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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend.... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (18851)	4/25/2006 1:15:48 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Ah, the New York Slimes - All the lies they deem fit to print Oops! Never Mind Posted by John Power Line The reporters and editors who produce the New York Times seem pretty clearly to be word people, not numbers people. Of course, they often get the words wrong too. But their problems with numbers are hard to understand or excuse. On April 20, the Times ran an article by Jennifer Steinhauer on the problems the City of Houston has experienced in coping with refugees from Hurricane Katrina. A principal theme of the article was that the federal government had failed to come through with needed or promised help: <<< Seven months after two powerful hurricanes blew through the Gulf Coast, elected officials, law enforcement agencies and many residents say Texas is nearing the end of its ability to play good neighbor without compensation. >>> That theme, of course, fit well with the Times' "bash Bush" obsession. Today, however, the paper admitted in its corrections section that it had completely misrepresented the facts: <<< A front-page article on Thursday about strain on government services in Texas caused by hurricane evacuees misstated the number of evacuee children in Houston public schools and the amount of Federal aid the state has received. The most recent count, in late February, showed 5,475 students, not 30,000. The aid is $222 million, not $22 million. >>. As Junie B. Jones says: Boom! Do the math. The Times reported that the feds had contributed $733 per student. In fact, the feds have paid $40,548 per student. One can only surmise that the people who run the newspaper are beyond embarrassment. (OK, that's not quite fair, since some of the federal money has gone for policemen and other costs imposed by the Katrina refugees. But still, you get the drift.) Oh, that's not quite all. Today's paper included a second correction for another article, published the day after the Houston piece: <<< An article yesterday about criticism of the Small Business Administration's response to the 2005 hurricanes misstated the value of loans the agency has provided to victims. It is $842 million, not $336 million. >>> Well, that article wasn't so bad. It was only off by a factor of 2.5. By the Times' standards, that's pretty good. What a funny coincidence, though. Why is it that the Times' math is always wrong in the same direction? powerlineblog.com nytimes.com nytimes.com

To: Sully- who wrote (18851)	5/3/2006 2:52:53 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Chocolate City Evacuation Plan Texas Rainmaker New Orleans’ Mayor Ray Nagin has just unveiled a hurricane evacuation plan should the city ever be threatened by a large hurricane. Whew! Just in time, too, because I think scientists have predicted a large hurricane may hit New Orleans in the near… past. From MSNBC: <<< NEW ORLEANS - Mayor Ray Nagin unveiled a new evacuation strategy for New Orleans on Tuesday that relies more on buses and trains and eliminates the Superdome and Convention Center as shelters. >>> Relies more on buses? What is Nagin going to do, insure TWO parking lots full of flooded buses? <<< “Amtrak trains will also be used for evacuation purposes, which we’re really excited about,” Nagin said. >>> Unfortunately, Hurricane Katrina didn’t strike during an election year or maybe Nagin would’ve been excited enough not to decline Amtrak’s offer to use a train to evacuate people last time. I wonder if Nagin remembered to include the “free trips to Vegas” offer in this year’s plan. texasrainmaker.com

To: Sully- who wrote (18851)	5/23/2006 6:29:34 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

