Katrina: Blame goes to local, state, and feds - this is THE big lie

[Stinky The Clown]

The BIG lie and the false moral equivalency .....

Did the officials in the City of New Orleans make mistakes? Yes, of course. No one's perfect.

Did officials of the State of Louisiana make mistakes? Yes, of course. No one's perfect.

Did the feds make mistakes? Yes, of course. No one is perfect.

And those three statements, taken together and given the implied moral equivalency we've all been fed, IS the BIG LIE.

Each statement, on its face, is technically true. What is NOT true is the implied moral equivalency.

A city of half a million (plus) people, with a police force of (roughly) 2000 officers, with its citizenry running for their very lives, is hardly able to muster the resources to react in any meaningful way to help those without the emans to evacuate. That city does not have the capacity to maintain or repair the levees under emergency circumstances.

And so they turn to the state and the feds for help.

A state does not have the capacity to respond when nearly half its population is affected directly and to the extreme by a natural disaster of great magnitude, and which became, in essence, two separate disaters - the storm and the levee breaks a few days later.

And so they turn to the feds for help.

And the feds fucked up on every measure.

And they continue to fuck up.

If the 'mistakes' of the city are, say, a 1 on the 1-10 scale, and if the state's 'mistakes' are a 3 on that same scale, then the 'mistakes' of the feds are an 11.

There is, quite simply, no moral equivalency.

If there is no moral equivalency, then there IS moral bankruptcy. And that type of bankruptcy is still quite legal. The feds in the face and person of one George W. Bush should so declare theirs.

[glitch]

1. Well said, and it doesn't even include the gravy boat the US Taxpayers

have put and are continuing to put Bush cronies on.

Can we call it incompetence when the same people in charge of preventing or ameliorating disasters benefit hugely from every failed response to every expected catastrophe?

[Stinky The Clown]

4. "Can we call it incompetence when the same people in charge ..... "

Actually, I'd love to see that officially adjudged 'criminality'.

Is it not the very same thing as looting?

[glitch]

5. Exactly!!

I think the whole incompetence thing is plausible deniability. The reality is, since they are there to loot, not govern, incompetence in governing is not relevant to them (although it is to us).

We could get them out for incompetence, but getting them out for criminality is much more appropriate.

[dajoki]

2. here is timeline...

shows you are correct http://thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline

[Stinky The Clown]

3. To say "The blame is shared" is teevee-easy. The facts always get lost

when issues get reduced to teevee-easy. **IF** we had an honest media, those facts would be out in front of the world.

Instead we get screech monkeys debating the (absolutley) false equivalency ... and then the conversaqtion gots bogged down in scoring points .... and we always lose.

I am SO FUCKING SICK of our inability to get the turth out.

The media MUST be eviscerated. Killed and reborn.

The media ... it ALL comes down to the media.

[Totally Committed]

6. I totally agree!

The Feds were, are, and continue to be the "heavies" here.

TC