“If some people are foolish enough to live below sea level, or in flood
plains, or in earthquake zones, why should the rest of us bail them out when
an expected disaster strikes?”
It’s an old complaint revived, of course, by the catastrophe visited upon
the Gulf states by Hurricane Katrina. It states, in effect, that the
citizens of New Orleans and other devastated communities in the region are
have only themselves to blame for their misfortune.
Similarly, prudent individuals will not chose to live alongside great rivers
like the Mississippi, or along active tectonic zones (i.e., the entire
Pacific coast), or in eastern cities such as New York, which attract
terrorists, or in the St. Louis/Memphis region, the site of the New Madrid
earthquake of 1812 – the most violent US earthquake in recorded history . I
guess we should all pack up and move to Kansas instead.
Oh wait! They have tornadoes, don’t they?
Who is Responsible for New Orleans’ Safety?
The free-market absolutist libertarian right proclaims, in
Ayn Rand’s words, that “there is no such entity as .. ‘the public’ ... only
a number of individual men.” (Rand: “The Objectivist Ethics”). Thus the
optimal society emerges “spontaneously,” through an unregulated free market,
from the self-serving economic activity of individuals and families.
By extension, apologists for the Bush Administration’s neglect of the
pre-Katrina safety and the post-Katrina recovery seem to be telling us that
“there is no such entity as ‘the nation,’ there are only states and
‘regions,’ whose responsibility it is to look after their own safety and
recovery.
This policy is articulated in an e-mail of uncertain origin that I received
last week, which states a now-familiar cop-out of the Bush-defense team:
In case you aren’t familiar with how our government is
supposed to work: the chain of responsibility for the protection of
the citizens of New Orleans is:
1. The Mayor of New Orleans
2. The New Orleans director of Homeland Security.
3. The Governor of Louisiana
4. The [Secretary] of Homeland Security.
5. The President of the United States.
The e-mail message then proceeds to argue that due to the
alleged blunders of the Mayor and the Governor, the Secretary and the
President are absolved of responsibility for the horror that followed the
hurricane. This, we are told, was a city problem and a state problem, not a
national problem. As is now more than obvious, this excuse (along with “this
not the time to play the blame game”) has become the standard talking point
of the Bush apologists.
In fact, when a Governor asks the President
to declare a federal state of emergency (as Governor Blanco did two days
before landfall) and the President agrees (as Bush did the same day),
the above-listed “chain of responsibility” is reversed and “the buck
stops” at the President’s desk. This procedure is explicitly stated in
the “Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD5" issued and signed
by George Bush in February 28, 2003 (see paragraph 4). Media reports and
right-wing punditry to the contrary notwithstanding, the Mayor and the
Governor fulfilled their responsibilities, albeit imperfectly. (See
“Right
Wing Myths about Katrina, Debunked”).
The Right, with its concept of “the nation” as a collage of autonomous
states and regions, perceives a devastated gulf region as comparable to a
diseased branch on a tree. Cut off the branch, and the tree will be no worse
off, and perhaps more healthy. Thus: “It’s too bad about what happened to
New Orleans, and maybe we’ll be charitable and send them some aid. But, once
again, it is ultimately the fault of the people in New Orleans because they
willingly chose to live in a sub-sea-level bowl.”
On the other hand, progressives and economically informed Republicans see
New Orleans and the Gulf region as vital organs of the body politic and of
the economy of the United States. Thus damage to this regional part is
damage to the entire nation.
For the fact of the matter is that New Orleans is an “inevitable city” – a
geographic/economic necessity. The Mississippi River drains two-thirds of
the 48 contiguous states, and within its watershed most of the nation’s
agricultural products are produced. And, now that we have “outsourced” most
of our manufacturing base, agricultural products are our primary export,
offsetting the United States’ huge (and unsustainable) trade deficit. Down
the Mississippi and its tributaries, barges full of the bounty of American
farms are towed toward the Gulf of Mexico, and to the necessary Gulf port at
the Mississippi delta. At the same time, essential imports arrive at this
port – by tonnage, the largest port in the US and the fifth largest in the
world. In addition, from the state of Louisiana, the United states gets
fifteen percent of its domestic petroleum and 27% of its natural gas. As
George Friedman writes in his excellent article,
"New Orleans: A Geopolitical Prize" before Katrina struck, “New
Orleans was, in many ways, the pivot of the American Economy,” and, he adds,
“there are no good shipping alternatives.” The cargo ships can go no further
upstream, and downstream are swamps and wetlands that prevent development.
In short, the port of New Orleans is an indispensable national asset. Its
loss, while an inconsolable tragedy to its residents, now scattered around
the nation, is also an economic hardship to all Americans, and to millions
abroad – as we are all about to discover.
And so, the response to the opening taunt – “it’s their fault for living in
a disaster-prone region” – is simple and straightforward: someone had to
live there, and because the entire nation has benefited from the city and
port of New Orleans, it is appropriate that the entire nation should invest
in its reconstruction and assist in the rehabilitation of its unfortunate
residents.
Similar considerations apply to the Pacific coast with its seismic hazards,
and the Northwest with the additional threat of volcanoes. The national
economy requires Pacific seaports, along with the timber of the Northwest
and the agricultural production of California’s incomparably fertile central
valley. And so, if disaster strikes, compensation to the victims is
appropriate.
