard and ice storm struck the first weekend of April, knocking out power to thousands. And the river was only beginning to rise.

I remember watching the televised images of the mounting floodwaters with a sense of disbelief at first. The dikes had never been topped; they were so high it was unthinkable they wouldn't hold. But on a cold April morning, the swollen Red River broke through and topped by more than 2 feet the 52 foot dikes, wiping out the bridge that connected the cities of Grand Forks, North Dakota and East Grand Forks, Minnesota and virtually destroying both cities.

Paired border towns waged their battles against the rising floodwaters: Wahpeton and Breckenridge, Minn., at the river's headwaters, and Fargo and Moorhead, Minn., downstream. None was swamped like Grand Forks and East Grand Forks. Most of the homes in the two cities and the business districts were destroyed by the floods. More than 50,000 people were forced to flee.

The flood of 1997 created what was, until Hurricane Katrina, the largest mass exodus in the United States since the Civil War.

Eight years later, with a $400 million state-of-the-art 60 foot floodwall/dike system nearing completion, both cities have made an amazing recovery. And they are eager to give advice and help to Louisiana. In Grand Forks, City Council members are planning to enter a sister-city relationship with one of those ravaged by Katrina.

The consensus among council members is that New Orleans is simply too big and that they ought to set their sights on a city closer in size to Grand Forks, such as Biloxi, Mississippi.

"We had a great little downtown, but the city fathers were thinking too big for their britches, trying to make it Fargo or Minneapolis. I just hope the towns down there don't make the same mistakes we did," observed antique store owner Linda Magness.

Across the river in East Grand Forks, Mayor Lynn Stauss lauds his city as "a poster child for flood relief. Grand Forks got all the attention during the flood, but we wanted the attention for our recovery."

The mayor's words hint at the underlying tension that has long existed between the two cities, which now market themselves to the world as "The Grand Cities." Those tensions played out during the flood recovery, with officials sometimes unable to appeal to disaster officials with a single voice, Stauss said.

"Down there [the Gulf Coast], they've got to learn patience and avoid the resentment and finger-pointing that sometimes went on here," he said. "If they can't speak with one voice, it's going to confuse people and cause them to mistrust their leaders. And if that happens, you'll never gain that trust back."

The sentiment is echoed by his counterparts in Grand Forks. But for now, city officials are holding off on inundating the Gulf Coast with advice, recovery materials and volunteers, again based on their own experiences eight years ago.

Pete Haga, who coordinated volunteer efforts in 1997, said for this disaster: "We're trying to avoid the mistakes we made here. Right after the flood, I'd have people show up to help, but I didn't have anywhere to send them right away. People are calling now, saying they're ready to go, but I tell them to wait until we know what people down there need."

One member of the council has seized on the idea of recycling flood relief money that still flows into the city's coffers. Doug Christensen has proposed funneling $1 million or more in federal block grant funds to the Gulf Coast.

"Someday you'll become the other guy -- you just don't know when," he said. "Now that we've been that other guy, we have the opportunity to help the new other guy."

Not to strike a sour note, and with the caveat that I haven't studied and compared the technical information about the Louisiana and Red River flood control systems. But the $400 million pricetag for the Red River "state-of-the-art" dike/floodwall system (60 feet high!) prompts Pundita to question whether many billions of dollars are needed to upgrade the Louisiana flood system -- a figure I've often heard mentioned since Katrina struck.

The advice to remake New Orleans into a smaller city could save much money and provide realistic flood protection during the decades it would take to restore the natural flood protection to the land.

The question, however, is how to prevent the region from continuing to sink. There is an inherent conflict between levees and salvaging the valuable silt that the Mississippi spews during floods. Without the silt, it seems the only solution is to keep building higher and higher levees and floodwalls -- while the land on which New Orleans rests continues to sink lower and lower.

There should be an engineering solution -- there's always an engineering solution -- that allows the levees to exist on better terms with the river's natural land reclamation system. The solution could be where the "many billions" would reside but one has to be found and implemented.

With the exception of my observations this post is a compilation of accounts taken from a September 2005 Star Tribune article by Bob Von Sternberg with additional quotes from a 2002 Associated Press/USA Today report . The articles present detail on the recovery and the planning behind it.

Also, a hat tip to ABC World News for their Sunday segment on the recovery from the 1997 flood (and the news that the new Red River flood control system is "state-of-the-art").

There could be a silver lining to the storm clouds made by Katrina and Rita: after decades of kicking the can down the road, Americans might be willing to confront two issues that strike hard at both sides of the political aisle: Pork spending in appropriations bills, and whether the country should pay taxes that encourage Americans to reside on the edge of fragile coastlines in hurricane alley. Support for this novel idea comes from two September 23 PBS television offerings:

First, NOW's surprisingly objective (i.e., no bashing of the political Right) report titled Coastal Development and Flood Insurance. Second, the Journal Editorial Report's surprisingly objective (i.e., no bashing of the political Left) discussion of pork spending.

Both shows bluntly ask whether Americans are ready to get serious about confronting the issues under discussion. Here's Pundita's answer: If NOW and the Wall Street Journal editorial board are willing to chuck partisan politics long enough to take an objective look at fundamental issues, this is a sign that the rest of us should try.

NOW's producers recently traveled to Dauphin Island, Alabama, where 60% of the homes on the western edge of the island have been destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. But this isn't the first time the island has been hit hard. In the wake of previous flooding, communities like Dauphin Island have used federal dollars and federal insurance programs to rebuild. NOW asks if we have been making a mistake with government policies that encourage rebuilding in areas vulnerable to natural disasters.

The transcript continues with a summary of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and its importance to the US debate about coastal development, then goes on to lay out how the debate is shaping up. The NOW transcript is required reading, if you are new to the debate and believe it's an important one.

The Journal show's transcript also makes for riveting, educational reading. The panel of Journal editorialists reviews pork spending in the recent transportation bill and sounds out the American willingness to deal with pork:

STEVE MOORE: ... in Washington the pork has finally hit the fan and what's happening in this town is you're starting to see Americans all over the country seeing these visions of all of this pork in the [transportation] bill and they find it to be repugnant.

The problem for Republicans is when they took over Congress back in 1994 they pledged to get rid of all this irresponsible wasteful spending and now a lot of voters, especially conservative voters, are looking at what's going on in the Republican Congress when people like Tom DeLay say "We can't find anything to cut." And they're saying wait a minute, now we've got two big government parties in Washington.

PAUL GIGOT: Nancy Pelosi, the democratic house leader, this week volunteered to give up $70 million dollars worth of roads and other projects in her district in San Francisco which struck me...as both good policy, but also very smart politics trying to reclaim the fiscal conservative mantle from the Republicans.

ROB POLLOCK: Absolutely. Look, there's a moral dimension to spending here and that's what we're seeing. Spending is ultimately about taxes, it's about coercion. I was surprised yesterday: Mary Landrieu, senator from Louisiana, she's requesting $250 billion dollars to be spent on her state alone. She says she admits that that's a lot of money. Well, how much money is that? That's $2,500 dollars per household in America.

The question is whether Americans will stay with the questions raised by both PBS shows, or whether we'll allow political agendas to once again send us down the garden path.

It's a vital question because several foreign interests have seen the Katrina disaster as the perfect opportunity to push harder for their own agendas, which range from pressuring the US on the Kyoto treaty to getting the US military presence out of the Middle East.

If Americans can manage to stay on track, this will not only do the United States a world of good; it will also serve as a model for peoples around the world who've never known anything but a raw deal and crocodile tears from their political leaders.

Amazingly, as many as half the evacuees from Katrina and Rita are expected to stay in Arkansas. It's especially amazing to me because if I hadn't caught the John Batchelor Show last night, I wouldn't have known that Arkansas splendidly managed a huge relief effort without any help from FEMA.

John interviewed Kane Webb, the deputy editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, whose article about the Arkansas relief effort was featured in the Wall Street Journal's September 22 Opinion Journal Online. I urge you to read Kane's article, Huckabee's Ark. (Subscription /registration not required.) The details give some support to Dave Schuler's argument posted at The Glittering Eye. In his September 9 list of suggestions for dealing with the Katrina aftermath, Dave wrote:

FEMA should be abolished. We should go back to something that more closely resembles the old Civil Defense approach. National Civil Defense should concentrate primarily on coordinating local Civil Defense (which in turn should be primarily volunteer), establishing standards, and measuring performance. Congressional rules should limit how much funding (for any purpose) states and localities should be able to receive that don't meet civil defense performance standards.

Earlier I'd contested the same argument from Dave by observing that two wage-earner families and single parents couldn't be expected to volunteer the time necessary to make the Civil Defense model work. After learning about the hugely successful volunteer response in Arkansas I'm willing to rethink my remark.

However, one learns from Kane's report that Arkansas has a striking advantage: the state is disaster prone. They've had lots of practice, on a yearly basis, at mustering quick help for residents made homeless and jobless by tornadoes and other natural disasters. When Katrina struck, Governor Mike Huckabee simply converted his well-tested TRACE (Tornado Recovery and Community Enhancement) response network for use by Katrina victims.

Practice seems to be the key to effective civilian response to an emergency. The state of Texas had a well thought-out plan for dealing with a massive evacuation effort, which they refined after absorbing the lessons of dealing with Katrina refugees. Yet the unprecedented number of Texas evacuees ahead of Hurricane Rita turned up oversights; notably:

> Failure to pre-position emergency gasoline refill tanker trucks along the evacuation routes.

> Failure to adequately coordinate timing of evacuations between state counties, which resulted in gridlock on the evacuation routes.

> Failure in Houston to adequately inform residents that the mandatory evacuation order extended only to the low-lying areas of the city, which contributed to gridlock on routes out of Houston and the run on the region's gasoline stations.

Of course the failures need to studied against everything that went right about the evacuation, which was considerable. All levels of Texas government did a great job handling the largest US emergency evacuation in history. Yet the failures stand as a warning about the limits of planning.

Drill is needed to iron out wrinkles that hide in planning on paper. This has been shown time and again since 9/11 when officials conduct homeland security drills. Every time they hold a drill they find situations that planning had overlooked.

Officials in New Orleans and Baton Rouge rationalized their poor readiness for Katrina by saying their planning was unable to imagine how a catastrophic hurricane would affect the region. Imagination is not a good friend in such instances, as the military could advise. Only lots of practice, in the form of drills, helps one prepare for the unimaginable.

Looking back, simple oversights had such horrific consequences that they defy comprehension. One example is that the New Orleans police department and Memorial hospital were thrown into chaos simply because they hadn't thought to stock up on diesel fuel for back-up generators.

But there is nothing like hindsight, which is best turned up through drills instead of the real thing. I will give Dave Schuler this much: If Americans are willing to make the time and take on the expense of routinely drilling for disaster, we might get away with abolishing FEMA -- or at least making it only a liaison agency between state governments and the federalized military.

If we want to consider the Civil Defense approach, the Arkansas response to the Katrina disaster is the model to study. Let's hope Governor Huckabee writes up a detailed report for presentation to Congress.

It would also be a help if the mainstream television media exerted themselves to report on the Arkansas success story. I can't understand why the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) didn't do coverage in Arkansas during all these weeks of the Katrina aftermath.

If I missed the coverage I will apologize for my remark. Yet despite all the time I dedicated to watching broadcast coverage I don't recall reports about the all-over Arkansas relief effort, which involves so many of Katrina's victims.

I'm beginning to feel like a sailor's wife.

"Dear Pundita:
We are the young couple who wrote you more than six months ago about not wanting to bring children into the world. You gave us a scolding and told a story you called Finish the Dance. We enjoyed the story and also it made us think about what you said, about not betraying the efforts of everyone in earlier generations.

We were in a bad situation at the time and feeling ashamed that we had done so poorly with our lives. We started saying, "Finish the dance" to each other and laughing. It became our private joke. Things are still difficult and we know that we can never return to our village. However, my wife is now pregnant and we are looking forward to the new life with hope.

So we are writing to tell you the good news and also to express sympathy for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. We watched the news about the floods on a neighbor's television. It was a shock to see the world's most powerful nation having such troubles but it was also a reminder that the weather visits tragedy on every nation. We send our prayers that the American people will recover soon.
[signed] "19 and 22"

Dear 19 and 22:
Pundita is happy about your good news. Thank you also for your prayers. Let me tell you how it is for Americans. We have been through much adversity for such a young nation. We had to fight hard for freedom, so we really appreciate it. Being free, we do a lot of complaining and criticizing of our government. Don't be misled by all the bad news you see on the television. Adversity is an old friend to the American people; it is just makes us stronger and wiser.

When adversity comes, you shouldn't think of it as a punishment or judgment on you but as the next bend in the road.

I was thinking of Beau Jocque when I received your letter. I have been thinking a great deal about Beau since Katrina struck Louisiana. Beau was a Louisiana musician who played a kind of music called zydeco but he was really the king of dance because you couldn't listen to his music without getting up and dancing, or at least dancing in your mind.

His birth name was Andrus Espre. He was born in Kinder, Louisiana in 1957. He spent his early adult years working as an electrician. In 1987 he suffered a back injury that left him paralyzed from the waist down for over a year.

He had always been bored by traditional zydeco music but during his convalescence, to pass the time, he picked up his father's Cajun accordion and began playing and singing. The music that poured from him was a fusion of zydeco with many streams of American music.

He formed his first band, the Zydeco Hi-Rollers, in 1991. The music he played was an overnight sensation because, well, because you couldn't listen without getting up and dancing. Eight years later Beau Jocque was dead of a heart attack.

Some great musicians die young. Why this happens is God's business; perhaps they are only on loan to the human race for a few precious years.

I wonder sometimes: did Beau cuss out God when he found himself paralyzed? Maybe, maybe not. What is known is that without terrible adversity, Beau Jocque wouldn't have given his gift of music to the world.

New Orleans will arise again but there is no going back; the city was sinking into the delta, for heaven's sake. It will be a different city when it's rebuilt but the best of the New Orleans tradition will live on.

Listen to Beau Jocque's music to understand America. This country is a fusion of many cultures united by love of freedom and self-expression for all people. So America is as old as human aspirations and ever young. That is the way it can be for every country, if the people have enough freedom.

Recently Dave Schuler at The Glittering Eye put together a chart that lists occupations of US senators and shows the percentage of each occupation represented in the Senate. Not surprisingly, 58% percent of the occupations are attorney.

Dave notes: "Many of the lawyers are actually lifelong politicians who’ve never done anything else. Note that more than [two-thirds] of the Senators are lawyers or people who’ve never worked in anything other than government."

He goes on to make thought provoking observations about the Senate's top-heavy representation of the legal profession and America's extremely adversarial political climate.

There are additional observations that could be drawn from Dave's chart. Please take a look at the chart. Then tell me whether you don't agree there is something very odd about the fact that scientists and engineers are not represented in this day and age.

The professions most needed for a grasp of efficiently managing large, complex systems are simply not represented in today's Senate. On one level that's understandable; after all, the Senate is a legislative body so of course it would attract legal minds. Yet legal minds are geared to analyzing situations after the fact of their occurrence. That kind of analysis is not geared to preventing disaster situations.

We can't expect every governor, every mayor, to have a degree in systems analysis or to come into office with experience managing a large city. Yet just because of this, Americans need to take a hard look at the makeup of the Congress and think about diversification of professional background. And think about upgrading the diversification to include the sciences and engineering -- and also a larger representation of high-level military command experience.

If you tell me you can't fight City Hall; that voters will always be swayed by emotion and promises of pork for their community -- all right, then how about a compromise between human nature and the challenges of the 21st Century?

Why not make it a law that US senators must take night courses on (1) managing large-scale social systems and (2) the worst problems affecting the largest urban areas in the United States -- and their course grades be published?

For readers who need a gentle reminder about why it's really very important to get the thinking of our elected leaders into the present day, consider the following situations:

"On 9/11 the cloak of competence was pulled off the City of New York. Safety codes treated a 100-story high-rise with the same guidelines as a ten-story building."
-- Sally Regenhard, mother of firefighter killed along with most of his company while trying to rescue people trapped inside the World Trade Tower on 9/11.(1)

"The Bonnet Carre Spillway [in New Orleans] is surrounded by oil refineries, chemical plants and a couple of nuclear reactors...And now it is being [proposed by Mayor Ray Nagin] as a site for a brand-new airport."
-- Save Our Wetlands commentary(2)

"Galveston City Manager Steve LeBlanc said the storm surge from Hurricane Rita could reach 50 feet. Galveston is protected by a seawall that is only 17 feet tall. ... The coastal city of 58,000 [sits] on an island 8 feet above sea level..."
-- Associated Press, September 22

About 22-million Californians depend on the water that flows from its delta. There are hundreds of thousands of people living on low land who could be flooded by levee overflows or breaks...." Much of the delta was filled in a century ago for farming." Since, much of that farmland has been turned into housing tracts. “The state looks after 1,600 miles of levees that protect at least a half-million people.” For example, “in 1997, more than 50 California levees broke on rain-choked rivers and killed eight people, forced the evacuation of 100,000 and damaged or destroyed 24,000 homes.” Yet, last January’s report by the State Department of Water Resources says levee maintenance funds have declined from Washington and Sacramento.
-- Bruce Kesler, You ain't seen nothing yet

Blanco finished second in the [gubernatorial] primary. Three days before the runoff election, she was trailing the front-runner, 32-year-old Republican whiz kid Bobby Jindal, when they met for a final debate. More polished and quick on his feet, Jindal seemed to have strengthened his standing that night. Then the two candidates were asked to name a defining moment in their lives. Jindal stayed on message, discussing his conversion to Christianity and the birth of his daughter.

"Blanco immediately knew she would have to address her rawest moment. Listening to Jindal speak, she says, she tried to summon a less painful memory, but she could not avoid it. "The most defining moment came when I lost a child," she told the statewide television audience. ...

"It's very hard for me to talk about it," Kathleen Blanco said as the debate wound up, looking into the camera and fighting tears. "I guess that's what makes me who I am today -- knowing that one of the worst things that can happen to a person happened to me, and we were able to protect our family, and the rest of my children have been strong as a result of it." ...

Commentators said her heart-felt response during the debate may have spelled the difference with voters. She overcame Jindal, defeating him 52 percent to 48 percent."
-- Tyler Bridges, Blanco's Bid

When he arrived in Baton Rouge on Sunday evening, [Michael] Brown said, he was concerned about the lack of coordinated response from Governor Blanco and Maj. Gen. Bennett C. Landreneau, the adjutant general of the Louisiana National Guard.

"What do you need? Help me help you," Mr. Brown said he asked them. "The response was like, 'Let us find out,' and then I never received specific requests for specific things that needed doing."

The most responsive person he could find, Mr. Brown said, was Governor Blanco's husband, Raymond. "He would try to go find stuff out for me," Mr. Brown said.
-- The New York Times, September 15: Ex-FEMA Chief Tells of Frustration and Chaos

1) Quote from Shortcuts to Safety by Matthew Reiss for Metropolis Magazine. If you haven't yet read about why the World Trade towers collapsed, and the New York-New Jersey port authority's exemption from building and safety codes, you should.

2) You'll have to scroll about halfway down the Save Our Wetlands page -- past the rambling rants against corporate greed and some of Mayor Ray Nagin's other decisions -- to get to the letters from New Orleanians about the airport idea. (Perhaps it should also be a law that citizens trying to light a fire under elected officials take a course in how to commit their central point to writing.)

What a difference a day and a presidential visit makes! After sneering that Vice Admiral Allen had crowned himself "the new federal mayor of New Orleans," yesterday Mayor Ray Nagin presented Allen with an "I Love New Orleans" T-shirt. He accompanied this gesture of noblesse oblige with a stiff little hug for the cameras.

We're "one leadership team," Nagin announced. "We may not always agree, but we have one mission: to bring New Orleans back."

And here I thought Allen was also tasked with the safety of the people in New Orleans. Silly Pundita!

