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Mayor Orders Mandatory Evacuation of New Orleans
Pickens writes "City officials ordered everyone to leave New Orleans beginning Sunday morning — the first mandatory evacuation since Hurricane Katrina flooded the city three years ago — as Hurricane Gustav grew into what the city's mayor called 'the storm of the century' and moved toward the Louisiana coast. 'This is the real deal. This is not a test. For everyone thinking they can ride this storm out, I have news for you: that will be one of the biggest mistakes you can make in your life,' said New Orleans mayor, C. Ray Nagin. Already, hundreds of thousands of residents had begun streaming north from New Orleans and other Gulf Coast areas stretching from the Florida Panhandle to Houston. Bush administration officials took pains not to be caught as flatfooted as they were in Hurricane Katrina, announcing that President Bush had called governors in the region to assure them of assistance and that top federal emergency officials were in the region to guide the response. 'We could see flooding that is worse than what we saw with Katrina,' said Louisiana Governor Jindal."
The US Geological Survey will be running a real-time "Map of Hydrologic Impacts" to monitor flood levels, and the National Weather Service has charted direction and wind-speed probabilities. Reader technix4beos points out the need for IRC transcription of FEMA and NOAA feeds.
It's below sea level in one of the most hurricane prone places on earth. Why are rebuilding and living there?
Make it an industrial zone and be done with it. Use the money to permanently relocate the population, not rebuild their soon-to-be blown away homes again.
Get the freaking hint - New Orleans is in one of the worst possible places, stop spending federal money rebuilding it. If people want to live there, let them suffer the entire burden of living there! If you want to spend federal money, spend it on relocation allowances and get people permanently away from the problem!
Well, think about it this way: How many people will be upset at the governor/government if NO evacuation is ordered? A TON of people will be because this country is full of idiots who can't think for themsleves and NEED the government to think for them.
So New Orleans is likely to be flooded yet again, but this is not a unique occurance. Florida is often trashed by hurricanes, and here in the UK much of our housing is on flood-plains, and some of our villages are crumbling into the sea due to coastal erosion.
You can't beat nature, but we've all got to live somewhere, and there is normally a very good reason for a settlement to be where it is.
It's a balancing act. Sometimes you need to put resources into sustaining a town/city, and elsewhere this may be inappropriate. The big question is 'Who decides?'
Smivs on the intertubes!
The Cato Institute is a neo-liberal/neo-conservative "think tank" and lobby group. Of course they're trying to attack Naomi Klein
And your point is? By the same token: Naomi Klein is a leftist, so of course she is trying to attack free economies. But that isn't what undermines her argument, what undermines her argument is that it is false.
Read Norberg's full report here:
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9384
Where in the world *isn't* there a natural disaster waiting to happen. If it isn't hurricane, it's general flooding. If not flooding, then earthquakes. If not earthquakes, then wildfires, or tornadoes, or whatever your local flavor of emergency is. Make sure you're willing to pay for your emergency before you decide you don't want to pay for theirs.
Racists are racists. There are republican and democrat racists. Let's not discriminate on which racists we choose to hate. Plenty to go around.
There is nothing wrong with people devoting their time, energy and money preserving New Orleans. It's your life after all. The problem is when you discover that you don't have enough and need to take some of my money too.
Because the last time a hurricane hit the Netherladns was... uhh... never? The fact that it's deep below sea level is not what makes new orleans problematic, but its proximity to one of the few places in the world that have big big storms.
Ok, katrina was the first big one, but now is coming the second one, and maybe in five years we'll see the third and so on. I call it basic survival instinct to leave and put your family in other place.
And immediately right after LBJ (Democrat) worked with Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1963 he told his advisors that he signed the South to Republicans.
Ever since, the South has been voting Republican.
So yes, they are still racist.
Byrd's a Republican now? Shit, when did he switch parties?
When his party changed around him, Byrd saw the error of his ways, apologized, and set to work trying to undo the damage he had done. Most of his "Dixiecrat" contemporaries, like Thurmond and Helms, never did ... so they went over to the Republicans, who welcomed them with open arms.
It's simultaneously amusing and sad how Republicans have to reach back decades to find slurs for Democrats, while the current Republican Party presents such a target-rich environment for those Democrats with the guts to take advantage of it.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Funnily enough, I happened to be in Louisiana during Katrina and happened to be working for the government at the time. A small portion (like 25%) of our state's national guard was in the process of standing down from Iraq when Katrina hit, and they were actually rotated into the city during the aftermath because our governor wanted to try and save face and look tough by deploying "combat hardened troops" that will "shoot to kill." One of the main Reserve bases in Louisiana, funnily enough, is IN New Orleans and the other 75% of our National Guard was sitting on their asses waiting for orders, as they were under control of the state government, not the federal government. Bush moving in and federalizing those troops would have been seen as a huge violation of states rights and an assurpation of power, as essentially the only legal basis he could have used for it would have been to declare the state of Louisiana to be rebelling and essentially removed the state government from power. In hindsight, that probably would have been a better option.
FEMA, funnily enough, responded more quickly to Katrina in New Orleans than they did to Andrew in Homestead, FL. The cynic in me would say that's because of the demographic differences between the two locations, but such baseless theorycrafting serves no one. FEMA (and pretty much any federal disaster relief agency) is in fact paralyzed without local and state government support and cooperation, as their primary role is organization and logistics; ie: figuring out who needs what and seeing that they get it. They need state and local governments (like the national guard, state police, etc.) to provide the actual manpower to accomplish anything, and in the case of Katrina our lovely (and unsurprisingly deposed) governor just sat around and dithered while people died. She even admitted herself (not realizing that the cameras were on) that she should have sent the guard in earlier and when the president offered to take over for her (since she was obviously in over her head) she told him she'd think about it and get back to him in 24 hours.
But of course, it's obviously Bush's fault, he's such a big meanie that Blanco was too scared to call and ask for help...
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
I'm sick of people calling out Bush for a slow response to Katrina. There's plenty to dislike about Bush we don't need to make crap up.
For anyone who for some reason doesn't know this: The federal government cannot go in and provide aid in a place like post-Katrina New Orleans unless the governor asks for it. It's against the law and the very basic nature of our country for the federal government to just go and do that kind of stuff. The governor in Louisiana was slow to ask for aid and was therefore slow to get it.
Bush actually tried to pass a law that would allow the federal government to quickly respond to such disasters and he was accused of trying to take over with an oppressive hand.
Seriously, I dislike Bush as much as the next guy but I'm not so stupid that I can't see the reality of a situation.
or else!