This May Not Apply To You

[billroper]

If this doesn't apply to you, then it doesn't. If it does, it does.

There are a number of people around who are loudly complaining that President Bush did not do enough in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and that he should have done whatever it took to bring the National Guard directly under Federal control no matter what the law said. I suspect that at least some of those people are the same ones who complain loudly about the Patriot Act and the potential that it has for abuse.

Why would the first be a good thing if the possibility that sort of abuse of Federal power could be used for evil purposes is such a bad thing?

ObDisclaimer: Yes, there were no doubt numerous actions that the Feds (and Bush) might have taken in the wake of Katrina that would have been good -- and legal! -- things to do and which they did not actually do. Yes, there are no doubt provisions of the Patriot Act that are subject to abuse.

ObDisclaimer Two: I said that if this didn't apply to you, it didn't apply to you. :)

Comments

[unkbar.livejournal.com]

Then there are the folks who claim he should have sent the Regular Army to break heads and restore order. If he did, he'd be risking impeachment. It's called the Posse Comitatus Act. Only Congress can send the Army to do domestic law enforcement.

You'll note that the regulars that were sent have all been doing rescue and relief work and the Louisian National Guard (who are sworn to and paid by the State of Louisiana, NOT the Federal Government) were doing the policing.

[patoadam]

What I find most appalling about all this is that President Bush appointed two people with no experience in disaster relief to head FEMA. From Mortimer B. Zuckerman's column in the New York Daily News:

"It was a reckless indulgence to pass over thousands of professionals and put the nation's disaster agencies into the hands of people who do not know how to run them. President Bush's first FEMA chief, Joe Allbaugh, who was his 2000 campaign manager, counseled states and cities to rely on "faith-based organizations" like the Salvation Army and the Mennonite Disaster Service. His successor, Michael Brown, was his college roommate. Brown... was forced out of his previous job overseeing horse shows."

[patoadam]

I have not looked into the particular issue you raise, but it would not surprise me if you could find something the federal goverment did that wasn't a mistake. It would also not surprise me if you could find an unjustified complaint about the government's response to this disaster.

[patoadam]

Also see Here's What Gets Me.

[billroper]

I've already commented elsewhere (and you probably haven't seen it) that appointing Brown was a case of assuming that management experience in one area is transferable to other areas. I disagree with that assumption.

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

That wasn't one of my objections.

[billroper]

Then it didn't apply to you. :)

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

It would be rash to say that any one thing was the whole problem, but a big chunk of the problem was that a lot of people at a lot of levels were looking for excuses to not act rather than trying to find a way to get things done. People waited for other people to order, or request, or inform them, rather than either acting on their own, or if they needed authorization, actively pushing for it. Don't ask whether the regular Army should have been busting heads on Friday, ask why they hadn't already been mobilized on Saturday before the storm hit but when it was absolutely certain that a big disaster was going to happen somewhere on the Gulf coast, so they were ready to move out as soon as the storm had passed Sunday night, in position with relief supplies on Tuesday, and trucking people out of the Superdome and convention center on Wednesday. If the President had had competent people in place who were allowed to exercise their initiative, he wouldn't have needed to abuse any powers, except for possibly his access to effective communication where he personally needed to light fires under some butts.

I suspect there was a fair bit of incompetence exercised by the state and local authorities, but with the exception of the Gretna sheriff's department (whose heads will hopefully be adorning the fence around Jackson Square in a few weeks), most of what I've seen that was objectionable has been Federal. If the Feds actually couldn't act until they got specific requests from the state (which is crap; all the necessary declarations of emergency were already signed, sealed, and delivered before the storm hit), and they couldn't figure out how to *ask* for those specific requests rather than just waiting for someone to figure out what they were waiting for, then they and their bosses both oughta be fired.

[rmeidaking.livejournal.com]

I think you're mixing apples with oranges, here.

The first error that has been exposed is that FEMA didn't have people of its own to deploy; its function in Florida and elsewhere had been to coordinate other agencies that were already in place.

The next error is that the Federal government has no civilian defense force to deploy. Their only possible response team is one branch or another of the military.

Related to that, the military that would normally have taken charge - the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard and Reserve units - were on the other side of the planet, engaging in active military operations, instead of being in place on the ground. Oops.

GWB and the Governors of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana should have already been signing contingent paperwork on Saturday, IMO. When they started mandatory evacuations, all levels of government should have started the plans for the relief effort. And they didn't. Bush was still on vacation, and his subordinates have other things on their agendas.

That's the real issue: Bush and the entire administration were Missing In Action, at a time of critical importance.

Maybe the key is to correlate Bush with Mayor Bilandic and the snowstorm. :-)

[billroper]

Well, the first -- coordinating other agencies -- has historically worked pretty well, so it's hard to blame FEMA for not setting up its own infrastructure. It'd be expensive and duplicative.

The second -- that the Federal government has no civilian defense force -- runs up against the notion that the Federal government shouldn't have police powers. You can argue that's an outmoded notion -- and you might be right! -- but that's another problem altogether.

