Here is the real story of this hurricane. The Republicans better not screw up this time. Three Republican governors in LA, TX, and MS and this is their time to shine or blow it (along with Bush). If it goes well, they, including Bush, can say we learned out lesson and the federal government succeeded. If they fail, say hello to President Obama.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_gubernatorial_election,_2007#Blanco.27s_faltering_popularity
Blanco's faltering popularity
Originally planning to run for re-election, the incumbent governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, entered the election year with a significant erosion in her level of popular support, due in large part to perceptions of inadequate performance in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In November 2006, Blanco had an approval rating of 39%, and she had encountered further political setbacks since November.
In December 2006, Blanco called a special session of the Louisiana State Legislature which she intended to use to dispense $2.1 billion worth of tax cuts, teacher raises, road projects and other spending programs. Legislators allied with Blanco attempted to lift a spending cap imposed by the state constitution, but Republican lawmakers defeated Blanco’s spending measures. The high-profile defeat further eroded Blanco’s political reputation. [2]
By late 2006 and early 2007, Blanco was facing increasingly heated accusations of delays and incompetence in administering the Road Home Program, a state-run program which Blanco had set up following Katrina in order to distribute federal aid money to Katrina victims for damage to their homes. By January 2007, fewer than 250 of an estimated 100,000 applicants had received payments from the program, and many of the payments were apparently based on assessments which grossly undervalued the cost of damage to homes. [3]
By January 2007, the first opinion polls of the campaign showed Blanco trailing expected opponent Bobby Jindal by over 20 percentage points. Facing an upcoming re-election campaign with greatly reduced popularity, Blanco began her campaign by making repeated public criticisms of the administration of President George W. Bush in January 2007. Noting that Bush neglected to mention Gulf Coast reconstruction in his 2007 State of the Union Address, Blanco called for a bipartisan Congressional investigation into the conduct of the Bush administration following Katrina, to determine whether partisan politics played a role in the slow response to the storm. [4] This call followed comments by disgraced former FEMA director Michael D. Brown, who claimed that the White House had planned to upstage Blanco by federalizing the National Guard in the days following the storm. Blanco also repeated accusations that Mississippi received preferential treatment because its governor, Haley Barbour, is a Republican. [5]
man, they couldn't even find a Democrat to run for governor after Katrina! they had to get a Republican to switch parties!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_gubernatorial_election,_2007#Democrats_drop.2Fdecline
Democrats drop/decline
Beginning in February 2007, speculation grew among Louisiana political commentators that former U.S. Senator and current Washington, D.C. lobbyist John Breaux would announce his candidacy.[6][7][8] However, controversy emerged as to whether Breaux would meet the residency requirements to run for Governor as he had listed his primary address in Maryland since 2005 and was registered to vote there. [9]
On March 20, 2007, Blanco announced that she would not be running for re-election. She stated that removing herself from the campaign would allow her to focus the remainder of her term on Louisiana’s recovery without the distraction of campaigning for re-election. But her announcement came after weeks of growing calls from members of the Louisiana Democratic party for her to step aside and allow a more popular candidate to face Jindal. [10]
On March 29, John Breaux made his first Louisiana public appearance since speculation began concerning his potential candidacy. Breaux said that he intended to run, and would announce his candidacy as soon as Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti, a Democrat, gave a formal legal opinion on whether Breaux was eligible to run. At issue was the clause in the Louisiana constitution which states that a candidate for governor must be a 'citizen' of the State of Louisiana; what constitutes a citizen is not defined.[11] The state Republican party began running advertisements attacking Breaux as a resident of Maryland.
On April 13, Breaux released a statement that he would not be running for governor. Attorney General Foti had declined to issue an opinion on Breaux's eligibility, stating it was an issue for the courts to decide. Breaux stated that he did not want the issue of eligibility to overshadow his campaign, as a court challenge would not occur until September. [12]
On April 17, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu also declined to run leaving the field very open on the Democratic side.[13] Due to the lack of a high-profile Democratic candidate, party leaders approached Republican State Senator Walter Boasso about switching parties;[14] Boasso formally switched to the Democratic Party on April 26.[15]
Originally posted by kirksey957Well lets see, the last time I heard they ordered a mandatory evacuation of the region. Therefore, if some decide to stay and ride it out, should it be considered the fault of the government?
Here is the real story of this hurricane. The Republicans better not screw up this time. Three Republican governors in LA, TX, and MS and this is their time to shine or blow it (along with Bush). If it goes well, they, including Bush, can say we learned out lesson and the federal government succeeded. If they fail, say hello to President Obama.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_government_response_to_Hurricane_Katrina#Federal_government_response
Background
Within days of Katrina's August 29, 2005 landfall, public debate arose about the local, state and federal governments' role in the preparations for and response to the storm. Criticism was prompted largely by televised images of visibly shaken and frustrated political leaders, and of residents who remained in New Orleans without water, food or shelter, and the deaths of several citizens by thirst, exhaustion, and violence days after the storm itself had passed. The treatment of people who had evacuated to registered facilities such as the Superdome was also criticized.
The government was accused of making things worse, instead of making things better; perhaps even deliberately, by preventing help by others while delaying its own response. Subsequently, criticism from politicians, activists, pundits and journalists of all stripes has been directed at the local, state and federal governments.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was also criticized for failing to implement his evacuation plan and for ordering residents to a shelter of last resort without any provisions for food, water, security, or sanitary conditions. Perhaps the most important criticism of Nagin is that he delayed his emergency evacuation order until less than a day before landfall, which led to hundreds of deaths of people who (by that time) could not find any way out of the city.[2] Adding to the criticism was the broadcast of school bus parking lots full of yellow school buses which Mayor Nagin refused to be used in evacuation. When asked why the buses wern't leveraged to assist evacuations instead of holding up in the Superdome, insurance liablity was used.
The devastation wrought by failure of the Federal flood protection has raised other, more general public policy issues about emergency management, environmental policy, poverty, and unemployment. The discussion of both the immediate response and of the broader public policy issues may affect elections and legislation enacted at various levels of government. Primary to this is the requirement by local and regional response teams to escalate requests for assistance upwards during emergencies. While this model has worked for decades in forest fire fighting and became the FEMA model for all emergency responce teams in the nation, the model breaks down when local authorities refuse to legally request help. Records show, and broadcasts mentioned repeatedly the request by federal authorities to evacuate New Orleans, however the Democratic-controlled state and city governments were strongly apposed to the federal requests for the first major citywide evacuation in US history. In an effort to look strong and resiliant, and unwanting perceived republican-backed federal assitance, evacuation orders and hence FEMA support was delayed until it was too late to mobilize National Guard troops and deliver supplies before Katrina's arrival. Assistance was then given to a devastated region with damaged infrastructure making mediation and recovery efforts exponentially more difficult... 4 more days mobilization could have made this an insurance catastrophe alone, not a catastrophic loss of life.