The bottom line is that the mass media blew their coverage of Hurricane Katrina badly. Has anyone paid a price for that malpractice? Not that I know of. Last I saw, media figures were awarding one another prizes for their Katrina coverage. Katrina Media Malpractice: Worse than we Knew! Power Line With another hurricane season approaching, Lou Dolinar's analysis of the medial meltdown over Katrina in Real Clear Politics couldn't be more timely. Dolinar shows that the media almost completely ignored an extraordinarily successful rescue effort, by the National Guard and others, that saved tens of thousands of lives in New Orleans. In their haste to broadcast lurid (albeit false) stories of chaos and mayhem, the press missed the real story: <<< The success of the makeshift medical center was such that there were just six deaths at the entire Superdome complex: four of natural causes, one drug overdose, and one suicide during the week of supposedly rampant anarchy and death.***Overall, the false claims of up to 200 dead at the Dome, including murder victims, had clueless FEMA officials showing up at the end of the week with a refrigerated 18-wheeler to claim the stacks of bodies. In all this time, Dressler said, "We didn't see a single camera crew or reporter on the scene. Maybe someone was there with a cell phone or a digital camera but I didn't see anyone." This was in the headquarters area. Maj. Ed Bush, meanwhile, did start seeing reporters on Tuesday and Wednesday, but inside the Dome, most were interested in confirming the stacks of bodies in the freezers, interviews with rape victims, he said, and other mayhem that never happened. He pitched the rescue angle and no one was interested. In the end, the media timeline was exactly backwards. The bulk of all rescues took place on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and began tapering off on Thursday, officials say. Their account is buttressed by a Washington Post poll of survivors, which indicates that 75 percent of the survivors who had been trapped and rescued were picked by Thursday, and virtually all were picked up by the end of the week. >>> Dolinar's analysis is lengthy and detailed. Please do read it all. The bottom line is that the mass media blew their coverage of Hurricane Katrina badly. Has anyone paid a price for that malpractice? Not that I know of. Last I saw, media figures were awarding one another prizes for their Katrina coverage. powerlineblog.com realclearpolitics.com

To: Sully- who wrote (18851)	5/26/2006 4:51:52 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Six Degrees of Stupidity By Texas Rainmaker on Hurricane Katrina Just in time for the kickoff of the 2006 campaign season, the media is padding some Hurricane Katrina statistics to give the finger-pointers some more ammunition. <<< Deaths of evacuees push toll to 1,577 Out-of-state victims mostly elderly, infirm The first stories of death came quickly and immediately: New Orleans area residents drowning in fetid floodwaters, succumbing in sweltering attics or being swept out to sea. But state officials say that for weeks after it made landfall Aug. 29, Hurricane Katrina kept claiming Louisiana victims, often in more subtle fashion and often in other states: elderly and ill evacuees too fragile for grueling trips on gridlocked highways, infants stillborn to mothers who were shuttled to other cities when they should have been on bed rest and residents overcome with anxiety by 24-hour television broadcasts of the devastation back home. >>> Seems to me we could just as well consider these “anxiety” deaths a result of the MSM-generated hysteria that was later shown to be total and complete BS. And other stories of death they blame on Katrina… <<< At 81, her aunt, Rita Parker, wasn’t the picture of perfect health. Parker had bronchitis and was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. But O’Neil and another of Parker’s nieces, Jo Ann Owen, said their aunt was nowhere near gravely ill… But after 20-plus hours in a car fleeing Katrina — with stops in Florida, Georgia and, finally, Oklahoma — Parker was beginning to wear, O’Neil said. Her aunt was glued to television coverage about the storm. Things seemed to worsen when they got the news that two family homes had been destroyed. Parker refused to eat and drink and became lethargic. She was hospitalized in Oklahoma City on Sept. 4 and died six days later. Doctors said her breathing problems put a strain on her heart. >>> and… <<< Most of the out-of-state dead reported so far were elderly people. But the ages range from an infant who survived only 45 minutes after birth in Pennsylvania, to a 104-year-old woman who died in North Carolina. The vast majority, 82 percent, died of natural causes. Twenty seven of the deaths were deemed accidental. At least two suicides are included in the official count. >>> If they were from “natural causes” doesn’t that by its very definition mean it wasn’t a result of the Hurricane? and the suicides? <<< In addition, Cataldie said, it’s quite possible that some evacuees had no access to essential prescription medication while away from home, and their wait turned fatal. Cataldie said he fielded a call from relatives of one man who committed suicide after he spent days without medication. >>> Really? That’s interesting considering there’s a friggin’ Walgreens on just about every street corner in Houston. and… <<< That’s where the National Guard airlifted Shirley Richard, 87, after she rode out Katrina at Metairie Manor nursing home. Richard refused to evacuate before the storm, said her sister, Mary Marino. Marino said she was shocked the second week in September to receive a telephone call from San Antonio informing her that Richard had been hospitalized there. She flew to Texas and spent three days with her sister, until Richard died Sept. 14. Richard had been ill before the storm with colitis and congestive heart failure. But she was determined to stay alive to comfort Marino, who was still grieving the death of a son a few years ago, Marino said. >>> I wonder if they’re also including murder victims in their stats of “hurrice-related” deaths. Because we all know that New Orleans wouldn’t have seen a single murder if not for the storm. Bottom line, the number of deaths in New Orleans around the time of the hurricane really showed no “catastrophic” increase, so there has to be some post-game analysis to see how many unrelated deaths can be retroactively attributed to the storm. And of course, I’m sure they’ll all be attributed back to President Bush… because we all know now it was 100% his fault. texasrainmaker.com nola.com seattletimes.nwsource.com sptimes.com

