Not true Uncle Kvetch…according to the Department of Homeland Security’s Proactive Federal Response to Catastrophic Events plan, they contend that they do have the authority to take control.

http://www.dhs.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/NRP_FullText.pdf

Government will always tend toward a system that people want to reward their friends with positions instead of finding the best person. Where they will play by some rulebook instead of doing things which make sense (large, bureaucratic corporations do the same) because they can’t be blamed. Where they won’t take risks or hurry because they will suffer a lot if they can be fingered and blamed for initiative, but will generally be ignored if they make sure paperwork is done (consider the FDA - approve a thalidomide and you’re deadmeat – hold a life-saving drug off the market for an extra year where 2000 die – you will just be thought of as being careful since no one will know the names of the 2000 dead).

The market works on incentives. If people got a big bonus for getting water to NOLA, it would be overflowing with fresh water. Instead you want the army – which is trained to do war – to be nice and turn into teamsters or longshoremen, and be really good at it. They have a logistics section, but that is set up to help the army, not something like rescue.

Government can’t be efficient – the incentives are more perverse than Abu Gharib. The market can be. Even non-profits or private citizens can be.

So as often as we do the experiment, the scorpion and toad drown when the scorpion stings the toad, but people still imagine we can just find a better scorpion or toad and it will all work better next time.

I’ve heard insanity defined as expecting a different result when you do the same thing. While the market might not be socially optimal, Libertarians aren’t insane enough to expect government to work except by a lucky exception and typically when it is destroying something.

It does not follow logically that 30 hours of traffic not including the creation of public awareness to act should be placed into the paper work request pile 48 hours before the event.

What events transpired post the hurricane are a whole different ordeal, but the fact remains that the purpose of evacuation was to not be where we are now.

I qualify my statements with the fact that I am a Louisiana resident and have been here the entire time. I am not writing this supporting one party over another, but I can not expect steps 2+ to work with the first one was not followed.

Pointing blame does not necessarily create the action to resolve the problem.

It does not follow logically that 30 hours of traffic not including the creation of public awareness to act should be placed into the paper work request pile 48 hours before the event.

What events transpired post the hurricane are a whole different ordeal, but the fact remains that the purpose of evacuation was to not be where we are now.

I qualify my statements with the fact that I am a Louisiana resident and have been here the entire time. I am not writing this supporting one party over another, but I can not expect steps 2+ to work with the first one was not followed.

Pointing blame does not necessarily create the action to resolve the problem.

Baton Rouge, LA

And the link is funny stuff. A more humorous take than yours, even if it makes some of the same elementary mistakes. To avoid further confusion on the most basic issues: The National Guard really does respond to the Governor’s orders! Really! And there really isn’t a federal emergency power to seize assets! No kidding! Chris, do you know those things? No extended discussion on factivity needed, though clearly there are good reasons for you to want to take the discussion in that direction.

Thomas, you clearly know more about my opinions than I myself do, so there’s no reason for me to stick around. You just go ahead and debate the Uncle Kvetch that lives in your head. Enjoy.

UK—I think you’re confused about the subject. Kieran didn’t see that poor woman die on her tv, so he doesn’t have any immediate interest in what happened to her. Further, it isn’t clear to me how supplying food and water to the Superdome (which had food and water) and the convention center (which didn’t) would somehow rescue this woman from a place 20 miles away. Is there something I’m missing? It seems to me that the impact of supplying food and water, in some cases to those who already had food and water, would have meant diverting resources away from search-and-rescue. But you were in favor of that diversion, weren’t you? I mean, if you’d been in charge, no one would have been rescued in Jefferson Parish until the people that the tv crews were showing were given food, water, a shower, new clothes, and an evacuation to a place of their choosing.

Finally, if you can find anyone anywhere in the Bush administration or elsewhere who has made a serious argument that the “vesting clause” of the constitution gives the president the power to do anything he might want to do in the event of a natural disaster, then, please, provide a link, a quote, some evidence for that position. (If you don’t know what the “vesting clause” is, then skip it, because you’re in over your head as it is.)

He had no choice, John…we all know how seriously he takes the US Constitution. He’s a strictly by-the-book kinda guy.

48 hours would have been awful enough. It was far worse than that.

“And he said, ‘Yeah, Momma, somebody’s coming to get you. Somebody’s coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody’s coming to get you Thursday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Friday’ and she drowned Friday night.”

Republicans are normally “can do” when it comes to things like economic growth, technological progress, and military invasions of third world countries. They are also big about cutting red tape and bypassing bureaucracy.

But in this particular case of disaster relief, they’re defeatists. Bush scarcely even tried, but that’s OK, because it would have been impossible to do anything anyway. Bush waited three days for a proper invitation from Governor Blanco. His hands were tied.

I don’t see any reason other than Republican loyalism and pure contrarianism (hi, Abb1!) to evade the judgement that from Jan 20, 2001 until a couple of days ago, almost every decision Bush made affecting New Orleans safety was disastrously wrong. (If you want to argue that the proportion was only 80% or 50%, cool).

