Hurricane Katrina: When Liberals are in Charge

This week marks the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and it’s devastation of the Gulf Coast, primarily the city of New Orleans. Most people who live near a coast know that the possibility of a hurricane making landfall is the price one pays for living near the ocean. But Katrina was not most hurricanes.

Katrina was a category 5 storm, and that level of power led to the failure of the inadequate levee system. Massive flooding occurred, and the system in place to remove flood waters couldn’t keep up.

None of this was the fault of the man in the center of it all, former Mayor Ray Nagin, perhaps affectionately known in conservative circles as the mayor of “Chocolate City”. How could it be the black mayor’s fault, when there was a white Republican to blame.

Nagin advised residents, mostly those who lived in low lying areas like the lower ninth ward, an area comprised of mainly low-income blacks, to evacuate. Many didn’t. He then promised to take care of those who did not.

Worse yet, Nagin ignored state and federal offers of help with evacuation. This pattern of too little too late played out many more times in the following days.

Ray Nagin had an entire fleet of school buses ready to take those who did not have the means to higher ground. Those buses never moved, and were destroyed once the levees broke.

New Orleans remaining citizens were ushered to the Superdome, where conditions went from bad to worse to unbearable. It was painfully clear that Nagin and his administration were in no way prepared for an emergency of this magnitude, but he made sure that he heaped plenty of the blame on others. Federal bureaucracy and more specifically then-President George W. Bush were his favorite targets.

Former Governor Kathleen Blanco also bared a large share of liberal incompetence. Five days after Katrina made land, President Bush made several offers to federalize the Louisiana National Guard, but Blanco declined each time. There were also reports that the Louisiana Dept. of Homeland Security, which Blanco oversaw did not allow the Red Cross to enter the city and ultimately set up operations in evacuation centers. Blanco claimed that Mayor Nagin made himself “virtually unavailable”, and said that communication with him was practically non-existent during the emergency.

After understanding the politics involved, Blanco shifted her focus from “Chocolate City” Nagin, to Bush. She would later blame former Bush advisor Karl Rove and his influence over President Bush for delays in federal assistance.

Ten years later, Ray Nagin is serving a ten year sentence in federal prison for corruption related to Katrina, and Kathleen Blanco did not seek a second term. Many areas of New Orleans have never fully recovered, and many people died due to the incompetence of liberal Democrats who pocketed federal money for things like levee repairs, and failed to make crucial decisions when people’s lives hung in the balance.

Obama promised to rebuild Obama, as if he would roll up his own sleeves and go all “Habitat for Humanity” in the 9th Ward. He’s done nothing. Well he is down there currently eating at nice restaurants and doing photo ops.

I’d like to see Obama go unprotected in the 9th Ward where he promised black people in that are he would help.

It’s pretty simple: putting Liberals in charge of a disaster is clearly a recipe for more disaster.

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