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Edited on Thu Sep-08-05 05:00 PM by klook
(edited subject line)
Said Times-Picayune reported for years on how federal monies intended for levee improvements were diverted by state & local officials to other priorities. Warnings from the Army Corps of Engineers were ignored--again, by Louisiana and New Orleans, not by the federal govt.
:think:
Here's a partial transcript--
Pelosi: "If you want to make a case for the White House, you should get on their payroll."
Phillips: "I'm not making a case for the White House, believe me."
Pelosi: "The White House has cut, this year, 72 percent of the request from Louisiana for flooding money. The White House has cut the Army Corps of Engineers by a large percentage in this last fiscal year. But the point is not to argue about that. The point is, where do we go from here to help these people? The last thing the American people need is bickering right now over this--except to make their rescue safer, a return to normalcy for them."
Phillips (interrupting): "So you thinking taking Mike Brown out of FEMA right now and replacing..."
Pelosi (interrupting): "Essential."
Phillips: "...Mike Brown with somebody else..."
Pelosi: "Absolutely essential."
Phillips: "...would change this entire dynamic and solve the problem."
Pelosi: "I do indeed. I think it's a question of the judgement of President Bush that he would have somebody in this crucial position who has no qualifications for the job. And if you need any further evidence of that, you need only look to the performance..."
Phillips (interrupting): "Who would you recommend?"
Pelosi: "of FEMA in the past week."
Phillips: "Who would you recommend take the place of Mike Brown?"
Pelosi: "Well, I think it should be someone like James Lee Witt who was there before Michael Brown--well, in the Clinton Administration--who was a professional, who was trained to do this kind of job."
Phillips: "But James Lee Witt came forward, too, and said, 'Hey, we've got a problem here. New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen.'"
Pelosi: "Exactly. But you asked me who I would choose and I said a person like that. But almost anyone who has training--maybe someone who served in the military, who has training and knows leadership and can organize, could do that. But this isn't a discussion of Michael Brown. This is a discussion of the judgment of the president. People are depending on our federal role; that's what we're responsible for. And we should be working together. It's I think a sign of weakness on the part of the White House's argument that they are so much wanting to cover up what happened and to say, 'What went wrong last week?' as the president said to me. I said he's either in denial or oblivious to what has happened.
"Now I appreciate that the president read a list of the initiatives that will be taken to help these people. We had hoped today on the floor of Congress to make some of these the law of the land: to cut the red tape; to stop the price gouging, especially at the pump; to help create jobs so people can get back to work; and to put competent people in place to run FEMA and the other agencies that address the people. This is about each individual person whose family has been affected. This isn't about politics or anything else. And we have a responsibility to make sure that our federal role is the best possible one that we can give to the American people."
Phillips: "So you don't think it was politics that even got us all to where we are today, ((Pelosi: "How's that?")) as we look at New Orleans and as we look at these other devastated areas. Politics had nothing to do with this disaster right now?"
Pelosi: "What I'm saying is, let's form an independent commission to look into that, to make an assessment of what the decisions were made about that."
Phillips (interrupting): "Let me ask you about an independent commission, because I addressed this to Senator Collins, and I addressed this to Senator Lieberman the other day. I mean, we had warnings before 9/11. We knew there were intelligence failures, we knew where Osama bin Laden was, we knew there were issues among our intelligence agencies. And 9/11 happened, and then there were all these reports, and all these investigations, and all these commissions that were formed; and all this focus on terrorism. Now, you had all these reports that were put forward talking about how this was going to happen to New Orleans; that Hurricane Pam--this project that was put forward--was showing and revealing all these problems with the levees and the hurricane, or the flooding systems there, and we heard from the Army Corps of Engineer ((sic)). Now we see, despite all those warnings, what happened to New Orleans, and what happened to these other states, and now all of a sudden everybody wants more investigations and more commissions. I mean, this is pathetic! How many things have to go wrong in our country, and how many investigations and commissions do we need?"
Pelosi: "We need as many until we make the country safer for the American people. We all have to settle down and take a deep breath, and say, 'How do we make the American people safer?' And in order to do that, we have to have an assessment of how this happened. I saw two disasters last week--a natural disaster, from Hurricane Katrina, and a man-made disaster from the mistakes made by FEMA. There are some larger issues, that go back farther, that you indicate. What about the funding for the Army Corps of Engineer ((sic)) for the Levees in Louisiana? What about the funding for the flooding that the officials of Louisiana have asked the federal government for? Both of which were cut back--the flooding money, and the Army Corps of Engineers money. But let's take a very objective, non-partisan look at this. We have a great example in the 9/11 Commission ((???!!)), where people in a bi-partisan way, non-partisan way, made an assessment of what happened leading up to 9/11, and what we can do to go forward to make America safer. I think that's a perfect example, and in fact, that very commission, if it's available, might well serve as a continuation of its Homeland Security function as the 9/11 Commission to being the Katrina Commission." ((barf))
Phillips: "Well, I think everybody--not one person in the United States of America--wants to see something like this happen again. ((Pelosi: "Of course not.")) And, by all due respect, nobody in this organization or any network is on the payroll of the Bush Administration right now. Everybody has been challenging every leader and every agency in this disaster, because it's *pathetic* to see something like this happen in the United States, and to see dead bodies still on the ground on American soil. It is absolutely pathetic, so--"
Pelosi: "Thirty bodies retrieved from the nursing home last night, 14 from Memorial Hospital..."
Phillips: "Should have never happened."
Pelosi: "It's a tragedy for our country, and it's a look in the mirror for us as a country, to see what our priorities are. Are we a country that wants to measure our strength in terms of the health and well-being of our people as well as our military strength? Or is it a country that is measured by the tax cuts that we give to the wealthiest people in our country--at the expense of the protection of the American..."
Phillips (interrupting): "And you bring up a very good point."
Pelosi: "...people."
Phillips (barrelling on through): "What happened in New Orleans brings a huge point across--the underbelly of our nation, and the poverty that's not dealt with; we're seeing what's happening to those poor people now; that's a very good point, and you know what? That's another huge issue that we need to tackle, because all of us Americans need to pay closer attention, uh, to the poor in the United States. ((Shades of Edward R. Murrow!)) Noone should have to live the way they're living now."
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