Right after Katrina I wrote a series of posts at the old Revolution blog that accused the Bush Administration of using the hurricane’s devastation and New Orleans’ desperate plight to try to lever the power to declare martial law away from Louisiana’s governor and give it to the White House in defiance of the law.
There was some evidence to suggest that FEMA was ordered to hold up the relief that was waiting in trucks and on ships so the administration could use it as a bargaining chip to force Gov Blanco to give away that power. She refused and Louisiana paid the price, sort of: FEMA slowed its relief efforts – which had been blazing fast in Jeb Bush’s hurricane-hit Florida the year before – down to a crawl.
Of course, in the end that snail-like response gave Bush a huge black eye and FEMA a horrendous reputation from which it has yet to recover, but that was small consolation to the tens of thousands left homeless, hustled off to other states, or abandoned altogether by a govt that has still shown no particular interest in their fate.
But though Blanco stymied that effort, Bush didn’t give up. Last October, while I was still offline, he got what he wanted from the Congress. Continue reading