In other developments, a real estate boom is on in Louisiana, with speculators from around the country snapping up property in New Orleans and nearby areas; this has sent prices on a steep climb.

So now, residents returning to the affected region to find their homes uninhabitable will not be able to rent or buy at pre-Katrina prices. And there is the added adventure of facing foreclosure:

New Orleans investors will be "pretty big investors who can write a check," said Dave Barry, a Boston-area investor who buys houses entering foreclosure. He predicted huge numbers of foreclosures in Louisiana, a process starting Sept. 1, when many probably missed mortgage payments. "This is a process that's going to play out over the next few weeks."(1)

One can sympathize with the eagerness of residents who only want to pick up their lives in New Orleans. And the determination of business leaders to get things moving again in the city is admirable. Yet it would be helpful if Mayor Nagin and the business community he represents considered the limitations of the hired help -- that being the federal government. And backed up their cheerleading for New Orleans with planning on how to accommodate returnees in a city still without basic services.

1) Boston Globe

Because nothing of any substance whatsoever occurred at the United Nations summit, we should look to the World Bank annual meeting this weekend, where the real fireworks will be found.

First, the really important news from the Bank -- long expected but now firmed:

WASHINGTON (Reuters)
Report filed by Lesley Wroughton, September 19

The World Bank plans to increase funding for infrastructure projects in developing countries by $1 billion a year over the next several years, according to a Bank report obtained by Reuters.

The plan, to be discussed at the Bank's annual meeting in Washington this week, would reverse nearly a decade-long decline in infrastructure spending.

"Most developing countries now face the challenge of correcting the huge infrastructure gaps that threaten growth and the achievement of social and other broader development goals," the report said.

"At the same time, the World Bank faces the challenge of rebuilding its lending and non-lending support and increasing its leverage to reverse the declines in infrastructure support experienced over the past decade," it added.

The increase would mean World Bank infrastructure lending could reach about $10 billion annually, from $7.4 billion last year. The move would lift spending to 40 percent of total Bank lending from a low of about 21 percent in 1999.

The plan follows a decade of cutbacks in spending by governments, particularly in the developing world, on infrastructure such as roads and power generators, due to low economic growth.

Now, with increased growth, infrastructure investment would need to be equivalent to 5.5 percent of gross domestic product, the report said. For poorer countries, the target should be as much as 7-9 percent.

Currently, governments are spending an average of about 2-4 percent of GDP on infrastructure investment, the report added. It said private businesses had not filled the infrastructure spending gap, with private sector investment falling to about $50 billion a year, significantly down from $100 billion a year in the late 1990's.

The report suggested a bigger role in infrastructure investment for the Bank's private sector wings, the International Finance Corp (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). [...]

For the rest of the Reuters report, which presents region-by-region analysis of spending on infrastructure, click here. The reason for the expected fireworks at the Bank annual meeting is slipped in at the very end of the report.

"In many of our client countries, decentralization of administrative responsibilities is proceeding at a rapid pace," [the report] said. "With many sub-national entities lacking adequate technical, institutional and credit capacity, there is a need for capacity-building assistance to help them achieve standards of administrative efficiency and financial transparency," it added.

It also said more emphasis was needed to help member countries manage infrastructure spending more efficiently, as well as using World Bank financial support to leverage private investment funds and help governments manage risk.

Translation: The Bank is planning to come down hard on corruption.

Note to US Congress: Watch World Bank for tips on oversight of federal projects earmarked for storm reconstruction in Louisiana, Mississippi.

Other Bank News
The Gleneagles G8 plan to cancel all debts owed by the 18 poorest (mostly African) countries to international lenders such as the World Bank has come under fire.

Tony Fratto, a senior American Treasury official, told The Sunday Telegraph: "It's not a done deal by any means. There are people who want this rewritten."

[...] An internal World Bank briefing paper has concluded that its International Development Association (IDA) will be hampered in making loans to low-income countries if the debts are written off, as the Bank itself would no longer receive interest payments.

In a second attack on the deal, the Netherlands and Belgium, apparently frustrated that they were not consulted over the G8 deal, have questioned some of the conditions of the debt write-off.

British and American officials are exasperated that the critical internal World Bank report, drawn up by a group of economists and analysts, overlooks provisions made at Gleneagles for the G8 countries to compensate for the lost interest payments, thus ensuring that the IDA can continue lending money.

"I'm not going to name names, but some people within the World Bank are dead set against debt cancellation because they feel it undermines their role," Mr Fratto said.

"There are people out there who want to make the deal seem untenable by chipping away at it. And there are some who just resent the American commitment to this.

"But there is no plan B. One hundred per cent debt cancellation was agreed at Gleneagles and we're not going back on that. This is the only deal on the table and the IDA will be compensated for the lost revenue."

[...] London believes that the deal will receive the required Yes vote, as the G8 countries make up the most powerful voting bloc on the World Bank board.(1)

In other Bank news, Wolfy reports that the Bank still hasn't made up its mind about putting a mission office in Iraq. "There is no question it is dangerous. It is not going to be a simple decision."

The bank evacuated its staff from Iraq in August 2003 after a deadly bombing at the UN headquarters in Baghdad, but has maintained a small Iraqi staff in the country.

The bank's coordination for Iraq has been run from an office in neighboring Jordan, but some in Washington feel it should have a presence inside Iraq to effectively manage the $500 million allocated for Iraq's reconstruction.

"What we are looking at is weighing the relative risks against the potential gains in terms of greater effectiveness," Wolfowitz said.

"Until I see a specific proposal as to what we are going to do and where we are going to be, I cannot predict when a decision will be made." (2)

With regard to that last utterance, every Bank employee down the entire chain of command is saying exactly the same thing. From this we can surmise: everyone has agreed that the Iraq field office stays in Jordan for now.

1) (UK) Sunday Telegraph

2) Reuters

Because Pundita earlier passed along two reports (NBC and NEWSWEEK) about the Orleans Levee Board's investigation of a New Orleans radio show host, I thought it only fair to give the board's president a chance to present his side of the story:

"Breaking a long silence over a bizarre controversy, Orleans Levee District (OLD) President Jim Huey says that, contrary to news reports, he did not authorize a cloak-and-dagger investigation of controversial right-wing radio talk show host Robert Namer, a vocal critic of the levee board.

Huey also discounts new allegations by attorney Patrick Klotz, who says the board also conducted private investigations of three of his clients, all critics of OLD themselves. [...]

Those quotes from a September 11, 2001 Gambit Weekly exclusive interview. Understandably New Orleanians had other things on their mind that day, so Mr. Huey's convoluted defense of his actions, and the board's, seems to have flown under the radar all these years -- at least, until the wake of Katrina.

Huey goes on to explain that actually he approved a cloak-and-dagger investigation into how board documents were "leaving the levee district," which included spying on Namer, and that actually the investigation cost $15,000 not the widely reported figure of $45,000.

"It did get a little out of hand and a little bizarre," he says, referring to one video surveillance episode in which a pair of trousers was secretly photographed in the studio of Namer's radio station (an incident dubbed "trousercam" by board attorneys).

Namer's attorney, Robert Harvey, gets in the last word: what do the probes of levee board critics "have to do with flood control?"

But to this and all other criticism since he took over presidency of the board in 1996, Huey has a stock reply: "If I'm doing something wrong, hang me."

Before reversing course Monday, a clearly agitated Nagin snapped that Allen had apparently made himself "the new crowned federal mayor of New Orleans."

That verbal caning because Allen pointed out that NOLA didn't even have basic services such as 911 and working hospitals and thus, it was premature to call people back to New Orleans.

But we mustn't bother the squire with such details; his job is to make the NOLA business community happy. The federal government and military's job is to function efficiently under impossible conditions and know their place.

At least we're settling into the drill: New Orleans business and political leaders make the messes; the hired help -- that being the American taxpayer and charitable givers -- clean them up.

Elsewhere across the city, where the damage was more severe, much of the sentiment seemed to be with the mayor and his attempts to reopen the city quickly.

"Send Bush here and we'll make him a po' boy and tell him to leave us alone," Kathleen Horn said as she cleaned up the debris piled in front of Slim Goodies Diner on Magazine Street in Uptown.

Hush your mouth, Mr. President; just see the checks are written out.

All quotes from the Associated Press

TUESDAY UPDATE
Associated Press Report:
North Korea Demands Nuke Reactor From U.S.
Sep 19 11:14 PM US/Eastern
By JAE-SOON CHANG, Associated Press Writer
SEOUL, South Korea

North Korea said Tuesday it would not dismantle its nuclear weapons program until the United States first provides an atomic energy reactor, casting doubt on its commitment to a breakthrough agreement reached at international arms talks. The North insisted during arms talks that began last week in Beijing that it be given a light-water reactor, a type less easily diverted for weapons use, in exchange for abandoning nuclear weapons. [...]

Both the United States and Japan, members of the six-nation disarmament talks, rejected the North's latest demand. "This is not the agreement that they signed and we'll give them some time to reflect on the agreement they signed," U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in New York [...]
* * * * *
Where there's life there's hope but Pundita awaits details of the agreement and sight of flying pigs. Tehran and Pyongyang have a sweet deal: Tehran builds the missiles and buys the nuke material for the missiles from Kim Jong-il's crew.

Maybe if the other parties to the six-way talks and the EU can periodically cough up enough money to match Tehran's payments, the North Korean announcement to give up nukes might hold a grain of truth. In that event, the announcement should read "Successful Extortion Attempt" instead of "Agreement."

[...] Chinese chief negotiator Wu Dawei described the key point in the statement to reporters this way: "The DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) committed to abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs and returning at an early date to the treaty on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons and to IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards."

North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 2003 and declared itself a nuclear-weapons power. North Korea is widely believed to have at least two nuclear weapons.

In exchange for North Korea saying it will give up its nuclear programs and weapons, the other five parties in the talks have expressed willingness to provide oil and energy aid and security guarantees to Pyongyang.

Washington has declared it has no intention of attacking North Korea and will respect its sovereignty. It also affirmed it has no nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula.

Washington -- which had previously dubbed North Korea part of an "axis of evil" -- has also declared it will work to "normalize" relations with Pyongyang over time. Japan has said it will do the same.

U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill said in Beijing today that North Korea had made the "right decision."

"It is a big decision for them (North Korea), a big undertaking, but it's absolutely the right decision for them," Hill said. "The security, the success, the prosperity of the DPRK does not depend on nuclear weapons. In fact, it depends on relations with others. So this is a moment which I think will be a very important moment in their history, to make this turn, and to turn away from these sorts of weapons and toward interactions with their neighbors and with other countries in the world."

Analysts say the agreement is a statement of principles whose details must still be worked out. But many today are expressing "cautious optimism" that the North Korean nuclear crisis will indeed be solved peacefully.[...]

Click here for rest of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty report.

# posted by Pundita : 9/19/2005 11:40:00 AM  0 comments

Bruce Kesler, who in recent months has been churning out one great essay after another for the Democracy Project, just send me his latest post; it contains this delicious news:

Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan, had perhaps the most accurate prediction of the inconclusive German elections. “I think you very soon will see in Europe an exhaustion of political parties,” Karzai told an interviewer from Der Spiegel, the text of which appeared one day before Germany’s elections.

Bruce goes on to note:

Karzai’s interview is full of wisdom and insight into the situation in Afghanistan, and in Iraq. For example, he distinguishes between the colonialist border-drawing that made modern Iraq, contributing to its internal divisions, compared to that not being the origin of Afghanistan’s composition, and that Afghans have a long tradition of building consensus compared to less experience with that among Iraqis.

Well. What with consensus-building busting out all over in Afghanistan, and with Germans in a snit at both their major political parties -- wouldn't it be an interesting reversal if the world's youngest democracies taught a civics lesson to old Europe's?

But then this turn of events would be displaying an established pattern. After World War Two, the United States lavished attention on Germany and Japan's political process. When Americans put considerable attention (and yes, considerable funds and patience) into nursing along democracy in other countries, democracy blooms.

I wouldn't discount the efforts by many determined Iraqis to hold their country together. The Iran-Syria funded terrorist attempts to create a civil war in Iraq are having the opposite effect. Yet consensus building is of course a process that takes considerable ongoing citizen involvement; Iraq's experience at this time is a strong reminder of this for Americans -- and Germans. If you can't always have what you want, it's self-destructive to hold to a standoff that hurts the entire country.

Bruce's correspondence with David at Medienkritik blog has yielded a hopeful speculation about Germany's troop involvement in Afghanistan. For this and the rest of Bruce's post, click here.

"Dear Pundita,
Do you think that the Posse Comitatus Act and more broadly American federalism hampered evacuation and rescue efforts with regard to Katrina's strike on the Gulf coast?
Sandy in Glasgow"

Dear Sandy:
The topic you address is implicit in remarks uttered by President Bush during his address to the nation on Thursday:

The storm involved a massive flood, a major supply and security operation, and an evacuation order affecting more than a million people. [...] It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces -- the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment's notice.

Interestingly, the last sentence received only passing mention if that during media discussions, which focused on how to pay for the reconstruction Bush proposed.

I'd say it's not so much federalism as abuse of state power that played a significant role in the unnecessary disasters that accompanied Katrina's hit on the Gulf coast.

Even with the best response there would have been widespread devastation; Katrina was a vicious storm that struck four states hard. But the disasters on top of the devastation just won't stand.

Another sentence in Bush's speech that has gone virtually unremarked:

"Clearly, communities will need to move decisively to change zoning laws and building codes, in order to avoid a repeat of what we've seen."

That was as close as Bush came to reading the riot act to states but Pundita would not have wanted to be in the same room while he was expressing his frank opinion -- not without wearing industrial-strength earmuffs. The pre-Katrina situation with New Orleans housing was horrific, given the city's fragile position below sea level:

''There's a lot of older homes [that can't sustain winds higher than 85 mph], most of these homes are below sea level, most of these homes are termite-ridden,'' said Capt. Lou Robinson, a training instructor with the City of New Orleans Fire Department. ``The newer homes, construction-wise, they just meet minimum requirements. You know, just for cost-effectiveness, they scrimp. The roofs are manufactured with trusses or lightweight metal, but they just don't hold up under extreme conditions.'' [...]

The prevalent hurricane code in Louisiana has been what engineers consider the bare minimum --- that buildings be designed to withstand 100-mph winds.

In 2004, Louisiana approved a higher standard comparable to post-Andrew codes in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, the highest in Florida -- that buildings stand up to gusts of 146 mph.

But the legislature didn't require localities to adopt the new standard. New Orleans and Baton Rouge did, but many local communities have codes that haven't been updated in 10 or 15 years, LSU's Levitan said.

And, he added, the local building industry seems reluctant to adopt hurricane-resistant windows or shutters, which are now required for new construction in Broward and Miami-Dade. Levitan, for instance, is building a wood-framed home, but when his contractor told him he didn't need hurricane straps, he installed them himself.

In any case, New Orleans has seen little new development since adopting the new codes, meaning that most of its structures at best meet the inadequate old standard -- certainly no match for Katrina. And many of those are aging or have been damaged by a Formosan termite infestation.

Worst-case scenario? The city could lose half its homes, Robinson said. [...][1]

Things have come to the point where this nation cannot afford to put up with states that are run like a Third World government. With all the time in the world and the patience of Job, it should be possible to convince American voters that it's slow suicide to keep electing officials who act like 19th Century European colonizers. But right now America is staring down the barrel of the Three Strikes rule. The big worry is that the third strike will be pandemic.

Of course America is a federalist system and there's nothing wrong with the system in principle. However, Louisiana is an example of what happens when there is great abuse of the system. The bottom line is that you just don't stuff hundreds of thousands of people into substandard housing in hurricane alley in a region that's really not fit for human habitation. Not in the 21st Century. Not here in America. And not when a state expects the nation as a whole to help foot the bill for disaster relief and reconstruction.

With regard to the other part of your question: I would guess that if President Bush knew on the Friday before Katrina struck what he knows today about Governor Blanco, he might have gotten around the Posse Comitatus Act. It isn't that hard to do, according to Major Craig Trebilcock, a US military attorney (2):

[...]Through a gradual erosion of the act’s prohibitions over the past 20 years, posse comitatus today is more of a procedural formality than an actual impediment to the use of U.S. military forces in homeland defense.

The original 1878 Posse Comitatus Act was indeed passed with the intent of removing the Army from domestic law enforcement. Posse comitatus means “the power of the county,” reflecting the inherent power of the old West county sheriff to call upon a posse of able-bodied men to supplement law enforcement assets and thereby maintain the peace.

Following the Civil War, the Army had been used extensively throughout the South to maintain civil order, to enforce the policies of the Reconstruction era, and to ensure that any lingering sentiments of rebellion were crushed. However, in reaching those goals, the Army necessarily became involved in traditional police roles and in enforcing politically volatile Reconstruction-era policies. The stationing of federal troops at political events and polling places under the justification of maintaining domestic order became of increasing concern to Congress, which felt that the Army was becoming politicized and straying from its original national defense mission.

The Posse Comitatus Act was passed to remove the Army from civilian law enforcement and to return it to its role of defending the borders of the United States. [...]

The intent of the act is to prevent the military forces of the United States from becoming a national police force or guardia civil. Accordingly, the act prohibits the use of the military to “execute the laws.” [...]

While the act appears to prohibit active participation in law enforcement by the military, the reality in application has become quite different. The act is a statutory creation, not a constitutional prohibition. Accordingly, the act can and has been repeatedly circumvented by subsequent legislation. Since 1980, Congress and the president have significantly eroded the prohibitions of the act in order to meet a variety of law enforcement challenges. [...]

Congress has also approved the use of the military in civilian law enforcement through the Civil Disturbance Statutes: 10 U.S.C., sections 331–334. These provisions permit the president to use military personnel to enforce civilian laws where the state has requested assistance or is unable to protect civil rights and property. [...]

Federal military personnel may also be used pursuant to the Stafford Act, 42 U.S.C., section 5121, in times of natural disaster upon request from a state governor [emphasis mine][3]. In such an instance, the Stafford Act permits the president to declare a major disaster and send in military forces on an emergency basis for up to ten days to preserve life and property. While the Stafford Act authority is still subject to the criteria of active versus passive, it represents a significant exception to the Posse Comitatus Act’s underlying principle that the military is not a domestic police force auxiliary.

An infrequently cited constitutional power of the president provides an even broader basis for the president to use military forces in the context of homeland defense. This is the president’s inherent right and duty to preserve federal functions. In the past this has been recognized to authorize the president to preserve the freedom of navigable waterways and to put down armed insurrection. However, with the expansion of federal authority during this century into many areas formerly reserved to the states (transportation, commerce, education, civil rights) there is likewise an argument that the president’s power to preserve these “federal” functions has expanded as well. The use of federal troops in the South during the 1960s to preserve access to educational institutions for blacks was an exercise of this constitutional presidential authority. [...]

However, this is an area of decision-making that can't be left to the last minute to wrangle over. As Bush indicated in his speech, to deal with the kind of devastation Katrina threatened takes federalized troop intervention at the soonest possible moment.

So it's time for the Congress to get down to brass tacks; spell out the exact conditions under which the commander-in-chief can supersede the constitutional authority of governors.

Dropping food, water and medical supplies into a zone already hit by a natural disaster is not a hard improvisational feat for the US military, as the quick response to the tsunami showed. But this is not the same as improvising the evacuation of a city and environs within three days.

The goal is not to force the military into improvisation. For that, a 'culture' has to be established whereby the citizens understand that they are ready to leave when the troops show up to escort them to shelter. And the military needs to do all the evacuation planning and drill well in advance of the evacuation operation.

Reminder to Americans: the role of the soldier is to kill people and break things. If they get really efficient at playing the role there is a conceivable dual use -- that of saving a large number of lives via managing evacuations, relief efforts and quarantines. However, one shouldn't expect Betty Crocker to show up at the door. Once the Department of Defense plays guardian angel, you do things the CENTCOM way.

