Helping the Poor

The Governor of the state of Louisiana always had the power to deploy the LA guard in the fashion that other state troops are being deployed today. It is her failure to do so that has prompted the President to get the help from other states.

The Mayor of New Orleans, who ordered all those people into the Superdome (yep, that was his big plan), had the power to bus them out of the city at the same time. The City of New Orleans moves many more children each day on school buses than were in the dome. Those buses were available and slated to be used for school the next day. He could easily have evacuated those people...but did not.

When ordering a mandatory evacuation you use what resources you have to move the people...he did not. If it was important and dangerous enough to order all citizens to leave, it was dangerous enough to help those people to leave. Yet, they did not. After they failed to do so...the busses ended up under water and useless.

Their evacuation plan was non-existent.Their evacuation plan was get out on your own.They know where every school in the state is. Most of them have gyms.They could have bussed out 100-200 people to each of those gyms 100 miles inland and left the city empty.The Mayor failed. The Governor does not appear to have put the National Guard on alert prior to the storm.Both of them sat on their butts and waited for the feds to do it all.

In the end, it was FEMA, after the local and state government's failure, that had to get the job done...but now under much, much worse and dangerous circumstances.

No, it is not Bush's fault or the fed's fault. We must place blame squarely where it lies at the feet of the local and state executives who had neither the desire nor the will to make those calls, irrespective of their political stripe.

Sent by Dr. P.Alvarez