Fault Lines

Investor's Business Daily reports Hillary Clinton says FEMA was more effective when her husband was president. The victims of Hurricane Floyd might venture a different opinion, and it wasn't FEMA that kept supplies from the Superdome. During a post-Katrina conference call with reporters, Sen. Clinton said, "Helping localities do what they needed to do to mitigate damage — that philosophy governed FEMA during the Clinton administration. It obviously was rejected by this administration."

FEMA's job should be seeing that cities and states have disaster plans, and from the New Orleans plan here, and the State of Louisiana plan here and here that is what they list FEMA's job as; they just failed to follow their own plans.

Does that mean Clinton's FEMA was the model of government efficiency and effectiveness? Or was it closer to the DMV and post office? Just ask the tens of thousands of people left stranded up and down the Eastern Seaboard by Hurricane Floyd in 1999. "We're starting to move the trailers in," said then-FEMA director and current Hillary favorite James Lee Witt, nearly a month after Floyd first hit. "It's been so wet, it's been difficult to get things in there" — an explanation that sounds familiar.

Who could have predicted that a hurricane might leave things wet?

Witt was also a guest on Jesse Jackson's CNN show, "Both Sides Now," in Floyd's aftermath. Jackson complained then that "bridges are overwhelmed, levees are overwhelmed, whole towns underwater. . . . (It's) an awesome scene of tragedy." Gee, where have we heard that recently?

Many have called for the head of FEMA Director Mike Brown. But Bill Clinton's choice to be Southwest Regional FEMA director in 1993 was even less qualified, earning his job handling disaster recovery of a different sort. Raymond "Buddy" Young, a former Arkansas state trooper, got his choice assignment after leading efforts to discredit other state troopers in the infamous Troopergate scandal. If a storm like Katrina struck the Big Easy back then, Young would've been in charge.

Former House Speaker Tip O'Neill used to say all politics is local. Forgotten in the Katrina disaster and its aftermath is that so is most law enforcement and disaster preparedness. Why does Hillary think Houston's Astrodome was all set up to receive thousands of refugees? It was because Houston and Texas authorities planned for it to take thousands of refugees from Galveston, where a hurricane in 1900 killed 8,000 people.

Totally clueless about their duties were officials at Louisiana's — not Washington's — Homeland Security Department. They blocked a convoy of Red Cross trucks filled with water, food, blankets and hygiene items to the New Orleans Superdome after Katrina struck because it would have encouraged refugees to stay there. The Red Cross Web site says: "The state Homeland Security Department had requested — and continues to request — that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane." The ARC was told its "presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city."

On Aug. 27, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco was asked at a press conference what could be done to avert disaster. Her pathetic answer was, "We can pray hard that the intensity will weaken." That was Louisiana's disaster-recovery plan.

Paul @PowerLine blogged Diana also points out that federal responders were on the ground in force within 48 hours after the flooding began, which is a rapid response by historical   standards.

It's also true that federal responders were involved even earlier than that. At a press conference yesterday, the Louisiana National Guard noted that FEMA was supporting its efforts at the Superdome before the storm arrived.