John Batchelor recently remarked to his audience that Americans prize liberty above order. Yet we all saw that one doesn't have much liberty while stuck in an attic in a flooded house or pacing a roof for days in 90 degree heat. So I think there has to be a better balance achieved between what Americans prize and what we need.


1) Miami Herald

2) The Myth of Posse Comitatus

3) Stafford Act

Two historic elections today -- one in a country that has never before respected women's rights, the other in a country that's in effect voting for a female leader for the first time in its history.

In Germany, Angela Merkel observed that never before has she been so aware of her gender in politics.

I think, I hope, the polls in Germany are wrong: the election is not as close as predicted. Germans should have enough common sense to elect Merkel's party by enough majority to escape the need for a counterproductive coalition. Otherwise, why not stick with peddling backward under Schröder and his dead-end party?

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, female candidates are just trying to live through the experience of running for office. There is also the problem of how to run for office if you can't leave the house.

In villages and remote areas, often women are simply not allowed to leave their homes, let alone publicly campaign and run for office. Many women candidates are forced to hold campaign meetings in their homes. Limited access to public platforms hampers women's ability to effectively campaign. And women who can appear in public are not allowed to appear in all public places.

There is also the problem of bringing the wrath of Allah down on one's head. Along with garden variety intimidation -- beatings, death threats -- faced by female candidates, they have to contend with warnings that prayers won't be recognized if people vote for female candidates.

“This is a serious threat against women in the society,” one female candidate observed with understatement.

When Osama bin Laden settled into Afghanistan, he bought the minor chieftains for as little as 300 rupees apiece; the big cheeses he bought for ten thousand bucks each.

Foolish men. It takes two types of outlook to survive if you can't keep capturing slaves to do your thinking for you.

Well, they have to elect at least some females to office. Afghan electoral law requires that at least 68 of the 249 seats in the general assembly are reserved for women.

Zut alors! After decades of rotting away beneath the surface of the US national media's attention, Louisiana is finally getting the star treatment! Brace yourself; you'll soon be learning more about crime, corruption and just plain mismanagement in the Magnolia State than anyone ever wanted to know. And here Pundita thought Brazilians were having all the fun, what with televised hearings on corruption in Lula's government!

Today's Los Angeles Times digs up enough scandal to keep tongues wagging all week:

Louisiana Officials Indicted Before Katrina Hit
Federal audits found dubious expenditures by the state's emergency preparedness agency, which will administer FEMA hurricane aid.
By Ken Silverstein and Josh Meyer
September 17, 2005

WASHINGTON - Senior officials in Louisiana's emergency planning agency already were awaiting trial over allegations stemming from a federal investigation into waste, mismanagement and missing funds when Hurricane Katrina struck.

And federal auditors are still trying to track as much as $60 million in unaccounted for funds that were funneled to the state from the Federal Emergency Management Agency dating back to 1998.

In March, FEMA demanded that Louisiana repay $30.4 million to the federal government.

The problems are particularly worrisome, federal officials said, because they involve the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, the agency that will administer much of the billions in federal aid anticipated for victims of Katrina. [...]

Details of the ongoing criminal investigations come from two reports by the inspector general's office in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, as well as in state audits, and interviews this week with federal and state officials.

The reports were prepared by the federal agency's field office in Denton, Texas, and cover 1998 to 2003. [...]

Much of the FEMA money that was unaccounted for was sent to Louisiana under the Hazard Mitigation Grant program, intended to help states retrofit property and improve flood control facilities, for example. [...]

For the rest of the Los Angeles Times story and the juicy details, click on this link.

The reporters did a great job of -- what's that wailing sound reaching Pundita's ears? Oh for heaven's sake; the FEMA Fan Club feels neglected! Lucky for you, Lisa Myers and the rest of NBC's Investigative Unit are on a roll:

Fema Ice Follies
By Lisa Myers & the NBC Investigative Unit
NBC News
Updated: 7:37 p.m. ET Sept. 16, 2005
WASHINGTON
Initially, after Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, was slow in getting ice and water to victims. NBC News decided to look at the ice situation now, as a microcosm of the relief effort, and found that FEMA ordered plenty of ice -- but getting it to those who need it has been chaotic.

Outside New Orleans, Lori Rosete waited an hour to get ice to preserve food and chill her mother’s insulin.

“We just need this to keep coming,” said Rosete, “and do what we have to do, you know? Ration until we can't ration no more.”

Friday, NBC News located hundreds of trucks full of ice sitting around the country: in Maryland, Missouri, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana. Some had been on trips to nowhere for the past two weeks.

Elizabeth Palmer is a truck driver in Carthage, Mo.

“We really don’t understand,” said Palmer, “why FEMA is sending to all these different locations and just putting us in cold storage.”

Dan Wessels’ Cool Express ice company has worked with FEMA for years. He says he's never seen anything like it -- only one-third of his trucks have actually unloaded the ice that FEMA ordered.

“The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing,” said Wessels. “The right hand is telling us to go to the left hand. We get to the left hand, they tell us to go back."

For example, one truck of ice left Oshkosh, Wis., on Sept. 6, and went to Louisiana. Then it was sent by FEMA to Georgia but was rerouted before it arrived to South Carolina, then to Cumberland, Md., where it has been sitting for three days at an added cost to taxpayers so far of $9,000. Multiplied by hundreds of trucks, this sort of dispatching could mean millions of dollars are being wasted.

"From a trucking aspect, I'm happy. Keep it coming," said Wessels. "From a taxpayer aspect, it's sick."

A FEMA official says, in the rush to respond to Katrina, the agency ordered too much ice. Rather than let it melt, they sent it to other parts of the country to be ready for the next hurricane.

But Wessels says FEMA just ordered more ice and re-routed some of his trucks again -- to Idaho.

Lisa Myers is NBC’s senior investigative correspondent.

By the way NBC is setting up a permament bureau in New Orleans (reportedly CNN is doing the same), so NBC's Ice Follies only picks at the tip of the iceberg, if you'll pardon the expression.

However, orientation is necessary before we embark on a festival of scandalous news. Thus, today's earlier Pundita post looks at New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana's Kathleen Blanco and her first year as governor.

For readers who saw the 'early edition' of the post: at 2:30 PM, EDT I added more footnotes and linked the book titles under discussion. Also, Dan at Riehl World View picked up on the Cuba angle mentioned in the post and put forth his thoughts.

The winds of Katrina have blown the lid off many, many things.

[2004] The only time she drew any attention that morning came in House Committee Room 1, where Wayne Parent, a Louisiana State University political science professor, was expounding on his new book, Inside the Carnival: Unmasking Louisiana Politics. [...] Someone asked Parent about Louisiana's history of political shenanigans.

"All of the oil and gas money in the 20th century allowed for a political culture that could breed corruption," he said. "It wasn't the people's money. It seemed like Texaco's and Exxon's money. We don't have that money anymore. We can't afford to be corrupt anymore."

Afterward, Blanco went up to Parent. "It's an interesting theory," she said. "But I'd like to think it had something to do with people in place over the past nine years. A thief will steal no matter how much money there is." [...]

"It's so frustrating," she said. "I'm trying to stop the bleeding. We lost the oil industry, everybody's now in Houston. New Orleans has little or no corporate presence. I'm determined to recapture what we lost. I'm trying to create an economy that generates the tax dollars to get us past the crisis that we have year after year. One option is to start passing taxes. Who in the heck wants to accomplish that?"(1)

"Pundita, I'm sure both Nagin and Blanco are decent people in their own right. There's no way either of them would intentionally hurt citizens. But [their] feud explains why there wasn't any communication and coordination in the critical days and hours before and during the crisis."

Those observations from a reader who passed along old gossip in Louisiana that Ray Nagin's backing of Blanco's Republican rival for the governor's seat, Bobby Jindal, greatly angered Kathleen Blanco and caused her to signal the start of a feud. In theory she might have had good reason to dislike Nagin: he was a Republican who only switched to the Democrat camp just prior to launching his run for mayor.

My reply was that given the well-established knowledge that a hurricane striking New Orleans would be catastrophic, whatever feud that might have existed would have taken a back seat in the days running up to Katrina's landfall on the Gulf coast.

In truth Governor Blanco did not make her decisions in a vacuum; she had a legislature to answer to. That she might have buckled to pressure or conversely overridden pressure from within the legislative body about how to respond to Katrina's threat remains to be explored.

And the towering fact is that Blanco's decisions in the critical hours did not only affect Nagin's Orleans parish; they also affected nearby parishes, over which he had no control.

However, Blanco's feud might have played a role in Nagin's failure to combat crime in New Orleans -- a situation that was to have tragic consequences in Katrina's wake. Long before Nagin's tenure New Orleans had been awash in crime -- and to such extent that reportedly major hotels routinely warned tourists not to venture outside the French Quarter and a very few other locales in the city. Crime went big-time during the past decade, with TOCs (transnational organized crime) syndicates staging turf wars against the local gangs.(2)

I interject that Americans outside Louisiana should keep all that in mind, before leaping to conclusions while listening to horror stories of fleeing New Orleans residents blocked from entering neighboring towns in the storm's wake, or met with distrust in other areas of Louisiana.

Many American blacks saw this decidedly unneighborly treatment as a sign of white racial prejudice against Americans of African slave heritage. The fact that racism, and bigotry of all kinds, have not been completely purged from American society should not be confused with the crime issue in this case.

Concerns about racism in the context of Katrina's onslaught ignore the obvious: Louisiana has a large black population. Blacks and whites alike across Louisiana were very much aware of the huge crime problem in New Orleans and justifiably worried that local police forces would be no match for a sudden influx of armed, organized and very dangerous criminals.

To help you conceive of the scope of crime in New Orleans, reportedly the police force could not fill enough slots without accepting candidates with criminal records and without expunging criminal records. Reportedly 7,000 hospital jobs in New Orleans went begging because the hospitals had rules against accepting workers with criminal records and who could not pass a test to screen for use of illicit drugs.

Behind the cutsey-poo mask that New Orleans put on for the tourist world, the Big Easy was Crime, Inc.(3) Only the large presence of battle-hardened US troops with federal power behind them has put a clamp on the street crime -- a type of crime that is only the tip of the iceberg, and which intersects with entrenched corruption in Louisiana government.

Fighting the level and scope of crime represented in New Orelans would have required help from the state government. Yet Kathleen Blanco's first year in office saw her greatly focused on scaring up money for education improvements, drumming up business, and embroiled in a battle with the owner of a football team.

So, given the amount of money the federal government plans to pour into Louisiana in Katrina's wake, I thought it might be helpful to take a look at the two central characters in the unfolding fiscal drama. First we'll visit Wikipedia for orientation:

Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (born December 15, 1942 in New Iberia, Louisiana) [...] On November 15, 2003, she was elected Governor of Louisiana, defeating Republican opponent Bobby Jindal in a run-off election by a margin of 52% to 48%, becoming the first woman to hold the office.

Kathleen Blanco is a member of the Democratic Party. She was formerly Louisiana's lieutenant governor, having served two terms in that office, starting 1996. Prior to that, she was on the Public Service Commission and was a state legislator.

She graduated from the University of Southwestern Louisiana, now known as the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, in 1964.

During her time as lieutenant governor, Blanco focused on developing the state's tourism industry. Her efforts led to Franco Fête, a statewide celebration of 300 years of French influence in Louisiana in 1999. The festivities drew a large amount of tourists, especially from France and Canada.

Blanco also coordinated another large tourism success -- the state's celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase in 2003. Blanco was the perfect person for this task, utilizing and showcasing her own French-Acadian Cajun ancestry.

On 11 January of 2004 she took the oath of office in both English and French, succeeding Murphy J. Foster, Jr. as Governor of Louisiana.

A major focus of Governor Blanco's time in office has been the future of the New Orleans Saints, one of two major sports franchises in the state of Louisiana. At one time or another, Governor Blanco has proposed the construction of a new stadium for the team, a renovation of the Louisiana Superdome, and has implied that the state cannot afford to retain the team. This has led to an ongoing impasse between Governor Blanco and Saints owner Tom Benson.

In the spring of 2005, Benson halted negotiations between the team and the state until after the 2005 NFL season is over. While Governor Blanco would certainly like to resolve this issue and remain focused on issues such as education, there is little doubt that the outcome of this debate will play a major role in Louisiana's future economic development. It will also affect Blanco's chances for re-election in 2007.

Here I must interrupt the Wikipedia writer to present a somewhat different description of the issue:

In her first year, Blanco has won high marks for forcing Saints owner Tom Benson to withdraw his demand that the state build him a new stadium and for challenging his back-up demand, that the state continue paying him more than $25 million a year to stay in New Orleans and pay more than $150 million to renovate the Superdome.[1]

To continue with Wikipedia's account:

Blanco has traveled more than her predecessor, Mike Foster, to seek economic development for the state. She has visited Nova Scotia, and in December 2004, visited Cuba to boost trade with the state. On her controversial visit to Cuba, she met with Cuban President Fidel Castro. As of 2005 Governor Blanco will also be visiting Asia (primarily Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) in the near future. She has been accused of junket[sic].

I think the author means 'junketing,' a practice whereby politicians receive nice vacations and related perks in exchange for putting in an appearance at function.

Pundita very much doubts a visit to Cuba and meeting with Castro could be considered a junket. Blanco was playing hardball -- and not only to scare up trade; she was going head-on with the Bush administration.

Now we'll turn to Wikipedia's biography of Clarence Ray Nagin Jr.

[Born] June 11, 1956 in New Orleans, Louisiana) is properly the Mayor of Orleans Parish but is more commonly referred to as the Mayor of New Orleans, Louisiana, as the Parish coexists with the city. He was elected in May 2002, succeeding Marc Morial. [...]

Before his election, Nagin was a member of the Republican Party and had little political experience; he was a vice president and general manager at Cox Communications, a cable communications company and subsidiary of Cox Enterprises.

Nagin did give contributions periodically to candidates, including President George W. Bush and former Republican U.S. Representative Billy Tauzin in 1999 and 2000, as well as to Democratic U.S. Senators John Breaux and J. Bennett Johnston earlier in the decade.

Days before filing for the New Orleans Mayoral race in February 2002, Nagin switched his party registration to the Democratic Party. Shortly before the primary election, an endorsement praising Nagin as a reformer by Gambit Magazine gave him crucial momentum that would carry through for the primary election and runoff.[4]

In the first round of the crowded mayoral election in February 2002, Nagin received first place with 29% of the vote, against such opponents as Police Chief Richard Pennington, State Senator Paulette Irons, City Councilman Troy Carter and others. In the runoff with Pennington in May 2002, Nagin won with 59% of the vote. His campaign was largely self-financed.

Shortly after taking office, Nagin launched an anti-corruption campaign within city government, which included crackdowns on the city's Taxicab Bureau and Utilities Department.

Nagin also made a controversial endorsement of current Republican U.S. Representative Bobby Jindal in the 2003 Louisiana Gubernatorial Runoff over current Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco, and only reluctantly endorsed U.S. Senator John Kerry in the 2004 Presidential race.

Nagin received a B.S. degree in accounting from Tuskegee University in 1978 and an M.B.A. degree from Tulane University in 1994. [...]

With that orientation behind us, it's time to take a closer look at Governor Blanco. Writing for Gambit Weekly a seasoned Louisiana journalist, Tyler Bridges, provides an in-depth look at the governor and her first year in office in his November 2004 cover story, Blanco's Bid.

Tyler Bridges is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and a former reporter for New Orleans' The Times-Picayune newspaper. He's also the author of The Rise of David Duke and Bad Bet on the Bayou: The Rise of Gambling in Louisiana and the Fall of Governor Edwin Edwards. (5) At least at the time of the article's publication Bridges was a Miami Herald reporter based in Lima, Peru.

Finally, for readers here and abroad who can't get enough background on Louisiana politics, here is Gambit Weekly's archive of links to journalist Clarence DuBos' writings going back to 2001; just scrolling down the list of titles is an education.

1) Quotes from Blanco's Bid; see above for link to the article.

2) 2001 Louisiana Drug Threat Assessment, published by US Department of Justice.

3) Gambit Weekly 12/2003. Note: A reader has raised a question about one of the facts cited in the commentary: "New Orleans is on track to lead all 71 major cities in per capita homicides -- for the second year in a row." He wrote that he was under the impression that New Orleans was second in homicides in 2003.

Good catch, Dan! However, the discrepancy might be due to different types of statistical analysis, so for now I will allow both views to stand. Even if the fact is in error the commentary does a good job of conveying the seriousness of crime in New Orleans, which was my reason for including the reference.

4) Gambit Weekly's endorsement of Ray Nagin for mayor. And I thought I was the only one who likened Louisiana's politics to those in a Third World country!

5) Part of a review of Bridge's book from Publisher's Weekly:

When the bayou state's oil boom bottomed out in the 1980s, Edwards decided gambling could revive the economy, but the cash flow through casinos, riverboats and video poker led to corruption, greedy promoters and "snake-oil salesmen in expensive suits," as the Times-Picayune put it. Following FBI wiretaps and raids, the 72-year-old Edwards was indicted and convicted on charges of extortion from riverboat casino companies.

Numerous quotes re-create remembered dialogue in this fascinating and fluid narrative reconstruction. Describing Louisiana as the country's most "exotic" state, Bridges does a formidable job of capturing its allure (as well as that of the former governor), but his easy flair is supported by high journalistic standards, including his meticulous attention to details and his exhaustive research which, all in all, make for an irresistible read.

Members of Congress have been studying a report titled New Orleans Levees and Floodwalls: Hurricane Damage Protection. We should also study the report because it will influence the congressional commission to investigate the federal response to Katrina -- whenever Democrat and Republican representatives finish staking out territory and get around to forming a commission.

The six-page report was issued September 6 by "CRS," which is so well known on the Hill that the author didn't bother to spell out the acronym. The report simply states, "CRS Report to Congress."

So before turning to the report, here's an introduction to the history and mission of The Congressional Research Service, which is the public policy research arm of the United States Congress.

As a legislative branch agency within the Library of Congress, CRS works exclusively and directly for Members of Congress, their Committees and staff on a confidential, nonpartisan basis. From the CRS website:

History and Mission
Congress created CRS in order to have its own source of nonpartisan, objective analysis and research on all legislative issues. Indeed, the sole mission of CRS is to serve the United States Congress. CRS has been carrying out this mission since 1914, when it was first established as the Legislative Reference Service. Renamed the Congressional Research Service by the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970, CRS is committed to providing the Congress, throughout the legislative process, comprehensive and reliable analysis, research and information services that are timely, objective, nonpartisan, and confidential, thereby contributing to an informed national legislature.

Because CRS does not make their reports directly available to the public, we can thank the Federation of American Scientists for sharing their copy.

Because federal projects boil down to the bottom line, the CRS report goes into some detail about relevant projects underway prior to the storm. The author also summarizes available knowledge at the time of writing about the major damage to the flood control system:

Challenge of New Orleans Hurricane Protection.
Protecting New Orleans has been an increasingly difficult task. First, the city has become increasingly vulnerable. Land in the city has subsided; barrier islands and wetlands buffering coastal Louisiana have been disappearing; and sea levels have risen.

According to the Corps [of Engineers]...the breaches were at floodwalls along three canals. The 17th Street Canal breach was at a levee-floodwall combination; the breach reached 450 feet in length. According to the Corps, “it’s believed that the force of the water overtopped the floodwall and scoured the structure from behind and then moved the levee wall horizontally.”

The Industrial Canal floodwall had two breaches -- a 100-foot breach, and a 500-foot breach. The London Street floodwall had a 300-foot breach. The Corps continues to work on repairing the breaches.

The Corps noted that other levees and floodwalls were being monitored for potential failure. One reason to fear additional failures is that levees and floodwalls are not designed for extended retention of water, but are instead designed for short-term storm events. [...]