To: Sully- who wrote (18851)	6/1/2006 4:43:04 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

What Do You Know? Katrina Wasn't Bush's Fault After All Media Blog Stephen Spruiell Reporting In the days after Katrina hit, many in the press — most notably the New York Times editorial board — jumped to the conclusion that a Republican-driven lack of funding for flood protection in New Orleans was responsible for the flooding that followed the hurricane. It turns out that the more we learn about the disaster, the more we learn how wrong those critics were: <<< The evidence, by now, is overwhelming: Beautiful, decadent New Orleans wasn't doomed by Hurricane Katrina but by decades of human incompetence and neglect. As far as the drowned city is concerned, the greatest natural disaster in the nation's history would have been just a messy inconvenience if not for the fumbling hand of man. The mortal threat to New Orleans, as Katrina plowed into the Gulf Coast, was not the powerful winds — Mississippi took the brunt of those — but the massive storm surge the hurricane generated. We now know that the levees, floodwalls and other barriers protecting the city were, for the most part, plenty tall enough and theoretically strong enough to keep the waters at bay. On paper, New Orleans should have ended up wet and wounded, but basically intact. What happened instead was "the single most costly catastrophic failure of an engineered system in history," according to a report issued last week by the Independent Levee Investigation Team, a blue-ribbon panel led by experts from the University of California at Berkeley and funded by the National Science Foundation. >>> Most of this system was constructed long before Bush assumed the presidency. The "blame penny-pinching Republicans" explanation for the levee failures was always shallow, but in light of recent investigations it looks like a particularly misinformed rush to judgment. The problem, which I wrote about here, was not a lack of funds but a complete lack of prioritization regarding how those funds were spent. media.nationalreview.com media.nationalreview.com washingtonpost.com nrd.nationalreview.com

To: Sully- who wrote (18851)	6/1/2006 9:51:15 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

It will be interesting to see how much media play this gets, since it, er, undercuts some earlier reporting on the story. MORE ON KATRINA: Instapundit The report is out, and Popular Mechanics has a summary. Excerpt: <<< Government or contractor negligence was not discovered. The practices and design criteria did vary however since 1965. The piecemeal construction of levees, floodwalls and gates over the decades led to inconsistent levels of protection. Protection erected around the 17th Street Canal for example was not as strong as those at the Orleans Canal, which incorporated more conservative designs and practices. Materials also ranged in strength and fortitude. IPET also determined Katrina's surge levels were as much as six feet higher than design levels in the eastern and southern portions. And the waves were long period ocean storm waves allowing them to run over the levees. Some waves generated velocities of 10 to 15 feet-per-second over levees. All but four breaches were due to overtopping and erosion. A key element leading to failures at the 17th Street Canal and London Avenue was the formation of gaps behind I-walls. The morning of the hurricane, water had already rose 1.7 feet above the tops of the levees and floodwalls to an elevation of 14.2 feet. As the water passed over the levees, it eroded the soil supporting the walls degrading their stability and resulting in catastrophic flooding. >>> It will be interesting to see how much media play this gets, since it, er, undercuts some earlier reporting on the story. feeds.feedburner.com popularmechanics.com

