Bacon's Rebellion

Consider these lines from a ‘what if’ piece in the National Geographic of October, 2004:

“As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however—the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.

“The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level—more than eight feet below in places—so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.

“Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.”

That was written a year ago. You see, we did know. We’ve known it was coming for years.

The Big Easy is being buried now under a blanket of lies.

Consider this from a Sept. 4, 2005 Chicago Tribune piece:

“While federal and state emergency planners scramble to get more military relief to Gulf Coast communities stricken by Hurricane Katrina, a massive naval goodwill station has been cruising offshore, underused and waiting for a larger role in the effort.

“The USS Bataan, a 844-foot ship designed to dispatch Marines in amphibious assaults, has helicopters, doctors, hospital beds, food and water. It also can make its own water, up to 100,000 gallons a day. And it just happened to be in the Gulf of Mexico when Katrina came roaring ashore.

“The Bataan rode out the storm and then followed it toward shore, awaiting relief orders. Helicopter pilots flying from its deck were some of the first to begin plucking stranded New Orleans residents.

“But now the Bataan’s hospital facilities, including six operating rooms and beds for 600 patients, are empty. A good share of its 1,200 sailors could also go ashore to help with the relief effort, but they haven’t been asked. The Bataan has been in the stricken region the longest of any military unit, but federal authorities have yet to fully utilize the ship.”

Or this from an Associated Press piece this morning:

“The top U.S. disaster official waited hours after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast before he proposed to his boss sending at least 1,000 Homeland Security workers into the region to support rescuers, internal documents show.”

We did the best we could? That’s a lie. We did not do the best we could. The federal response to this disaster was a tragedy of incompetence.

This administration failed us—and thousands of Americans died as a result of that failure.

Sure, there will be hearings and inquiries. There will be commissions of one sort or another. We had those after 9/11, remember? What was that conclusion?

“Across the government there were failures of imagination, policies, capabilities, and management. The most important failure was one of imagination.”

Thousands of Americans died as a result of those failures, too. Was there any accountability? Were there any firings? Any charges filed?

No.

Instead we got Homeland Security, a new federal agency with 180,000 employees and a $40 billion budget, an agency that waited five days to respond to Katrina–five days during which Americans died for lack of a bottle of water.

National Public Radion reported this morning that a FEMA plane carrying Katrina injured to Charleston, South Carolina yesterday, where emergency medical personnel waited on the tarmac, landed–in Charleston, West Virginia.

Ha! Wishful thinking and whistling past the graveyard at the Virginian-Pilot today.

The September 5, 2005, edition of the Bacon’s Rebellion e-Zine is now online. Click here to read it.

While Bacon’s Rebellion bloggers argue over whether President Bush should be held accountable for the horrendous aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, whether he’s being unfairly blamed for the failures of state/local authorities in Louisiana, or whether it’s simply too early to make an informed judgment, there’s one thing that we can all agree upon (I hope): Gov. Mark Warner has done a fine job handling Virginia’s response to the hurricane.

To keep track of the news coming out of the Governor’s office, click here.

Don’t forget, tonight …

Ready, Set, Go: Republican Gubernatorial candidate Jerry Kilgore BLOGS LIVE in the dog pound, 6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Rules will be posted on Blue Dog blog.

More to come: State Senator Russ Potts will BLOG LIVE! with the Blue Dog membership in the coming weeks. The campaign agreed last week and is working the Blue Dog blog session into their schedule.

~ the blue dog

All afternoon I have been trying to figure out what that O’Tool “give-them-a-free-car” post (“Lack of Autonomobility …”)was about. I have narrowed it down to two:

Someone is trying to trash O’Tool’s rep by posting something not just “outside the box” but outside the realm rational thought.

If you want a quick view of how silly the “buy-them-a-car” approach to urban mobility is, the following is what I recall of the scenario run in the late 60s by opponents of METRO. Everyone projected to ride METRO by 1985 could get a free VW with the then projected cost of METRO. However, by 2005 the cost of the roadways to provide level of service D for all the drivers would be more than the cost of METRO. So you would have twice the total outlay, no METRO system and lots of 20 year old VWs.