After all these years Pundita still refuses to give away the ending of The Usual Suspects; this by way of explaining that I hate to be a spoilsport. I'll make an exception in this case and leap to the last paragraph:

In what is the understatement of the century thus far, the author notes that "Hurricane Katrina has resulted in some questioning why a Category 4 or 5 hurricane storm damage system was not already in place for New Orleans, and whether it should be part of the rebuilding effort," then settles down to plopping out the brass tacks:

Others are supporting more emphasis on restoration of coastal wetlands to improve storm damage protection. Others are raising concerns about the extent of rebuilding that should take place considering the city’s hurricane and flooding vulnerability. They are concerned that higher levees and floodwalls may provide a false sense of security and continued risk of catastrophic failure. Decisions on what type and level of hurricane protection to provide New Orleans and other coastal areas in the future, as well as factors contributing to Katrina’s damages (Category 3 infrastructure, and levee and floodwall construction, maintenance, and appropriations) likely will be the subject of congressional oversight.

Now how do those last sentences read when translated into plain English? Pundita's blindfolded shot in the dark:

The lowest-lying sections of New Orleans have not been fit for human habitation for well-nigh a century, if ever. So we might as well bow to Nature and deepen and widen the NOLA port to make it fit for containerized shipping, and greatly expand the airport and feeder roads to handle increased cargo traffic from a containerized port. Take that, Singapore!

CRS Report to Congress in PDF. Or copy and past the URL:

http://www.fas.org/
sgp/crs/misc/RS22238.pdf

On Tuesday, President George W. Bush reversed course by announcing to the nation that to "the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility."

On Wednesday, Governor Kathleen Blanco also reversed course: "At the state level, we must take a careful look at what went wrong and make sure it never happens again. The buck stops here, and as your governor, I take full responsibility,'' Blanco told lawmakers in a special meeting of the Louisiana Legislature.

Here Pundita must also reverse course. Privately I have been clinging to the straw that Kathleen Blanco is not in full possession of her faculties. Yet on the assumption that the governor of a US state has a team of legal advisors, common sense precludes me from hoping the entire team is barking mad.

So I find myself inexorably maneuvered into wondering whether the most simple explanation isn't the likeliest: perhaps Governor Blanco and her advisors assume that Americans outside Louisiana's seat of government have the puzzle-solving capacity of a two-year old.

How else to explain why legal advisors would allow Blanco to suddenly take responsibility for what is negligence verging on a capital crime? In these days of the Internet, how long did they think it would take, before the central issue bubbled to the surface?

In the case of the New Orleans levees, which were only built to withstand a Category 3 hurricane, there are still too many variables to categorically assert that winds and flooding from a Category 4 hurricane would automatically breach or even 'top' them. Whereas in the case of the New Orleans floodwalls, it is beyond argument that they were unable to withstand a Category 4.

On the distinction turns the level of negligence indicated by Governor Blanco's failure to fully evacuate the lowest-lying sections of New Orleans ahead of Katrina's strike. That is the central issue.

There have been statements by Blanco and other Louisiana officials to the effect that no one could have predicted the catastrophic flooding that overtook New Orleans. However, the statements cannot apply to the floodwalls.

So before continuing let's be clear on the difference between a levee and a floodwall and exactly what failed in the hurricane:

Levees are broad, earthen structures, while floodwalls are concrete and steel walls, built atop a levee or in place of a levee. Floodwalls are often used in urban areas because they require less land than levees. The floodwalls in New Orleans generally are 6 to 10 feet tall and a foot wide at the top and two feet wide at the base, and they stand on earthen foundations. (1)

Yesterday I reported that Jim Huey, President Orleans Levee Board, told NBC's Investigative Unit: "As far as the overall flood protection system, it's intact, it's there today, it worked. In 239 miles of levees, 152 floodgates, and canals throughout this entire city, there was only two areas [of failure]."

Mr Huey neglected to mention the floodwalls. Yet as early as August 31, WWL-TV (CBS affiliate, New Orleans) reported that the floodwalls had failed. Here, part of the transcript:

Answers from Army Corps of Engineers on unwatering New Orleans
11:28 PM CDT on Tuesday, August 30, 2005
[...] Q.2. Why did the levees fail?

A.2. What failed were actually floodwalls, not levees. This was caused by overtopping which caused scouring, or an eating away of the earthen support, which then basically undermined the wall.

These walls and levees were designed to withstand a fast moving category 3 hurricane. Katrina was a strong 4 at landfall, and conditions exceeded the design.

Q.3. Why only Category 3 protection?

A.3. That is what we were authorized to do.

On September 4, 60 Minutes picked up on the critical distinction between the floodwalls and levees protecting New Orleans. From the transcript (published September 5 on CBS website):

Scott Pelley: "We learned something that surprised us here. Despite what you’ve been hearing, not one of New Orleans’ levees failed. All of the massive earthen levees survived. The failure was in flood walls like this one on the 17th Street canal. The flood walls are miles long, but only two feet thick."

Al Naomi is the man who manages them for the Army Corps of Engineers. He was probably the first to understand what was about to happen to New Orleans.

"Flood walls are unforgiving. They're either there or they're not," Naomi says.

The walls were designed in 1965 to withstand a Category 3 storm. Category 4 Katrina pushed her surge over the top.

"It just was overtopped and the water started pouring over the support for the flood wall, failed and it just pushed out and toppled over and that was it," Naomi explains.

Naomi was at a loss when asked how this engineering disaster could have been prevented.

"You see there was not sufficient money or time to do anything about this," Naomi says. "If someone had said, 'O.K. here is a billion dollars, stop this failure from happening for a Category 4,' it couldn't have been done in time. I’d of had to start 20 years ago to where I feel today I would've been safe from a Category 4 storm like Katrina.

"Sure it should have been done 20 years ago but what can we do about that? You have to recognize before we had Category 3 protection we didn't have anything."

The question is whether a billion dollars and 20 years would be required to upgrade the floodwalls in just the lowest-lying and thus, most at-risk residential section of New Orleans and environs. This would include the Lower Ninth Ward, where many of the city's poorest lived. According to the Wall Street Journal:

Trapped between three cascades of [flood] water were the neighborhoods of the Lower Ninth Ward, where nearly 14,000 African-Americans lived, a third of whom owned no vehicle and a third of whom had physical disabilities, according to U.S. Census data.(2)

The same WSJ article asks:

Why were the levees lining the Industrial Canal and parts of Lake Pontchartrain to the east lower than in other parts of the city? [...]

How high the wave reached hasn't been determined, but the surge poured over 15-foot high levees along the Industrial Canal, which were several feet lower than others in the central areas of the city. [...]

But let's set aside for now the technical question of how much it would have cost, and how long it would have taken, to reinforce only the most vulnerable areas of the NOLA flood protection system.

With regard to the matter at hand, the key sentence in the 60 Minutes interview is "Flood walls are unforgiving." Unlike the levees on which they perch, their construction and material provide virtually no latitude for inexact assumptions.

What we know for certain at this point, and what was clearly known to anyone managing the flood protection system or reading reports on such, is that it wouldn't have taken a Category 4 hurricane to overwhelm the flood control system protecting the lowest-lying area of New Orleans.

A slow-moving Category 3 or even lower, of the kind represented by Ophelia, would greatly weaken the levees and likely overwhelm the floodwall defenses, which are several feet lower than ones in other parts of the city.

Then it would depend on the pumping system, which reportedly was not designed to pump out floodwater; it was designed to pump rain water. And in the event of a widescale electrical outage, the pumping station would likely fail and could take days if not weeks to be fully functional in the event of catastrophic flooding.

Against all this is the inarguable fact: the Governor of the State of Louisiana did not ensure that the lowest-lying regions of New Orleans and neighboring districts were fully evacuated ahead of Katrina's landfall.

So I cannot find reason, other than a belated attack of conscience, for Kathleen Blanco to publicly assert this late in the day that she takes full responsibility.

1) CRS report.

2) Anatomy of a Flood: 3 Deadly Waves
September 7, 2005; Page A1, Wall Street Journal.

Report featured on NBC Nightly News tonight(1):

Is the Orleans Levee Board doing its job?
Critics allege corruption, charge the board with wasteful spending

By Lisa Myers & the NBC Investigative Unit
NBC News
Updated: 6:26 p.m. ET Sept. 14, 2005

MSNBC TRANSCRIPT
"The unveiling of the Mardi Gras Fountain was celebrated this year in typical New Orleans style. The cost of $2.4 million was paid by the Orleans Levee Board, the state agency whose main job is to protect the levees surrounding New Orleans -- the same levees that failed after Katrina hit.

"They misspent the money," says Billy Nungesser, a former top Republican official who was briefly president of the Levee Board. "Any dollar they wasted was a dollar that could have went in the levees."

Nungesser says he lost his job because he targeted wasteful spending.

"A cesspool of politics, that’s all it was," says Nungesser. "[Its purpose was to] provide jobs for people."

In fact, NBC News has uncovered a pattern of what critics call questionable spending practices by the Levee Board -- a board which, at one point, was accused by a state inspector general of "a long-standing and continuing disregard of the public interest."

Beyond the fountain, there's the $15 million spent on two overpasses that helped gamblers get to Bally's riverboat casino. Critics tried and failed to put some of that money into flood protection.

There was also $45,000 for private investigators to dig up dirt on radio host and board critic Robert Namer.

"They hired a private eye for nine months to find something to make me look wacko, to make me look crazy or bad." says Namer. "They couldn’t find anything."

Namer sued and the board then spent another $45,000 to settle.

Critics charge, for years, the board has paid more attention to marinas, gambling and business than to maintaining the levees. As an example: of 11 construction projects now on the board's Web site, only two are related to flood control.[2]

"I assure you," says Levee Board President Jim Huey, "that you will find that all of our money was appropriately expended."

Huey says money for the levees comes from a different account than money for business activities and that part of the board’s job is providing recreational opportunities.

And despite the catastrophic flooding, Huey says, "As far as the overall flood protection system, it's intact, it's there today, it worked. In 239 miles of levees, 152 floodgates, and canals throughout this entire city, there was only two areas."

But those two critical areas were major canals and their collapse contributed to hundreds of deaths and widespread destruction.

Lisa Myers is NBC’s senior investigative correspondent."

Pundita notes that Jim Huey, the levee board's president, doesn't mention that the levees are now so weakened they can be breached by even a tropical storm surge. And according to an earlier reports, the levees were breached in at least seven places; the two breaches mentioned by Huey were only the major ones.

Nor does Mr. Huey volunteer the information that in addition to levees, floodgates and canals there are floodwalls. It is on the question of the New Orleans floodwalls that much hangs.

For more on the Orleans Levee Board story, see Pundita post The Banana Republic of Louisiana and the French (Canadian) Connection.

(1) Link to MSNBC transcript and map of New Orleans levees, canals and flood breaches.

(2) Link to Orleans Levee Board Bids and Proposals

Reviewing a reader's question about corruption in Peru's construction industry reminds Pundita that two states famous for corruption, Mississippi and Louisiana, are undertaking a massive reconstruction effort. So now is good time to bone up on a report about corruption in the construction industry and guidelines for averting the worst abuse of public monies....

September 2
"Dear Pundita:
I've lived in Latin America on and off for years. I've often wondered how US aid money gets from taxpayers' pockets to corrupt officials' private bank accounts. A flow chart would be fascinating (and heartbreaking).

The stealing going on must be tremendous. There is virtually no investment in infrastructure in most Latin American cities. Public works is a complete nil. I agree with one of your basic assessments (my paraphrase): it is not that rich people -- say, in Latin America -- are particularly bad or twisted, but they do not tax themselves.

Latin America does not have an IRS-type agency that has the Fear of God as a backstop. Basically, nobody pays taxes at any significant level. Or at minimum, there doesn't seem to be any honest collection and distribution system.

In any case, would you be willing to explain just how corruption works? Take for example some Minister -- say the Director, Ministerio de Vivienda of Peru. The public monies coming in cannot be all that large. Foreign aid on the other hand represents a respectable pile of cash.

How does our director go about getting his divvy of US foreign aid?
Doug in Seattle"

Dear Doug:
Actually the rich are soaked in countries without a fair tax code and enforced collection system; the taxation on the rich is whatever the traffic will bear. However, the taxation is under the table, as I pointed out in Paw a Revenuer's at the door....

In other words, there is always de facto taxation in effect. If you have to pay bribes to get anything done that's a tax albeit an illegal one.

The biggest problem with this kind of taxation is that the revenue, if it can be called that, is not spent on works that benefit the public as a whole. That sets in motion a vicious cycle. The roads or electricity will be somewhat reliable in a rich neighborhood, thanks to bribes, but because other regions or sections of a city go without, the rich end up spending exorbitant monies to do business or simply function outside their own neighborhood.

That much human stupidity is hysterically funny when looked at from the longest view. More than once Pundita has had to tell a bald-faced lie, in order to explain away her peals of laughter while listening to the complaints of the rich in countries that run on bribes.

"Bah! Nothing works in this crazy country! Our entire shipment rotted on the docks again because the roads washed out! I can't tell you how much in bribes it cost to get things moving again!"

If you see someone who is otherwise sane whacking himself in the shins with a tire iron then complaining, "I can't walk," at first you feel sympathy. But once you've heard, "This is my tradition" a few times it's hard not to think of The Three Stooges.

The good news: that much stupidity is severely punished in a globalized trade system unless there is an external force propping it up. Enter foreign aid and development loans.

So I'm going to throw you a curve ball. Even if the aid agency or development bank could somehow prevent corruption, which often can't be done without draconian, expensive oversight measures, you're not even out of the gate.

The truth is that as long as many governments have a way to stave off a realistic, enforced tax code, they'll take it. That's because the wealthy faction that put them in power throws a hissy fit when confronted with an iron-clad tax code and collection enforcement.

The World Bank has learned this lesson the hard way and USAID is catching up.(1) That's why they've gone gaga over remittances. The reasoning is that if they have to contribute to tax delinquency, at least work it so they're not the only ones. Encourage chump immigrants to send their hard-earned money over and above taxes back home.

In this way, the chumps continue to support the home administration's habit of blowing revenue to keep the rich from overthrowing them. Then we're right back at shin whacking.

Here you might ask why the wealthiest nations don't simply shut off development loans and aid except for outright disasters. The answer is that aid and development banking are mega-industries.

Even if you only gave aid in the form of outright cash, you'd be helping to support the banking sector because you have to collect, transfer and disburse the cash. However, most aid is in the form of goods or service, which helps support contractors and subcontractors.

Same principle applies to development banks. See Development Banks under the Pundita Selected Essays on the sidebar.

The industry of being helpful to the poor supports so many livelihoods that if you somehow managed the impossible and shut it down, it would spring up again virtually overnight.

The development loan industry even supports the industry that's grown up to invest in helping the poorest in the poorest nations, if you can feature that. There are funds you can invest in that specialize in providing micro loans to the world's poorest entrepreneurs. You don't get a big return, of course, but if you want to invest in 'socially responsible' projects, an industry has arisen to tend to that desire.

I hasten to add that investing in micro-projects, which can be as small as a few hundred dollars, is a good idea in principle. And in practice micro-investing brings genuine and generally corruption-free assistance to the neediest and hardest working.

Yet as soon as the poor expand beyond a tiny neighborhood business, they run into the same problems the rich run into in their country. The electricity fails during business hours, the roads are washed out, the garbage isn't picked up, and so on down the long list. So what do the fledgling entrepreneurs end up doing? They pay more bribe money.

How to break the vicious cycle? The US government has hit on the idea of promoting genuine democracy and election reforms in the poorest countries. The reasoning is that if more people in the poorest countries are brought into the voting and governing process, collective wisdom will break self-destructive traditions.

As to how aid money gets from Americans' bank accounts into the hands of corrupt officials, it depends on how the aid transfer is set up and the form it takes. Money can be skimmed or outright stolen by a virtually infinite variety of means. Close oversight, which costs a lot of money, is the only way to insure that most of the aid won't wend its way into the wrong hands.

With regard to corruption in public construction works, you will find the 2005 report by Transparency International of interest. You might want to first read their press release, which is cheerily titled, "A world built on bribes?"

Or go directly to Global Corruption Report 2005, which focuses on corruption in construction and post-conflict reconstruction. And ahem the guidelines and warnings apply as well to post-disaster reconstruction.

1) USAID Anticorruption Strategy 2005 (PDF).

When Paul Wolfowitz took over the presidency of the World Bank he identified corruption as a major obstacle to development in the poorest countries and observed that, "Corruption is the biggest threat to democracy since communism."

As investigative reporters unravel the tangled skein of events leading to the New Orleans horror, it is coming clear that Wolfowitz's comments might apply as much to Louisiana as a developing country.

It is public knowledge that failure to upgrade the New Orleans levee and floodwall system was a key factor in the flooding that overtook the city during Katrina's onslaught. Less known is that the local agency responsible for maintaining the flood protection system misallocated funds.

Last Wednesday Charles Gasparino, a writer for NEWSWEEK, reported to John Batchelor's radio audience that the Orleans Parish Levee Board spent revenue on casino development and other tourist attractions instead of financing projects to upgrade and repair the New Orleans levee system.

In an article for NEWSWEEK Gasparino reported that the levee board did not work with the federal government to issue municipal bonds to upgrade the levees. The bonds would be needed to make up the tax shortfall when paying for major work on the levees.

Former Louisiana congressman Bob Livingston, who represented the suburbs surrounding New Orleans for two decades, told NEWSWEEK that regional rivalries were greatly to blame in preventing federal money going to fix the levees.

The Orleans Parish Levee Board might have had a more serious reason for any unwillingness to deal with the feds: a US congressman had called for an investigation of corrupt practices at the board.

Writing for Canada Free Press, David Hawkins, Foundation Scholar at Cambridge University and Judi McLeod, award-winning journalist and founding editor of Canada Free Press, observe:

Rampant public corruption was doing big business in New Orleans long before Hurricane Katrina ever hit. What then Congressman, now Senator David Vitter [R-LA] calls "corrupt, good old boy" practices were apparent in the New Orleans Levee Board just one year before the collapse of regional levees, emergency communications and government services brought the Big Easy to the brink of anarchy.

In fact, Senator David Vitter requested a federal investigation into improper practices of a number of public utilities, including the New Orleans Levee Board, and a new Task Force was to have been initiated in the Baton Rouge office, beginning in July 2004.

As Vice-Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee, which holds jurisdiction over the Justice Department, Vitter met with and actively encouraged Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller to establish an additional Public Corruption Task Force in their Louisiana offices.

With the focus on kickbacks and bogus contractors, who was heeding experts calling for a levee disaster from a major hurricane?

The same article raises the question of a connection between corruption in Louisiana government and a French Canadian organization with ties to the UN Oil for Food scandal.

Of all the coastal regions struck by Katrina, only the State of Louisiana is in the clutches of La Francophonie. La Francophonie's detractors […] describe it as a Montreal-based, racketeering influenced and corrupt organization (RICO) with outlandish claims to represent the interests of the French-speaking world. [...] Purporting to "defend Louisiana's unique linguistic heritage", it was the Conseil pour le developpement du francais en Louisiane (CODOFIL) that brought the state into the La Francophonie tent.

"CODOFIL represents Louisiana at the signing of accords with the foreign governments: these accords dictate the nature of the relationship between Louisiana and the foreign governments." [...]

La Francophonie was funded and re-structured [...] by insiders of CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) at a 1986 meeting in Paris. [...]

Management of La Francophonie is Canadian, CIDA is the main source of funds granted by Canada to Francophonie cooperation programs and managed by La Francophonie Affairs Division. Canadian Heritage, Industry Canada (information technologies), Justice Canada (democracy, legal cooperation) and Environment Canada (particularly management of the Energy and Environment Institute of la Francophonie [...])

CIDA was founded in 1968 by the ex-president of Power Corp. of Montreal, Maurice Strong [...] In the 1990s, Strong went on to become the godfather of the $trillion Kyoto trading scandal, with the financial clout to execute his dreams for La Francophonie.

