It’s been quite some time since I’ve taken to this – by now moribund – blog. Blogging, per se, simply takes more time than I generally have available.

However, it is now even more necessary than commonly to speak up, and speak out.

For those of you who are new here, I am impelled to make a few brief introductory remarks. I am a Democrat, albeit a conservative first before I am a party man. I hold my undergraduate degree (double major, Politics [Special Honors] and Philosophy) and my law degree both from Washington & Lee. A native Houstonian, I have lived through hurricanes and tropical storms, and have long had a neighborly interest in the politics of Louisiana, ‘next door’ to us as they are. I served with a total lack of distinction with the current Stonewall Brigade, 3/116 INF, 29th INF DVN (LT), Virginia ARNG. I’m a member of the Society for Military History, the Organization of American Historians, the Southern Historical Association, the Southwestern Social Science Association, the Southwestern Historical Association, the Southwestern Political Science Association, the Virginia Historical Society, and the Texas State Historical Association.

It is from that perspective that I say what I am here saying.

The situation in New Orleans has root causes (as what does not?). Those root causes are peculiar to New Orleans and to Louisiana. They are causes rooted in the political culture and history of Louisiana.

I would like to believe that those who are reading this have so much as heard of James B. Eads, of Ellet and Humphreys, and of the 1927 flood. I wish that at the very least I could expect you to have read John M. Barry’s Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, Nancy Lemann’s The Ritz of the Bayou, John Maginnis’s The Last Hayride and Cross to Bear, and A. J. Liebling’s immortal and seminal The Earl of Louisiana.

But I cannot expect that.

Thus, I will do my best to explain from the beginning.

A common comment, at home and abroad, to the scenes broadcast from New Orleans, was, ‘My God, it looks like Haiti.’ (I note that in fact, Mississippi was hit harder by the actual hurricane, but the news is skewed – think of it as analogous to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle – by the fact that the news crews chose to go to New Orleans. I also note that the crews were imbedded there before the storm hit, and that moving an anchorman is logistically much easier than moving a division of troops.)

Yes, many of the scenes did look like something from Haiti. The reason is simple. To paraphrase Liebling, Louisiana is the only banana republic in the US.

This was so when Liebling wrote of the Long Machine: and Huey P. Long and ‘Uncle Earl’ Long were called into being, as political forces, by the Old Order’s perceived failures in handling the Flood of 1927 (just as it was the handling of the relief that, added to previous triumphs as a relief administrator during and after the Great War, made Herbert Hoover presidential timber).

It is as true today, because incompetence, inefficiency, and corruption are built into the post-1927 system in Louisiana, and were part of the political culture of Louisiana well before that. The truly Byzantine complexity of responsibilities, for any given levee or any municipal ward or any other political subdivision in the state, the divided responsibilities of boards, parishes, and Baton Rouge, do not truly exist to improve public administration or enhance public safety, and they do not do these things save incidentally, nor do they do them well. What they are designed to do, and have done exquisitely, is to produce, multiply, and augment, and to deliver, one product: patronage.

The historic, entrenched climate of political corruption in Louisiana generally and in New Orleans and the metropolitan parishes specifically is the most salient, proximate, causal factor in the loss of lives we are now mourning.

When Liebling was writing, the New York Times and The New Yorker – as constituent elements of, and as synecdoches for, the ‘mainstream’ or ‘legacy’ national press and media – reveled in what they saw as their duty of pointing out these manifold corruptions.

The mechanisms of corruption have not materially changed.

What has changed, and what seems to be the only real and plausible explanation for the change in the legacy media’s narrative, its unwillingness to mark these corruptions, is that the hands on the levers of this unmodified mechanism are no longer those of white Southern men unidentified with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. It no longer fits the chosen narrative of the legacy media to call attention to these things.

Governor Blanco is mendacious, but not personally corrupt. She is however woefully incompetent, and desperate to shift blame: in which effort she has found a sufficiency of purely partisan allies.

Mayor Nagin is perhaps the most personally honest man to lead New Orleans in decades, and one of the most honest since, say, Miro and Carondelet. He is, however, woefully incompetent, and desperate to shift blame: in which effort he has found a sufficiency of purely partisan allies.

His point man for managing disasters – a disastrous manager – may well not be personally corrupt, but his abject incompetence is nakedly obvious. Terry Ebbert is, understandably, desperate to shift blame: in which effort he has found a sufficiency of purely partisan allies.

In the weeks prior to Katrina, the news stories out of Louisiana spoke eloquently to the failure of governance. A two and a half year federal corruption probe continued and continues at the Jefferson Parish courthouses, targeting judges and law enforcement. The New Orleans school system did not know how many students and employees it had in the system, what resources it had, or how to balance its budget, which is a deficit-ridden shambles.

Such things were portents.

It is only within the past five to ten years that the NOPD has finally ceased accepting convicted felons as police officers.

