It had the potential to be a moment when Americans finally realized what decades of a lack of investment and a libertarian governing philosophy popularized by Goldwater and Reagan have wrought in our infrastructure; when the lid finally came off the neglect and chaos of our inner cities; and when Americans realized that the emergency planning of this administration consisted mainly in notifying those with means that they should pack up their SUVs and leave.
Katrina seemed, briefly, to have that potential. Shockingly however, the Bush response to Katrina focused on only further eroding government protections: suspending prevailing wage laws, handing out massive private contracts without oversights, and even the proposal to hand out vouchers instead of rebuilding schools. Democrats were not in a position to set the agenda or pass legislation.
Paradoxically, Republicans seemed to blame their own ineptitude on the failures of government generally and indeed they demonstrated the crippling and devastating slowness and bureaucratic redtape of which government bureaucracy is capable --- under a total and utter lack of leadership. Report after report has detailed the extraordinary mismanagement and delay of much of the funds provided to the region.
Obama in 2006:
You know, we all remember that George Bush said in 2000 campaign that he was against nation-building. We just didn't know he was talking about this one.Now, let me say this - I don't think that George Bush is a bad man. I think he loves his country. I don't think this administration is full of stupid people [Laughter] - I think there are a lot of smart folks in there. The problem isn't that their philosophy isn't working the way it's supposed to - the problem is that it is working exactly the way it's supposed to.
The reason they don't believe government has a role in solving national problems is because they think government is the problem. That we're better off if we dismantle it - if we divvy it up into individual tax breaks, hand 'em out, and encourage everyone to go buy your own health care, your own retirement security, your own child care, their own schools, your own private security force, your own roads, their own levees... [Laughter]
It's called the Ownership Society in Washington. But in our past there has been another term for it - Social Darwinism - every man or women for him or herself.
Edwards clearly recognized the symbolism and had the right instinct, choosing to announce his campaign for president in the ninth ward in December of last year. His announcement went uncovered by the media --- not entirely due to the media's studied inattention to Edwards or even to the Christmas season but instead to the timing of Gerald Ford's somewhat unexpected death and the glowing, one-sided obituries that dominated the news cycle for days.
But it was the right instinct. Every candidate should have announced their run in New Orleans, and it should be made a central storyline of the coming general election campaign. This week, with the second anniversary of Katrina, there will be another opportunity. Candidates will be visiting New Orleans. Let's take a look at what's coming of it.
The Situation Today
It's worth pausing to reflect on the situation there. Just working off of a fact sheet the Obama campaign provided with their plan. Here are some particularly telling statistics:
- The crime situation in New Orleans is out of control:
Katrina decimated the region's criminal justice system, destroying police stations and courthouses, and scattering police officers. New Orleans led the nation in murders per capita in 2006, and is experiencing a 14 percent increase in murders and 44 percent leap in armed robberies this year. Two of the city's police stations and police headquarters continue to operate out of FEMA trailers.
Every four miles of wetlands can absorb about a foot of a hurricane's storm surge, but Lousiana is losing about an acre of wetlands - the equivalent of three football fields - every 24 minutes.
- Local infrastructure is crumbling. Both hospitals:
Only one of the seven major hospitals in New Orleans is operating at pre-hurricane level; two are partially open, and the remaining four are closed. As a result, only a third of the hospital beds remain in the city.
Fewer than half of New Orleans' schools are reopening this September.
The city's homeless population is approximately double what it was before the hurricane.
In New Orleans, only 19 percent of buses are running on 50 percent of the pre-Katrina routes.
A. Preventative Measures
1. Major Levee Construction: New Orleans clearly needs an overhaul of their flood protection. Katrina had weakened to the level of a Category 2 hurricane by the time it hit New Orleans, whose levees had supposedly been built to withstand a Category 3 storm but failed anyway due to faulty construction, inadequate investment, and poor maintenance.
As president, Barack Obama will ensure that New Orleans has a levee and pumping system to protect the city against a 100-year storm by 2011, with the ultimate goal of protecting the entire city from a Category 5 storm. Obama will also direct revenues from offshore oil and gas drilling to increased coastal hurricane protection.
B. Better Managing Disaster Relief
The obvious must be stated: A Republican administration that has failed miserably in promoting adequate disaster management has no business claiming leadership on the "war on terror." These failures can detailed in full:
This administration has failed to take the job of FEMA Director seriously by instead: demoting the position from its cabinet-level status in the Clinton administration; pushing the responsibility for emergency response onto local and state authorities unable to cope with the magnitude of a major natural disaster or terrorist attack; and failing to see the need for an active federal role in coordinating across state lines and between agencies, in ensuring proper preparedness, establishing standards, and making sure no one is left to face catastrophe alone, especially not the poorest of the poor.
We can do better.
1. In keeping with his package for reforming the civil service, Obama would end the practice of awarding the position of FEMA Director to the politically well-connected and practically inept; ban gifts to executive branch employees from lobbyists that could influence the giving of contracts; refuse to hire lobbyists into administration positions directly dealing with their firm (sorry, Halliburton); and only give the position of FEMA Director to someone with "professional emergency management experience."
The FEMA Director would no longer report to the Department of Homeland Security but, as in the Clinton administration, to the president himself. And the position would be for a fixed six-year term (mirroring the appointment of FBI Director and ignoring the change of presidential terms), making the office of emergency management a professional position and not a political reward.
2. Obama recognizes the critical importance of getting federal agencies to coordinate with one another in order to respond effectively. That means coordinating not only vertically with state and local authorities but horizontally across executive branch agencies. This is why "immediately following a catastrophe, Barack Obama will appoint a Federal Coordinating Officer to direct reconstruction efforts."
The job of the FCO and his or her staff will be to cut through bureaucratic obstacles, get federal agencies to work together and to coordinate efforts with local officials. Obama will ensure bipartisan staffing to ensure that politics do not override the real needs of the recovering community.
3. A reformed FEMA can do a better job ensuring that local governments have effective emergency preparedness plans. Clearly Katrina was not a "no one ever imaged" scenario, as Bush claimed. Professionals had warned of the danger for years and been ignored.
Obama will work with emergency management officials, emergency responders and other experts from all 50 states to create a real National Response Plan that provides real cooperation between states, locals and the federal government in the face of a disaster. Obama's FEMA will provide real training to emergency responders and professionals in states and localities to ensure that all areas of the country have the human resources necessary to respond to disasters.
Lastly, we can do a far better job rebuilding New Orleans, not only by ensuring that federal dollars allocated to the city are spent in a proper and timely fashion -- and that the help goes to those who need it -- but by offering debt forgiveness to medical students willing to take up positions at hospitals in New Orleans and others willing to become teachers; by targeted efforts to rebuild the city's infrastructure through a new, major hospital complex and a VA hospital.
Lastly, we can ensure that the reconstruction benefits those at the bottom through:
1. Ensuring more reconstruction jobs go to local residents.
2. Improving access to credit for new and struggling small businesses.
3. Tax incentives to small businesses in the hardest hit areas.
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