Strong's plan appears to have played out as follows: Montreal insiders of Power Corp. and La Francophonie have controlling positions in global commodity markets through oil companies (TotalFinaElf) and water companies (Suez). Former UN Secretary-General Bhoutros Bhoutros Ghali serves as La Francophonie Secretary-General. Both Strong and Ghali are under investigation by American authorities for alleged ties to the UN oil-for-food scandal.

It might take considerable digging to learn whether there is a direct connection between Maurice Strong's ventures and Louisiana-backed enterprises; seeking a connection between Strong and inappropriate expenditures by the Orleans Parish Levee Board could be even more difficult.

However, the connection between Strong, CIDA, La Francophonie and Louisiana points up the interlocked, globalized aspect of corruption in today's world. A 2004 report to the National Press Club, Public Corruption in the United States, underscores that Louisiana is by no means the only US state with entrenched government corruption.

Yet the corruption in Louisiana represents a special case because of the vital importance of the Port of New Orleans and the fact that New Orleans is dangerously below sea level and continuing to sink.

It has long been established that the city could not withstand water surges from a Category 4 hurricane. Yet the Orleans Parish Levee Board, and those holding power in Baton Rogue, didn't even bother to put on a good show of trying to raise funds to upgrade the levees and floodwalls protecting New Orleans.

And those holding power in Louisiana didn't even bother to make a show of evacuating residents most at risk from a city they knew would be a disaster zone in the wake of a powerful hurricane.

It is almost beyond comprehension that here, in America, in the 21st Century, we have a state in our midst that remarkably evokes Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe.

How, then, is US Ambassador John Bolton supposed to stand before the United Nations and demand more accountability from governments in other countries? How, then, is Paul Wolfowitz to urge the poorest nations to fight corruption in their government?

For more on the Orleans Parish Levee Board, Dan at Riehl World View provides a few nuggets, including the stunning news that the board announced they would close an evacuation route to New Orleans on the Saturday before Katrina struck.

Ironically enough, it doesn't require an engineering degree, or any type of experience with a levee to serve on the levee board in New Orleans. It says only that: they serve at his (the Governor's) pleasure. It's my understanding that the levee board is often primarily composed of business people. [...]

Let us hope that someone with engineering experience, or at least the mayor, persuaded the board to keep the evacuation route open longer.

See today's earlier post (Hidden in plain sight) for full text of Governor Blanco's Friday, August 26 declaration of a state of emergency.

Issued by Louisiana Governor's Office
"Press Release
Date: 8/27/2005 [Saturday]
Contact:Denise Bottcher or Roderick Hawkins at 225-342-9037

Governor Blanco asks President to Declare an Emergency for the State of Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina

BATON ROUGE—Today Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco forwarded a letter to President Bush requesting that he declare an emergency for the State of Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina. The full text of the letter follows:

August 27, 2005
The President
The White House
Washington, D. C.

Through:
Regional Director
FEMA Region VI
800 North Loop 288
Denton, Texas 76209

Dear Mr. President:

Under the provisions of Section 501 (a) of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 5121-5206 (Stafford Act), and implemented by 44 CFR § 206.35, I request that you declare an emergency for the State of Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina for the time period beginning August 26, 2005, and continuing. The affected areas are all the southeastern parishes including the New Orleans Metropolitan area and the mid state Interstate I-49 corridor and northern parishes along the I-20 corridor that are accepting the thousands of citizens evacuating from the areas expecting to be flooded as a result of Hurricane Katrina.

In response to the situation I have taken appropriate action under State law and directed the execution of the State Emergency Plan on August 26, 2005 in accordance with Section 501 (a) of the Stafford Act. A State of Emergency has been issued for the State in order to support the evacuations of the coastal areas in accordance with our State Evacuation Plan and the remainder of the state to support the State Special Needs and Sheltering Plan.

Pursuant to 44 CFR § 206.35, I have determined that this incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments, and that supplementary Federal assistance is necessary to save lives, protect property, public health, and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a disaster. I am specifically requesting emergency protective measures, direct Federal Assistance, Individual and Household Program (IHP) assistance, Special Needs Program assistance, and debris removal.

Preliminary estimates of the types and amount of emergency assistance needed under the Stafford Act, and emergency assistance from certain Federal agencies under other statutory authorities are tabulated in Enclosure A.

The following information is furnished on the nature and amount of State and local resources that have been or will be used to alleviate the conditions of this emergency:

• Department of Social Services (DSS): Opening (3) Special Need Shelters (SNS) and establishing (3) on Standby.

• Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH): Opening (3) Shelters and establishing (3) on Standby.

• Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (OHSEP): Providing generators and support staff for SNS and Public Shelters.

• Louisiana State Police (LSP): Providing support for the phased evacuation of the coastal areas.

• Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (WLF): Supporting the evacuation of the affected population and preparing for Search and Rescue Missions.

• Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD): Coordinating traffic flow and management of the evacuations routes with local officials and the State of Mississippi.

The following information is furnished on efforts and resources of other Federal agencies, which have been or will be used in responding to this incident:

• FEMA ERT-A Team en-route.

I certify that for this emergency, the State and local governments will assume all applicable non-Federal share of costs required by the Stafford Act.

I request Direct Federal assistance for work and services to save lives and protect property.

(a) List any reasons State and local government cannot perform or contract for performance, (if applicable).

(b) Specify the type of assistance requested.

In accordance with 44 CFR § 206.208, the State of Louisiana agrees that it will, with respect to Direct Federal assistance:

1. Provide without cost to the United States all lands, easement, and rights-of-ways necessary to accomplish the approved work.

2. Hold and save the United States free from damages due to the requested work, and shall indemnify the Federal Government against any claims arising from such work;

3. Provide reimbursement to FEMA for the non-Federal share of the cost of such work in accordance with the provisions of the FEMA-State Agreement; and

4. Assist the performing Federal agency in all support and local jurisdictional matters.

In addition, I anticipate the need for debris removal, which poses an immediate threat to lives, public health, and safety.

Pursuant to Sections 502 and 407 of the Stafford Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 5192 & 5173, the State agrees to indemnify and hold harmless the United States of America for any claims arising from the removal of debris or wreckage for this disaster. The State agrees that debris removal from public and private property will not occur until the landowner signs an unconditional authorization for the removal of debris.

I have designated Mr. Art Jones as the State Coordinating Officer for this request. He will work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency in damage assessments and may provide further information or justification on my behalf.

Sincerely,
Kathleen Babineaux Blanco
Governor
Enclosure

ENCLOSURE A TO EMERGENCY REQUEST

Estimated requirements for other Federal agency programs:

• Department of Social Services (DSS): Opening (3) Special Need Shelters (SNS) and establishing (3) on Standby. Costs estimated at $500,000 per week for each in operation.

• Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH): Opening (3) Shelters and establishing (3) on Standby. Costs estimated at $500,000 per week for each in operation.

• Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (OHSEP): Providing generators and support staff for SNS and Public Shelters. Costs estimated to range from $250,000-$500,000 to support (6) Shelter generator operations.

• Louisiana State Police (LSP): Costs to support evacuations - $300,000 for a non-direct landfall.

• Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (WLF): Costs to support evacuations - $200,000 for a non-direct landfall.

• Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD): Costs to support evacuations - $2,000,000 for a non-direct landfall.

Totals: $ 9,000,000

Estimated Requirements for assistance under the Stafford Act:

Coordination: $0
Technical and advisory assistance: $0
Debris removal: $0
Emergency protective measures: $ 9,000,000
Individuals and Households Program (IHP): $0
Distribution of emergency supplies: $0
Other (specify): $0

Totals: $ 9,000,000
Grand Total: $ 9,000,000"

http://www.gov.state.la.us/
Press_Release_detail.asp?id=976

10:00 AM Update
A reader (thanks, Ben!)informed me that my memory was in error; Governor Blanco declared a state of emergency on Friday the 26th. I've included the declaration at the end of this post.
* * * * *
Michael Wright: There was a Keystone Cops aspect to the Katrina responses. People in charge couldn’t think as fast as the storm and the events afterward. There was ineptness across the board.

Pundita: Ineptness is the least of it. There were definitely breakdowns in communication between agencies. Those need to be examined and fixed straightaway because hurricane season is still with us. And sure there was ineptness of varying degrees; there always are, in an emergency of such complexity and scope.

However, you don’t want to lose sight of the big question, which is whether there is something about the square footage in the lowest part of New Orleans that conceivably makes it worth committing mass murder for. Or negligent homicide or involuntary manslaughter, or however you want to term it.

MW: [Laughing] You’re still after Blanco!

P: What I don’t understand is why a grand jury isn’t after her yet. This is the screwiest thing I’ve ever seen in the US, at least in modern times. It’s happening in plain sight, which is what makes it screwy. I think Louisiana has a different code of law than the rest of the country; I wonder if that explains it. I think they go by the Napoleonic Code -- the French influence.

MW: If there’s anything to what you’re saying, it’s not really in plain sight. It’s a needle in a haystack of information. There’s so much going on, so many facts drifting around. I think it’s going to take time for people to sort things out, especially if they do other things with their life in addition to study news about Katrina.

P: What’s to sort out? Nothing has been done in underhanded fashion; it’s all been done in the open. That’s why Bush has been looking green around the gills. By the time he could think the unthinkable it was too late. He was sucker punched; you can always tell because he starts cracking tasteless jokes.

It’s her looks; Americans associate this kind of thing with someone who looks like Stalin, not someone whose picture could be on a box of cake mix.

MW: Then I think most people are having the same problem you say Bush had because it looks like a straight-up case of incompetence to me.

P: You’re overlooking key facts. At the time she needed to make the critical calls [Friday], Blanco [was informed] a Category 5 hurricane [could be] heading for Nola [New Orleans]. She knew that the entire city had to be evacuated. And the lowest-lying regions of the city definitely had to be evacuated or it was guaranteed there would be virtually no survivors in the Lower Ninth Ward and the entire eastern industrial section.

That was...before the storm was downgraded to a Cat 4 and of course before the storm veered slightly to the east, which was just before landfall.

She had to make the decision then to ask for federalized troops, which Bush offered, to help clear the city, including the hospitals and prison. She had to make the decision, then, how many state National Guards to deploy to start the evacuation process. She had to make the decision, then, whether to institute a state of emergency. [Correction: Blanco declared a state of emergency on Friday, the 26th.]

Blanco understood all this very clearly; she had the exact nature of the threat explained to her in front of witnesses in a video conferencing call from the head of the national hurricane agency.

Her attorneys can try to grasp at a straw by saying she was unaware that the levees, floodwalls and pumping system for Nola couldn’t handle anything greater than a Cat 3 storm surge. But that’s why a grand jury investigation is needed. They need to subpoena testimony, meeting minutes, computer records, and so on.

MW: Okay, surely she knew.

P: “Surely” doesn’t cut it in this situation. The evidence needs to be collected and entered into record. Of course they must have known -- Blanco and her emergency response team. They must have seen the engineering reports. But “must” won’t take you to criminal indictments

MW: You’re really envisioning criminal charges?

P: To think in any other terms evades the seriousness of the matter. The idea is to discover whether criminal charges need to be brought. No more federal monies, except for disaster relief for the victims, should be given to the state of Louisiana until there has been a grand jury inquiry. No clowning around with a congressional commission or naming an independent investigator. This isn’t Whitewater.

I’ll give you this much. The seriousness is not yet evident to many in the general public because the major television media have not yet run with the information in the Wall Street Journal report and the previous day’s ABC TV report. [About the flood in the Lower Ninth Ward and the eastern industrial section; see September 8 Pundita post.]

Those two reports jibe and ABC has footage of the flooding in that section. Oddly, ABC World News did not continue to run with that story after Sunday. Maybe a cable channel picked up on it but in that event it would be strange if NBC and CBS hadn’t jumped into the act.

So I don’t think most people understand yet that the lowest area of the city was under threat not just from the storm surge from one lake overflowing but from two, in addition to the surge from the Mississippi River in that part of the city.

To crib a quote from Titanic, it was a mathematical certainty; in a Cat 5 or Cat 4, there would be catastrophic flooding in that region of the city. The flooding just happened faster in this case, or it’s theorized that it happened faster, because a barge was thrown by the storm surge into a floodwall or levy portion.

The theory is that the barge tore loose a section of the floodwall or levee and water flooded into the breach although it’s still just a theory. The barge could have been tossed by the waves into a breach that was already there.

Yet even without that factor, the floodwalls would have been entirely topped and battered by the surge from 175 mph winds, which you could expect with a Cat 5. As it was, I seem to recall the Katrina winds were clocked at 145 mph.

MW: You’re saying the eastern industrial section is what to be looking at.

P: That’s where the story is but the TV cameras for the most part were trained on other parts of the city. You’re looking at a maze of facts that have been thrown at you for two weeks. The way out of the maze is to keep remembering there could not be survivors in the lowest level of the city in the event of a direct hit from a Cat 5.

How could there be survivors? You need to calculate how low the lowest-lying section of New Orleans is. It’s said that Nola is about 6 feet below sea level. That’s an average. It’s anywhere from about 1 to 10 feet below sea level. That means the lowest level, where the Lower Ninth Ward and the eastern industrial section are located, is 10 feet below sea level.

Then you have to add as much as 2 extra feet under sea level, depending on the time of day – the tide.

Now add the water surge generated by a Category 5 storm, which would immediately knock out the floodwalls, which if I recall are only 2 feet thick.

MW: Then you could be looking at 30 or 40 feet of water rushing in.

P: Not “could.” Certain. And remember you have to add the rain level in addition to the storm surge. In a direct hit from a Cat 5, the rain would have dumped as much as a half-foot or more within minutes.

Then there is the hurricane-force wind. So you’re in your house and you see the water flooding in at least a foot a minute. You run to the attic to get out through the roof. What do you do then, with 175 mph winds blowing? Try to cling to the chimney? Jump down into the floodwaters? Navigate ten foot waves or higher with 175 mph wind blowing?

Now, if you were living in the Carolinas or Florida you might be able to hold out if you clung to something high enough, if it’s a fast moving storm. That’s because the floodwaters have someplace to go --

MW: But the waters are trapped in New Orleans.

P: Sure. The city is a like a bowl set below sea level. Only the levees, floodwalls and pumps keep it from filling even when there’s no storm. Once the water gets in, it can’t get out except through leeching, evaporation or pumps. Realize the city floods from just one inch of rain.

In a Category 4 or 5 hurricane the pumps would be guaranteed to break down almost immediately. Yet even with all of them working at full tilt, they could not keep up with the walls of muddy, gunky water coming into the bowl during the height of the storm. And remember the pumps were constructed to deal with rainwater, not gunk water, which is why it’s slow going now.

And again keep in mind that the lowest section of the city is under threat not from one lake flooding but from two in addition to the Mississippi River flooding at that low elevation. They get pounded from three angles.

All this was surely known to the disaster planning team that advised Blanco; they had the engineering reports. But again, “surely” doesn’t cut it.

MW: I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around the implications.

P: There’s more, much more. So to think in terms of a white paper or a 9/11-style commission report and recommendations is ridiculous. You’re not going to collect the evidence needed to get a clear picture without threat of criminal indictment. The general idea is to get the Louisiana state legislature and various members of Blanco’s administration singing like a bird in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

MW: I’m not keeping up with you. You’re saying there’s something larger than assigning blame for the lack of upgrades to the levees and the chaos that followed the storm. That much I get --

P: Assuming Blanco is in possession of her faculties, she knew on the Saturday before the storm struck that she risked impeachment, at the least, by not ordering a full evacuation of the lowest-lying portion of the city and taking every means open to her to ensure the order was enforced.

MW: But she could pass the buck to [Nola mayor] Nagin, which might have happened anyway.

P: If she thinks Nagin would take the fall for her, truly she isn’t in possession of her faculties. He’s already sent up smoke signals. And that’s just in the wake of a Cat 4 strike. Money says he would be talking a blue streak already -- provided he survived the flood -- in the event of a Cat 5. But in that event, I think he would have evacuated himself on Sunday.

MW: Provided he could do so at that point.

P: Got that right.

MW: That’s a hard way to discover how expendable you are.

P: Not only Nagin, the police and the firemen. By Sunday they had learned just how expendable they were. At least the head of the harbor patrol knew how to take being expendable; the entire patrol was ordered to leave their posts and get themselves and their families out of Nola.

MW: You have to turn everything around and ask what the motive would be; why Blanco would take such a risk.

P: You can’t ask the question at this point; you can have suspicions about motive but first you have to establish whether a crime has been committed before you can talk about motive. First enter into evidence that a Cat 5 storm would overwhelm Nola’s defenses. Then that Blanco knew this. Then that she knew all her options. And that she had certain knowledge that a Cat 5 storm coming near or hitting directly at Nola would mean no survivors in the city’s lowest part without enforced evacuation.

MW: That’s a lot of things to establish.

P: Sure. And you have a snowball’s chance of establishing them without threat of criminal indictment. But if you don’t go that route, attempt to establish all that, you’ll never get the chance to ask “Why?”

MW: None of that will happen. The Democrats and the Republicans have pretty much equal reasons for wanting to get past the situation as fast as possible. And if it would be serious enough to go to an indictment the Democrats would not want to hear about a sucker punch. They would ask why Bush didn’t override her. They’re already asking that question, without even bringing up the hint of a criminal investigation.

P: The legalities about the point seem hazy; I’m not sure they are clearly established. That’s another reason to investigate whether a crime was committed. If so, that would give weight to legislation that gives unequivocal guidelines about the conditions under which the president can override a state governor.

You’re dead in the water, if you’ll pardon the expression, if you think in political terms. I’m talking about investigating whether a crime has been committed. If politics tries to get in the way, it will fall back hard on both political parties.

MW: Politics is already in the way; you’ve said that yourself. It’s already impeding a congressional investigation.

You’ve always been a ‘square at a time’ person. You don’t like to move to square two until you’ve resolved things at the first square. That makes for a thorough investigator but society doesn’t operate that way and political life certainly doesn’t.

In a sense, you want to hold Blanco accountable for something that didn’t come to pass. Maybe the analogy in criminal justice would be intention to commit a crime. You’re going back to the event as it originally unfolded but it didn’t end up the way it started. The Category 5 storm did not hit New Orleans. There was not a direct hit; the storm veered slightly.

So I think most people are willing to breathe a sigh of relief that the worst didn’t happen, then turn their attention to helping the survivors and wrangling over whether to rebuild New Orleans. You’re still back at that Saturday, going over it like a crime scene. It’s pig disease all over again.

P: Pig illness. Remember it hasn’t been established whether it is a disease.

MW: [Laughing] That just proves my point! You demonstrated that it wasn’t necessarily a disease but after the tenth day or so of inching through essays about pig disease -- illness -- I started wondering what it would take to pry you away from the topic. Only an American city under water, I found out!

At least there was a foreign policy angle to the pig disease story, no matter how tenuous. Now what are you going to do with your readers, if you spend the next six months trying to nail Blanco?

P: What makes you assume there’s not a foreign policy angle to what happened in Louisiana?

MW: I give up!

P: Don’t give up. Stay tuned.
* * * * *
"Press Release
Date: 8/26/2005
[...]
GOVERNOR BLANCO DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY

BATON ROUGE, LA--Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco today issued Proclamation No. 48 KBB 2005, declaring a state of emergency for the state Louisiana as Hurricane Katrina poses an imminent threat, carrying severe storms, high winds, and torrential rain that may cause flooding and damage to private property and public facilities, and threaten the safety and security of the citizens of the state of Louisiana The state of emergency extends from Friday, August 26, 2005, through Sunday, September 25, 2005, unless terminated sooner.

