Dick Cheney and Katrina

On the night of August 30, and again on the morning of August 31, the Souther pInes Electric Power Association in Taylorsville, Mississippi, received phone messages from Vice President Dick Cheney's office in Washington that dictated the order of priority for the restoration of the region's electricity--first to a privately owned pipeline, then to public hospitals.

--Harper's, December 2005


This happened.

Grounds for impeachment? Maybe. Grounds for an independent investigation? Sure.

But that's not happening in the GOP-controlled congress.

Time to vote the bastards out.

Comments

&y said…
Thanks for the reminder, Kid. And just to reiterate... From your "this happened" link:

Jordan [manager of Southern Pines Electric Power Association] dated the first call the night of Aug. 30 and the second call the morning of Aug. 31. Southern Pines supplies electricity to the substation that powers the Colonial pipeline.
...
[W]orkers who were trying to restore substations that power two rural hospitals - Stone County Hospital in Wiggins and George County Hospital in Lucedale - worked instead on the Colonial Pipeline project.


Josh Marshall's Katrina Timeline:
"[Late on August 30]: DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff declares Katrina an 'Incident of National Significance', 'triggering for the first time a coordinated federal response to states and localities overwhelmed by disaster.' Declaration is first use of DHS National Response Plan."

DHS National Response Plan (pdf, emphasis added):
"Once an incident occurs, the priorities shift from prevention, preparedness, and incident mitigation to immediate and short-term response activities to preserve life, property, the environment, and the social, economic, and political structure of the community."

============
At least Big Dick's priorities are consistent--if not beforehand, then certainly within minutes of the "Incident of National Significance" declaration, Cheney's office had ka-chunked "life" to the bottom of the list. Property and economics über alles.

Oh.. and speaking of priorities (and consistency). Again, from JMM's timeline:

Wednesday, August 31 -- "President Bush heads back to Washington from vacationing in Crawford, TX."
awol said…
Great catch. Remarkable because of the direct, personal, explicit, and undeniable involvement of Cheney.
Anonymous said…
My theory is, we already voted them out twice. Time to stop them from stealing another one.

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