Sunday, September 04, 2005
IMPEACH HER! THEN, INDICT HER!
by Roy Fletcher
What the hell were Governor Blanco and her staff thinking in the forty eight hours prior to Hurricane Katrina? Apparently, there they weren’t thinking. In fact, there’s a growing sense that there’s not a brain cell among them. However, ignorance is not a defense in a court of law nor should it be in the court of public opinion.
Blanco and her crew herded good people into the Louisiana Superdome and the Morial Convention Center to protect them from a hurricane. However, no one ever thought about the potential, a potential that has been discussed for years, that the levees may break and the City of New Orleans would be flooded and thousands of people would be trapped. Instead, Blanco and her crew herded people, like animals, into the Superdome and the Convention Center without provisions for the bare essentials, water and food, being afforded these people.
The result: people have died, folks have been traumatized, and the world has witnessed the human impact of gross incompetence. It has been Blanco’s incompetence pure and simple. The Blanco Plan for New Orleans was simple: herd but do not feed and water human beings.
This is the kind of incompetence that demands the impeachment of a public official. However, if she were a CEO of a company in the private sector, it would also demand more: it would demand an indictment and a trial. In Louisiana, we have a negligent homicide law which demands the jailing of a person who engages in gross and wanton negligence that leads to the injury or killing of a person. Blanco should first be impeached and, then, indicted and tried for negligent homicide.
Not only should Blanco be indicted for the herding program she undertook, she should also be impeached and indicted for her stupidity when it came to evacuating New Orleans prior to the hurricane. Three hundred buses sat in New Orleans waiting to pick up evacuees. The problem: they sat. They were not dispatched to the neighborhoods, loaded with bullhorns, so the oldest, the sickest and the poorest could walk out of the their houses and the projects to get on the bus to flee.
No, the buses sat. This was the Blanco Plan for New Orleans, and it is a plan of criminality.
Yesterday, it was reported that more than 80 elderly people housed in a nursing home in St. Bernard Parish were found dead. They had been drowned. If one of the 300 buses had shown up at this home, these people could have been saved. Instead, Blanco and her crew were too busy high-fiving themselves for the contra-floor plan for traffic that they had instituted. It was a plan that worked as far as it went, but it was only a superficial remedy that resulted in the deaths of many who could not get into the traffic.
Now, there is a concerted effort by Blanco and her crew to blame everything on everyone else. Everyone else deserves their share, but the criminal aspect of this entire failure falls directly at the feet of Governor Blanco. She not only is incompetent. She is criminal.
From day one, in fact, reports suggest before the hurricane even hit New Orleans, thugs and looters were running rampant in New Orleans. As the situation grew more desperate, the thugs grew more powerful and bold. No one can blame a person in this condition for taking water and food, but Blanco did not act to stop those who were taking televisions, tape players, jewelry, and breaking into houses of their more affluent neighbors and stealing furniture and whatever they could find.
The result: the rescue effort was a stop and go effort, because people were shooting at the rescuers, and the result of this was that people who could have been saved probably died. Blanco needs to be impeached and indicted for this failure to act. Where was she? Was she thinking she could not act tough to protect people and property, because she had been elected with the votes of the Black citizens of New Orleans? If she was, and if there is proof of such a conversation, Blanco deserves to be convicted.
This has been and remains a moral outrage. It is an outrage that flows directly from incompetence…Kathleen Blanco’s incompetence. When people act in a morally outrageous manner, there are laws to punish them. Kathleen Blanco deserves to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of these laws, and, at the least, she deserves to be forcefully removed from the public office she was elected to by the good people of Louisiana.
Rescue the people…get them back on the road to recovery…punish those who deserve punishment. This goes for Blanco as well.
What the hell were Governor Blanco and her staff thinking in the forty eight hours prior to Hurricane Katrina? Apparently, there they weren’t thinking. In fact, there’s a growing sense that there’s not a brain cell among them. However, ignorance is not a defense in a court of law nor should it be in the court of public opinion.
Blanco and her crew herded good people into the Louisiana Superdome and the Morial Convention Center to protect them from a hurricane. However, no one ever thought about the potential, a potential that has been discussed for years, that the levees may break and the City of New Orleans would be flooded and thousands of people would be trapped. Instead, Blanco and her crew herded people, like animals, into the Superdome and the Convention Center without provisions for the bare essentials, water and food, being afforded these people.
The result: people have died, folks have been traumatized, and the world has witnessed the human impact of gross incompetence. It has been Blanco’s incompetence pure and simple. The Blanco Plan for New Orleans was simple: herd but do not feed and water human beings.
This is the kind of incompetence that demands the impeachment of a public official. However, if she were a CEO of a company in the private sector, it would also demand more: it would demand an indictment and a trial. In Louisiana, we have a negligent homicide law which demands the jailing of a person who engages in gross and wanton negligence that leads to the injury or killing of a person. Blanco should first be impeached and, then, indicted and tried for negligent homicide.
Not only should Blanco be indicted for the herding program she undertook, she should also be impeached and indicted for her stupidity when it came to evacuating New Orleans prior to the hurricane. Three hundred buses sat in New Orleans waiting to pick up evacuees. The problem: they sat. They were not dispatched to the neighborhoods, loaded with bullhorns, so the oldest, the sickest and the poorest could walk out of the their houses and the projects to get on the bus to flee.
No, the buses sat. This was the Blanco Plan for New Orleans, and it is a plan of criminality.
Yesterday, it was reported that more than 80 elderly people housed in a nursing home in St. Bernard Parish were found dead. They had been drowned. If one of the 300 buses had shown up at this home, these people could have been saved. Instead, Blanco and her crew were too busy high-fiving themselves for the contra-floor plan for traffic that they had instituted. It was a plan that worked as far as it went, but it was only a superficial remedy that resulted in the deaths of many who could not get into the traffic.
Now, there is a concerted effort by Blanco and her crew to blame everything on everyone else. Everyone else deserves their share, but the criminal aspect of this entire failure falls directly at the feet of Governor Blanco. She not only is incompetent. She is criminal.
From day one, in fact, reports suggest before the hurricane even hit New Orleans, thugs and looters were running rampant in New Orleans. As the situation grew more desperate, the thugs grew more powerful and bold. No one can blame a person in this condition for taking water and food, but Blanco did not act to stop those who were taking televisions, tape players, jewelry, and breaking into houses of their more affluent neighbors and stealing furniture and whatever they could find.
The result: the rescue effort was a stop and go effort, because people were shooting at the rescuers, and the result of this was that people who could have been saved probably died. Blanco needs to be impeached and indicted for this failure to act. Where was she? Was she thinking she could not act tough to protect people and property, because she had been elected with the votes of the Black citizens of New Orleans? If she was, and if there is proof of such a conversation, Blanco deserves to be convicted.
This has been and remains a moral outrage. It is an outrage that flows directly from incompetence…Kathleen Blanco’s incompetence. When people act in a morally outrageous manner, there are laws to punish them. Kathleen Blanco deserves to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of these laws, and, at the least, she deserves to be forcefully removed from the public office she was elected to by the good people of Louisiana.
Rescue the people…get them back on the road to recovery…punish those who deserve punishment. This goes for Blanco as well.