You can confirm the validity of this result by consulting the TAMU data on urban mobility if METRO went away today.

Bottom line: Large urban agglomerations do not work without shared-vehicle systems. Large urban agglomerations are necessary for contemporary civilization. Even Houston and Dallas have come to this conclusion.

The second theory behind the post is that Randal O’T is preparing us for his real proposal. Give every household without a car $40,000 a year so they can afford a car, gasoline, insurance and a place to park it 70 miles from where they work.

Think of all the people who make money from this scheme! Think of all the land owners who could cash in on their “right” to have their land developed for urban land uses.

Bottom Line: Unless there are Fundamental Changes in human settlement pattern we would have to give $125,000 to every household so they could live close to where they work. Defensable urban settlement patterns along the lines of the strategies we out line in tomorrow’s column would cost a lot less. No one ever said quality urban environments were cheap, however.

Think PROPERTY DYNAMICS.

EMR

With a Homeland Security department of 180,000 employees and a $40 billion budget, the five day delay in the federal response to Katrina, during which Americans died for lack of a 90-cent bottle of water , was, is, and remains near-criminal.

Randall O’Toole of the Thoreau Institute, in his Vanishing Automobile Update #55, raises some intriguing questions about the disaster in New Orleans. Here are some excerpts:

Those who fervently wish for car-free cities should take a closer look at New Orleans. The tragedy of New Orleans isn’t primarily due to racism or government incompetence, though both played a role. The real cause is automobility — or more precisely to the lack of it. …

What made New Orleans more vulnerable to catastrophe than most U.S. cities is its low rate of auto ownership. According to the 2000 Census, nearly a third of New Orleans households do not own an automobile. This compares to less than 10 percent nationwide. …

About 26,000 low-income families in New Orleans don’t own a car. If all the money spent on New Orleans streetcars from 1985 to the present had been spent instead on helping autoless low-income families achieve mobility, the city would have had more than $6,000 for each such family, enough to buy good used cars for all of them. Add the money the city wanted to spend on the Desire Street streetcar and you have enough to buy a brand-new car for every single autoless low-income family — not a Lexus or BMW, certainly, but a functional source of transportation that would have allowed them to escape the current disaster. …

While I don’t think that buying low-income families brand-new cars is the best use of our limited transportation resources, it would produce far greater benefits than building rail transit. Studies have found that unskilled workers who have a car are much more likely to have a job and will earn far more than workers who must depend on transit. That is why numerous social service agencies have begun programs aimed at helping low-income families acquire their first car or maintain an existing one. …

Some thought provoking, out-of-the-box thinking commentary.

In response to Saturday’s post, “The Case of the Missing Threads” and in the comments section of the post “Hurricane Katrina: Open Post,” comes a resolution of the mystery from the missing posts’ author, Barnie Day:

Will, and others: I deleted the two Katrina posts I had authored, disgusted no end by the tone and temper of the discussion that ensued, but little thinking, or realizing, that in so doing I was also removing the comment work of others. I believe I have every right of ownership to delete my own work. I wanted to be no part, in name or participation, to what was developing. And, please, it is not thin-skinnedness on my part. I have rhino hide. It was an inner sense of dismay.

That my work was inextricably, and fatally, linked to that of others is regrettable. I regret the collateral damage. I would have made this response in a separate post, but I am in a hotel in Williamsburg and something about the “cookies” arrangement here will not permit it. BKD

The comments section of this post is declared a “free speech zone” with the hope that commenters will avoid personal attacks, disagree without being disagreeable, and attempt to be constructive.

I occasionally write about state government issues, trying to make the point that state government could be more efficient and, in many cases, could do more with less. I do not make my suggestions from some philosophical redoubt far removed from the day-to-day churning of the bureacracy. I am a state employee and I try every day to practice what I preach.

