Feds Again Admit Katrina Damage Is Their Fault

Louisiana is chock full of problems, and I’ve never tried to hide that. We have had corrupt leaders, nepotism, short-sightedness, and decades of bad decisions. Governor Kathleen Blanco made HUGE judgment errors in Katrina’s aftermath for the sake of trying gain political advantage. Mayor C. Ray Nagin made huge mistakes before and after Katrina; I doubt anyone disputes that, although I contend that they were not because he was seeking political gain. BUT… the overwhelming conservative narrative is that the local Democratic leadership is wholly at fault because they are incompetent and corrupt. The overwhelming liberal narrative is that it’s all a Bushitler plot to kill brown people. They’re both wrong. That’s the problem with narratives, and the desire to see things as black and white.

The biggest part of the damage from Katrina was due to the levee breaks. Had the levees not broken, New Orleans – which was brushed by Category 3 Katrina and not directly hit – would have been back to normal in a month or so. The levees did break, flooding 80% of the city – hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses. And for that, the Federal government is entirely at fault.

The purpose of the following linked article is to note that Louisiana has poorly managed some of the federal funds we’ve received, giving grants to some homeowners for wind, not flood damage. And it’s entirely correct. This is the first I’m hearing of it, and had I known sooner I would have been writing and calling to complain. Wind damage is covered by private insurance – and if a person chose not to have that, they should suffer the repercussions of that decision. The “Road Home” program – Blanco’s baby, I might add – has been a fiasco almost from the start for many reasons. But this statement is a real attention grabber:

“As elected officials have said many times, the federal government is responsible for this hurricane damage because of the failure of the levee system. And now nearly half of the federal funding is going to homeowners that experienced no levee-related damage,” he said.

The levee breaks are the fault of the federal government, but it’s also not accurate to lay the blame wholly on President Bush. The problem goes back decades, and is due to poor decisions and institutional thinking, not malice. The Corps of Engineers, aided and abetted by our local leadership, let us down badly. The Corps is doing a great job in Iraq, but their levee management – nationwide – is deplorable. They finally admitted that New Orleans is still not protected, even two years after Katrina. The government is quite open now about admitting fault in New Orleans, after a year of stonewalling and obfuscation, but it’s too late. Whichever narrative they prefer has been set in people’s minds, when the truth is a good deal more complex. The truth is that there is plenty of blame to go around, and acknowledging and dealing with that would go far toward fixing these problems and making sure they don’t happen again. But I guess when it doesn’t serve a political agenda, these days the truth is irrelevant.

Well, maybe next time… because there certainly will be one eventually. The levees still aren’t up even to category 3 standards in many places, the Corps is still lying and obfuscating, and the local government doesn’t seem to have learned a thing.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, Perri Nelson’s Website, The Random Yak, DeMediacratic Nation, Adam’s Blog, Maggie’s Notebook, Webloggin, Cao’s Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, The Amboy Times, Colloquium, , Conservative Cat, The HILL Chronicles, Woman Honor Thyself, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, Nuke’s news and views, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, and Dumb Ox Daily News, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.