As far as the Guard, well, there were an awful lot of Guard units that weren't overseas. And as I've seen pointed out elsewhere, we wouldn't pay for as much National Guard as we have if they weren't intended to be used as soldiers, regardless of any opinions that anyone might have about the Iraq war.

Contingent paperwork might well have been a good idea, but Governor Blanco apparently wouldn't sign the paperwork when it was no longer contingent, so I can't visualize her signing it in advance.

As far as appearances, well, yes. Appearances sucked.

[madfilkentist]

This is the first I've heard of that particular complaint, but I'm sure there are people whose knee-jerk response is "If Bush didn't do it, that proves he should have," or "Any problem can be solved by ignoring Constitutional limitations on federal power." But without knowing who's saying this and what else they actually say, I'd just be guessing about their motives.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

So if my neighbour lets his huge rotten oak tree crash into my garden and wreck my greenhouse, I have no right to complain because I already complained when he bought a cannon and aimed it at my house.

[billroper]

I didn't say that.

This is more of a case where the government has passed a law that says that your neighbor isn't allowed to remove the oak tree. You might choose to complain that it's a stupid law, but arguing that he should have broken the law is a different thing.

However, in the particular case I'm discussing, the laws preventing Bush from taking certain actions with Federal troops and the National Guard are there to prevent abuses of Federal power. And I assert (but have admittedly not provided references) that some of the complaints about Bush not breaking these laws come from the same people -- or, at least, the same message boards! -- who complain that the Patriot Act allows abuses of Federal power.

Our government over here in the States is a little weird if you're used to the British system. There are more things that our states are expected to do and that the Federal government is precluded from doing, because of the history of our Federal system.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure I haven't made that specific complaint, but if I had known about it I would have. I still see no conflict between the complaints. On the one hand we have Bush (conceivably) sitting on his hands when people needed help and hiding behind the law when they called him on it. On the other hand we have Bush making himself a law which would allow him to do things he wants to do that (I assume) a lot of the people he governs wouldn't want him to do.

If he's going to abuse the powers of the Patriot Act anyway (and I see no reason to assume that he wouldn't, given that I gather new laws have gone through that make large chunks of it permanent), he might as well have thrown the rulebook out on this as well and done what was necessary to help NOLA. I see no conflict in complaining about him doing one thing and not doing the other. If it got him into trouble afterwards, I'm sure the people of New Orleans would have spoken up for him.

When Captain Kirk says "Blast the regulations, Mister Spock!" it's usually so he can help someone in need or peril, not so he can extend his spy-camera network to the yeomans' quarters. If he justified one in terms of the other, or not doing the former in terms of not doing the latter, the worthy Vulcan wouldn't be the only one raising an eyebrow.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

And see this, possibly.

[billroper]

Interestingly, the article linked in the original makes no reference to posse comitatus. I also understand that the active duty military are participating in relief actions, but not attempting to exercise police powers, which would be a violation of posse comitatus.

Anything to show otherwise?

[madfilkentist]

If Bush were to violate every law on the books, then we'd have a dictatorship, plain and simple. There are still some limits on his power, and suggesting that he should just do whatever he feels like and steamroller the opposition is a really bad idea.

Or let me try it another way. The President can't just seize the power to use troops illegally one time. If people knuckle under and say he can do it, that fact doesn't just evaporate conveniently afterward. The President would now have the authority to use troops domestically any time he felt like it, not just when you want him to. You might feel you're far away enough not to worry about the consequences of that; I'm not, and I don't think you are either.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

I love the way you take the discussion effortlessly into the realms of the personal...

So as soon as Bush had used these troops to help deal with this horrible national emergency, he would then immediately use them to annexe all fifty-odd state capitals, close down Congress and declare himself dictator. I must admit I hadn't realised he was that mad, but you've certainly opened my eyes on that. I also hadn't realised (though gods know I should have done) that there was no provision in your system to deal with a president who breaks the rules: once he's done it, the genie's out of the bottle, everything flies out of the window and it's every man for himself. I wonder if he knows that...

And to reply to your final jab in kind, I also hadn't realised that you are even more scared of George W Bush than I am. Or, presumably, anyone who occupies that office. The whole system is founded on fear and mistrust, isn't it?

[billroper]

I don't know of any reports that the Patriot Act has been abused (although I may have missed them when Congress was looking it over for reauthorization). There are things about the Patriot Act that I see as being good things -- for example, the ability for a judge to issue a wiretap that follows an individual from disposable wireless phone to disposable wireless phone, rather than having to get a new warrant for each phone to be tapped.

However, the fact that the Patriot Act could be abused has caused some folks to complain a lot. And I won't argue that the act shouldn't be amended appropriately to make it more difficult to abuse.

Of course, one man's "abuse" is another man's "vital national security interest", I suppose...

[poltr1]

I've also heard that the state's emergency response team screwed up because they should have stepped in instead of waiting for the federal government's approval.

But that's probably not germane to the question.