Word: blancos
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Further tangling the post-Katrina disaster effort was a struggle for power. On the Friday after the hurricane, as the Governor met with Bush aboard Air Force One on the tarmac of the New Orleans airport, the President broached a sensitive question: Would Blanco relinquish control of local law enforcement and the 13,268 National Guard troops from 29 states that fall under her command? State officials say Blanco considered it an odd move, given that federal control would not in itself mean any additional troops and would prohibit the guard under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 from acting...
...Republican Governor Haley Barbour of hurricane-ravaged Mississippi, he told Newhouse News Service. However, Barbour's press secretary Pete Smith told TIME that "no such request" was made of the Mississippi Governor. (Bartlett says Barbour's office made it clear early on they did not want to relinquish authority.) Blanco asked for 24 hours to consider it, but as she was meeting at midnight that Friday night with advisers, Card called and told her to look for a fax. It was a letter and memorandum of understanding under which she would turn over control of her troops. Blanco refused...
...signs of hard feelings between the White House and the Governor were hardly subtle. Blanco hired James Lee Witt, Bill Clinton's well-regarded FEMA chief, as an adviser--and didn't discourage anyone from assuming that it reflected her feelings about the ineffectiveness of Bush's FEMA director, Michael Brown. When Bush decided to make a second trip into the state last week, Blanco learned about it from the media--and had to cancel her trip to visit evacuees in the Houston Astrodome. Blanco insists, however, that Washington and Baton Rouge are now on the same page. Bush...
...While Blanco has come under fire, Republicans and Democrats in Louisiana's congressional delegation have stood behind her. Her fellow Governors, frustrated by FEMA's lack of response to their own offers of assistance, began trying to coordinate help through the National Governors Association. But by late last week, neither system appeared to be working. Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, initially told to expect 300 evacuees, got 9,000; meanwhile, Virginia Governor Mark Warner arranged for 1,400 beds in Blackstone, Va., complete with Internet access, a school, day care, even a heated pool and gym. By Friday, not a single...
...deep inside his government for information, the way his father or Bill Clinton did, preferring to get reports through channels. A highly screened information chain is fine when everything is going well, but in a crisis it can hinder. Louisiana officials say it took hours for Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco to reach Bush (although when she did, he talked to her soothingly, according to White House officials). "His inner circle takes pride in being able to tell him 'everything is under control,' when in this case it was not," said a former aide. "The whole idea that you have...