The full text of Proclamation No. 48 KBB 2005 is as follows:

WHEREAS, the Louisiana Homeland Security and Emergency Assistance and Disaster Act, R.S. 29:721, et seq., confers upon the governor of the state of Louisiana emergency powers to deal with emergencies and disasters, including those caused by fire, flood, earthquake or other natural or man-made causes, in order to ensure that preparations of this state will be adequate to deal with such emergencies or disasters and to preserve the lives and property of the citizens of the state of Louisiana;

WHEREAS, when the governor finds a disaster or emergency has occurred, or the threat thereof is imminent, R.S. 29:724(B)(1) empowers her to declare the state of disaster or emergency by executive order or proclamation, or both; and

WHEREAS, On August 26, 2005, Hurricane Katrina poses an imminent threat to the state of Louisiana, carrying severe storms, high winds, and torrential rain that may cause flooding and damage to private property and public facilities, and threaten the safety and security of the citizens of Louisiana;

NOW THEREFORE I, KATHLEEN BABINEAUX BLANCO,
Governor of the state of Louisiana, by virtue of the authority vested by the Constitution and laws of the state of Louisiana, do hereby order and direct as follows:

SECTION 1: Pursuant to the Louisiana Homeland Security and Emergency Assistance and Disaster Act, R.S. 29:721, et seq., a state of emergency is declared to exist in the state of Louisiana as Hurricane Katrina poses an imminent threat, carrying severe storms, high winds, and torrential rain that may cause flooding and damage to private property and public facilities, and threaten the safety and security of the citizens of the state of Louisiana;

SECTION 2: The state of Louisiana's emergency response and recovery program is activated under the command of the director of the state office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness to prepare for and provide emergency support services and/or to minimize the effects of the storm's damage.

SECTION 3: The state of emergency extends from Friday, August 26, 2005, through Sunday, September 25, 2005, unless terminated sooner."

http://www.gov.state.la.us/
Press_Release_detail.asp?id=973

Thanks to Liz for sending me this diary of one man's odyssey in his 'deuce' vehicle to help survivors in Biloxi and New Orleans. He meets with armed looters and everything else you can imagine. And thanks to the author for his heroism and for getting his experiences down in writing. It begins:

Background:
My name is John and I live in Central Texas. I have served in three different military components totaling 25 years of service and I am recording this story for posterity. All opinions are the author's and if you disagree with them, that's really too bad.

Katrina Day 1: Monday, 29 August 2005
Watching the news today was horrific. Hurricane Katrina has devastated an area larger than the United Kingdom. When I heard that Biloxi was savaged, I immediately thought about my best friend Tracy.

Tracy was a Master Sergeant with me in the US Air Force and we were stationed together for several years. Friendships formed in the military are far stronger than anything a civilian can experience. They usually last until the grave. I won't go into the psychology of it, it is just so. You usually bond to one particular individual, and Tracy was it. He was my Best Buddy, and that is spelt with two capital B's.

I know this man well enough to know that he was not going to evacuate, he would tough it out. Now I was worried sick about Tracy and his family. I tried calling him for several hours but gave up realizing that communication would be non-existent. [..]

Visit Lonestar MVPA to read about the epic journey, or cut and paste this URL:

http://lonestar-mvpa.org/events/2005/05_Katrina.htm

Yesterday President George Bush declared Friday, September 16 a national day of prayer and remembrance for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. After hearing that the federal bill for Katrina's aftermath is predicted to head toward $200 billion, Pundita's first thought was to call for the final, nuclear measure: The Taco Bell Solution.

For those too lazy to use the Google search engine on this blog, that awful measure is to herd all concerned Washington players into one place, not allow them out until they have screwed their heads back on straight, and commandeer Taco Bell to deliver breakfast, lunch and dinner for however long it takes.

But not being a mean person by nature, and in light of the scope of the tragedy, I've downgraded to calling for a national day of thinking.

Just a few months ago, ahead of the G8 meeting in Gleneagles, contingents of columnists worked themselves into fits about corruption in African governments.

So we really need to stop and think, in a very graphic detailed way, about what the state and local governments of Louisiana and Mississippi can do with a huge windfall coming their way. Government in those US states have much in common with many governments in perpetually poor countries.

Corruption is just one factor to consider when spreading around hundreds of billions without draconian oversight. We just got through a transportation bill that was laden with so much pork it oinked. The question is how much pork would attach to a $200 billion spending spree.

I think Congress needs to realize that they could double or treble the spending and this would not stop questions about how a major American city got into the position it did. No amount of guilt money will halt the questions.

We also need to think about something called the future. Yesterday Scott McClellan passed along the White House argument that the yearly bill for Medicare is much larger than a "one time" payment for Katrina. The logic is that no matter what the bill the United States economy can absorb a once-in-a-lifetime whopping payment rather easily.

The logic assumes the rest of this hurricane season, flu season, next hurricane season, weather patterns signaling drought, tinder dry forests, faults in the earth, a major infrastructure system and America's enemies won't spring a surprise.

In short, there is nothing but hope backing the assumption that lightning won't strike twice. Perhaps that is why President Bush called for a national day of prayer: he saw the estimates of the one time bill for reconstruction and relief, and hopes there won't be a second time bill anytime soon.

But I think the most important thinking on a day reserved for thought should be in the area of community preparedness. Doug Duncan went a little over the top, but I don't think he was trying to score political points when he called for a review of Greater Washington DC's disaster planning in the wake of Katrina.

Two reminders from Katrina: hurricanes can zig on a dime and hit regions that never before experienced catastrophic flooding, and at virtually the same time devastate a large region. So even with the best federal assistance program, regions anywhere near a coastline should be prepared to fend for themselves for at least 72 hours without outside help.

Top Washington area elected officials conferred [September 8] by conference call, at the request of Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan, to begin re-evaluating and strengthening emergency plans in light of concerns about the federal response to Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf region. The conference call was organized by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG).

Duncan and the other area officials agreed to ask COG to help the region’s local governments, the State of Maryland, the Commonwealth of Virginia and key federal agencies re-evaluate the emergency coordination plans adopted since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

COG led its member governments in creating the Regional Emergency Coordination Plan (RECP) after the terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon. The plan fostered improved regional coordination during Hurricane Isabel and a major snowstorm in 2003, as well as during events like the president’s inauguration.

“Frankly, I was disappointed and concerned about the federal response to Hurricane Katrina,” Duncan said. “Federal law enforcement agencies were there for Montgomery County when we were dealing with the sniper incident and because we all worked together, we apprehended the two men responsible for those murders.

But if we can no longer count on quick assistance from FEMA and other agencies, we need to re-evaluate our plans,” Duncan said.

Here I must interrupt. Pundita went through Hurricane Isabel in this region. My memory is that there was much to be desired about emergency response and preparation.

There was more than a bit of chaos in this region in Isabel's wake because electrical failures knocked out some water pumping/treatment stations and certain areas were without electricity for several days. There was delay about getting bottled water distributed to people in need.

Also, there was unexpectedly heavy flooding in Alexandria and low lying regions of the District of Columbia -- nothing life threatening, but destructive to property in residential/storefront areas.

With regard to the serial snipers my memory is that it took a few days before what I recall was the FBI setting up phone tip lines. Even with that, the Feds and the local police missed crucial tips, which focused the search on a red herring trail: everyone was looking for a white van, which allowed the snipers to keep getting away despite their rather distinctive vehicle. To continue with The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments press release:

The officials voiced concerns about the speed and comprehensiveness of the federal response to the hurricane and stressed that while first response to emergencies is a top local priority, state and federal agencies must remain ready to aid local responders, especially when the local response is overwhelmed as it was in New Orleans.

“The National Capital Region has made great strides on emergency planning,” said Jay Fisette, Arlington County Board Chair, who also serves as vice-chair of the COG Board.

“We’ve addressed health, communication and transportation issues. We are as prepared for and capable of handling an emergency as any region in the country,” he added.

Duncan highlighted the outcomes of the conference call earlier today as he and other regional officials participated in the launch of the Washington area’s “Be Ready, Make a Plan” public readiness campaign. The campaign will include advertising and community events during September, National Preparedness Month, designed to encourage area citizens to make emergency plans with their families and in schools and workplaces. The campaign will target residents, community groups and businesses.*

I think that's all very good advice. In particular, neighbors should talk with neighbors about how they would go about banding together and pooling resources if the cavalry didn't arrive within a few hours after a disaster struck.

What I remember most about Isabel's wake in this region are the 'odd' horror stories:

Children happily splashing in polluted floodwaters in Alexandria and a reporter yelling at the parents to get the kids out of the water; the confused look on the parents' face at first then realization dawning.

A few people getting electrocuted because they touched wet outlets without realizing the electric had been turned back on.

A few people dying of carbon monoxide poisoning because they ran a generator in a small enclosed space.

In light of the horrors visited by Katrina such incidents seem almost small in the grand scheme. But many people in this region were caught short without enough potable water and food to last them a few days and by their lack of knowledge about what to do and not do when a bad storm strikes.

It doesn't take a huge amount of money to bridge such knowledge gaps; just a lot of patience, persistence and periodic repetition.

Aside from "Help!" the words I recall hearing most from Katrina survivors after the floodwaters rose: "I didn't know."

They went through a hard way to find out.

* http://www.mwcog.org/news/
press/detail.asp?NEWS_ID=160

Even at this early stage, one inarguable fact towers above whatever blame might be attached to agencies and individual officials for the horror that engulfed New Orleans:

For decades, it was well known in Washington, in Louisiana, in every US capital where the state economy relied on the Port of New Orleans, and to every US business dependent on the port and every American interested in civil defense that the City of New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen.

So there can be no going back to normal in the wake of Katrina. Not until Americans, as a nation, face the implications of a vital American city wrecked because of decades of negligence.

At root the nightmare that arose in New Orleans is about the abandonment of long-term comprehensive planning in the United States. The tragedy played out in New Orleans removed arguments for long-term planning from the abstractions of economic and political theories and put them in concrete, simple terms. So now, everybody understands.

The neglect of long-range planning has been across the board: in education, jobs retraining, energy exploration, maintenance of critical infrastructures, land/water management, civil defense, the list goes on.

If the disaster that befell New Orleans teaches us nothing else, it teaches that. For it is plain to see there can be no repairing storm-damaged New Orleans and moving on. The city must be built anew and in such way to prevent the next hurricane season from leveling it again.

It is also plain that disaster assistance is not enough to mend many of the lives shattered in New Orleans. Many evacuees were on public assistance or working in dead-end jobs at the lowest end of the pay scale for the gambling and tourism industries. The lives must be built anew. For the American work force cannot hope to remain competitive in the globalized markets if entire regions of our country are on the dole or working as croupiers and waiters.

Many causes led this country to drift from long-range thinking; among them:

• The two-party system of politics, which became a literal industry serving its own needs at the expense of the national welfare.
  
  
• Pork barrel politics: localities elected officials not for their foresight and governance skills but for what they could do, short-term, for a business faction or voting bloc.
  
  
• Over-idealization of democratic principles: obsessive focus on the Right and Left to ramrod ideals about freedom into legislation at the expense of basic, critical national needs.
  
  
• Abuse of the concept of federalism, which transformed many US state governments into a virtual duchy.

Meanwhile, the American west warned they were running out of water. The American coastal regions warned they were losing precious land to the ocean. The Saudis warned that the price of oil would climb -- however slowly, and with fits and starts, but it would continue to go up and up over the decades.

Meanwhile, a car industry wedded to an interstate highway system and cheap oil, and a population in love with car transport, plugged their ears and built and bought gas-guzzlers. The two-car family became standard in many regions.

Meanwhile, the oldest and most important cities creaked from lack of repairs to bridges, tunnels and other critical public works. The country's electrical grid system became a duct-tape affair.

Meanwhile, a permanent American underclass arose, at a time when China and India and other hardscrabble nations cranked out engineering PhDs with state sponsorship.

The two-party political machine way of doing things began to creak and groan two decades ago under the pressures of the modern era. The machine is now broken. Any doubts on that score, consider the squabbling in Congress these past days about the makeup of the Goat Commission to fix blame for what happened to New Orleans -- the very commission Congress called for.

Face this: the aftermath of a hurricane is sweeping away an era in American politics. If the Congress does not confront the failure of long-term planning they will lose the American public. Then the Democrat and Republican parties will find themselves facing a third party candidate by 2008.

The candidate will not be Ralph Nader or a Green Party type -- one easily blocked by Democrat and GOP machines at the state level. It will be a candidate representing the tidal wave of public outrage. The American workforce is among the hardest working, if not the hardest working, in the world. And hands down, we are the busiest people in the world. We don't have time for verbal sleights of hand from elected officials.

The American people as a whole have facing-up to do as well. The outpouring of donations and volunteer help from millions of Americans in the wake of Katrina is filling the yawning gap created by incompetence at the federal, state and city levels. Yet quite simply this heartwarming show of kindness amounts to treble taxation.

Last week, as the horror in New Orleans unfolded before the television cameras, ABC gave the nation a respite by airing the screwball chopsocky comedy, Shanghai Nights. At one point his dizzy partner shows Jackie Chan a hastily sketched football-type diagram, replete with arrows and dots, for how to break into a heavily fortified castle.

“It’s the old Hail Mary play,” he explains. “Plan B is we dig a tunnel.”

Perhaps the greatest warning given by Katrina is that it’s time for Americans to focus more on long-range planning and leave the Hail Mary plays to the divine.

During the early stages of a catastrophic event, as with war, the first reports are often woefully incomplete or simply wrong. Yet from the beginning, something didn't stack about the reported pattern of flooding in New Orleans after Katrina, when measured against the dire predictions about tens of thousands of residents possibly drowned.

The Tuesday reports spoke of two and possibly more breaches in the levees that caused water levels inside the city to rise at the rate of one foot every half hour. Attention centered on the smaller breach at the 17th Street Canal. Reports about the larger breach, in the eastern industrial section, were sketchy.

Then, on Sunday, ABC Nightly News carried a report, "The Lower Ninth Ward," which spoke of a wall of water, 20 feet or higher, surging into the Ninth Ward and other areas of the eastern industrial section. There were anecdotal accounts of thousands drowned. The camera showed part of a wrecked barge that had seemingly sliced through part of a flood wall and/or levee.

From another Sunday television report -- CBS 60 Minutes -- the floodwalls were not high or thick enough to withstand a powerful storm surge.

Anyone caught in the surge in the eastern section would have drowned. Those who sought refuge in an attic -- tried climb above the flood -- would have baked to death if not rescued very quickly. The 90+ degree temperature outside would have put the temperature in attics at 150 degrees or higher.

Then, on Monday, a lengthy front page report in The Wall Street Journal started to put the pieces together. The details explain why failure to evacuate the lowest-lying sections of New Orleans ahead of Katrina would virtually guarantee a high death toll. Drowning would have been virtually instantaneous for thousands trapped in the eastern industrial section. Here is a part of the report:

Hurricane Force
Anatomy of a Flood: 3 Deadly Waves

Canal, 2 Lakes Swamped
Eastern New Orleans
As Storm Tore Through
Mr. Mullet's Fight to Survive
By JEFF D. OPDYKE, EVAN PEREZ and ANN CARRNS
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
September 7, 2005; Page A1

NEW ORLEANS -- On Aug. 29, as Hurricane Katrina brought chaos to this city, three massive waves of water poured largely unseen into the eastern section of town and neighboring St. Bernard Parish.

One surged west, off a churning Lake Borgne. Another came across from Lake Pontchartrain in the north. That sent a steel barge ramming through the Industrial Canal, a major shipping artery that cuts north to south through the city, possibly scything a breach that became 500 feet long, letting waters pour into nearby neighborhoods.

The waves inundated the mostly working-class eastern districts, home to 160,000 people. In some places, the water rose as fast as a foot per minute, survivors say.

Until now, the world's attention has focused on the levee system protecting the city's central districts, and on the near-anarchy in the storm's aftermath.

But a complete reckoning of the damage and death toll will likely focus on an entirely different event, hitherto overlooked: the devastating swamping of the eastern sections of New Orleans, hours before the central flooding began.

The final tallying of the dead across the city will be substantially dictated by how many residents of these neighborhoods got out alive. [...]

For the rest of the city, and the investigators piecing together the puzzle, the floods in eastern New Orleans suggest a more complicated explanation for the disaster, one that raises new questions about how it was devastated and what must be done to make it secure.

In particular: Why were the levees lining the Industrial Canal and parts of Lake Pontchartrain to the east lower than in other parts of the city? Should residents near Lake Borgne have been more clearly warned that the lake could rise so furiously?

Are the levees outside the city limits sufficient to protect parts of the city that few tourists ever visit? Should shipping companies be required to do a better job of securing barges and vessels?

[...] According to engineers, scientists, local officials and the accounts of nearly 90 survivors of Katrina interviewed in recent days, the first of the three waves swept from the north out of Lake Pontchartrain. How high the wave reached hasn't been determined, but the surge poured over 15-foot high levees along the Industrial Canal, which were several feet lower than others in the central areas of the city.

About the same time, a similar wave exploded without warning across Lake Borgne, which separates Lake Pontchartrain from the Gulf of Mexico. It filled the lake, engulfed its surrounding marshes, raced over levees and poured into eastern New Orleans.

As Lake Borgne swallowed those neighborhoods from the east, a separate catastrophic wave rose from the other side, possibly caused by the flying barge.

Trapped between three cascades of water were the neighborhoods of the Lower Ninth Ward, where nearly 14,000 African-Americans lived, a third of whom owned no vehicle and a third of whom had physical disabilities, according to U.S. Census data.

Next door, just outside the city limits, were the virtually all-white areas of St. Bernard Parish -- Arabi, Chalmette and Meraux -- home to more than 50,000 people as well as oil refineries, docks and a fishing boat in what seemed like every other yard.

Within a few hours of Katrina's arrival, those areas sat under as much as 15 feet of water, according to witnesses.

To the north, water poured through black and Vietnamese neighborhoods closer to Lake Pontchartrain, where another 96,000 people lived. [...]

A Crucial Waterway
On normal days, the 5½-mile-long Industrial Canal hums with barge and ship traffic, moving between a lock at the Mississippi River on the southern end of New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain in the north. It is a crucial waterway for vessels carrying petroleum products, industrial chemicals and oil-field pipes because it connects the river to the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, which in turn leads to the Gulf of Mexico.Beside the canal is the Lower Ninth Ward, which was originally a cypress swamp prone to flooding. In recent decades, its white residents largely left for neighboring St. Bernard Parish and other suburbs. A third of those who remain live below the poverty line.

The Industrial Canal has been the area's defining presence since it was built in the 1920s. Time and heavy use have taken a toll on the canal, now operated and maintained mostly by the federal government. Barges and ships were routinely delayed because of growing traffic levels and the lock was "literally falling apart at the hinges" in 1998, according to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report, which called it an "antique" and recommended replacing it.

A $600 million lock-replacement project didn't get very far. Lower Ninth Ward residents complained about noise and launched a legal fight that bogged down the work.

The levees along the Industrial Canal's eastern side are supposed to stand at a height of 15 feet, according to the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Joseph Suhayda, a retired Louisiana State University coastal oceanographer, suspects the levees aren't actually that tall, partly due to sinking of the land beneath them. Mr. Suhayda now consults for a maker of flood-protection barriers. If he's right, that would mean the levees weren't high enough to handle even a Category 2 or 3 hurricane. Katrina was a Category 4.

The Corps of Engineers concedes some of its levees in the area "have settled and need to be raised to provide" the level of protection for which they were designed, according to a fact sheet on the Corps's Web site dated May 23, 2005. But federal budget shortfalls in fiscal 2005 and 2006 "will prevent the Corps from addressing these pressing needs.

"Hurricane Katrina's storm surge -- the wave of water pushed ahead of a hurricane by its furious winds -- raced across Lake Pontchartrain. As it did so, the canal became the delivery vehicle for the first wave that would destroy the Lower Ninth Ward. Just before the water began rising, a surge hit the mouth of the Industrial Canal. The Corps of Engineers says a lock operator reported seeing water from the lake pouring over 15-foot walls on each side of the canal. Corps officials believe the flood scoured away a portion of the flood wall near the northern end of the Lower Ninth Ward.Much worse was also to come.

As storms approach New Orleans, owners of ships, tugboats and freight barges that populate the city's port and waterways attempt to secure their craft. Barges -- typically about 200 feet long, 35 feet wide and capable of hauling three million pounds of cargo -- are lashed with cables and kept in position with tug boats, according to Edward Peterson, executive director of the Louisiana River Pilots Association. Removing the barges from the area entirely is impossible.

