The Deepwater Horizon disaster has put a renewed media and political focus on the significant government failures of Hurricane Katrina, including the collapsed, flawed floodwalls and levees that put most of New Orleans underwater. There's also an HBO drama now featuring John Goodman's impassioned, expletive-laden speeches on that man-made disaster. The New York Times Public Editor recently devoted part of a column to discussing the subject.
But for some reason, a selective amnesia still dominates on this topic. Take a look at this blogosphere exchange between NRO's Yuval Levin and MoJo's Kevin Drum:
Levin says, essentially, Katrina was an act of God for which no government could have been prepared, and, under the circumstances, things weren't so bad:
I think it's actually right to say that the BP oil spill is something like Obama's Katrina, but not in the sense in which most critics seem to mean it.
It's like Katrina in that many people's attitudes regarding the response to it reveal completely unreasonable expectations of government. The fact is, accidents (not to mention storms) happen. We can work to prepare for them, we can have various preventive rules and measures in place. We can build the capacity for response and recovery in advance. But these things happen, and sometimes they happen on a scale that is just too great to be easily addressed. It is totally unreasonable to expect the government to be able to easily address them--and the kind of government that would be capable of that is not the kind of government that we should want.
The notion that "these things happen" and there's nothing we can do about it beforehand overlooks the history and the facts of the flood. Now, perhaps there is an NRO-friendly argument to be made that, given the scale of the challenge, we never should have undertaken to protect New Orleans from hurricane floods. I don't agree, but such a point would at least indicate a basic familiarity with the subject matter. Instead, Levin simply treats the disaster as an abstract argument for the pointlessness of emergency preparedness, which is an odd argument indeed.
I expected better from Kevin Drum. Alas, his response also ignores the levees-falling-down issue:
As Levin says, Katrina would have been an immense disaster no matter what. But it was far worse than it had to be because a conservative administration, one that fundamentally disdained the mechanics of government for ideological reasons, decided that FEMA wasn't very important. Likewise, the BP blowout was made more likely because that same administration decided that government regulation of private industry wasn't very important and turned the relevant agency into a joke. If you believe that government is the problem, not the solution, and if you actually run the country that way for eight years, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But we shouldn't pretend it's inevitable.
I realize levees are a lot less attention-grabbing than "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job" - or the exotic mechanics of top kills and junk shots, for that matter. But this is an important issue, a significant failure of American knowhow and accountability that has never really been addressed by the government. That oversight will almost certainly lead to more disasters. It's essential context for understanding Katrina, emergency management, and government dysfunction in general. Don't leave it out, blogosphere.
This post first appeared on my True/Slant blog.
Follow John McQuaid on Twitter: www.twitter.com/johnmcquaid
One can blame his slow respond, I have no illusions about that. However, can we not blame the Gulf Spill on the same government for dragging their feet on energy policies? The government and oil is so entwined, its sickening.
We are at fault as well. Have we really pushed for alternative fuels, or simple given lip service?
All are guilty. Throw away the key on mankind, and give it back to the other species.
http://www.nro.gov/
Almost every paved road in the country was built since the '30s, by government. Also, almost every sewer and water treatment plant, almost every water pipe, and sewer pipe, and drainage pipe, by government. And, almost every major bridge, canal, dam and lock, built by government.
http://anelegantfeast.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/cnn/
BP is the same thing. Why isn't Vitter writing a bill to raise the liability? Why aren't the senators from AL, GA, FL, MS, TX, all republicans, jumping on board with him to find a response to the absurdly low fines and caps on damages BP enjoys? Because they are republicans and if they vote for this it will help the president. Think about how insane that is as a political strategy.
The repairs are substandard according to the Corps themselves. It is they that have labelled their proposal the "not technically superior solution." What could sound more substandard than that?
He then goes on to say how great it is to be living right near the beach and having such a great lifestyle...until the next flood hit. Unlike any rational person who would simply move to higher ground, he believed it was his chosen right to live in a disaster area and have the rest of us pay for his paradise.
In that sense, these yokels are no different from "Big Banks" or TAARP recipients. These grasshoppers want a party life...and they want us ants to pay for it!
Re the role of government: In a capitalist society, the role of govt, is to serve the interest of the capitalist class as a whole--in other words, the govt's role is to keep THEIR system (the collective interests of the richest class) intact. It is not a system for "the people" or the lower classes. In fact, the machinery of government, the courts, police, army, etc. are used to keep the lower classes in their subordinate place.
Of course, it is in the interest of the richest class to prevent its cities from floods and massive pollution. However, corruption and misuse of funds for imperialist war, etc. get in the way of efficiency. The lower middle class resents the dominace of the big capitalists and their system, hence we have Tea Party slogans against all government and taxes, etc. There are no significant differences between Republicans and Democrates on these points--just differences in rhetoric and phony appeals to different interest groups.
Jim Kawasaki
All you ever get is snark. Well, snark won't put food on the table, sir.
To what snark do you refer? I find Mr. McQuaid's piece to be completely accurate and rational.
That's *exactly* what BushCo did.
People watch TV shows that are, even with today's technology, mostly science fiction, and they believe that we have the capability to control everything and that everything can be fixed. That just isn't the case. We are still pretty helpless when it comes to natural disasters, even and especially those that occur because of human error.
If the levees had been built properly, NOLA would have survived fairly well...
If the oil companies had been required to have a reasonable plan to prevent this disaster, and if the government had followed up to make sure it was in place, then the spill might not have even occurred.
It is true, however, that there occurs in every disaster, that moment beyond recovery, where it is simply too late to save the situation. That's where we are now.
But you are right, neither the government nor BP can now be expected to execute magic and make the problem go away.
As to Obama's being responsible for the continued devastation, that's absurd. BP, which is losing tons of money over this disaster, can't fix it. The military can't fix it. We don't have the science and technology to fix a deep oil leak from a blown-up oil rig that shouldn't have been drilling in the deep Gulf in the first place. That is the unpleasant fact that no one wants to admit.
A small group won a judgement from the Corps for the way a navigation canal they built compromised a drainage structure. Some believe the judgement will be overturned on appeal. I hope not.