Monday, September 19, 2005

Point your Finger Right Back in your own Direction Mayor Ray Negin!

I’m sure you can tell by my writings that I am not a fan of George W. Bush. So, my dedicated readers, this post might just shock you. Although I am not a fan of GW I also adhere to the truth, and this time, part of the time at least the president is getting a raw deal. I spend several hours a day scouring the internet, reading newspapers and watching news channels on TV keeping up with current events. I do it mainly for my own intellectual stimulation, but also for my blog articles. Although I just started this blog project a couple weeks ago, I absolutely love it. This is my opportunity to report truth and I can’t think of anything I’d rather do. Back to the current issue; why are we as a people solely focusing on why the president didn’t act quick enough? Is he a racist? Why did he appoint Mr. Brown to FEMA having no experience to handle the job? And so on it goes. Although these remarks do hold some merit, why is there no focus on Ray Negin, the Mayor of New Orleans? Mr. Negin was so busy in the pre hours of Katrina figuring out how to blame the president rather than peering into his own reflection and placing the blame squarely where it belongs: on himself. Long before Katrina ever developed this man knew where he lived and hurricanes are a fact of life there. Ivan was a warning about a year ago. Why wasn’t there an in-depth evacuation plan developed? Maybe even practiced? Who was monitoring the levee commission? Why were they allowed to run amuck with the money set aside for upkeep and upgrades of the levees? What did he do, close his eyes to these problems? The levees are the survival backbone of the city, so it would seem they should be a priority. The Mayor called for an immediate evacuation with more than enough time to have enacted an evacuation plan, guess they didn’t have one that actually works. How did the Mayor think these people in his city were going to follow his orders? Most don’t have cars or money to afford other options for such an escape. I have read in two separate reports that more than 100,000 people do not have a car. Another report quoted “an estimated 134,000 people needed transportation”. Where do the hospitals, rehabilitation facilities and convalescent homes come into this evacuation? It would seem nowhere. Now I have seen countless articles, blogs, forums and the like referring to the buses. Everyone arguing about how many there are, how many people could have been bussed out, who would drive them etc… Bottom Line? It wouldn’t matter if they only had five buses if the effort was made to help the people. The fact is there are 324 buses for the New Orleans Parish School System (public schools) as reported in 2003; The New Orleans Regional Transit Authority reported owning 364 city buses in May 2005. That is a total of 688 buses provided that the fleet of school buses didn’t dramatically increase. We also have to allot for the fact that they all might not be running. So let’s take off 10% (or 69 buses) as non functional. That now leaves 619 buses. They all need driver’s right? Well who drives them every day? I can drive a vehicle of that size with a regular license, so I’m sure that really shouldn’t be a problem. So there was certainly enough time to make two separate trips outside of the threatened area, preferable to two separate locations. A regular bus holds 72 students so let’s knock that down to 55 adults, which makes a total of 30,900 people per trip, or a total of 61,900 people evacuated. The buses could then be used to bring food and supplies back the designated shelters i.e. the superdome…where there are 70,000 seats…funny we have just taken care of probably 85% of the people. There are 619 buses coming back with water and food. I’m sure somewhere in the evacuation plan, since they have designated the superdome as a refuge, there ought to be porta-potties on the way from a neighboring city. Please understand now no one has had to drive in dangerous conditions, evacuation took place before the storm, supplies are coming back after the storm. What of the shut-in’s? Well how many emergency vehicles are within a 50 mile radius, police cars, government vehicles, etc…? All refuges should always allow crated/contained pets. What of the people who chose to ride it out? Or were stranded in/on their homes for whatever reason? Well there certainly was no shortage of news coverage from the air…well stop flying over and get down there and get those people out of there!! Now while all this is happening a much more organized and prepared FEMA should be enacting their plan, and of course the federal government should be working with both the state and FEMA and taking up all the slack. What about preventative measures? Couldn’t most of this be prevented or at the least the final tragedy lessened...YES. Here are some facts about the levee and the levee commission:
LA Officials Could Loose the Katrina Blame Game

Now Now, I’m pretty thorough so if confronted with this assessment I’m positive the Mayor would say “well I have only been in office since 2002 and I couldn’t have possible had the time or resources to investigate the levee commission or have a fully working evacuation plan in place, little lone both” Well then let’s blame Former Mayor Marc Morial who was in office from 1994-2002. Certainly 8 years was enough time. You know it is just a vicious circle of finger pointing and blame. This country’s biggest problem is accountability; no one wants to accept that their actions do have, sometimes horrible, effects on others.
I haven’t touched on FEMA…yet; or The govenor...I’ll save that for another day. But I would like to mention another distorted issue, this “we left only the blacks behind” crap. First of all the population of New Orleans is 76% Black and 18% White leaving the other 6% as “other”.
So it stands to reason the majority of the people still there WOULD be black because the majority of the people there ARE black. Get a grip and think about it. There is nothing racist about it that is absolutely ridiculous. If anyone should be accused of not caring for the “black” people of New Orleans it should be and is Mayor Ray Negin.
2000 Census Report

I cannot end this post without giving the straight up facts about our “not that innocent” president and the Katrina Crisis.
GW played golf the day after Katrina Hit

It took him 3 days to make a TV appearance.

It took 5 days for him to take advantage of a photo shoot in New Orleans and he spent a lot of time reminiscing about his boozing days there and yukking it up.

VP Cheney was MIA in Wyoming on vacation for over a week because he was at the closing on his new 2.9 million dollar house there.

Although Barbara Bush has been under fire for her disgraceful comments, she unknowingly disclosed a very unpleasant truth about the bitter realities of life in the American Underclass. If you missed what she said after touring the Houston Astrodome here it is again. “Many of the 20,000 refugees from Hurricane Katrina seem to be content to live in a stadium, so many of them were, well you know underprivileged anyway so this is working very well for them.”