The murder rate and crime rate in NO are off the charts. No other Southern city has remained thus crippled. Then again, no other Southern city is as infested by corruption, mafiosi, and graft. Nagin’s predecessor’s family spent most of the past summer getting indicted, and that’s commonplace in Louisiana and NO politics. Chicago at its worst was less corrupt.

Let me pause, here, to remind or enlighten you: the ‘Posse Comitatus’ Act constrains any Administration from use of the Army and Air Force to execute the laws, save in cases of insurrection (there are certain exceptions for the Navy and the Coast Guard). When there is not a police presence to support and the governor, for reasons of turf, won’t mobilize the Guard, it stymies the DoD and the White House. Guess what has happened in this very instance….

So. Let us look. Let us look at what has happened.

There was a disaster plan for New Orleans. It required mandatory evacuations. It required the use of designated shelters – of which the Superdome was not one. It was the responsibility of Blanco, Nagin, and Ebberts to execute.

They didn’t.

In fact, the mandatory evacuation order – too little and far too late – was issued by Blanco only after she was begged by the President to order it. No wonder she’s trying to shift blame.

Nagin and Ebbert did not execute. Nor did they provide for those without the ability to evacuate on their own: they left between 400 and 500 city and metro buses standing empty in parking lots, that could have materially assisted the evacuation of those without access to private transportation. Of course, we now have reason to suspect that the NO school system may not have known it had buses, or drivers, or how to reach them. Those buses, now ruined, are still sitting in rows, like planes at Pearl Harbor and Manila on 7 and 8 DEC 1941: sitting, ruined, and leaking toxic sludge into the floodwaters. No wonder they’re trying to shift blame.

New Orleans had a scare last year – Hurricane Ivan – that provided these same officials with a dry run. They made the exact same mistakes. Like the city’s founding French Bourbons, they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. No wonder they’re trying to shift blame.

Let’s be clear here. In the first place, New Orleans received neither a direct hit from Katrina nor did it catch the ‘dirty quarter’ of the storm. Mississippi did. Do you see these problems where Haley Barbour is showing leadership? No.

What happened, instead, was the Pontchartrain levee failed. The newest and strongest and most recently upgraded one. Which is to standard: a standard set under LBJ, in 1965, and not changed since by any Congress or any Administration. The levees are engineered for a Cat 3 hurricane. Katrina was a Cat 4.

Everyone knew that was the danger. George W. Bush could have started the Corps in on upgrading the levees the day he first took office and they wouldn’t be done. In fact, the idea to study the possibility of doing so was adopted in 1999, under Clinton, and set to result in a completed study and the possible start of work only in 2006.

That is why the plans have always been to evacuate, on a mandatory basis, 72 hours prior to landfall. Blanco and Nagin didn’t. Only pressure from GWB got them to order an evac at all. No wonder they’re trying to shift blame.

Prior to the disaster, the Bush White House – which, we know now, was also having to deal with the imminent death of the Chief Justice of the United States, in addition to all the other business of government – tried to federalize and streamline the emergency management and the evac. Blanco resisted, in a turf war. No wonder she’s trying to shift blame.

Blanco did not mobilize her own National Guard – the disaster relief elements of which, including its civil engineers BDE, are not in Iraq, by the way – beforehand. No wonder she’s trying to shift blame.

Blanco did not, until well after the disaster was already unmanageable, make any, much less any valid, request for ANG units from other states, under the compact, to assist. No wonder she’s trying to shift blame.

Two thirds of the NOPD have deserted, quit, vanished, or joined the looting since the storm and the subsequent levee failure. Contrast this with the NYPD on 9/11. Contrast the Giuliani culture of leadership to Nagin’s and Ebbert’s. No wonder they’re trying to shift blame.

Blanco, when she did move, prompted primarily, it seems, only by the threat of losing turf wars with an Administration trying to take charge and save lives, delegated command to the Louisiana State Department of Homeland Security. I see bloggers and such small deer on the left trying to conflate the Louisiana State Department of Homeland Security with the US – i.e., Bush – Department of Homeland Security, as when they misrepresent the Red Cross’s press release that says the Louisiana State Department of Homeland Security (and Blanco’s still-non-federalized National Guard) has kept the ARC out of the metro NO area. This means that the Lefties are either mendacious, illiterate, or both: common conditions on the Left, to be sure. No wonder they’re trying to shift blame.

By her actions and inactions, her paralysis in crises and her mendacity and playing partisan politics, Blanco rendered it effectively impossible under the Posse Comitatus Act for the Feds to assist timely and effectively. No wonder she’s trying to shift blame.

The systemic failure in New Orleans is explicable. So too is the fact that the systemic failure is centered on the NO metro parishes. A legacy of complacency and of complaisance with corruption; political infighting; partisan politics even as disaster loomed; and incompetence and paralysis compounded by lying post-facto attempts at shifting blame to the United States Government, are the material and proximate causes of what happened. The US Government – and let’s stop talking about ‘Bush this’ and ‘Bush that’: the Government of the United States – has responded to this natural disaster faster and more comprehensively than in any prior comparable situation. It was the first responders, it was specifically and individually Nagin, Ebberts, Blanco, and such subordinates as top cops Riley and Compass, who failed their citizens, with fatal consequences. And I’m sick of the Left lying about it, no matter that that is what they do first and do best.

