Critics Say Bush Undercut New Orleans Flood Control

[caligirl]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/01/AR2005090102261.html


By Jim VandeHei and Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 2, 2005; Page A16

President Bush repeatedly requested less money for programs to guard against catastrophic storms in New Orleans than many federal and state officials requested, decisions that are triggering a partisan debate over administration priorities at a time when the budget is strained by the Iraq war.

[Frances]

1. Why was this on page 16?

It sounds like page 1 info to me.

[caligirl]

3. It is on the WEB page front page

On the web page it is posterd in the politics section first.

NATION
• Manhattan Leads Single Living
• Bill to Sterilize Dogs Passed
POLITICS
• Critics: Bush Cut Flood Control
• Lawyers Oppose Roberts Pick
• Specter Has Agenda for Hearing
WORLD

[Frances]

7. I think the Post is braver on the web

than in print because more people who read it on the web are not Bushbots. The Post has to please a lot of Repubs in both Maryland and Virginia in the print edition.

[asjr]

4. It should be headlines, but I guess the WaPo just can't give

up their propensity to kiss Shrub's fanny.

[Old and In the Way]

2. What did he have against New Orleans?

Did he get scammed on a coke deal? A bad experience with a hooker? Sounds like a personal vendetta. Or prehaps it had something to do with oil and politics.....?

[caligirl]

5. he doesn't read remember?

[grytpype]

6. Bush: Always the wrong priority.

Before 9/11, his priority was stupid shit like ballistic missile defense when no one is threatening us with ballistic missiles.

After 9/11 it was all warmaking, and ignoring basic, essential domestic safety functions.

Always wrong.

[DesEtoiles]

8. Critics say? And what do the FACTS say?

[bling bling]

9. Excellent point. God, I am so used to that kind of spin I don't

even notice it anymore.

[Vogon_Glory]

10. Not Just Bush, Also The Republican Party

The Republican Party doesn't escape the blame for what happens just because Fearless Leader WANTED to short-change New Orleans's levees and pumps. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives and Republican-controlled Senate also deserve blame--both bodies are given power to appropriate and both approved the budget cuts.

Don't let right-wing friends try to let their Congressfolk off the hook on this--Republicans have frequently spent OVER Buckaroo Bush's requests to fund their particular projects.

[JoFerret]

11. Truth is

...that a lot of democrats are pretty culpable in the this mess too. Straightening the Mississippi for one. too much crooked self-serving money grubbing corruption in every direction. But - Bush and his ilk beats them all hands-down. They make it a policy as well as a habit.

If anything good were to come out if this it would have to be a complete new deal for the people and a respect for the land.

[Vogon_Glory]

14. Republicans Have Controlled Legislative Branch Since 1995

The Republicans still bear the greater responsibility for this disaster. After all, the reactionary Republicans have controlled the Legislative Branch of the federal government since 1995, the Executive Branch only since 2001.

[Almost_there]

12. This has been a problem for 200 years...

Ever since New Orleans was founded, they built the levees and knew this was a problem. I think in 1991 (no link yet, I think its a history or discovery channel link) they evaluated the whole levee system and the engineers came to the conclusion it would take something like $40 billion and until the year 2050 to redirect, rebuild and fortify the levees to withstand a category 5 hurricane. even had someone given the ok to rebuild the whole levee system, it would still be 40 years from completion, and this would still have happened.

My personal bottom line isn't to blame anyone for the levee breaks, the response was horribly slow, but, damnit, these people should have been evacuated BEFORE the hurricane, there are hundreds of school buses sitting there, FEMA, state or local should have said "let's use them to get out to anywhere.. this is a MANDATORY evacuation!" We have all these resourses, sitting around, waiting to be used, and FEMA needs a form filled out to release things, the Governor has to "request" National Guard? COME ON!! MOVE YOUR ASSES! Bush should have had National Guard moving Tuesday midday when the levees gave way and we all saw New Orleans wasn't ok.

[UpInArms]

13. related: Ex-Army Corps officials say budget cuts imperiled flood mitigatio

Ex-Army Corps officials say budget cuts imperiled flood mitigation efforts

http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=32144&dcn=todaysnews

excerpt:

Mike Parker, the former head of the Army Corps of Engineers, was forced to resign in 2002 over budget disagreements with the White House. He clashed with Mitch Daniels, former director of the Office of Management and Budget, which sets the administration's annual budget goals.

"One time I took two pieces of steel into Mitch Daniels' office," Parker recalled. "They were exactly the same pieces of steel, except one had been under water in a Mississippi lock for 30 years, and the other was new. The first piece was completely corroded and falling apart because of a lack of funding. I said, 'Mitch, it doesn't matter if a terrorist blows the lock up or if it falls down because it disintegrates -- either way it's the same effect, and if we let it fall down, we have only ourselves to blame.' It made no impact on him whatsoever."

<snip>

After Parker's Capitol Hill appearance, Daniels wrote an angry memo to President Bush, writing that Parker's testimony "reads badly. . . on the printed page," and that "Parker. . . distancing actively from the administration." Parker, a former Republican congressman from Mississippi, was forced to resign shortly thereafter.

<snip>

Amid the largesse, however, Congress and the administration have made targeted cuts, some of them in Louisiana. As New Orleans City Business noted earlier this year, the Corps' construction budget for the district has gone from $147 million in fiscal 2001 to $82 million in fiscal 2005. Scores of projects, from efforts to build levees, canals and pumping stations to bridge improvements -- all of which deal with flood mitigation -- are incomplete. (The administration's fiscal 2006 budget proposal cut construction funding for the district even further, to $56 million.)

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