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more on FEMA Had Authority to Act, even without Emergency Declaration; So what?
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2005 16:28:51 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: "Munro, Neil" <NMunro () nationaljournal com> Date: September 13, 2005 3:53:12 PM EDT To: dave () farber netSubject: RE: [IP] FEMA Had Authority to Act, even without Emergency Declaration; So what?
The President has many extraordinary powers, but doesn't usually use them until there's no alternative. The question to consider is whether the feds should have seen the need to take over the collapsing state & local operation earlier. One possible answer is that the feds should have done it years ago. After all, the city and state had never practiced how they would evacuate the city's poor. They had not even drawn up detailed plans for where those poor would go. To see how difficult even that planning task was, let's put ourselves in the planners & politicians place for a minute. Assume is 2004, and we decide that 100,000 people need to be evacuated from New Orleans on buses. The other 400,000 will drive themselves to towns and cities in the region. But the 100,000 are nearly all poor. Most have few skills. Many women have dependent children but no husband. Many are old, and many have chronic ailments, such as diabetes or the afflictions of old age. Many have pets. Many have friendships, and all have some possessions. Few have savings. It is also impossible to segregate out the criminal offenders who have elevated New Orleans' murder rate to roughly 10 times the average of similar-sized cities. Now name an elected major in a small-town - of whatever party - who would volunteer to accept 1,000 of these unfortunates in the years before the storm hits. Bear in mind, please, that the mayor would reasonably have to fear a big impact on the local school budget and local employment and local housing, as well as a possible uptick in local crime. And if extra state and federal funding doesn't immediately accompany the movement of the unfortunates, the town's budget would be wrecked. And, many of the roughly 400,000 other, better-off, citizens of New Orleans might also be looking for lodgings, classrooms, and medical aid in the same towns. No? Can't name even one mayor who would volunteer for this task in the tranquil years and months before the storm? Assuming the mayors do not step forward, can you imagine the governor and legislature telling the local politicians and residents of 50 small towns that they much each accept 1,000 unfortunates? And then telling the bigger cities and towns to absorb the remaining 50,000? With an election two years away? Given the practical impossibility of dealing with this political problem before the disaster, we should hardly be surprised that the city's mayor and the state's governor - both Democrats, FWIW - had no real evacuation plan for the 100,000. So they hemmed and hawed as the crisis rushed upon them, let buses sit until they were flooded, and then simultaneously sent food to the Superdome and blocked the movement of food to the Superdome, and also urged people to congregate at the Superdome for evacuation even as they failed to get buses for an evacuation until two days afterwards. Many IP-readers might say the feds should have stepped in to take over the job, even years before. Perhaps, but can anyone imagine Bill Clinton stepping in to decide where those 100,000 unfortunates should go? We should hardly have expected Bush to get directly involved in 2003 and 2004, and we cannot imagine that FEMA had the political power to solve the evacuation problem. If FEMA had tried, the state's Senators and Representatives would have .... voiced their concern. Next, given the, er, incomplete nature of New Orleans' planning (I've heard nothing of poor planning in the adjacent states) how realistic would it have been for the feds to shove aside local police, local officials, local emergency workers, etc. in the day or three before the storm, when there was no alternative plan but to rely on the locals' (incomplete) plan? Does anyone think the feds would have improved their performance by issuing orders to a collapsing state & local infrastructure? One-third of the police deserted even without the feds intrusion, and that intrusion might have provoked direct or passive opposition from local officials and planners. Some evidence for that alternative history can be found in reality, because the NYT reported that the White House and the governor spent a day or three arguing over legal authority and the state guard. If the feds had just declared they were taking over, those disagreements might have been even worse. OK, now let's apply this analysis to something else - maybe a really big earthquake in California, or major damage to the electricity grid. If you think the feds could have solved the New Orleans problem, then surely you think the feds should be ready to take over afte ran earthquake. In a spirit of generosity, I'll give you two years to collect the approvals and forward the plans to the feds. That should give you plenty of time to get mayors in California, Arizona, Oregon and New Mexico to prepare for the evacuation of several million people from Los Angeles, or plenty of time for you to persuade the feds to impose an answer on the uncooperative mayors and governors. I'll give you an extra month to get the endorsement of the states' federal Senators and legislators. Monday-morning quarterbacking is easy. Politics is hard. Neil -----Original