"There is nowhere to go," Mr. Peterson says.

As the hurricane rolled into New Orleans, scores of boats broke free or sank. In the Industrial Canal, the gush of water broke a barge from its moorings. It isn't known whose barge it was. The huge steel hull became a water-borne missile. It hurtled into the canal's eastern flood wall just north of the major street passing through the Lower Ninth Ward, leading officials to theorize that the errant barge triggered the 500-foot breach. Water poured into the neighborhood.

When the storm was over, the barge was resting inside the hole. "Based on what I know and what I saw, the Lower Ninth Ward, Chalmette, St. Bernard, their flooding was instantaneous," said Col. Rich Wagenaar of the Army Corps.

It didn't help that the Mississippi River, which runs along the southern border of these neighborhoods, rose 11 feet between Sunday and Monday mornings. Coastal experts say that could have worsened flooding by limiting the water's escape route.

As the water roaring out of the Industrial Canal turned the streets of eastern New Orleans into rivers, the same areas were hit from the other side by the storm surge coming off Lake Borgne. Engineers say the estimated 20-foot surge also appeared to overflow levees just north of St. Bernard Parish. [...]

Now that the memo has surfaced* Bush might want to think about immediately removing Michael Brown, or at least putting someone in at FEMA who is above Brown's head. This is if Bush does not want to spend the rest of his presidency doing damage control.

Anyone who saw Oprah Winfrey's show yesterday knows she is fit to be tied about what happened in NOLA. I saw more dead bodies during her one hour show yesterday than I saw televised during the entire Iraq invasion. And these were not covered bodies; the surgeon examined the bodies in front of the camera. Winfrey is beyond caring if she whips people up.

There will be a second show today although it will be about other regions hit by Katrina; yesterday's show focused greatly on NOLA. I sure hope someone in the White House tunes in to watch Hurricane Oprah.

The question is the replacement on short notice for the head of FEMA. If Bush can get Rudy Giuliani to step in, that would work. A reader suggestion: Colin Powell on a temporary basis. That would also work; keep Brown on to advise Powell about details and until crisis is bridged.

If Bush nudges Brown aside he can spin it by saying this is not about people, it's about familiarity with complex systems under extraordinary circumstances. That's a good spin because it's the truth.

The only registry system that FEMA has for the evacuees is an 800 number that evacuees call at their own initiative. Red Cross has only a partial list. Even with full registration, there are not enough vaccines available to immunize people exposed to the kind of infectious diseases the NOLA residents were exposed to. Now those people are scattered across at least 30 states.

The high pressure system has been upgraded to tropical storm that threatens to bring heavy rain to Florida but the storm's path is very erratic.

So right we need someone at FEMA who can chew and walk and give that person great authority. Later for dealing with Blanco/Nagin. Get that blasted FEMA agency working right, this very day.

* For those who haven't seen the news about the Brown memo:

By TED BRIDIS, AP
WASHINGTON (Sept. 7) - The government's disaster chief waited until hours after Hurricane Katrina had already struck the Gulf Coast before asking his boss to dispatch 1,000 Homeland Security workers to support rescuers in the region - and gave them two days to arrive, according to internal documents.

Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, sought the approval from Homeland Security Secretary Mike Chertoff roughly five hours after Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29. Brown said that among duties of these employees was to "convey a positive image" about the government's response for victims.Before then, FEMA had positioned smaller rescue and communications teams across the Gulf Coast. But officials acknowledged Tuesday the first department-wide appeal for help came only as the storm raged.

Brown's memo to Chertoff described Katrina as "this near catastrophic event" but otherwise lacked any urgent language. The memo politely ended, "Thank you for your consideration in helping us to meet our responsibilities."

(Update, 10:25 AM EDT
I received a letter in response to this slightly revised post, which I've published with my response at the end of the post.)

President Bush has called for an investigation about the handling of the Katrina crisis but not right now and he won't say when.

"One of the things that people want us to do here is to play a blame game," said Bush. "There'll be ample time for people to figure out what went right and what went wrong."

Okay. Now. Who's gonna be the one to tell that high pressure system building off the Atlantic coast that the President of the United States has ordered hurricane season to come to a halt while the federal government deals with the task at hand?

For the love of survival, hurricane season in the Western hemisphere doesn't fully end until November.

Earth calling President Bush: Fixing blame is not the issue. We need to immediately discover the exact points of breakdowns in communication between Homeland Security, FEMA, the administrations in states hit by Katrina, and the military. Then, even if it takes emergency sessions of legislatures and special legislation, we need to get the breakdowns resolved, yesterday.

Given the state of things in Mississippi, Florida (just recovering from Katrina's first strike), Alabama and Louisiana, it wouldn't even take a hurricane to completely overwhelm present response efforts in those states. A tropical storm would do it.

That's not even talking about what would happen, if FEMA had to deal with another hurricane taking a path up the eastern coast or hitting the Gulf region again during the next few weeks.

Given that FEMA has authority over the US military's part in any storm response efforts, state and local authorities can't afford to wait until after the Katrina response is under control before finding and correcting breakdowns in communication.

Pundita applauds Bush's distaste for politicizing critical relief efforts and I appreciate his reluctance to fix blame on individuals at this time. Yet I venture he's looking at the 'people' aspect of the situation at the expense of the system aspect.

Wanting to delay an inquiry is akin to holding off asking why the electrical grid system failed parts of the East Coast in 2003, so as not to divert attention from fixing the grid. First they had to find out where the system failed before they could fix it.

Disaster response at the interlocked city, state and federal level is not only a bunch of people. It's also a complex system. Moreover, you can't plan for everything that goes wrong with response, so that has to be factored in when asking where a system can fail.

In other words, you need a red button Plan B if Plan A goes kabooey. You can heap blame all you want on the Louisiana governor and New Orleans mayor but that's not going to stave off another mega-disaster piled on top of a disaster. You need to know what to do, if you suddenly discover idiots are in charge while a disaster bears down.

Doesn't the military have a manual to cover this kind of situation? You can't just throw up your hands if a state governor gets territorial when asked why 100,000 people haven't been evacuated yet from the path of a doomsday hurricane.

Same with FEMA. If the agency has an inbuilt problem that will take several months to fix it via the legislative route, find a duct-tape solution for now.

Once all of New Orleans' pumping stations are running they can move water at a rate of 29 billion gallons a day and lower the water level a half-inch per hour, or about a foot per day. But by late Tuesday afternoon, Army Corps officials said only three of New Orleans' normal contingent of 148 drainage pumps were operating.

Under normal conditions, with all the pumps in order, New Orleans floods from just one inch of rain. So for the rest of this hurricane season, the early phase of recovery efforts in the city is under constant threat. This observation extends to the entire region.

Katrina sank hundreds of barges in the Mississippi, which is preventing cargo ships from docking. There are overturned cargo trains in creeks and rivers; some of those carriers contain highly toxic, caustic or flammable materials. Katrina also put out of commission countless big cranes -- the very cranes needed for recovery efforts.

So things are very dicey right now across a wide spectrum of situations. And some FEMA officials have already admitted that they have been overwhelmed by the scope and complexity of the recovery and rescue tasks. The latter now spans 30 states because the New Orleans evacuees were dispersed.

I think that situation implies that states in the hurricane track need to review their emergency response measures in light of FEMA's limitations.

Certainly, a Goat Commission can wait until the crisis has been bridged. What we do need right now is an ad hoc committee of governors and mayors who've had extensive experience dealing with FEMA and disaster response in their states. Ex-officials such as Rudy Giuliani and Gray Davis should be drafted if they're available. Their task should be to go through Louisiana's emergency response manual and the FEMA guidelines, pinpoint where the system broke down and/or deviated from the plan, and make recommendations.

Reportedly President Bush wants to lead the investigation he plans to launch at some point in the future; if that is true it's understandable because he's an ex-governor with considerable experience at overseeing disaster response preparations for a hurricane. But I don't think it makes sense to involve him in the kind of investigation that needs to be done immediately.

Let an ad-hoc committee do the groundwork then show the recommendations to Bush. He could then use presidential powers to cut through red tape at Homeland and FEMA and call for state governors to fix any glitches on their end of the disaster response system.

With about two months to go in this year's hurricane season, this nation cannot afford to allow communications breakdowns between agencies to stand. About 50% of Americans live within 50 miles of a coast.

"Pundita:
Local, State, THEN Federal. Where was the mayor? Why did the governor turn away help at first? Remember your civics classes please. The local authorities have the responsibility to respond first, then ask the governor for help who in turn asks for the feds for help.
[Anonymous]"

Dear Reader:
I appreciate your point but this nation can no longer afford to leave idiots in charge when doing so carries a price tag of hundreds of billions of dollars and puts millions of lives at immediate risk.

Governor Blanco has shown us a worst-case scenario when elected officials greatly abuse the spirit of federalism. We cannot allow this kind of situation to continue.

We have other things on our plate, including two more months to go of hurricane season and flu season bearing down. And now with the threat of epidemic added. That's because those NOLA evacuees were dispersed all over US without first being vaccinated against the kind of infectious diseases they were exposed to in the NOLA floodwaters. And hello, there's not enough vaccine available for the kind of immunizations that are needed.

We're not even talking about H5N1, if it decides that this flu season is the season to mutate into a human-to-human transmissible form.

In a perfect world, the states should have great autonomy. But who is screaming loudest about federal slowness to resolve the horrors that Blanco and Nagin's administrations set in motion? Blanco and Nagin.

Governors and mayors can't have it both ways: Hold the feds responsible when a state screw-up punches the entire nation in the gut, while telling the feds to mind their own business when they offer military or other federal assistance to ward off a mega-disaster.

The bottom line is that globalization is very hard on rugged individualism at the state level. If a state is plugged into global trade, they can't be allowed to wander off according to their own devices when their handling of an impending disaster throws the entire nation in an uproar.

We need to standardize disaster response interfaces at the federal, state and local levels. End of story.

11:15 AM EDT update
Regarding the Brown memo:

Now that the memo has surfaced, Bush might want to think about removing Michael Brown immediately, or at least putting someone in at FEMA who is above Brown's head. This is if Bush does not want to spend the rest of his presidency doing damage control.

Anyone who saw Oprah Winfrey's show yesterday knows she is fit to be tied about what happened in NOLA. She is beyond caring if she whips people up. There will be a second show today. I sure hope someone in the White House tunes in.

The question is the replacement for Brown on short notice. If Bush can get Rudy to step in, that would work. Or maybe he can ask Jeb to lend him someone in his administration. Florida probably has more experience dealing with disasters and FEMA than any other state.

If Bush nudges Brown aside he can spin it by saying this is not about people, it's about familiarity with complex systems under extraordinary circumstances. That's a good spin because it's the truth.

The only registry system that FEMA has for the evacuees is an 800 number that evacuees call at their own initiative. Red Cross has only a partial list. Even with full registration, there are not enough vaccines available to immunize people exposed to the kind of infectious diseases the NOLA residents were exposed to. Now those people are scattered across at least 30 states.

The high pressure system has been upgraded to tropical storm that threatens to bring heavy rain to Florida but the storm's path is very erratic.

Right now emphasis should be on giving the military their head, getting someone at FEMA who can chew and walk and giving that person great authority. Later for dealing with Blanco/Nagin. Get that blasted FEMA agency working right, this very day.

For those who haven't seen the news about the memo in question:

By TED BRIDIS, AP
WASHINGTON (Sept. 7) - The government's disaster chief waited until hours after Hurricane Katrina had already struck the Gulf Coast before asking his boss to dispatch 1,000 Homeland Security workers to support rescuers in the region - and gave them two days to arrive, according to internal documents.

Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, sought the approval from Homeland Security Secretary Mike Chertoff roughly five hours after Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29. Brown said that among duties of these employees was to "convey a positive image" about the government's response for victims.Before then, FEMA had positioned smaller rescue and communications teams across the Gulf Coast. But officials acknowledged Tuesday the first department-wide appeal for help came only as the storm raged.Brown's memo to Chertoff described Katrina as "this near catastrophic event" but otherwise lacked any urgent language. The memo politely ended, "Thank you for your consideration in helping us to meet our responsibilities."

For readers trying to nail down lines of authority and responsibility, here is the section of Chapter 3.3, March 2004 City of New Orleans report Special Emergency Transportation Planning and Massive Evacuation that specifically pertains to evacuation of New Orleans ahead of a hurricane. See URL (PDF or cached version) at end of this post for the entire section.

" [...] The prospect of catastrophic flooding within New Orleans and the Metro region resulting from hurricanes, and the potential for heavy loss of life, means the region's transportation network must be able to handle the stress of a large-scale evacuation. During a full evacuation more than a million people need to travel at least 80 miles to reach safer ground.

Travel times to nearby cities can be expected to be much longer than normal due to heavy traffic and weather conditions. During Hurricane Georges in 1998 it took six hours for New Orleans area citizens to reach Baton Rouge.(3)

Also the number of people evacuating the city grows in direct proportion to the intensity of a storm. The following figures show the number of people and vehicles needing to evacuate Orleans Parish in the event of a hurricane, based upon the intensity of the storm. (4)

People Evacuating Minimal Storm
19,300
People Evacuating Catastrophic Storm
441,400
Vehicles Used (Minimal storm evacuation)
6,945
Vehicles Used (Catastrophic Storm)
145,510

Based upon a total resident population of 496,938, as found in the 1990 U.S. Census.

When combined with the similarly large number of citizens that would be evacuating the parishes closer to the Gulf and from Plaquemines, Jefferson and St. Tammany Parishes it is obvious the transportation system would be stressed.

Regional planning and coordination are essential to successful evacuations. There are currently no coordinated plans to use all available resources such as the public transit system to evacuate the population without automobiles.

The main responsibility and authority for operational aspects of evacuation in Orleans Parish lies with the Office of Emergency Preparedness (OEP) within the Chief Administrative Office of the City. The authority to make the final decisions related to an evacuation rests with the Mayor of New Orleans.

Evacuation decisions are made in coordination with OEP staff, other City directors, and members of the Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Task Force, made up of top elected officials in all the Southeast Parishes and municipalities and the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development(LaDOTD).

The private and public economic costs of closing an entire geographic area for several days are significant, so the decision to evacuate has to be carefully considered, based on the severity of the storm, the likely storm path, and the time required to prepare and move citizens away from the city. Evacuation decisions and status updates are broadcast on the City's cable access channel and communicated to all media.

[…] While the LaDOTD can assist with hurricane planning and evacuation, particularly with increasing capacity of major evacuation routes, most of the responsibility for implementing evacuations rests at the local level.

Careful planning must be done to continually improve the routes and methods of hurricane evacuation on both sides of the River. Problem areas, due to insufficient road capacity and/or frequent flooding, have been identified and targeted for improvements [see Map 16 PDF version]. (5)

These projects should be of the highest priority given the unpredictable nature of destructive storms and the potential for loss of life or property. Critical issues concerning emergency evacuation can be classified as follows:

Early Warning
Although the region supposedly can be evacuated in 72 hours, difficulty in predicting storm landfall can cause a delay in ordering such an evacuation. Hurricane advisory rules have recently been changed from a 3 day advance storm notice to 5 days. This added time should increase preparedness and promote a more timely and orderly evacuation. Such action promotes safety by reducing roadway congestion and exposure to poor weather and roadway conditions.

Preparation and Early Action
The key to the success of the evacuation system is based upon motorists being prepared and leaving early. Reliance on a public education program which calls for citizens to make appropriate arrangements in advance of the storm has proven inadequate.

Despite many booklets and educational programs, many citizens still do not know the basic evacuation routes, procedures, and the "how to" tips of hurricane evacuation. This causes carelessness, confusion and congestion. Evacuation warnings need to be taken more seriously by the populace.

Means of Departure
Hurricane evacuation planning is made more difficult for the City, due to the large percentage of residents without access to a private automobile. Only 27% of Orleans Parish residents evacuated the city during Hurricane Georges, while 45% of Jefferson Parish residents evacuated.

Orleans Parish residents were more likely to stay during a storm for lack of transportation, financial resources or a tendency to ignore evacuation warnings. Evacuation is also closely related to income.

During Hurricane Georges only 16% of those with incomes below $25,000 left town, while 54% of those with incomes over $80,000 left.(6)

In addition to those unable to afford vehicles or transportation there are the disabled, hospitalized, elderly and incarcerated who would not be able to drive from the area.

Development of alternative means for citizens to leave the area is crucial. RTA provides transportation for citizens to shelters and places where out of town transportation may be obtained, but has no provision to use its buses to evacuate citizens out of the city.

While the RTA has expressed a willingness to assist in emergency evacuation, a regional cooperative agreement with other jurisdictions is needed. Visitors and some residents may choose commercial transportation, but at some point commercial bus, rail, and air transportation out of the city will not be available.

Greater involvement of local churches, businesses and non-profit groups in providing transport and assisting people without their own transportation or with special needs is needed. [...]"

(3) Washing Away: A Special Report- New Orleans Times-Picayune, 2003

(4) South Louisiana Hurricane Evacuation, prepared for LADOTD, 2001

(5) Hurricane Incident Transportation Planning: Infrastructure Improvements for Regional Evacuation, Regional Planning Commission, 1995.

(6) Evacuation Behavior in Orleans and Jefferson Parishes During Hurricane Georges, University of New Orleans Survey Research Center, 1998.

PDF URL.

Google cached URL.

Bruce Kesler has written an article that covers several points about aid to the US. Pundita strongly agrees with his advice that the US should consider accepting all offers:

American government and private individuals and organizations of prominence should be task-forced to work out arrangements with all the offerers, including those like Cuba and Venezuela and Iran normally hostile toward the U.S.

If some are false, they will be embarrassed and revealed, and meanwhile the sincere majority will be encouraged perhaps to be even more forthcoming now and in the future elsewhere. An “international zone” might even be created, with facilities and communications, to facilitate other nations and international organization’s help.

The entire article is worth the read; it can be found at:

http://www.democracy-project.com/

under the September 5 heading Luck Beckons the Bush Administration.

I would add additional reasons for accepting all offers but as my arguments include unkind remarks about the US Department of State, I will let things stand with Bruce's observations; this in deference to the tragedy still unfolding in Louisiana.

That information from tonight's CBS television 60 Minutes show. As of this time, the transcript/video are not posted on the 60 Minutes website; clearly the segment, hosted by Scott Pelley, was put together shortly before air time. For readers who are located in time zones where the show airs later than EDT, the discussion about the floodwalls comes near the end of the first segment.

The correction about the floodwalls will surely be all over the news within the coming days and adds another layer of complexity to the situation.

The problem with the floodwalls, according the expert who spoke to 60 Minutes, is that either they work or they don't. The expert said categorically that the floodwalls protecting New Orleans were only built to withstand a Category 3 storm.

If that information holds up, it had to be known to the state and local officials in Louisiana. This would mean they knew for absolute certain that the floodwalls would be breached. They would know as soon they received news of a Category 4 or 5 headed for the New Orleans portion of the Gulf.

That would mean they absolutely knew that without evacuation of the low-lying regions of the city, virtually all the people in those regions would be drowned or stranded on rooftops. They would also know that search and extraction from rooftops would be a slow, painstaking effort requiring specialized equipment.

Again, if it is true that it was the floodwalls that were breached, there would be no question that as soon as they got word of Katrina's track, the New Orleans officials and the state government would have known that the city had to be fully evacuated as a precautionary measure.

In other words, with the knowledge that Cat 4 or 5 would breach the floodwalls, they would have evacuate the city even if they were not 100% certain that the storm would make landfall exactly in the New Orleans region. Even a close call from a Cat 4 or 5 would flood the bowl in which New Orleans sits.

And keep in mind that New Orleans is already 6 feet below sea level. Thus, a 20 foot storm surge actually works out to a 26 foot surge.

