Katrina? Who's Responsible?

I would very much like to settle this once and for all. Who's responsible for the disaster that is Katrina? Who deserves the blame? Many media sources scream loudly that the buck stops at Bush's desk, and that he is the one responsible.

Interesting enough, according to a gallup poll by CNN and USA Today conducted on 9/5 and 9/6 - Only 13% of people feel that Bush is most responsible for New Orleans' problems. 38% say no one is to blame and 25% blame the state and local officals.

Bush - 13%
Federal agencies - 18%
State/Local - 25%
No one - 38%
No opinion - 6%

Now, if you are a part of that 13% that feel Bush is responsible, let me explain something to you; allow me to shine some light on truth. Many people have been quick to place the blame on Bush - house minority leader Nancy Pelosi called Bush "oblivious in denial, dangerous," while Harry Reid among other politicians demand Bush answer to them.
Let's look beyond the propaganda, beyond the lies. Who's really responsible?

New Orleans itself has been playing the odds for quite some time. Parts of the city lie as much as 16 feet below sea level. The city's flood walls and levees were only built to withstand Category 3 hurricans. They had not seen a major upgrade since 1965. It was just a matter of time before a category 4 or 5 hit the city. Katrina was a 5 the day before it hit and a 4 when it made landfall.

Disaster experts had long warned of such a catastrophe. In June, Shirley Laska of the Center for Hazards Assignment, Response and Technology at the University of New Orleans told Congress the city could not withstand a direct hit.
"There is no safe place in New Orleans," she said. Yet in the days before Katrina struck, no one in authority seemed to grasp the gravity of the situation. New Orleaners knew days in advance that Katrina was gathering strength and heading straight for them.

Two days before Katrina hit, Bush called Dem. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, and urged her to order a mandatory evacuation. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was already urging residents to leave, but he and Blanco waited another day before ordering an evacuation.

"The more we learn the more we realize that Mayor Nagin and Gov. Blanco have alot to answer for, too" Sabato said. "They clearly were not on top of this disaster." Nagin said that Bush offered to have the federal government take over relief efforts, but Blanco balked, saying she needed 24 hours to decide.

Louisiana's senior senator, whose brother is lietenant governor and whose father was New Orleans' mayor is blaming President Bush for "the staggering incompetence of the federal government." Come again?

It's understandable that on the Sept. 4 edition of ABC's "This Week," Mary Landrieu said of President Bush, "I might likely have to punch him - literallu" if he or members of his administration made any more disparaging remarks about local authorities and their pre- and post- Katrina efforts. Some are and were family.

Brother Mitch Landrieu is lietenant governor of Louisiana. Father "Moon" Landrieu was not only mayor of New Orleans, but also later became secretary of housing and urban development under President Carter.

If anyone had clout in Washington, it would be this family and this swing-state senator. She could easily have traded her vote on a key issue or nomination for needed funding, acommon practice in Washington. If funding for levee repairs was less than adequate, she was in a position to get more.

Likewise, ex-Sen. John Breaux was arguably the most influential senator in Washington during the Clinton years, and could easily have gotten more funding, if nothing else, in an effort to break the growing GOP hold on the south.
But if all money ever asked for was appropriated, as Breaux himself has said, everyone knew that the levee system was designed for a Category 3 hurricane, and not for a "once every hundred years" storm that could put New Orleans under 20 feet of water. And the track record of how money that was appropriated was actually spent is not good.

Despite Landrieu's complaints of budget cuts and paltry funding, the fact is that over the five years of the Bush administration, Louisiana has received more money - $1.9 billion - for Army Corps of Engineers civils works projects than any other state, and more than under any other administration of a similar period. California is a distant second with less than $1.4 billion despite a population more than seven times as large.

In December 1995, the Orleans Levee Board actually boasted to the New Orleans Times-Picayune about all the federal money it had to protect the city from hurricanes. As a result, the board said, the "most abitious flood-fighting plain in generations was drafted," one that would plug the "few manageable gaps" in the levee system.
The problem was at the local level. The ambitious plan fell apart when the state suspended the Levee Board's ability to refinance old bonds and issue new ones. As the Times-Picayune reported, Legislative Auditor Dan Kyle "repeatedly faulted the Levee Board for the way it awards contracts, spends money and ignored no-bid contract laws." Blocked by the state from raising local money, the federal matching funds went unspent.

By 1998 Louisiana's state government had a $2 billion construction budget, but less than one-tenth of one percent, or $1.98 million, was dedicated to New Orleans levee improvements. By contrast, $22 million was spent that year to renovate a home for the Louisiana Supreme Court.
Where did all the money go? Again, the Times-Picayune says much of the money went not to flood control, but to lawmaker's pet projects, from a $750 million for a new canal lock to a $2.5 million Mardi Gras fountain project that ran $600,000 over budget.

Nine months before Katrina, three top Louisiana Office of Home-land Security and Emergency Preparedness officials were indicted by a federal grand jury in Shreveport and charged, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Louisiana, "with offenses related to the obstruction of an audit of the use of federal funds for flood mitigation opportunities throughout Louisiana."
No reason to wonder why. New Orleans is not called the Big Easy for nothing.