To: Sully- who wrote (18851)	6/17/2006 11:32:20 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Katrina fraud: Don’t blame the "victims"!? McQ The QandO Blog Sometimes you read an editorial and wonder what the writer was smoking at the time of putting the old -30- at the end. In an LA Times editorial entitled "A Hurricane of Fraud", is a subtitle which says "FEMA did mismanage Katrina relief, but it’s wrong to blame victims for spending irresponsibly." It is? Why in the world is that? And just to be clear, it wasn’t "irresponsible" spending. It was fraudulent spending. To the tune of about 1.4 billion dollars. In the first paragraph you get an indication of why this sort of thinking is on display in the subtitle. <<< MOVE OVER, RECKLESS CONSUMERS. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has outdone your irresponsible spending by racking up a debit card bill so outrageous it could have been created using Mad Libs. Sex-change operations, vacations to the Dominican Republic and wild nights at strip clubs were all bought on the government’s dime by both con artists and legitimate victims of Hurricane Katrina. But try to keep that knee from jerking — although FEMA’s oversight was lacking, wasted money is an inevitable byproduct of providing rapid emergency assistance. >>> First of all, it wasn’t the "government’s dime". It never is. It was mine. And while FEMA may not have done the best job in oversight, what those who bought vacations and sex change operations did was commit fraud on my dime. Secondly, those who committed this fraud weren’t "victims". They were con artists. I’m sorry, contrary to the LA Times editorial advice, I do blame them, just as I blame a car jacker or a burgler for his or her acts. And every effort should be made to recover the money and to prosecute those who fraudulently misrepresented themselves and spent it. While it is fine to rake FEMA over the coals for its inept oversight it is not fine to excuse those who defrauded the real victims who were actually in need of those funds. <<< It’s easy, and necessary, to criticize FEMA’s across-the-board incompetence in responding to the largest displacement of Americans since the Civil War. But obsessing about the spending habits of refugees comes perilously close to blaming the victim. >>> This is just nonsense on a stick. Those that used the money for things like vacations, strip clubs and sex change operations weren’t "victims". They are crooks. And the LA Times should know better than to try to cast crooks as "victims". qando.net latimes.com

To: Sully- who wrote (18851)	6/20/2006 2:59:24 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