Message----- From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net] Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2005 11:02 AM To: Ip Ip Subject: [IP] FEMA Had Authority to Act, even without Emergency Declaration Begin forwarded message: From: John Lyon <jelyon () mac com> Date: September 13, 2005 5:08:31 AM EDT To: "dave () farber net" <dave () farber net> Subject: [For IP] FEMA Had Authority to Act, even without Emergency Declaration For IP, if appropriate. It's a transcript of the prologue from last weekend's public radio program "This American Life." <http:// thislife.org>. Ira Glass: OK, in the coming weeks and months we're all going to be hearing so much about hurricane Katrina, and why the government's response was so abysmal. And already the blame shifting is like this prize fight that's already in it's third or fourth round. Already we've heard officials try to shrug off any attempts of accountability by saying it's too soon, by saying we're not going to play the "blame game." And before the million details, and arguments and counter arguments start to make all of our heads woozy, I would just like to repeat here, something that was talked about very briefly this week. One of those things that seems so fundamental, that seems to cut through a lot this supposed debate that's happening and end it definitively. So much so that when I would see people on TV posturing and trotting out the talking points, I kept wanting to go back and say "Nonononono, don't forget this thing." It has to do with the biggest argument out there right now. Whether the federal government was in fact supposed to be in charge of rescuing people and getting food and water and all that to New Orleans. It's come up a lot, like when the head of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff was asked by Tim Russert on Meet the Press, "Since you knew the storm was coming, why didn't you get buses and trains and planes and trucks in there to evacuate?" Chertoff...said it wasn't his job. Chertoff: Tim, the the way that, that that emergency operations act under, under the law is, the responsibility, and the, the uh power, the authority rests with the state and local officials. Glass: This idea, that it was state and local officials who were the ones who blew it, not the feds, this idea is all over place. From the talking heads on TV, to Rush Limbaugh: Limbaugh: What we had down there was eminent failure of state and local government. We had incompetence in the mayor's office, incompetence in the governor's office. Glass: And sure, it is clear, even this early, that there are plenty of things that state and local government did to screw things up. But here's this thing that I read this week, this thing that I kept thinking about all week. It really comes down to a couple of basic facts. The governor of Louisiana declares a state of emergency, the Friday before the storm hits, right? Calls on the federal government to step in. Then President Bush officially declares a state of emergency in Louisiana, the next day, Saturday before the storm, and authorizes the Federal Emergency Management Agency to act. You can read the paper where he does this on the White House website. Basically, that should have settled who was in charge. Nicholson: After that happened, there was plenty of authority. There was all the authority in the world. Glass: We checked it out this idea that, from that point, the federal government was in fact in charge. We checked it out with several different experts and consultants on these issues this week. And they all agree that the law is unambiguous. This particular guy is William Nicholson, author of the books "Emergency Response and Emergency Management Law" and "Homeland Security Law and Policy." And if you're into Homeland Security policy, you might want to check those out. He says that once the governor asks for help, and the president declares a state of emergency, the feds basically have the broad powers to do what's necessary. And, he says, even if the President hadn't declared a state of emergency, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, Chertoff, could have acted. There's this whole newfangled way for him to take emergency powers under something called the National Response Plan. Nicholson: Well, basically, the way it works is, the Secretary of Homeland security designates this as a catastrophic incident, and federal resources deploy to preset federal locations or staging areas, and, so they don't even have to have a local or state declaration in order to, uh, move forward with this. Glass: In other words, it doesn't matter what the governor says, it doesn't matter what the local people say, basically, once that happens, they can just go ahead and do, what needs to be done to fix the problem. Nicholson: That's correct. It's utterly clear that they had the authority to preposition assets and to significantly accelerate the federal response. Glass: And they didn't need to wait for the state? Nicholson: They did *not* need to wait for the state. Glass: Remember, you heard it here first. Remember you heard it at all. -- John Lyon | http://surlyedition.com President Coolidge came down in a railroad train With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand The President say, "Little fat man isn't it a shame What the river has done to this poor crackers land." -- Randy Newman, "Louisiana, 1927" ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as nmunro () nationaljournal com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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