Posted On: May 14, 2007, 2:13 pm CDT

Posted By: ad

Katrinafying Kansas
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, May 09, 2007 4:20 PM PT

Leadership: Democrats are starting to blame the federal government every time their governors get caught unprepared for natural disasters. Nowhere is that more blatant than in the Greensburg tornado aftermath.

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco blamed the feds after the 2005 hurricane that devastated New Orleans. Now Kansas' Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is doing the same.

It's become a pattern: Democrats blaming President Bush for their own lack of disaster preparedness. Like Blanco in Katrina, Sebelius claims the federal response to the May 6 tornado that leveled the town of Greensburg was slow. She blames Bush's deployment of Kansas National Guardsmen in Iraq.


The president and his latest critic.

"States all over the country are not only missing personnel," she told CNN, "they don't have the equipment they need to come in. And it will just make it that much slower."

Fact is, she had 4,500 guard troops on call for this town of 1,600 if she needed them. She also had offers of help from other states for any resources Kansas asked for.

More than that, Kansas itself is full of resources — like farm equipment, along with private companies and citizen volunteers that can use them as effectively as any military equipment to clean up.

Worse, after Sebelius' loud complaints, it turned out she hadn't even asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency for help.

"If you don't request it," White House Spokesman Tony Snow noted, "you're not going to get it." That, by the way, is the law.

What Sebelius was really doing was resurrecting the bogus 2005 Katrina-era myth of an unresponsive federal government shunning a helpless disaster-struck community for no good reason.

Sebelius isn't alone. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Wednesday decried the 10,000 Greensburg tornado deaths. There were in fact 12 people killed. Never mind. An aide later called it a slip of the tongue, but the similarity to wildly overblown death estimates in New Orleans was unmistakable.

Why were so few people killed in a tornado that destroyed 90% of the town? Unlike New Orleans, Greensburg's 1,500 self-reliant residents used their 20-minute warning to find shelter.

That's why it is they who see though Sebelius' bid to blame Bush.

"The 'poor response' thing is just B.S." a disgusted Greensburg resident, Mike Swigart, told WCBS TV. He cited a swift National Guard response, and fellow farmers who rushed in to help.

Nor were the Kansas residents clamoring for aid. Self-reliance, it seems, is an antidote to political opportunism from demagogues who would turn everyone into a victim. These Kansans knew hay from political hay. Maybe it's time Sebelius did, too.