(Updated) A Simple Response to Those Blaming Blanco/Nagin
Thu Sep 15, 2005 at 09:38:47 AM PDT
I was just watching Howard Dean on (shudder) "The View", the disturbingly vapid "half a dozen gums flapping at once" show on ABC.
Dean held his own pretty well, but one of the hosts--the youngest one, don't know her name--is apparently a member of the Bush Koolaid Brigade, pouncing on Dean with her 8-month-old "outrageous statement" talking points.
When discussing FEMA/BushCo's completely botched response to Katrina, the Coulter Wannabe tried her best to do what the GOP always does in cases of Bush Administration accountability: shift the blame to the state & local officials.
Naturally, she threw the "Nagin didn't use the school buses" meme at Dean.
While his specific response was so-so (the buses were under the jurisdiction of the school board), and his general response was fairly good ("plenty of blame to go around"), I really wish he had simply stated it this way:
Me: "Do you live in New Orleans?"
Wingnut: "No."
Me: "Do you live in Louisiana?"
Wingnut: "No."
Me: "OK, then. Neither do I. I don't vote for Mayor of New Orleans, and I don't vote for Governor of Louisiana. I don't pay their salaries, and I don't pay their taxes. The mayor and/or the governor may have made mistakes or may not have made mistakes, but if they did, it's up to the PEOPLE OF NEW ORLEANS and the PEOPLE OF LOUISIANA to judge them, not you, not me.
"On the other hand, I do vote for President of the United States--and therefore, for those he chooses to appoint. I do pay his salary--and that of his appointees. I do pay federal taxes--which are spent on FEMA and other federal agencies. Therefore, I do have every right to criticize and question HIS judgement, HIS appointments, and HIS administrations' response."
This, to me, slams the door on the "blame the locals" crowd pretty well; instead of getting bogged down in a defense of Nagin/Blanco, it puts the focus back where it belongs: Bush and his admnistration MUST be held accountable for THEIR screwup *regardless* of any errors on the part of others. They're separate issues.
NOTE: I've never requested a Recommend before, but the responses so far seem to indicate that I may have actually come up with a Highly Useful diary for once in my life! So, for the first time, I'm Rec-begging :)
Update [2005-9-15 15:18:43 by Brainwrap]: Many, many people in the comments have been discussing the "2,000 buses" meme, which I mention in the diary solely to point out how irrelevant the "bus" question is with regards to the Federal response. However, for the record (and for those who don't feel like slogging through all of the discussion), the gist of the "bus" issue seems to be:
--First, there were NOT 2,000 buses; there were only 324, and 70 of these were apparently broken or otherwise unusable before the fact, leaving only 254 usable buses
--Assuming that they were able to hunt down enough drivers (either licensed or "voluntary") to drive all 254 buses, and assuming that they were able to fill up every bus with perhaps 35 people apiece (?), that means they *might* have been able to transport, at *most*, 8,900 people...assuming that the buses wouldn't have been washed away, stalled out, or otherwise caught in the storm.
--Even if that many people had been transported out of the immediate harms' way, they would still have been left to starve, dehydrate, be unmedicated or otherwise left to rot for 4-5 more days by the FEDERAL government, whose screwups are the point of order in the original discussion anyway!