Today’s Gail Kelley column in the Richmond Times-Dispatch business section reports on the latest improved service offering from the little organization I’m proud to say I founded, the Virginia Business Information Center of the Department of Business Assistance. An article about the center previously appeared in the Virginian-Pilot.

The Virginia Business Information Center is a place Virginians who want to start a business or who have questions about their existing business can go to get a real person offering straight answers and information. The center can be reached by toll-free phone, email, and now live chat from its website. The center actually answers upwards of 70% of its phone calls live and returns calls the same business day almost 100% of the time. The center does it without any special appropriation from the General Assembly; it just uses authorized employees of the agency in a way that improves their accessibility to taxpayers.

Somewhere back in 1999 or so, the Department of Business Assistance paid a consultant around $30,000 to study the idea of a Virginia Business Information Center. The consultant demonstrated a need and projected that it would take over $1 million dollars, a group of new employees, a certain amount of square footage, etc. As Virginia’s economy began to tighten, that kind of appropriation became untenable and the project was shelved.

Fast forward to 2002. Governor Warner came into office with his “One Virginia” vision, but budget cuts, too. What I had been doing was essentially eliminated, but I still had a job. I asked agency management if I could start a Virginia Business Information Center. I knew in my heart it was needed and that I could make it sucessful. All I requested was a toll-free number and an email address. I believed strongly that a toll-free number was needed to equalize the access between someone from the West End of Richmond making a local call and someone in Grundy dropping quarters into a pay phone. Somewhat reluctantly, in late 2002, they gave in, gave me what I asked for, and I became the Virginia Business Information Center.

In my first month of operation, January 2003, I got 130 calls and a handful of emails. Now, the center gets well over a thousand calls a month and several hundred emails. The average monthly bill for the toll-free number is $55. Contrast that expense with the old model (still used, too often in my estimation), of sending one or more state employees in a state car to a meeting where the topic is the agency’s services–chief among them the Virginia Business Information Center! By October 2003 the center was busy enough that another state employee was moved to work in the center and by mid-2004 two other employees began to spend 20% of their time answering center inquiries.

The center has harnessed the power of the internet to reduce the costs of providing services; indeed, it has expanded the services offered at no additional costs. If the center didn’t exist, I have no doubt that I’d still be driving around the state, going to Chamber of Commerce meetings, and totally ignoring the huge customer base of people starting a business and those strugggling to improve their existing business. Since I started the center, I have spent two nights in motel on state business. I used to stay overnight at least once every two weeks.

There’s so much more to be done, though. Every Virginia agency that interacts with business could make their web-based information more user-friendly and could design their information to answer the real questions people ask, not the ones the agency makes up to answer. Agencies could be much more responsive to business, or they could save by letting the Virginia Business Information Center take their questions.

Last week I physically spoke with or answered the chat or email questions of almost 200 individuals. That’s a typical week for me. Yet I’ve never been asked by one of these “business” commissions or ad hoc business study groups to describe what entrepreneurs and small businesses tell me they need. I’ve never been asked to rate the customer service levels of the myriad of agencies that serve businesses, even though those who call me give me tons of feedback.

I think the kind of approach that I took with the Virginia Business Information Center could work with other agencies. Focusing on the customer–the taxpayer–is very clarifying. It’s a great way of deciding how to cut out expenses and improve efficiency. I’m going to continue doing what I’m doing, no matter how little impact it has beyond the lady at the other end of the phone who just wants to know how to start a home-based business and be “legal.”

Now, the next time I rant and rave about taxes and state government, I hope you’ll understand my perspective and at least give me credit for being willing to work under the terms of the policies I recommend.

Every disaster has a name. A disaster has many names when you know the faces of its casualties. You know who suffered what. You know how people are doing. You care and you contribute – just like everybody else. Hurricane Isabel is the name of the disaster you see on TV. Everyone in my town – Poquoson, Virginia – knows the names of some of the 50 families who lost their homes and the 2000 with damage to their houses out of 4360 plus residences. Isabel means the many names for neighbors we know and care about.