Any politician who believes that these regions are autonomous and
economically detachable and thus not the responsibility of the federal
government is unqualified for national leadership. To the great misfortune
of the United States, such individuals are nonetheless in political control
of the federal government.
Why a Federal Emergency Management Agency?
Why shouldn’t the city of New Orleans and the state of
Louisiana take full responsibility for “emergency management.” Why should
there be a Federal agency charged with such tasks?
Answer: for the same reason that cities have fire departments. Just as some
fires can not be controlled by individual home owners, some disasters are of
a scale that overwhelm municipal and state capacities. Often these
disasters, like Katrina, affect several states, and in such cases the only
political entity qualified to deal with multi-state disasters is the federal
government.
It is conceivable, of course, that each state might invest in massive,
federal-scale, emergency response facilities, just as each homeowner might
purchase and park a $100,000 fire truck in his driveway, “just in case.” But
the irrationality of both procedures is immediately obvious. Neither is
cost-effective. While a fire in your home is unlikely, the probability of
fires breaking out somewhere in a city is sufficiently high to justify a
municipal fire department that is frequently engaged in fire-fighting and
constantly prepared to respond anywhere in the city, including, of course,
your home. Similarly, the minimal annual probability of a Katrina-scale
disaster in any particular state is not worth the investment of fifty
large-scale separate “just-in-case” response facilities. However, if we
multiply the low-probability of a disaster in each state by fifty, we then
have a justification for an in-place and “at the ready” federal agency such
as FEMA. In short: fifty multi-billion dollar agencies for each state is
folly; one multi-billion dollar agency for all states is rational.
Just as most home fires can be put out with a fire extinguisher or a garden
hose, most disasters can be managed with municipal and state agencies. But
for those rare and massive events, such as Katrina and the much-anticipated
major California earthquake, a coordinated national response is imperative.
As evidence for this claim, just contrast the effectiveness of FEMA under
James Lee Witt during the Clinton administration with that of the
crony-ridden fiasco of FEMA under Bush.
So Who Lost New Orleans?
None of the leading official players in this tragic drama
are totally blameless – each one, “if they had it to do over again” would
respond differently and more effectively. But that does not mean that each
responsible official is equally culpable. Despite false media reports to the
contrary (notably by The Washington Post and Newsweek),
Governor Blanco declared a state of emergency on August 26, three days
before the hurricane made landfall. The following morning she requested Bush
to declare a federal state of emergency, which Bush granted, following which
Bush, Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff and FEMA Director Michael Brown
were inexcusably unresponsive for the next two days. Mayor Nagin’s mandatory
evacuation order proved to be too little and too late (by a whole day).
Subsequent events would show that FEMA, severely incapacitated by Bush
Administration cutbacks, the loss of key professional personnel, and
management by unqualified political appointees, was worse than ineffective
as it refused assistance by relief agencies such as the Red Cross and
numerous municipal police and fire departments, and blocked assistance to
victims by volunteers. (For a detailed timeline with links to validating
documents, see Salon.com’s
“Timeline to Disaster”).
George Bush’s remark to ABC’s Diane Sawyer that “I don't think anybody
anticipated the breach of the levees," is contradicted by numerous studies
and media reports. In fact, the flooding of New Orleans was long-anticipated
and feared, and aggressive flood control measures were proposed to Congress.
All were slashed by the Bush Administration to small fractions of the
amounts requested. (See Will Bunch:
“Why the Levee Broke”).
It is impossible to determine with certainty whether a repaired and improved
levee system could have spared New Orleans from this Category Four
hurricane. If it could not, then the answer to the question “who lost New
Orleans” must be “Katrina.” If fully-funded and fully installed levees would
have held, then the answer to “who lost New Orleans is clearly the Bush
Administration and the Republican Congress which refused to fund the repair
and re-enforcement of the levees.
But Katrina was two disasters: one natural – the hurricane -- and the other
administrative – the botched relief effort that followed. And for that
second disaster the fault lies squarely with the Bush Administration and its
under-funded and atrociously administered Federal Emergency Management
Agency. The message of the Bush spin-machine, and much of its enabling
media, is that the blame lies with Governor Blanco and Mayer Negin. But the
documented evidence,
available on the internet for all to see refutes this allegation.
At the root of the second, post-storm, disaster is the right-wing’s visceral
distrust of government: the Reaganite conviction that “government is not the
solution, government is the problem,” and the Bushite proclamation that “you
can spend your money more wisely than the federal government can.” (Bush in
the second debate, 2000). As Thom Hartmann has observed,
“You Can't Govern
if You Don't Believe in Government." Katrina has proved that
because the Busheviks don’t believe in government, they can’t govern. And
so, faced with a regional crisis with devastating impacts upon the national
economy, the Bush administration was incapable of acting effectively in the
national interest. Indeed, they are scarcely capable of recognizing the very
existence of a “national interest” apart from the separate interests of
privileged individuals and corporations.
It is difficult to find any silver lining in Katrina’s storm clouds. But if
there is any, it might be the dawning public realization that there are good
reasons why no civilized society is without a government – why our founders
recognized that an enlightened government, “deriving its just powers from
the consent of the governed,” exists, in the words of our Constitution, to
"establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common
defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to
ourselves and our Posterity."
Those who dare to call themselves “conservatives” would have us believe
otherwise.
Copyright 2005 by Ernest Partridge
