Kathleen Blanco Quotes
We both got caught on making a bureaucracy work on things that were much bigger than that which they had ever worked on.
Kathleen Blanco, Governor of Louisiana (Democrat), Statement particially explaining the failure of herself and President George W. Bush in making rapid responses the crisis of Hurricane Katrina, Quoted on CNN, Late Edition, September 11, 2005
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This egregiously insensitive statement was one of the reasons he was fired from heading the relief effort and then resigned from the government. He had been a political appointee of George W. Bush with no previous emergency management experience. He had been a lawyer and his management experience consisted of managing horse shows. While many blamed the President for the terrible appointment, the Senate confirmed Brown with not a single No vote, yet his lack of experience was known to the Senators.
Here we see the classic aristocratic arrogance of 19th century England. Bureaucracy was a French, Dutch and Spanish problem, not an English one. The reality was that England was developing the largest bureaucracy in the world.
Thousands of people were trapped in the New Orleans convention center without food, water, sanitary or medical facilities. A number died. While the head of FEMA claimed Federal ignorance, the plight of the people at the Superdome and the Convention Center was constantly being broadcast on the radio and television, including on location video and pleas for help. Mr. Brown’s qualifications for emergency management before he was appointed to head FEMA was to head up an organization for Arabian Horses.
The George W. Bush administration had been caught ill prepared and with the exception of the Coast Guard, was slow and inadequate in responding to the emergency.
His ancestors had come to New Orleans from Haiti around 1800 before the United States made the Louisiana Purchase.
Nagin was being aggressively questioned about why New Orleans was not rebuilt from the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. He gave as an example the fact that the World Trade Center site in New York had not even started with any rehabilitation. The politics of rebuilding after a catastrophe have become very complicated regardless of the location. Many in New York found the wording “hole in the ground” insensitive as 2,000 people had died on the site. The reality is that both rebuilding efforts were severely hampered by political issues: In the case of New York, the kind of memorial that would be appropriate for “hallowed ground.” In New Orleans, the issues of rebuilding in risky area vs more protection was debated as well as the racial effect where New Orleans had been a majority Black city before but depending on how it was rebuilt might not be after.
Statement after Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans including almost all of the public housing.
Kathleen Babineaux Blanco was an American politician who served as the 54th Governor of Louisiana from January 2004 to January 2008. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the first and, to date, only woman elected as the state's governor.
