Project Katrina

Newsweek ponders something I’ve been wondering about myself. Why the heck has Dick Cheney been so silent on the oil spill gusher? I mean virtually everything he did while in the White House was in service of the oil industry. Plus, it isn’t like he has been remotely silent in this views concerning Obama and willing to yell them from the highest mountain:

His ears ringing with the cries of “Cheney’s Katrina,” a title many are striving to bestow on the gulf oil spill, one might expect the former VP to convene journalists for a speech, like he did in May last year at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute to talk about national security. That lengthy rebuttal was timed specially to coincide with a speech President Obama gave on the same topic—a ploy calculated to get the maximum press attention. The closest we have this time is Liz Cheney, Dick’s daughter, arguing with Arianna Huffington on ABC’s This Week.

It just makes no sense. On countless issues before this Cheney should have been “blackballed” in polite circles. But that somehow has never happened. Why would we think it would happen over this topic? Kind of makes you wonder, or at least it does for me.

Greg Sargent at the Washington Post Plum Line nails why just about every Republican should just STFU:

It’s the deregulation, stupid: One of the outstanding questions about Obama’s handling of the spill has been whether he’d seize on it to make an aggressive case against the knee-jerk deregulatory ideology that ran rampant before he took office.

Now he’s done that in an interview with Politico, taking direct aim at the hypocrisy of those who pose as anti-government diehards but are suddenly demanding a robust Federal response to the spill [....]

It’s an interesting paradox: Even as the spill’s destruction dramatically illustrates the need for more robust Federal regulation, the government’s inability to respond effectively to the spill now that it’s in motion risks undermining his larger effort to move the debate in the right direction. Polls show very low confidence in the government’s handling of the spill.

One can only hope the public realizes that the inability to halt the spill shouldn’t have any bearing on the argument over whether more Federal regulation, and real Federal energy reform, are required to prevent such disasters in the future.

In my own head I often ponder if Republicans are either really smart, or really dumb. On the dumb part of the spectrum do they even grasp if they belittle government 24/7, underfund everything other then the DoD, and cut regulations, it is kind of hard then to blame the Democrats with something like what is unfolding in the Gulf occurs. I mean they can connect the dots can’t they?

Or are they really, really smart. Meaning they can slash regulations, underfund important departments, cut taxes, and then be able to blame the Democrats when something goes terribly wrong, knowing a large percentage of the population will believe them.

I just don’t know which it is.

It is kind of hard to turn on MSNBC and not see Steve McMahon, Democratic consultant telling me as a liberal what I should be thinking about this or that. I could never put my finger on it, but the dude always seem like a total asshole. Now I know why I always felt that way.

[BP] declined to say how much it is spending on the [advertising] effort. It has suspended all of its regular corporate advertising, and is using its ad budget to address the oil spill and the resulting environmental crisis. Last year, BP shelled out almost $100 million on ad time and space in the U.S., according to an ad-tracking unit of WPP PLC.

BP bypassed its longtime ad agency, WPP’s Ogilvy & Mather, to create the new television ads, enlisting Purple Strategies, a Washington public-affairs firm that is owned by Republican strategist Alex Castellanos and Democratic consultant Steve McMahon, according to a person familiar with the matter.

In Crashing the Gates one of the core questions asked by Markos Moulitsas is why so many high-profile Democrats running for elected office hire political consultants that have a track record of losing more often than winning. I don’t think we really know. But one thing is clear, folks like Steve McMahon will work for just about anybody or any cause if the check is large enough.

Unbelievable. The Minerals Management Service (MMS) just issued a Gulf of Mexico shallow water drilling permits to Bandon Oil and Gas. Obama’s announcement that a hold would be put on any new drilling permits was just related to deepwater rigs, not those that operate in shallow water. This is just unbelievable.

Let’s set aside the junk shot and top hat distractions and look at the record of drilling in shallow waters. The two last big underwater oil spills, Ixtoc I and Montara, both in shallow waters, were eventually brought back under controlled by relief wells. Montara, the most recent, took ten weeks to control, and there were five misses before the final relief well hit.

There’s no reason to think that we’re going to have anything but a bunch of oily beaches, dead sea life, and fucked up attempts to stop the leak for the next few weeks. Recent revelations about BP’s hundreds of safety violations have completely undermined confidence in the MMS. I don’t know what the heck the Obama Administration is thinking here, but issuing more permits in this environment is political suicide.

With the Super Bowl being played this weekend it means that everybody that is remotely famous is required to pick a winner. Well former FEMA head Michael Brown has picked the Colts to win. That’s really not like him, to abandon New Orleans like that.