One week after, most people still do not have power. Many will do without for another week or so. Yet, there is praise that no one was killed. Doesn’t that speak to our values – sacred life, injury, then property? Among property there are memories like photos/videos, sentimental values and then stuff – no matter the price.

The emergency center in the ruined Middle School Gym is full of items freely donated for those who lost the most. The government didn’t stock the long tables, the people did. Volunteers operate the center.

We have much to applaud in our civil servants. The police, fire fighters and emergency medical personnel left their loved ones to serve us all and the most dangerous time. City/County, Commonwealth and Federal Governments all do their part to help in the recovery. Their roles are clearly defined. It’s the earnestness and dedication of their performance of duty of the officials that makes them so appreciated. Again, we have much to be grateful.

One good that comes from this devastation is the sense of good will among citizens. There is the realization that we don’t live in a cruel or heartless community. Our officials, our bureaucrats, are our neighbors and they care – and some of them had losses. Our public servants serve. The workers in companies that provide us power – under government regulations – and other utilities like cable – make personal sacrifices to bring our services back.

There was no looting on our peninsula on The Peninsula. There are only two roads in and out and one was under water. Besides, the homeowner guns per capita in this Conservative community would make looting more fatal than foolish.

The Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) headquarters is set up in the Christian Outreach Center (our gym) of my Baptist church home. Funny, no one is concerned about the separation of church and state. Food distribution is made at other churches in town. This suggests what safety nets we should have in Virginia and in what order.

Individuals have a personal responsibility to carry insurance. For those who don’t or don’t have enough, the General Assembly should create communities of common interests as multiple safety nets – before you get to a government agency.

First, every extended family should be able to share their resources and discount every penny they provide for relief from their taxes. Dollar for dollar it’s more efficient by a factor of 5 than going through government.

Second, church families, community of faith, should be the second safety net – and they are already for many folks.

Third, communities of co-workers – like credit unions with new capabilities – and (Fourth) neighborhoods organized into credit union-like legal entities should be able to operate tax-free to pool resources and provide relief, loans, etc. for individual members. These should be the third and fourth safety nets.

If a person has none of these – in the future after the legal entities are created – then a welfare agency of the Commonwealth or a Federal agency – for a loan, etc. – should be the fifth safety net.

But, this is a vision for the future. For today, we must deal with the helping agencies as they are. Our churches are stepping up to provide real assistance.

We should be thankful for all that is good in our government – our neighbors who share our burdens and our joy – who represents the best in us – today. Yet, we need to be certain that no government gets too powerful, because sooner or later it will represent the worst of us. Power will be abused.

Here’s to our common cause on high ground indeed. We will recover and rebuild – even better than before Isabel. We will not forget the many names of this disaster. Yet, storms don’t defeat my proud Virginian neighbors, they just set folks back a spell.

Our material losses remind me of what New York City feels after 9-11-01. Think what families across the country suffer when the flag-draped coffin comes home from WW IV. Let’s honor their loved ones and their loss with courage of conviction. Let’s pray for them. Let’s cry with them. Let us never give up.

James Atticus Bowden

Barnie is right to be angry and he is right to call the pre-Katrina preparation and the post-Katrina response a governance disaster. He deserves better responses than blogspammers which was all I saw before his two Katrina posts vanished.

While I share much of Barnie’s disgust, I hope he is even madder about the workings of contemporary government after reading our column next Tuesday. But what to do?

We can all be fairly sure that – at least for the next decade – water, food and body bags will arrive in a more timely manner. We can all hope that police officers will not turn in their badges and head for high ground. I expect all sorts of post-event things will change even if the President and the Governor are also from different political tribes the next time there is a disaster.

But what is it that an individual can do beside being mad and hoping their donations do not end up in the wrong pocket?

Here is a brief list of items. It is not intended to be exhaustive, there are books on the topic and every household should have one. These are just things to jog your thinking:

In your New Urban Region:

Go to the regional agency responsible for mobility, access and settlement patterns and ask to see the long-range plan for preventing and managing known potential catastrophes. Find out if it outlines areas to harden the defenses against wind, water, fire and earth (as in quakes, slides, subsidence, etc).

