I was going to make this an add-on to my earlier post on the Perry executive order for naming crisis managers for catastrophe situations, but for future reference I figured making a separate entry would be better: Turns out it’s not just H-GAC that failed to comply with Governor Perry’s deadline or had problems with his edict.
Of the five regional “councils of government” along the Gulf of Mexico, only two met Perry’s deadline in naming a single commander to coordinate disaster response efforts.
Other regional councils, including the San Antonio-based Alamo Area Council of Governments and the South Texas State Planning Region in Laredo, also missed Thursday’s deadline.
The councils were unable to agree on having just one person take charge during a disaster, including who would direct mass evacuations during hurricanes.
Mayors and county judges across Texas expressed concern that Perry’s plan wasn’t feasible for every region of the state, saying some areas had more municipalities than others and some local leaders were reluctant to yield control to a single person.
[…]
“We’ve been going over this for a month and it hasn’t worked out yet,” said John Buckner, executive director of the Coastal Bend Council of Governments.
Buckner said a meeting with all of the mayors and county judges in the Coastal Bend area has been scheduled for next week to tackle the issue again.
“We’re going to sit down and come to terms with reality,” he said. “I can see (Perry’s) point, though. When you have chaos reigning, you don’t want a bunch of guys running around.”
Meanwhile, the Alamo Area Council of Governments also plans to meet April 28 to determine how to respond to Perry’s order.
Al J. Notzon III said he has alerted the governor’s office that the region wouldn’t meet Thursday’s deadline.
“As long as we are working toward it, they said they would not enforce the actual date on that,” Notzon said.
“The main thing is that the system has to work,” said Bandera County Judge Richard Evans, the council’s chairman of the board. “That is what everybody wants. We have everything under control. But this is government, it takes a little time.”
I’ll be interested to see what they come up with. It would not shock me at all if other councils arrive at a similar decision as the Houston-Galveston Area Council did.
Charles,
I was busy with other stories this week, so I only called a few other COGS leading up to the Thursday deadline for choosing a “regional incident commander.” One COG had actually chosen an incident commander and the other intended to do so, but had requested and received a week’s extension from the Gov’s office.
I’ve little doubt that if 23 other COGS had already come up with an incident commander that Perry would now be less conciliatory to H-GAC than he has recently been.
But for your post I probably wouldn’t have found this interesting article — thanks.
Eric
Chart of what Stupid Bush’s and Perry’s Voluntary Pollution Laws have given us all–Messing with Texas and the Whole Planet.
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41204000/gif/_41204668_big_polluters_gra416.gif
……………………………
It should be a Happy Earth Day, but it is not, because of the destructive behavior of Deadly Stupid Leaders who continue enormous, unabated, unregulated pollution with Voluntary Pollution Laws, causing Global Warming.
But, they are saving the anti-pollution slogan: Don’t Mess with Texas.
Sometimes I think that the GOP are either Apocalypsers who are causing this destruction on purpose, or shills for polluting businesses whose tragic timing (we have passed the tipping point to 425 ppm of CO2 and Methane) has to have a cover story. The GOP don’t want to be blamed for the great increase in Hurricanes, drought, heat waves and fires. In Texas last year, we had 10,000 fires. In Texas this year, we had a giant increase to 500,000 fires to try to put out.
That cover story or perception management is to blame God (Apocalypse) for Thelma Bush’s and the Louise GOP’s Global Warming.
………….
Gore Revs Up Campaign – on Global Warming
—————————————–
From CBS News
(link:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/18/ap/politics/mainD8H2M9H07.shtml)
Al Gore has a major campaign under way – to change policies on global warming.
The 2000 Democratic presidential nominee has hired longtime political associate Roy Neel to aid in his effort to raise awareness about global warming, a problem Gore calls “a planetary emergency.”
Gore’s movie and book about the issue, both called “An Inconvenient Truth,” are set for widespread release in May.
snip
Gore has warned about the dangers of global warming for years, arguing that without dramatic changes in the emission of greenhouse gases, the planet is likely to experience a dramatic increase in violent storms, infectious disease, deadly heat waves and rising sea levels that will
force the evacuation of low-lying cities.
He plans to hold a training session in Nashville this summer on how to deliver the message on climate change.
snip
Gore’s campaign will pit him against an old adversary: President Bush.
Bush acknowledges global warming is a real problem, but he believes more uncertainty exists about the degree to which humans play a part – mainly through fossil fuel burning – than most scientists do. (Scientists that Bush has edited, silenced or fired, if they spoke up.)
He (Bush) reversed a 2000 campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide, the chief global warming pollutant, and withdrew the United States from the Kyoto climate treaty, saying it would harm the U.S. economy and unfairly excluded fast-growing developing countries. Gore is a strong supporter of the Kyoto treaty.
…………..
Maybe Bush’s approach toward Global Warming with his Greater Extinction-Level Job Performance has a purpose.
Just a while back, remember Bush’s long silence, then nervous laugh when asked whether his administration believed in and was actively working toward Armageddon?
For a well researched study of the real danger to us all because of the influence of Republican Fundamentalists in Bush’s (what about Perry’s?) Government who are actively working to bring about Armageddon, see:
Mark Crispin Miller
http://markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com/2006/04/c-span2-appearance.html
above link to select to play the C-span’s BookTV program where it says:
Watch now
Saturday, April 22, 2006
C-SPAN2 Appearance
Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They’ll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them)
Description: Mark Crispin Miller argues that the outcome of the 2004 election, in many states including Ohio, was manipulated to favor George Bush and the Republican party. He discusses the evidence he has for this charge and talks about the reaction that Sen. John Kerry had when presented with the evidence. Professor Miller also argues that the Republican party has been taken over by religious fundamentalists who see their opponents as evil and whose ultimate goal is to bring about Armageddon. The talk was hosted by the University of Massachusetts – Amherst.
