[Vision2020] Of Deltas and CO2

[Pat Kraut]

I do not want us to repair any more levees. Something is terribly wrong when you can stand on a street and see ships go by above you! This is an opportunity for the area to move back and let the ocean have its land back. Just how much money do you think it would take to 'study' it one more time. Just how much do we spend to 'save' New Orleans?? It really isn't that 'special' a city! It is time to go a totally different direction.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Tom Hansen 
  To: 'Andreas Schou' ; 'Pat Kraut' 
  Cc: 'vision2020' 
  Sent: Sunday, September 04, 2005 6:12 AM
  Subject: RE: [Vision2020] Of Deltas and CO2


  I am with you 100%, Andreas.

   

  Under our current president, FEMA was relegated to being a sub-agency within Homeland Security, thus drastically reducing its budget.

   

  And who does Bush appoint as Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response (FEMA)?

   

  Michael D. Brown, a former Colorado and Oklahoma attorney and former bar examiner on ethics and professional responsibility for the Oklahoma Supreme Court, a person with virtually no experience in emergency management.  An attorney in charge of our nation's emergency management?  He may not be able to solve anything, but he will most certainly be able to put some serious spin on his responses to questions.

   

  Ms Kraut stated:

   

  "Why does everyone want to make the Fed responsible for everything?? When did they take over?"

   

  HUH??  What part of "Federal Emergency Management" are you struggling with, Ms Kraut?

   

  FEMA is struggling to identify additional large temporary holding facilities (comparable to the Houston Astrodome).  This is a simple question that should have been addressed a couple years ago when the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana were seeking federal funds to repair the 17th Street levee.

   

  But then, we wouldn't want to interrupt George Bush's vacation with something so trivial now, would we?

   

   

  Tom Hansen

  Moscow, Idaho

   

  "If not us, who?
  If not now, when?"

  - Unknown
    


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  From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com] On Behalf Of Andreas Schou
  Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2005 8:02 PM
  To: Pat Kraut
  Cc: vision2020
  Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Of Deltas and CO2

   

   

  On 9/3/05, Pat Kraut <pkraut at moscow.com> wrote: 

  I disagree! Someone in Louisiana should have told her! Why does everyone
  want to make the Fed responsible for everything?? When did they take over? 
  The locals could have done whole rescue operation if they had paid
  attention. There is a picture circulating showing the school buses all under
  water. The mayor could have confiscated them and sent those people out of 
  town by force. But, he keeps yelling about the feds not coming in time! He
  is just hoping no one asks him too many questions.\

   

  Pat --

   

  It is the federal government's responsibility, like it or not, to do disaster relief. You can argue about whether or not it should be their responsibility later, but the fact is, at the time of Hurricane Katrina, it was FEMA's responsibility to handle the evacuation planning and then pick up the pieces. 

   

  George W. had put a chronic fuck-up in charge of FEMA who was fired from his last job for malfeasance, dismantled their planning office as it transitioned to the Department of Homeland Security, sent the Louisiana National Guard to search for phantom WMDs in Iraq, cut all disaster mitigation funding to the /entire state/ of Louisiana, and defunded the levees. It is at his desk that the buck stops, but he and his stand-ins are doing their best to blame everybody else: the victims, the first responders, the police, the looters. Thisis a failure of management at the highest levels: food was dropped in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, within /two days/ of the tsunami. Food got to New Orleans, LA, /today/, or six days after the hurricane. We are a first-world nation. This should not be happening here. 

   

  If I had done this in my work, I would have had my ass canned, and then I would have been sued, and for God's sake, they would have been right to do it, too. This administration has abdicated any pretense of taking responsibility for its 

   

  -- ACS


   
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