Former state legislator puts blame directly on Nagin and Blanco

[JR]

ok... let me preface this by saying BUSH SUCKS!










.... then i would like to say that i fail to see why people don't understand that these are state issues (preparedness, evacuation plans and their execution etc). the federal government is not responsible for thier failures. furthermore, the federal government can only assist states upon request... they can't just jump in with troops and start marching down the street all willy nilly with machine guns and rocket launchers. thats how our country is designed.

XxXotic, "current officials are to blame" because the current officials are the current officials. who should bare the blame? the French? Christopher Columbus? The Puritans? Julius Ceasar? regardless of what happened 5 years ago, 10 years ago or 300 years ago, its the obligation of the current state and city administration to deal with these threats and protect the people. as governor, you can't say "this should have been dealt with 40 years ago, so its not my problem or responisibility"

[Dravyk]

Originally Posted by JR

i fail to see why people don't understand that these are state issues (preparedness, evacuation plans and their execution etc). the federal government is not responsible for thier failures. furthermore, the federal government can only assist states upon request...

Ok, first I want to say, generally speaking, you are correct.

And, that you are all also correct in that plenty blame goes to the states involved, and that they have not until recently got their share of it, and they certainly should and will.

That said ... however, here's the rub. (Unfortunately, I only have one item handy as example at the moment.) When the governor of one state wanted to send their guard to Louisiana, and the LA governor also accepted their help, the bullshit request got postponed in WASHINGTON for four days and they are not allowed to move without the federal OK.

So there are many things are so-called "state" issues, but in some way still need, require, whatever some kind of federal stamp on it, or which need to go to the feds for "alledged" coordination. In the end many of the state issues are actually not merely state issues and the feds are involved in many of those as well.

[XxXotic]

Originally Posted by JR

ok... let me preface this by saying BUSH SUCKS!










.... then i would like to say that i fail to see why people don't understand that these are state issues (preparedness, evacuation plans and their execution etc). the federal government is not responsible for thier failures. furthermore, the federal government can only assist states upon request... they can't just jump in with troops and start marching down the street all willy nilly with machine guns and rocket launchers. thats how our country is designed.

XxXotic, "current officials are to blame" because the current officials are the current officials. who should bare the blame? the French? Christopher Columbus? The Puritans? Julius Ceasar? regardless of what happened 5 years ago, 10 years ago or 300 years ago, its the obligation of the current state and city administration to deal with these threats and protect the people. as governor, you can't say "this should have been dealt with 40 years ago, so its not my problem or responisibility"

but that's not entirely fair to the current admin. Not saying they don't hold some blame, but if money that was sent to us 10 years ago got spent on what it was supposed to be spent on, current funding would not have been cut 40% by bush's administration and new orleans probably wouldn't have suffered such a fate.

I'm by no means saying Blanco and Nagin aren't partially to blame, but Former Governor Mike Foster as well as Former Mayor Morial from New Orleans should share some of the blame as well. Had they done what they were supposed to, the current administrations may not have been put in this position. Blanco nor Nagin have held office for all that long, they could have both ordered complete overhauls of the levee system and it wouldn't have made much difference. There wasn't enough time to fix the fuck ups from the previous administrations.

My point was that Blanco and Nagin aren't the only ones to blame so they shouldn't shoulder 100% of the fault, nothing more then that.