Also airing on C-SPAN2 –
Monday April 24th, 2:30am
Is this why Bush and his cronies do such a bad job?
No one with these views should be working in Government on Emergency Planning or Hurricane Rescue–or anything to do with life and death situations. Because what you and everyone else would see as doing a bad job, may be on purpose.
Please, get people who are real experts and heroes to help us all in the now unavoidably worsening weather that we will all have to endure and, hopefully, at some point soon begin to reverse.
Get People like the Coast Guard, Firemen, Dedicated Civil Servants, Teachers, Doctors, Nurses, Good Stewards, Good Samaritans, and Experts in their fields.
Like:
http://www.protectingamerica.org/
with:
JAMES LEE WITT, National Co-Chair
Former Director, Federal Emergency Management Agency
Chief Executive Officer, International Code Council
ADMIRAL JAMES M. LOY, National Co-Chair
Former Deputy Secretary, Department of Homeland Security
Commandant, U.S. Coast Guard (Retired)
Their mission is to raise awareness, educate the public and policymakers, and offer solutions that will better prepare and protect America from major catastrophe in a sensible, cost-effective fashion.
You need to pick very good people who are experts, dedicated to saving lives, not ending everyone’s lives.
………………..
told you…
Come On Purple…
from: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/4/22/182648/314
Main Stream Ohio Republicans Fear Election High-Jacking
by JellyPuddin
Sat Apr 22, 2006 at 04:26:48 PM CST
Excepts taken from Online Journal and Findlaw
Mainstream Ohio Republican leaders now fear their party–and the state–are about to be highjacked by the Rod Parsley/Ken Blackwell fundamentalist machine unleashed by Bush and Rove in the upcoming Governor’s race.
Extremist right-wing screachers, such as Pastor Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church, Ann Coulter, Alan Keyes, Ohio gubernatorial candidate J. Kenneth Blackwell and followers of Jerry Falwell, have taken center pulpit in an escalated war over what really happened when George W. Bush was allegedly re-elected in November, 2004, and who will occupy the Buckeye Statehouse in 2006.
In the 2004 Presidential debacle in Ohio there were many dubious successful efforts to curtail the Democratic vote and sway the election towards George W Bush.
Such as:
William Anthony, the Democratic Chair of the Franklin Country Board of Elections, revealed that on November 2,2004, a number of voting machines were transferred from inner city precincts to Parsley’s suburban church. Thousands of African-Americans were deprived of their vote due to the fact that their precincts lacked sufficient balloting hardware. But voters at Parsley’s extreme right-wing precinct had no such waits.
And also:
In keeping with Blackwell’s faith-based tally of the Ohio vote, the New Hope precinct broke new ground. In the now infamous “loaves and fishes” parable precinct Gahanna 1B, after 638 citizens cast ballots there, the precinct’s divinely inspired voting machines registered 4,258 votes for George W. Bush.
They eat their own first before going after the Democrats.
Running against Ken Blackwell in the Republican primary is the current Attorney General Jim Petro, long known as Ohio’s Republican “enforcer”. The Columbus Dispatch reported that Blackwell supporters were referring to Petro as “pro-homo”. OUCH!!!…now thats before they go after the Democrat….Congressman Ted Strickland in the general election.
What makes Ken Blackwell so dirty to even the Republicans and all of Ohioian’s concerned with the ethics problems the State faces is his connection to the now infamous Tom Noe and the Coingate Scandal. When the Republicans in control gave Noe $50 million of the State of Ohio’s Workmans Compensation funds to invest in rare coins and other collectibles such as baseball cards. The same Tom Noe who generously donated to Republican candidates. He and his second wife, Bernadette Noe, have personally given more than $200,000 to candidates, party organizations, and political action committees over the past fifteen years. Among the beneficiaries were the two State GOP officeholders who are now candidates for Ohio Governor in 2006: Attorney General Jim Petro, and Secretary of State Ken Blackwell.
And just Before the 2004 Presidential election, the Sandusky County Democratic Party brought a suit seeking to require Secretary of State Blackwell to count provisional ballots even if cast in the wrong precinct. Republican candidates – including President Bush – were widely perceived as likely to benefit from Blackwell’s stringent vote-counting rule. Noe intervened to support Blackwell’s position. Ultimately, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit agreed with Blackwell and Noe. Given Bush’s 119,000 vote margin of victory, the decision probably netted the President a few thousand votes – though the election’s outcome would have been the same, regardless. But the two, Noe and Blackwell pulled the strings together.
Ohio Republican’s have a real reason to worry about being high-jacked. This summer they will witness Jerry Falwell, Ann Coulter, Alan Keyes, Sean Hannity, Rod Parsley and a host of Christian neo-con fascist rolling around the State to get their man and fellow crook Ken Blackwell into the Governors mansion.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Candidate (now leading in a head to head match up with Blackwell) Ted Strickland will need to watch his back. Ted, a Methodist minister himself in the past, can handle himself quite well in any normal political fight….this one is going to get really dirty.
I hear Karl Rove has rented a townhouse in Columbus to run the election from there.