Ok, that is a trick task. There is not one single agency in any region in the United States with that responsibility. Given the current trends in destructive weather patterns and stated threats to life and infrastructure would it not be a good idea to have such an agency for every region? Our next column outlines the issues our firm examined 33 years ago for the Louisiana State Office of Planning and the suggestions we made. If these strategies had been implemented the impact of Katrina and the next Big One to hit Greater New Orleans would have been fundamentally different.

So your first region-scale task is to work for Fundamental Change in governance–think PROPERTY DYNAMICS.

In the meantime, you can address some specifics. See if the building code in your jurisdiction is “post Andrew” and if the very same code applies in all jurisdictions in the region.

You can also be sure no one tries to sell “the roads for evacuations” myth. The physics of mobility / access and the reality of storm track predictions makes building roads to escape large urban are to avoid hurricanes a non-starter. Even with a lot of warning a large percentage of any urban population has no access to private vehicles. Trying to run away from most natural phenomena or acts of terror is useless but details are beyond the scope of this note.

Unfortunately, you will not have much more luck at the Alpha Community scale than at the New Urban Region scale. No big municipality (e.g. Fairfax County) covers just one Alpha Community and no small municipality (e.g. the City of Falls Church) covers all of any one Alpha Community. See our column “Where is Northern Virginia.” 18 August 2003 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com . Again the first long-term task is governance restructuring. The same is true at the Alpha Village and Alpha Neighborhood and Alpha Cluster scales.

At the Alpha Dooryard scale there are some things you can do.

Who in your dooryard has a generator? If it is not you, have you asked the owner if you could store extra gasoline and heavy duty extension cords. How about getting together to acquire enough generators in the dooryard so that power is available for a few hours a day–not just for the ice maker but for sump pump, fans and heaters–for say 2 weeks. How about a Labor Day block party where everyone test their generators and emergency wiring plans.

What about snowblowers? Take the same steps with snow equipment as with the generators.

What about tree maintenance? Even healthy trees fall in bad storms. If there are substantial trees in your dooryard treat chain saws like generators and snowblowers.

Are there enough plastic tarps in the dooryard to cover holes in the roof and ladders long enough to reach the roofs?

You have even more control inside the dwelling unit. Is there enough water and food for you and your pets for a week? Here we slip into the area where there is a lot of good advice. Be sure it is not just advice for other people.

If you have a hard to maintain house or yard, it might be smart to think smaller and more easily maintained.

The nice thing about the dooryard scale projects is that you can drum up citizens support for taking action at the larger scales of the settlement pattern.

Together you can get after the power company to harden and defend the power grid–not just the transmission grid but also the distribution grid.

Together you can get after VDOT to unblock the culvert that backs up over the road in every thunderstorm.

If you and your clustermates have a special vulnerability think about organizing a subdivision recycling program–recycling the subdivision, not plastic bottles and aluminum cans.

That should be enough to focus your post-Katrina anger into future event security.

EMR

With Jim Bacon out of town, I will reprise the Alexander Haig role.

This open post is offered for anyone to comment on any aspect of the Hurricane Katrina relief effort and on those involved in that effort. It will not and cannot replace the posts and comments on the subject that were deleted, but Bacon’s Rebellion is not about censorship.

Naturally, I would ask that personal attacks on commenters be avoided, but the passion this terrible disaster has aroused is almost unprecendented. Consider the comments section of this post a free speech zone.

When Jim returns, we’ll sort out any long-term lessons.

It will be obvious to any readers of this blog that posts regarding Hurricane Katrina have disappeared. This deletion was noted in the comments section here, where Jim Bacon responded and said he had not removed the material.

I just got off the phone with Jim. He asked if I had deleted the posts. I did not. I would never delete another contributor’s post and don’t believe I even have the security authority to do so. I would never delete one of my own posts or comments to one of my posts without offering a corresponding post explaining my actions.

Hopefully, an explanation of the removal will be forthcoming. We owe it to our readers.