By way of endnotes, here is a link-dump. It averages to about one link for each 9 or so buses Mayor Nagin failed to use to evacuate his constituents as called for in the emergency management plan he failed to follow. Those who fail first to read and absorb it, in toto, forfeit the right to be reasoned with or responded to.

Now if you will excuse me, I have more contributions to make and cast-off clothing to collect for the refugees in my city, as an act of practical charity and corporal mercy.
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UPDATE, 0924, 6 SEP 2005: What was I saying about corruption? State DHS Indictments and FEMA Monies; the Governor Shown Incompetent.

And this may clarify matters as well: Katrina Response Timeline/.
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http://michellemalkin.com/archives/003463.htm

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/003468.htm

http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/091904ccktWWLIvanFlaws.132602486.html

Ben Stein: http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8693

http://moltenthought.blogspot.com/2005/09/katrina-aftermath-choke-lwm-moment-749.html on logistics

Don Luskin observes as the GAO and the NY Times take a, well, spin: http://www.poorandstupid.com/2005_08_28_chronArchive.asp#112566608136084148

http://donsingleton.blogspot.com/2005/09/who-is-responsible.html

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/005375.php

http://corner.nationalreview.com/05_09_04_corner-archive.asp#075515

http://iraqnow.blogspot.com/

http://www.democracy-project.com/

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/005372.php#comments

http://www.punditguy.com/2005/09/the_locals_verses_the_fed.html

http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2005/tr20050903-3850.html

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/20050827-1.html

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/011560.php

http://gaypatriot.net/2005/09/03/us-military-saves-the-day-now-what-do-liberals-say

http://www.homocon.com/archives/2005/09/those_who_cant.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9178815/site/newsweek/

http://donsingleton.blogspot.com/2005/09/criticism-of-bush-mounts.html

http://junkyardblog.net/archives/week_2005_08_28.html#004752

http://americansforfreedom.blogspot.com/2005/09/ive-had-it-with-people-blaming-this.html

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2005/09/president-bushs-actions-saved.html

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=17362_The_Ray_Nagin_Memorial_Motor_Pool&only

http://theanchoressonline.com/2005/09/04/sitting-back-in-stunned-awe/

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=17361_Blanco_Refused_to_Act&only

http://chrenkoff.blogspot.com/2005/09/mississippi-versus-louisiana.html

http://instapundit.com/archives/025328.php

http://eurota.blogspot.com/2005/09/us-left-all-straws-clutched-every.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/30/national/30cycle.html

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_2997225

http://www.mudvillegazette.com/archives/003491.html

http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon_09_01_05ng.html

http://www.professorbainbridge.com/2005/09/combat_in_nola.html

http://www.postchronicle.com/commentary/article_212499.shtml

http://www.redstate.org/story/2005/9/1/221441/6933

http://www.redstate.org/story/2005/9/1/125948/7993

http://www.techcentralstation.com/090105A.html

http://www.techcentralstation.com/083105JKG.html

http://www.snopes.com/photos/katrina/looters.asp

http://www.radioblogger.com/#000957

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110007203

http://instapundit.com/archives/025335.php

28 August: Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding: http://www.nola.com/newsflash/louisiana/index.ssf?/base/news-18/1125239940201382.xml&storylist=louisiana
and
http://www.freewillblog.com/index.php/weblog/comments/6027/
– and,
http://bushinatree.blogspot.com/2005/09/more-on-mayor.html

http://billhobbs.com/hobbsonline/007188.html

http://billhobbs.com/hobbsonline/007196.html

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/005368.php

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/005367.php

http://www.mudvillegazette.com/archives/003488.html

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/003447.htm

Bill Clinton defends the current administration, quite rightly: http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/005360.php

http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archives/2005/09/cnn_masochism.php

http://theanchoressonline.com/2005/09/01/100-hrs-after-stormfall/

http://www.patrickruffini.com/archives/2005/09/hurricane_of_ha.php

http://vodkapundit.com/archives/008082.php

http://betsyspage.blogspot.com/2005/09/are-people-so-filled-with-hatred-for.html

http://polipundit.com/index.php?p=9806

http://www.proteinwisdom.com/index.php/weblog/entry/18940/

http://volokh.com/posts/1125665798.shtml

http://www.mattszabo.com/archives/2005/09/kanye_west_ageo.html

http://malcontent.typepad.com/malcontent/2005/09/kanye_west_deco.html

http://eurota.blogspot.com/2005/09/msm-blamestorming-under-radar.html

http://frum.nationalreview.com/archives/09022005.asp#075132