FEMA's folly by Jeff Jacoby Townhall.com Jun 19, 2006 About 10 days after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast last year, a front-page story in The Washington Post noted with wonderment that huge numbers of people had been rescued from disaster by private relief efforts. "Owing to stealthy acts of hospitality that are largely invisible to government, aid agencies, and the news media," the story began, "hundreds of thousands of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina seem to be disappearing -- into the embrace of their extended families. . . Community leaders say that the speed with which families have absorbed displaced people is remarkable, especially compared with the federal response." The extraordinary generosity of ordinary Americans is indeed remarkable, and not only when it comes to relatives and friends. In Katrina's wake, millions of Americans opened their hearts, their wallets, and even their homes to help strangers. That help came in every form imaginable: from food, bedding, and clothing to cellphones, cars, and Internet access ; from truckloads of toys to offers of jobs ; from the barbers who gave free shaves and haircuts to hurricane victims in the Astrodome to the Delta Airlines CEO who flew to New Orleans with 20,000 pounds of blankets, food, generators, and toilet paper. And then there was the money. Hundreds of millions of dollars were raised within days -- a charitable outpouring that broke all records -- and funneled to the Katrina refugees through a myriad of charitable organizations. When Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds solicited other bloggers' recommendations on where to donate, he was swamped with replies. I printed out the list on Sept. 1; it was already 12 pages long. It contained links to scores of charities large and small, including every relief organization I'd ever heard of. Except one. Nobody recommended sending money to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It was on Sept. 7, the day the Post was marveling at how swiftly hundreds of thousands of evacuees had already been helped without government involvement, that FEMA announced it would distribute $2,000 in "expedited assistance" to each household of hurricane victims. Households could also receive additional payments, up to $26,200, to pay for temporary shelter, property repairs, and other emergency expenses. That this was an open invitation to abuse was clear at once, but only last week did we find out just how egregious -- and costly -- that abuse turned out to be. Of the $6.3 billion that FEMA handed out, as much as $1.4 billion -- nearly a quarter of the total -- went to crooks and con artists. According to the Government Accountability Office, FEMA paid millions of dollars to prison inmates, to people who listed cemeteries or post office boxes as their damaged homes, and for property that its own inspectors reported was nonexistent. Some people collected thousands of dollars in rent assistance even though they were staying in hotels paid for by FEMA. One man ran up an $8,000 government tab at the Pagoda Hotel in Honolulu, for example, yet was paid $2,358 to cover his rent for the same period. Debit cards issued by FEMA to cover emergency expenses, the GAO reported, were frequently used for purchases "that did not appear to meet legitimate disaster needs." Like diamond jewelry. And fireworks. And season tickets to the New Orleans Saints, a bottle of champagne at Hooters, $300 worth of "Girls Gone Wild" videos, and a Caribbean vacation. And that doesn't include the 381 debit cards, worth $762,000, that FEMA simply -- lost. This is what comes of turning charity into a government function. It is what comes of believing that a centralized government agency can respond to a local disaster more effectively than a multitude of private individuals acting on their own initiative and using their own judgment. It is what comes of letting politicians vow, as President Bush did after Katrina, to spend "whatever it costs" on post-disaster relief and rebuilding. Presidents didn't always talk that way. When Congress in 1887 appropriated funds to buy seed for drought-stricken farmers in Texas, President Grover Cleveland vetoed the bill. Nowhere did the Constitution authorize public expenditures for personal benevolence, he wrote in his veto message. "The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character." He was right. Private donors came through for those Texas farmers with 10 times as much money as Cleveland had vetoed -- just as millions of Americans came to the aid of their countrymen last year, without waiting for Washington to tell them what to do. Think of how much more those Americans could have accomplished if the $1.4 billion that FEMA wasted had been theirs to spend instead. Jeff Jacoby is an Op-Ed writer for the Boston Globe, a radio political commentator, and a contributing columnist for Townhall.com. Copyright © 2006 Boston Globe townhall.com

To: Sully- who wrote (18851)	6/21/2006 3:36:35 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