(6:45 PM Update
According to NBC Nightly News report, water for putting out fires is being trucked into New Orleans from Mississippi but "It's not enough," one firefighter told a reporter.)

Yesterday there was an unconfirmed report on a major TV station affiliate that a "large" oil slick had been spotted in the New Orleans floodwaters. In any case there are now many oil slicks in the floodwaters trapped in the city and the slicks would get more concentrated as the waters subside; I have seen footage of reportedly "spontaneous" fires in the waters.

There are also chemical mixtures in the New Orleans floodwaters that even Chemical Ali wouldn't think to mix. So New Orleans police and National Guard on duty there should negotiate truces with the remaining looters rather than shoot at them. This is because gunfire can set off a conflagration that could engulf what's left of New Orleans' standing structures.

Already large fires have broken out in New Orleans; the Saks department store is burning and rows of warehouses along the east bank of the Mississippi are burning. (Reportedly at least some of the fires were started by arson but the reports are unconfirmed.)

Negotiation should be the preference because all that's left among the looters are the desperadoes. The professionals have come and gone. They have pulled out the ATM machines, lifted all the merchandise that can bring the big bucks and trucked it out of New Orleans.

The looters left in the city are out of their mind from booze, dope, desperation and lack of sleep. So it has to be assumed they would not realize or care if they set what's left of the city ablaze. Aside from the fire hazard posed by gunfire, there is the threat that the looters will start fires for distraction if the National Guard closes in on them.

That kind of situation might have already happened. It could be coincidental but no sooner did the military convoys start showing up than a fire broke out at a chemical storage facility and (although I can't confirm this) reportedly a fire broke out at a large commercial oil storage unit.

So the New Orleans police and the National Guard should think twice about adding to an already deadly situation by setting off heavy gunfire exchanges in a city that is now a tinderbox.

Given the fire hazard and with no way to put out major fires in New Orleans at this time, the task at the moment is to disarm the desperadoes. So what's needed are SWAT teams, which are skilled at negotiation. Mayor Nagin should ask mayors of major cities to lend their negotiaton experts.

The teams should go in with megaphones and offer amnesty, shelter and medical help. Also, remind the looters that if they are dead or in jail they can't get in on the bonanza that will come to Katrina victims who were unable to evacuate prior to the storm. In short, the basic idea is to say anything to get the desperadoes to lay down their arms or anything else that could start a fire.

There is another critical reason to invest heavily in negotiation: the desperadoes should not flee because they need medical testing. It is very likely that people splashing through the floodwaters have been exposed to hepatitis and a host of other highly infectious diseases.

(See mention of Dr. Henry Miller's report in today's earlier Pundita post and the press reports on the public health threat, which are linked on John Batchelor's website site under the "Henry Miller" Friday segment.)

That is why every effort should be made to prevent the evacuees from fanning out individually across the country until they have been given a battery of medical tests.

The terror of the situation is that many evacuees have already fanned out; many of them don't have medical insurance so if they feel 'okay' it's unlikely they'll go to a health clinic for a battery of tests.

Thus, every city and town now offering to shelter evacuees needs to air warnings on TV/radio to the effect that anyone who was in New Orleans during the flooding should immediately go to [X] clinic or X hospital for free medical testing. The warnings should be worded in the most urgent terms and accompanied by a toll free number to call.

This advice extends to well-meaning individuals who want to take evacuees into their home. I do not support this effort because the New Orleans evacuees should be kept together as much as possible. Secondary reasons are that lawyers need to be able to find those evacuees quickly; so do insurance companies and a parade of bureaucrats.

The most important reason for keeping the New Orleans evacuees together is that the federal and local public health agencies can arrange for hospitals to provide free medical tests.

In addition to risk of exposure to hepatitis and cholera, anyone who came in contact with the floodwaters could be suffering from cellulitis and sepsis, not to mention rashes of all kinds. And there is also the risk of heavy metal poisoning from toxins absorbed through the skin or via cuts directly into the bloodstream.

At this moment and at all costs the victims of Katrina need medical treatment (for exposure, dehydration, etc.) and medical tests almost before they need food.

I add that the need for medical tests extends to all who came in close contact with the hurricane victims after the flooding began. This advice extends to television film crews and press reporters.

Please pass this message along to everyone you know who is directly involved on a volunteer basis with helping disaster relief efforts for the victims of Katrina. Of course the warning extends to flood victims outside New Orleans. However, the floodwaters trapped in the "bowl" in which New Orleans is situated creates an unprecedented public health emergency.

According to health experts, never before in the US have so many highly toxic chemicals and putrifying bodies been concentrated and trapped in a small area of flooding -- from which the living have had no escape for days.

Katrina turned up many crucial interlocked situations, all of which point to complex issues that Americans have long put off dealing with in a systematic fashion. So the storm and immediate aftermath are just the beginning.

John Batchelor dedicated his entire Friday show to discussing various aspects of the Katrina disaster. The discussions included much sound advice from experts. His show is not archived but the website posts articles relating to the discussion segments. My comments about three segments:

For those who are unfamiliar with the name, John Timoney is the Miami, Florida chief of police. He's had tremendous experience dealing with looting in hurricane conditions.

Dr. Henry Miller stressed that a huge health threat from the floodwaters trapped in New Orleans is from Hepatitis A, B and C; also, from tetanus.

Charles Gasparino's discussion about Louisiana's credit rating (with regard to issuing bonds) is based on his article for Newsweek, which is linked on the Batchelor website.

"Red River" might have been engaging in wishful thinking when he observed that in years past Louisiana could have issued bonds to pay for reinforcing the levees. (See yesterday's post.) In any case, during the 90s, at least, Louisiana was intent on paying down half their debt.

Several jaw-dropping factoids revealed on Friday's NOW (PBS television) segment on the Louisiana levees and the flooding threat to New Orleans. The transcript is not yet up on the PBS website but they have transcripts from earlier years on the disappearing wetlands and the threat this poses to Louisiana and the nation's economy. Fascinating and very troubling reading.

One factoid from the NOW show: The New Orleans pumps were not built to pump out floodwater and it's silt and other gunk. They were built to pump out rain water. So of course several if not all pumps would fail very quickly in serious flooding.

The Goat Commission
It's a good bet that a commission will be formed to investigate the botched handling of the evacuation and relief efforts in New Orleans. From discussions on Friday Talking Head shows, here are the current Top Ten candidates for scapegoat:

1. Bush (The buck always stops with the president.)

2. Bush (He created Department of Homeland Security, which reportedly took away FEMA's authority to oversee planning.)

3. Bush-Pentagon (Deploying Guardsmen with critical skills to Iraq.)

4. FEMA.

6. Mayor Nagin of New Orleans.

7. The sick, elderly and poor for not levitating themselves out of New Orleans ahead of the storm.

8. Department of Homeland Security.

9. Everybody except the Coast Guard.

10. Bush.

So far, it looks as if Governor Kathleen Blanco's grandmotherly routine has gotten her off the hook, except for inclusion in a generic condemnation of everyone concerned except the Coast Guard, which did their job heroically and well.

And interestingly, the Congress has not yet come in for much criticism. However, in his thoughtful essay today about fixing blame, Dave Schuler mentions almost in passing:

The Army Corps of Engineers has had primary reponsibility by statute for flood control on the Mississippi since the 1930’s IIRC. Congress funds the Corps, directs its operations, and provides oversight. The Chief Executive and the military administers the Corps and provides day-to-day direction. Neither the Bush administration, the Clinton administration, the Bush administration, the Reagan administration, nor the Carter administration (and so on) nor any of the Congresses -- some dominated by Democrats some by Republicans -- saw fit to correct the problems with the defense of New Orleans against the water.

From Friday's Inside Washington panel show (just moved to PBS TV): Charles Krauthammer, when it was his turn to name the goat, said with a chuckle that we could blame it on America's Founding Fathers or at least on federalism.

His point was that we really don't have a central government so it's very hard to muster highly coordinated interstate responses to a variety of problems.

I am in profound agreement with his observation. The question is how we're going to solve the root problem, which is a hideous jumble of individual state regulations.

Charles mentioned in another context that to his understanding Louisiana does not have a provision in their constitution for invoking martial law. If he is right, that would explain why the New Orleans "mandatory" evacuation order had no teeth.

In any case it seems the Louisiana constitution gives the governor enough powers that Blanco could have invoked martial law although it might have required an emergency session of the legislature.

That situation is small chips next to other ones Katrina has dredged up. Consider another stunning fact from the NOW segment:

New Orleans faced potentially as much danger from the flooding set off by a Category 3 storm as from 4 or 5 hurricane.

Reason: The barrier islands and marshlands are disappearing so fast that now even the storm surge from a Category 3 could have breached the levees. The strength of the waves has remained the same, but now there is less between them and the levees.

This situation is only deepening. Essentially, levees are increasingly under pressure to hold off the entire force of an ocean. Before, thousands of miles of barrier islands and wetlands acted as a buffer between the levees and the Gulf waters. The buffer is now greatly weakened and it's continuing to weaken at a great pace. So conceivably within a decade or so the storm surge from even a Category 2 hurricane would batter holes in the levees or top them.

Given the importance of the region to the rest of the US, this situation has to be dealt with. It's not an individual state matter. A lot of situations like that exist now. So we are testing the limits of federalism.

Catch-22
FEMA can't evacuate private hospitals, only public ones. So if staff and patients are still trapped in New Orleans and located in a private hospital, they have to find other means to evacuate or wait until FEMA cuts through a lot of red tape.

That story and this one from Inside Washington Friday discussion:

Al Gore tried to use his influence and money to get FEMA to evacuate a doctor and some critically ill patients from a private hospital; he even had the plane on standby. FEMA wouldn't authorize without a "special number," which could only be obtained through a lot of red tape.

As to why critically ill hospital patients were not evacuated ahead of the storm, it will be interesting to hear the explanation from Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco.

Newt Gingrich has suggested that Bush appoint Rudy Giuliani to oversee the entire relief effort. Best idea I've heard from Newt in a long time. New York's former mayor has proven experience at overseeing a massive, highly complex relief effort involving many different agencies at the city, state and federal levels. Such experience is greatly needed because Katrina's devastating swath in Louisiana and Mississippi has created a bureaucratic nightmare.

"Pundita:
[Re September 1 post] I think a lot of people see this as a political opportunity -- and it cuts both ways. The other thing is that Katrina is a dress rehearsal for any real civil emergency response. Not looking too good. It is important for the local level to act decisively. By the time a national response gets there it may be too late to bring things under control.
Anonymous Reader"

Dear Reader:
The local level is absolutely critical and it seems the greatest failure was at the local level. But in a highly complex social system the local level must coordinate with state, federal and private contractor levels.

This debacle goes way beyond politics and to the heart of government capacity in the complex, interlocked modern era of fragile communications and transport systems.

Granted, we don't like to think there is so much incompetence at the disaster preparedness level, so we seek scapegoats.

And the situation with New Orleans is so weird that it's hard not to imagine dark theories and conspiracies, i.e., real estate developers in cahoots with corrupt officials to use hurricane as cheap means of land clearing.

Yet even supposing a dark explanation is true, if people get into political food fights they will miss the critical lessons taught by the New Orleans storm aftermath crisis.

By accident or design, it still comes down to mind-boggling incompetence. So the distinct facets of the situation have to be studied on their own and also studied as a gestalt:

> City and state planning and preparation for evacuation/preparation for an approaching storm (or other kind of disaster including terror attack).

> City/state planning/preparation for disaster relief after a storm.

> FEMA and National Guard preparation/deployment and interface with local government after a storm.

> Emergency repair of critical infrastructure (key roads, debris removal, cell phone towers, etc.) by the Army Corps of Engineers, private contractors and public works employees. Who oversees all this? Coordinates?

Last night there was a breakdown of communication about buses routed to the Astrodome. Astrodome ran out of key supplies so they had to turn away the arriving buses. There was simply nowhere for people on buses to go -- they were left in parking lot.

Buses should have been rerouted to the two other large shelter sites located in Texas when it was clear the Astrodome was nearing capacity. But there was no communication. Who is responsible for command and control at that level? FEMA? State/local governments?

Yet if you trace it back a lot of it is very simple preparation. The story that hit me hardest was the refugee in New Orleans who suggested that megaphones be used to direct people wandering the streets to food/water distribution points. Sensible idea but evidentially the city had not thought to stockpile megaphones and it seems no one (e.g., FEMA, National Guard)thought to bring megaphones with them.

I can't verify the story but it is typical of what has been happening. For want of a nail the kingdom was lost, and all that. Simple critical stuff such as batteries was not stockpiled and distributed prior to Katrina's landfall.

Yet for a city that is squeezed between a river, lake and gulf in hurricane alley with a levee system clearly inadequate to hold back a 20' storm surge, special supplies should be stockpiled at the start of every hurricane season.

Of course all the above skirts the question of the levees -- why such a critical system was not shored to withstand a big storm surge. Yet all the more reason to have adequate planning for what authorities should do during a storm approach and during the immediate aftermath.

Everybody knows the electricity tends to fail in a big storm! So, stockpile batteries! Arrange for chemical toilets to be transported to shelter sites prior to the storm, if complete evacuation is out of the question. This kind of preparation is not rocket science. But don't take Pundita's word for it. A comment posted by "Red River," in response to Belmont Club's Imperfect Storm 2 spells things out from the viewpoint of someone who worked with engineering firms in New Orleans.

The entire comment is worth the search to read (Belmont Club's comment section is huge) but here is part of Red River's observations:

[...] Compartmentalization, raised roads, sandbag strike teams, and modern pumps would have allowed NO [New Orleans] to ride this out.

They have to, Like the Dutch, see the Sea as the enemy to be feared and planned for.

Its an egregious criminal failure of local political leadership and a failure of imagination of local elites.

LA [Louisiana] and NO could have invested small amounts of money every year to deal with this contingency. They don't need the feds to do this - they can do this on their own. Bond money could have been sought and sources of funding could be had. How many times have they had the Superbowl?

There was no initiative before, during or after by local leadership.

I have spent a lot of time in NO the last three years working with local engineering firms. Many a time key people have shown up in shorts, and then left to go fishing rather than do their job and their duty.

Compare the situation in NO with what Iowa and Illinois went through during the Mississippi floods a few years ago. The farmers and ranchers and city slickers FOUGHT for weeks and saved Many, Many farms. The City of NO cut and ran.

While I sympathize with their plight, and have rooms open for refugees, this WAS and IS preventable with good planning and execution. The Dutch deal with this on a scale 1000 times bigger and endure winter storms like Katrina every year. But they make it.

The Mississippi is the most critical waterway and port in the USA. The City of NO has shirked their duty and their conduct is a disgrace. The Mayor and the COE leaders need to be fired and a FULL audit of activities and monies needs to be conducted.

Speaking of cutting and running, a basic question: Can the state actually enforce an evacuation order without first declaring martial law?

Okay, Pundita can't put off vacation any longer.

For those who did not watch Governor Kathleen Blanco's press conference yesterday, here are selected quotes. (Transcript available on PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer website at this link.)

JIM LEHRER: As the frustrations have grown in New Orleans and the surrounding area today, government relief efforts have been criticized by some local residents. A short time ago Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco responded to those criticisms and spoke about her own frustrations.

GOV. KATHLEEN BLANCO: You need to understand that we are working in what is essentially a primitive site condition. These conditions make it extremely impossible to do everything that is absolutely essential to be done simultaneously. So we have deployed our people in a prioritized fashion. And our goal is to save as many lives as possible.

We begged all of those people, the mayor begged the people; the parish presidents begged people to get out. The people who stayed chose to stay in some cases and in other cases had limited resources. But they were given -- even those with limited resources were given opportunities and perhaps the communications network did not filter rapidly enough. We were working on a very short time line when that hurricane turned its fire power on Louisiana. We acted as rapidly as humanly possible and we got out over a million people out of that region. Now, you know, we have limited resources.

No state, no region is prepared for the dimensions that we have dealt with. [...]

Since when does a major American city constitute a "primitive site condition" prior to a disaster?

Since when does "begging" people to leave a site constitute a valid execution of a mandatory order to evacuate?

Since when do only the most rudimentary and wholly inadequate disaster preparations constitute a "goal to do everything possible to save lives?"

Now let's stop clowning around. Let's look at just a few of the facts that are well known to virtually every American adult who has lived through a severe storm and its aftermath in an urban US region -- or closely followed news about such.

And we'll examine a few facts that would be well known to anyone who is apprised about the nature of the flooding threat to New Orleans from a storm higher than a Category 3. This knowledge would be shared by emergency preparedness planners in the city administration of New Orleans and the state capital.

> When a bad storm hits, the first thing that almost inevitably fails is electricity.

> Widescale electrical outages from storm damage can take weeks to repair.

> Hospital emergency generators can fail if electrical outages continue longer than 24-48 hours.

> When electricity fails, pumping stations fail.

> When pumping stations fail, water pressure and plumbing fails.

> With electrical outage and without a large emergency stockpile of chemical toilets, any refugee site in a city would have a health problem within 24 hours of usage.

> A category 4 or 5 storm near New Orleans would mean a storm surge that would flood the city and render impassible most if not all vehicular routes into/out of the city.

> It could take a month or longer to drain city of floodwaters.

> In a region cut off from electricity, food, water and critical medical supplies, citizens will break into stores/storage sites to obtain such supplies. Criminal element will organize to systematically loot and they will rob gun stores first.

> When an evacuation order is issued, the poorest, the oldest, the sick and the handicapped most likely cannot evacuate without vehicular assistance, meaning that planners must provide transport and create contingency measures for arranging pickup and/or loading sites.

> When an evacuation order is issued, those who comply will form long lines at gas stations to tank up; this will slow down evacuation and deplete gasoline/diesel fuel in the immediate region. Without large emergency gasoline and diesel fuel stockpiles, transport (including boat and air) used for search and rescue operations will be unusable.

> If an evacuation order is not fully enforced, extensive search and rescue will be needed in a flooded region after a storm.

> Prisons without electricity mean plans would need to be effect to evacuate prisoners prior to the strike of a category 4 or 5 storm.

> If an evacuation order is fully complied with, it could be virtually impossible to fully evacuate the city of New Orleans ahead of a storm depending on the time frame because of the limited number of vehicular exit routes. Therefore, extensive planning would need to be done to shelter those who could not make it out of the city in time.

> Because of the very small number of vehicular routes leading to and from New Orleans, emergency supplies could not be trucked into the city with an evacuation order in effect about 2-3 days ahead of a storm. This is because all routes designated for entry to the city would need to be transformed into exits to support the evacuation order.

> In a region without electricity and without large emergency stockpile of batteries, communications instruments such as portable radios and cell phones would be unusable. Electrical outages would also affect cell phone towers.

All these things and many more along the same lines have been absolutely positively known to disaster planners in every major urban region on the planet since there have been modern cities and communications systems.

So the Louisiana state/New Orleans city administrations knew all these things. Very definitely, they could project what would happen if a category 4 or 5 hurricane struck at or near New Orleans.

Very definitely, the administrations could project the kind of emergency stockpiles and contingency measures required to avert a disaster from secondary consequences created by a Category 4 or 5 hurricane striking directly at or near New Orleans.

Very definitely, the authorities could project what would happen to the city of New Orleans if a storm surge broke or overflowed the levees.

Very definitely, the authorities knew that a breach of the levees was likely from a category 4 or 5 storm.

And successive administrations had decades to prepare for a worst-case scenario -- which I might add, the Katrina storm did not represent for New Orleans.

So what really happened to disaster planning for the city of New Orleans? I do not know. What I do know, from anecdotal accounts I've read and heard in recent days, is that lower income house owners in New Orleans cannot afford home insurance. That would guarantee they would be unable to rebuild after a catastrophic storm -- provided they lived through a category 4 or 5 hurricane if not evacuated.

I also recall a report that roughly 80% of the housing in New Orleans is substandard and that Formosa termites have infested the wooden residential structures.

Beyond that -- if I had his phone number, I'd ring up Robert Mugabe and ask what he thought really happened in New Orleans.