Category 5 Spin
[Update: after you read this, see Category 5 Wingnuttery, at Sadly No, to find out Who is really behind soaring oil prices. And note that, since we will undoubtedly be hearing more of this, the title of this post is now also a category. Feel free to contribute and/or send links. And start stockpiling those bullshit protectors.]
Tuesday, at a House hearing on federal state and local responses to Katrina, Mike Brown (aka, “Brownie”) – now a FEMA consultant, admitted to “a few specific mistakes”:
First, I failed initially to set up a series of regular briefings to the media about what FEMA was doing throughout the Gulf Coast region. And instead, I became tied to the news shows, going on the news shows early in the morning and late at night, and that was just a mistake. We should have been feeding that information to the press and in the manner and in the time that we wanted to, instead of letting the press drive us.
Second, I very strongly personally regret that I was unable to persuade Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin to sit down, get over their differences and work together. I just couldn’t pull that off.
[And later added:] “My biggest mistake was not recognizing, by Saturday, that Louisiana was dysfunctional.”
He also blamed the Department of Homeland Security for removing a request for communication equipment from the budget, but, when asked “what he and the agency he led should have done to evacuate New Orleans, restore order in the city and improve communication among law enforcement agencies” Brown said: “Those are not FEMA roles. FEMA doesn’t evacuate communities. FEMA does not do law enforcement. FEMA does not do communications.” No wonder the request for communication equipment was removed. I guess he was just following orders. An Independent Commission, should we get one, might ask about those.
A full transcript can be found here. More at The Progress Report. If you need to restore lost memory, see Josh Marshall’s Katrina timeline and ongoing thread on Brownie’s Lies.
Meanwhile, fueled by the winds of Katrina, just as Katrina was fueled by the heat of the loop current, House Republicans wasted no time in introducing legislation that would permit wholesale looting of public assets by: lifting moratoriums on offshore oil development elsewhere in the country, open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration, sell public lands including parks to recover costs, ease environmental restrictions on the expansion, development and siting of oil refineries, and provide “government funded risk insurance against regulatory delays” to refinery construction. Never mind that revenue from offshore oil and gas is suppose to be used to finance the Land and Water Conservation Fund so as to expand public land holdings.
On the Senate side, things were kept a bit more simple. Senators Inhofe and Vitter introduced a 1 page bill (SB 1711) that would just give the EPA administrator unprecedented power to waive any federal or state laws and regulations – including state criminal laws, anywhere in the country, in any way related to Katrina, regardless of whether it has anything to do with the environment, as long as it is determined to be “in the public interest.” What it does not do, is require that anyone be held accountable for injuries that might result, e.g., from poisoned drinking water. According to an analysis by the NRDC, “not even during the Civil War, World War II, or the aftermath of September 11 has any one person had that power.”
In older news, in case you missed it, an article in the National Review blames environmental groups for EVERYTHING. To properly respond to that one, I would have to look at the specifics of the examples given but, the point is, the specifics matter. The article is based on gross generalizations about environmental opposition to Army Corps of Engineers levee projects and delays in such projects associated with the need to conduct environmental impact studies. That the example cited is an entirely different set of levees from the ones that failed, and that what was opposed was not the fortifying and heightening of levees, but that it would be done with fill material removed from wetlands – will not even be noticed by those who will just read the headlines and conclusions to reinforce their preconceived notions. No mention of the fact that levees and offshore oil development are the main culprits in the loss of coastal wetlands, which made the Louisiana coast more vulnerable to hurricanes to begin with. If you read one of my previous posts, you know that forthcoming attempts to use Katrina as a pretext for waiving requirements to do environmental impact studies will come as no surprise. There are people who have been waiting for this moment for a long time. An Independent Commission, should examine this response pattern as well. And next time, we need to be prepared to distribute BS protectors – along with food and water.