NEW ORLEANS' CRIMINAL CHAOS Nicole Gelinas NEW YORK Post Opinion June 21, 2006 IN the aftermath of a weekend bloodbath that left five teenagers shot to death, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has asked Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco to send in National Guard troops to assert order in that half-empty city. Perhaps all this will alert Washington to a key truth it has so far ignored, even as it spends billions of federal dollars to rebuild the Big Easy: The largest obstacle to recovery is New Orleans' culture of murder - which is so vicious and pervasive that it numbs the whole city. At best, the Guard is just a short-term fix. Yes, soldiers can protect neighborhoods from looting, as some residents have complained that they have refurbished their houses and bought new appliances to replace flooded junk only to return from work to find their homes stripped bare. But soldiers can't fix the real problem: Criminals terrorized New Orleans long before Katrina in large part because the city's law and order system is broken. No matter how many billions the feds spend to rebuild levees, the majority of New Orleans' upstanding citizens won't return until the city solves its crime problem. In the past six months, New Orleans has booked 54 killings, ensuring that it leads the nation in per-capita homicides. Social scientists can ruminate over the "root" causes behind New Orleans' sky-high pre-Katrina homicide rate (which, if it held for New York's population, would mean nearly 5,000 murders a year here). But the most important thing is to stop it. To do that, Blanco and Nagin must make real changes, not just call up the troops - and the Bush administration should help them, or the billions national taxpayers spend to rebuild will be wasted. First, Blanco should fix the criminal-justice system. Consider: Before Katrina, only 7 percent of those arrested for a crime in New Orleans served time, compared with 58 percent in a "normal" city. For homicide arrests, it was only 12 percent incarcerated in New Orleans, vs. 47 percent in a healthy city. Robbery arrests, 18 percent vs. 60 percent; drug-distribution arrests, 12 percent vs. 71 percent. Because New Orleans doesn't keep violent criminals behind bars, witnesses are afraid to testify against dealers, and murder victims' friends and relatives take revenge themselves: Last weekend's mass murder was likely retaliation for an earlier drug-related murder spate. Blanco can stop this virulent murder cycle by ensuring that her state is tough on crime: For one thing, Louisiana needs tough drug laws (like New York's Rockefeller laws) to keep dealers locked up. Of course, New Orleans' police department is no picnic, either. While many officers serve heroically, the department is not up to professional standards. Plus, even before the Katrina desertions, it had one-third of New York's police coverage on a population basis. (Pre-Katrina, New Orleans had hired former NYPD Chief of Department Louis Anemone to draw up a reform plan based on New York's model. But the storm cancelled his scheduled seminars for command officers, and the city hasn't restarted the project.) Where do the feds fit in? New Orleans's tax base is still decimated from Katrina. Operating cash from the feds to help the Big Easy's beleaguered police department would do a world of good in luring evacuated middle-class citizens back so that the city can rebuild that tax base over, say, three years - but only if the funding's tied to accountability and an outside plan like Anemone's, and if Blanco holds an emergency session of the Legislature to fix the judicial system. No, this isn't a federal mandate: New Orleans needn't take any money if it doesn't want to. As for the U.S. taxpayers, well, we're already spending billions to rebuild physical infrastructure; to ensure that criminal sociopaths don't ruin that investment, we might spend a few tens of millions more on helping New Orleans assert safety. President Bush, meanwhile, could show that New Orleans, a Democratic city, can be rebuilt better than before with conservative values, including basic law and order. Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to City Journal. nypost.com

To: Sully- who wrote (18851)	8/16/2006 2:28:05 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

