The Phone Tree of Incompetents

11:26 am, 9/4/05

The Phone Tree of Incompetence
...must from time to time be watered with the blood of bureaucrats. Mayor Nagin paints a picture of the profound bungling of the State of Louisiana:

NAGIN: I said, "I need everything."

Now, I will tell you this -- and I give the president some credit on this -- he sent one John Wayne dude down here that can get some stuff done, and his name is [Lt.] Gen. [Russel] Honore.

And he came off the doggone chopper, and he started cussing and people started moving. And he's getting some stuff done.

They ought to give that guy -- if they don't want to give it to me, give him full authority to get the job done, and we can save some people....

WWL: Do you believe that the president is seeing this, holding a news conference on it but can't do anything until [Louisiana Gov.] Kathleen Blanco requested him to do it? And do you know whether or not she has made that request?

NAGIN: I have no idea what they're doing....

You know what really upsets me, Garland? We told everybody the importance of the 17th Street Canal issue. We said, "Please, please take care of this. We don't care what you do. Figure it out."

WWL: Who'd you say that to?

NAGIN: Everybody: the governor, Homeland Security, FEMA. You name it, we said it....I flew over that thing yesterday, and it's in the same shape that it was after the storm hit. There is nothing happening. And they're feeding the public a line of bull and they're spinning, and people are dying down here.

WWL: If some of the public called and they're right, that there's a law that the president, that the federal government can't do anything without local or state requests, would you request martial law?

NAGIN: I've already called for martial law in the city of New Orleans. We did that a few days ago.

WWL: Did the governor do that, too?

NAGIN: I don't know. I don't think so....And one of the things people -- nobody's talked about this. Drugs flowed in and out of New Orleans and the surrounding metropolitan area so freely it was scary to me, and that's why we were having the escalation in murders. People don't want to talk about this, but I'm going to talk about it.

You have drug addicts that are now walking around this city looking for a fix, and that's the reason why they were breaking in hospitals and drugstores. They're looking for something to take the edge off of their jones, if you will.

And right now, they don't have anything to take the edge off. And they've probably found guns. So what you're seeing is drug-starving crazy addicts, drug addicts, that are wrecking havoc. And we don't have the manpower to adequately deal with it. We can only target certain sections of the city and form a perimeter around them and hope to God that we're not overrun.

WWL: Well, you and I must be in the minority. Because apparently there's a section of our citizenry out there that thinks because of a law that says the federal government can't come in unless requested by the proper people, that everything that's going on to this point has been done as good as it can possibly be.

NAGIN: Really?...I'll tell you, man, I'm probably going get in a whole bunch of trouble. I'm probably going to get in so much trouble it ain't even funny. You probably won't even want to deal with me after this interview is over....You know, I'm not one of those drug addicts. I am thinking very clearly.

And I don't know whose problem it is. I don't know whether it's the governor's problem. I don't know whether it's the president's problem, but somebody needs to get their ass on a plane and sit down, the two of them, and figure this out right now....

It seems like for a top official, there sure are a whole lot of things Nagin doesn't know about who's responsible for what.

Now, let's address a few of the key points here: First of all, Mayor Nagin can't declare martial law. He just thinks he can, and reporters didn't bother to check it. Martial law does not exist in the State of Louisiana. What they do have is an extensive set of emergency powers which belong to, you guessed it, Governor Blanco, and, for that matter, the Parish presidents. "Governor Blanco and the Parish Presidents": Sounds like a good name for a band.

As I mentioned yesterday, of course, President Bush did, in fact, attempt to heed Nagin's request: He asked Governor Blanco to back off and let the federal government get the job done. She refused, apparently reasoning that as long as she stayed in charge, no one would blame her for anything. (???)

The National Guardsmen and Louisiana State Troopers who could've prevented Nagin's city from turning into a cut scene from Black Hawk Down? Blanco.

There is, however, one thing that is probably not Blanco's fault: Nagin brought up the canals and levees, which some liberal pundits have been claiming were cut from the budget to pay for the Iraq war. (How big of a drop in the bucket that would be I'll leave up to the reader to figure out for themselves.) If you refer to this 2001 article, however, you'll see that there appears to have been another reason this type of work was never done:

...Other possible projects include restoration of barrier reefs and perhaps a large gate to prevent Lake Pontchartrain from overflowing and drowning the city.

All are multibillion-dollar projects. A plan to restore the Florida Everglades attracted $4 billion in federal funding, but the state had to match it dollar for dollar. In Louisiana, so far, there's only been a willingness to match 15 or 25 cents.

"Our state still looks for a 100 percent federal bailout, but that's just not going to happen," said University of New Orleans geologist Shea Penland, a delta expert.

"We have an image and credibility problem. We have to convince our country that they need to take us seriously, that they can trust us to do a science-based restoration program."

The state wanted the federal government to come in and build their infrastructure for them. As a practical matter, could the work have been done in less than a decade? For the Bush-blamers out there, why didn't Clinton do it with that big ole' budget surplus? Or did he, then he took the good levees with him when he left office?

"The State of Louisiana: Where it's everybody's job but ours."

I'm sorry, can someone explain to me why Louisiana even has a state government? I don't think I'm going to make it through this week. I'm going to be researching one of these posts, and pop, part of my brain is going to explode like a watermelon on a Gallagher tour.

Update: "It could mean that that point in time inherently contains some sort of cosmic significance, almost as if it were the junction point for the entire space-time continuum. On the other hand, it could just be an amazing coincidence."

Update: How do you think Mayor Nagin would feel about plugging the levee with Michael Moore? I'm not sure where you'd get a helicopter with that kind of lift capability, though.

Update: Lee at Right-Thinking confirms what I thought about the levees and canals.

Pelley interviewed some guy, who had something to do with maintaining the levee and canal system. He was asked if he could have prevented this. The guy said no, there was no way to prevent this. There wasn't the budget and there wasn't the time. When Pelley asked him to elaborate he said that even if he'd been given a billion dollars it still would have taken 20 years to get the levees up to withstand a category 5 hurricane, and that 20 years ago they didn't even have protection against a category 3.

One other interesting tidbit from the report: none of the levees actually broke, despite what we've heard on the news. All of the flooding came from breaks in the retaining walls of the canals, which despite being miles long are only a couple of feet thick.

How about that.