This issue is especially important because it is a very bad sign about the administration’s ability to protect us from terrorist attacks on American soil—supposedly one of the Bush administration’s high-priority items. FEMA and DHS seem to be dead in the water.

The Republican talking points are 1.) the violence in New Orleans and 2.) the late federalization of the Guard. I’m pretty sure that the second of these issues is bogus, and the first is exaggerated, but who cares? There are dozens of criticism of Bush’s non-performance, and these two points, even if valid, would partially exonerate him on only a few of them. But by repeating the talking points often enough, people start to believe that they are the main point.

And last—no one here has exonerated the mayor of NO or the governor of LA. There’s enough blame to go around, and LA is notoriously one of the most corrupt states in the union. LA Dems are, furthermore, mostly low-tax low-service conservative Dems who are in the pocket of the oil companies and other big business.

It’s dishonest to divert attention from Bush to the local officials. These are separable issues, and for those of us not in LA, the federal issues are much more important.

Now, if one starts with a different understanding of the facts—with the understanding that, as the NOLA newspaper blog reportted, food (in the form of more than 300,000 MREs) and water was provided to the Superdome prior to the storm—then any delay in providing additional food and water to the Superdome might be understood as simply a matter of priorities. On this line of thought, the Superdome has food and water, while many other places in the 90,000 square mile region do not, and even though these other places aren’t on television, they are no less real for that. If those are the facts—and as always, we really don’t know much right now—then Kieran’s insistence on providing additional food and water to those folks he can see, at the expense of those he can’t, must be understood as something truly monstrous: we should afflict particular individuals, and comfort others, not based on need or available resources, but simply based on the level of comfort we can give those academics watching the scene on television at home.

robin, I do understand that the US army is in the logistics business. That doesn’t mean they move quickly; to the contrary. (BTW: I don’t doubt that we could have bombed LA very quickly—it isn’t that the US can’t respond militarily very quickly, just that we can’t deploy troops on the ground very quickly.)

Assume each person averages to needing 1 gallon of water, 2 MREs and 1 pound of sundry supplies (diapers, formula, medical, etc.) That’s a pretty generous base; people could survive for a long time on half that. Assume 30,000 people at the dome and surrounding area. A case of 12 MRE’s weights 20lbs, a gallon of water 8.5. Rounding up for packaging and the like, that’s about 195 tons of lift a day. Water is the bulk of this; if one of the USMC reverse osmosis units is available you could chop the daily lift to 60 tons/a day. MREs are not the most efficient food packaging method; you could trim off some with different food source, but MREs are likely to be sitting around ready to go.

195 tons may sound like a lot, but that boils down to about 11 48’ semis, 30 US Army M813A1 trucks, 160 HMMWV, or 100 CH-46 or 5 LCAC sorties. While LCAC’s and airlift might be scarce, semis and Army trucks aren’t. As far as accessibility goes, they seem to be getting non-articulated buses to the dome, which in my experience are a whole lot harder to maneuver than a semi with trailer. Use army trucks like the M813 if you think off road travel is needed.

While this is non-trivial, it seems that a convoy of this sort should be ready within 48 hours. Pick a big warehouse somewhere as your logistics center. If you are clever, you pick a big grocery operation; a lot of stuff like water will already be there (a lot of these operations have already volunteered aid, so this shouldn’t be too hard.). Locating the MREs should be a matter of a phone call to the Defense Logistics Agency. Allow 24 hours to chase down the rest of the stuff and get it to the warehouse. Vehicles and drivers should be straightforward to find, especially if you start out at a logistics center. Loading the trucks should take less than 4 hours given that everything will be palletized. With relief drivers and a convoy speed of 40mph, you should be able to start anyplace convenient within 500 miles. Run it into NOLA in a convoy. If you are being paranoid, assign a couple of National Guard HMMWV’s as security escort as you get close to the disaster area; that might be the hard part since it involves cooperation between possibly unconnected groups. This is not rocket science, and there are a lot of people around with this kind of know-how. Many just-in-time logistics operations, including Wal-Mart and the U.S. military, run with a far shorter response window. Given that the National Guard has been the source of a lot of the logistics troops in Iraq, I bet you even could find a few specialists in handling hostile environments.

We have had private individuals and companies try to organize this sort of relief already, but turf wars, bureaucratic obstacles and the like have sabotaged things. The problems go beyond the absence of planning into incompetence and active interference with the relief effort. There are any number of news reports with instances of relief operations being blocked, agencies at loggerheads and the like. That points to what is the biggest failing here: there was no one in charge. The government agencies were either incompetent (FEMA, DHS) or were not activated in a timely fashion (Military). If one agency is unable to do the job, yank them and find someone who can. Decisive command decisions could have made the situation far better. A lot could have done with a few executive orders, and I’d much rather see the Commander in Chief back in DC making things happen than doing touchy-feely tours of the disaster area. Instead we had the government thrashing like a headless snake.