In an interview with The Hill newspaper last week, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) boasted that “the best vote” he ever cast while in Congress was to deny $52 billion in aid to Hurricane Katrina victims. Yesterday, the Times-Picayune called King’s comments “heartless” and “appalling,” especially because he is from “a state that’s also vulnerable to flooding:”

Greater New Orleans suffered catastrophic destruction not only because of a powerful storm but because the flood protection system built by the federal government failed.

While some lawmakers from other parts of the country showed a lack of concern and understanding after Katrina—even questioning the wisdom of rebuilding our community—it’s hard to understand how a lawmaker from Iowa, a state that’s also vulnerable to flooding, could be unwilling to help.

Even now, officials in Des Moines are complaining about a slow and inadequate response to their flood recovery—including the lament that FEMA is underestimating the amount of money needed to replace public buildings. That’s something that South Louisianians can understand, and in fact, we feel for Iowans.

Unfortunately, when it counted, Rep. King didn’t feel for us.

Under the “Agenda” section of the site regarding Katrina, it reads:

President Obama will keep the broken promises made by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He and Vice President Biden will take steps to ensure that the federal government will never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur.

President Obama swiftly responded to Hurricane Katrina. Citing the Bush Administration’s “unconscionable ineptitude” in responding to Hurricane Katrina, then-Senator Obama introduced legislation requiring disaster planners to take into account the specific needs of low-income hurricane victims. Obama visited thousands of Hurricane survivors in the Houston Convention Center and later took three more trips to the region. He worked with members of the Congressional Black Caucus to introduce legislation to address the immediate income, employment, business, and housing needs of Gulf Coast communities.

I think US News & World Report’s pretty much says it all in their analysis of Bush’s legacy:

It was a disaster at every level. But in political terms, the government’s failure to respond effectively to Hurricane Katrina in the late summer of 2005 was Bush’s biggest setback at home. “Katrina showed he is incompetent,” says Howard Dean, outgoing chairman of the Democratic National Committee. “Before Katrina, everyone, including America’s friends and enemies, believed if something awful happened in the world, you could call in the Americans and they’d fix it.” The government response to the hurricane, which devastated New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast, ruined that reputation, Dean argues.

Bush seemed slow off the mark as millions of people suffered, and he created a lasting image of isolation when the White House released photos of him, a solitary figure in his cushy seat, looking out a window on Marine One at the hurricane devastation far below. He also made a huge mistake when he praised Michael Brown, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, with a now infamous attaboy—”Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job”—even though the agency was botching the disaster response, adding to the impression that Bush was out of touch.

White House advisers say the blame for the poor Katrina response must be shared by the federal, state, and local governments, especially in dealing with the hurricane-related problems in New Orleans. Bush defenders add that he was correct not to visit the disaster sites immediately because to do so would have greatly complicated the relief efforts on the ground.

More substantively, Bush refrained from having the federal government immediately take over the relief effort even when it became clear that the state and local governments in Louisiana were not up to the job. His aides say Bush was guided here by his experience as governor of Texas and his belief that such matters are best left to lower-level officials. “For him, it was a question of usurpation of power,” says a former senior adviser. But his failure to act while thousands of desperate people, unable to find food or water, were appealing for help on national television erased his image as an effective decision maker.

Bushie, you did one heck of a job …..

Paul Krugman of the New York Times reports in an op-ed something I’ve not heard before, which is troubling to say the least.:

Some observers have pointed out that daily briefings on preparations for Gustav, which should be coming from the Federal Emergency Management Agency—which is, you know, supposed to manage emergencies—have been coming, instead, from the U.S. military’s Northern Command.

It’s not hard to see why. Top positions at FEMA are no longer held by obviously unqualified political hacks and cronies. But a recent report by the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security said that the agency has made only “limited progress” in the area of “mission assignments”—that is, in its ability to coordinate the response to a crisis. So FEMA still isn’t up to carrying out its principal task.

That’s no accident. FEMA’s degradation, from one of the government’s most admired agencies to a laughingstock, wasn’t an isolated event; it was the result of the G.O.P.’s underlying philosophy. Simply put, when the government is run by a political party committed to the belief that government is always the problem, never the solution, that belief tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Key priorities are neglected; key functions are privatized; and key people, the competent public servants who make government work, either leave or are driven out.

So almost exactly to the day, three years after Katrina hit, FEMA still can’t even handle something as basic as briefing the president on Hurricane Gustav. Sad, sad times.