A partial chronology to share with those leftists who remain Stuck on Stupid regarding Katrina. That’s a fact! State & local governments ARE considered first responders. Their own disaster plans specifically state this fact. And FEMA also makes it indisputably clear to every agency that FEMA is NOT a first responder. Here's irrefutable proof again - it that has been made available to you at least once already. City of New Orleans Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan Message 21668348 New Orlean's "Hurricane Plan". Scan it for about 10 minutes and you'll see it's a damning document insofar as city management there is concerned. Message 21669945 FEMA's plan advises state and local emergency managers not to expect federal aid for 72 to 96 hours, and base their own preparedness efforts on the need to be self-sufficient for at least that period. "Fundamentally the first breakdown occurred at the local level," said one state official who works with FEMA. 'Did the city have the situational awareness of what was going on within its borders? The answer was no." Message 21672938 I've reviewed the New Orleans emergency management plan. Here is an important section in the first paragraph. "We coordinate all city departments and allied state and federal agencies which respond to citywide disasters and emergencies through the development and constant updating of an integrated multi-hazard plan. All requests for federal disaster assistance and federal funding subsequent to disaster declarations are also made through this office. Our authority is defined by the Louisiana Emergency Assistance and Disaster Act of 1993, Chapter 6 Section 709, Paragraph B, 'Each parish shall maintain a Disaster Agency which, except as otherwise provided under this act, has jurisdiction over and serves the entire parish.' " .... "In other words, the Feds actually responded much faster than they were normally expected to." Message 21673097 SATURDAY, AUGUST 27 - Bush declared the gulf coast area a Federal Disaster area on Saturday – two days before Katrina hit. That freed up FEMA resources for local and state coordinators and allowed for the pre-positioning of supplies so they could be rapidly deployed to the affected areas..... For the first time in (I heard) 34 years the President actually declared a state of emergency before the storm even hit. Then he went a step further... Meanwhile, no one points out that it was President Bush who implored Governor Blanco to issue a first-ever mandatory evacuation order for the city, an action by the President that probably saved tens of thousands of lives..... SUNDAY, AUGUST 28 - Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding (However, Blanco will not make an official evacuation order until late on Tuesday evening)..... President Bush ... on Sunday urged people in the path of Hurricane Katrina to forget anything but their safety and move to higher ground as instructed.... MONDAY, AUGUST 29 - Hurricane Katrina strikes New Orleans at 8:00 AM ...... As the Category 4 surged ashore just east of New Orleans on Monday, FEMA had medical teams, rescue squads and groups prepared to supply food and water poised in a semicircle around the city, said agency Director Michael Brown..... At 1:45 PM, President Bush declares the states of Louisiana and Mississippi “Major Disaster Areas.”..... At midafternoon on that Monday, a few hours after the hurricane made landfall.... Governor Blanco lavished her gratitude on Mr. Brown, the FEMA chief. "Director Brown," she said, "I hope you will tell President Bush how much we appreciated - these are the times that really count - to know that our federal government will step in and give us the kind of assistance that we need." Senator Mary L. Landrieu pitched in: "We are indeed fortunate to have an able and experienced director of FEMA who has been with us on the ground for some time." Mr. Brown replied in the same spirit: "What I've seen here today is a team that is very tight-knit, working closely together, being very professional doing it, and in my humble opinion, making the right calls." At that point, New Orleans seemed to have been spared the worst of the storm, although some areas were already being flooded through breaches in levees..... If relief was REALLY slow in coming, if the Federal Government was NOT meeting its standard timelines, then I doubt Sen. Landrieu and Governor Blanco would be standing shoulder to shoulder issuing statements like this in the early stages of the storm.... MONDAY Evening - Mayor Nagin, in an interview with TP relates a conversation with federal disaster officials. “FEMA said give us a list of your needs,” said Nagin, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “And let me tell you, we’re giving them a hell of a list.” TUESDAY, AUGUST 30 - less than 24 hours after the storm had passed over the area, this represented the federal response to date to the disaster. Here are some highlights: FEMA deployed 23 Disaster Medical Assistance Teams from all across the U.S. to staging areas in Alabama, Tennessee, Texas, and Louisiana and is now moving them into impacted areas. Seven Urban Search and Rescue task forces and two Incident Support Teams have been deployed and propositioned in Shreveport, La., and Jackson, Miss., including teams from Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Three more Urban Search and Rescue teams are in the process of deployment. FEMA is moving supplies and equipment into the hardest hit areas as quickly as possible, especially water, ice, meals, medical supplies, generators, tents, and tarps. The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) dispatched more than 390 trucks that are beginning to deliver millions of meals ready to eat, millions of liters of water, tarps, millions of pounds of ice, mobile homes, generators, containers of disaster supplies, and forklifts to flood damaged areas. DOT has helicopters and a plane assisting delivery of essential supplies. The National Guard of the four most heavily impacted states are providing support to civil authorities as well as generator, medical and shelter with approximately 7,500 troops on State Active Duty. The National Guard is augmenting civilian law enforcement capacity; not acting in lieu of it........ CNN has a taped telephone conversation with New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin in which he says the city doesn't need any help. This conversation was taped on August 30, the day after Katrina hit, with his city filling with water, uncontrolled looting in the streets and a disastrous situation developing in the Super Dome and the Convention Center. If the Mayor of New Orleans didn't know what was going on, in his own city, how could the president have known, or for that matter Secretary Chertoff or Director Brown? .... Ya, somehow this is Bush's fault too. Read the New Orleans Evacuation Plan linked above. These are among the buses that were NOT used to evacuate people BEFORE Katrina hit. Terry Ebbert, the head of New Orleans' emergency operations job is to coordinate New Orleans' response to emergencies. Somebody should show him this picture and tell him to stop blaming everyone but himself..... But since no one mobilized these buses before the storm--ahem, Mr. Ebbert--since no one mobilized them before the storm, the poor in New Orleans had no way of getting out. And now the buses are waterlogged and useless. All 205 of them. They will go on the expense side of the ledger instead of the asset side. That's your fault, Mr. Ebbert. The blame rests with you, sir. You knew the city owned those buses, you knew where to get them, where to fuel them and you probably had a list of the drivers who operate them. Yet there they sit, half submerged. One emergency manager with half a clue and a couple hundred drivers could have more or less saved New Orleans from turning into Mad Max territory. Terry Ebbert can blame everyone else all he wants, but this crisis is almost entirely his fault..... The lesson: "It's the busses, stupid." Even if you can't fill 'em up full of people before the storm, you drive them up the road and back again to pick people up after the storm passes and the city floods..... TUESDAY, AUGUST 30 - At 6:30 PM Mayor Nagin issued an urgent bulletin: Nagin said efforts to stop the flow of water at the breach on the 17th Street Canal are failing, which means the floodwaters will rise again. Nagin said the waters will soon overwhelm the pump, shutting it down. He said the water will rise to 3 feet above sea level – or 12-15 feet in some places of east Jefferson and Orleans parishes. The additional flooding causes 80% of the city to be underwater........ At 10:15 PM, Governor Blanco releases a statement calling for the evacuation of the Superdome.... WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31 - Morning - Blanco Refused to Act - Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said. . . . Governor Blanco called for a total evacuation of the city of New Orleans (FEMA is providing 475 buses for the convoy)..... Governor Blanco (finally) asks the President to send federal troops to conduct law enforcement activities (the President cannot order them in himself - the Governor MUST make this request)...... WEDNESDAY Afternoon - Governor Blanco announces that Superdome evacuation will begin Wednesday evening. Department of Social Services Secretary Ann Williamson said the buses should start rolling later Wednesday. About 475 vehicles have been arranged to ferry the evacuees to Houston.... “This is one of the largest, if not the largest evacuations in this country,” said Col. Jeff Smith, deputy director of the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. “This (plan) buys us some time so we can figure things out,” said FEMA spokesman Bill Lokey..... I found a picture even more tragic in Google Maps. wizbangblog.com On the left is the Superdome. On the right is the OTHER Orleans Parish bus barn (the Algiers Bus Barn... less than 5 miles from the Superdome). These buses never flooded and the route from there to the Convention Center and the Superdome was open the whole time. The hurricane blew in Monday morning and this picture was not taken until Wednesday. They did not finish evacuating the Superdome until Saturday. To put a fine point on it... These were not private buses. They did not belong to a neighboring parish. These buses belonged to Mayor Ray Nagin. He could have used them at any time. He didn't. Same place later in the day Your count may vary, but I counted roughly 60 buses in the yard and presumably they filled the bus barns with buses to protect as many as possible. The 2 buildings could have held probably another 50 buses..... Mayor Nagin didn't need to wait for the Feds to "get off their asses." All he needed to do was use the resources available to him..... The feds declare a Public Health Emergency: HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt Wednesday declared a federal public health emergency and accelerated efforts to create up to 40 emergency medical shelters to provide care for evacuees and victims of Hurricane Katrina. Working with its federal partners, HHS is helping provide and staff 250 beds in each shelter for a total of 10,000 beds for the region. Ten of these facilities will be staged within the next 72 hours and another 10 will be deployed within the next 100 hours after that. In addition, HHS is deploying up to 4,000 medically-qualified personnel to staff these facilities and to meet other health care needs in this region..... Governor Blanco (finally) issues an Executive Order allowing the National Guard to seize school busses in order to help in the evacuation: National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Pete Schneider, said the order, signed by Gov. Kathleen Blanco late Wednesday, means “we are going to take the buses. We need to get people out of New Orleans.. . . .Either they will give them up or we will take them.’’ These are the same buses that were to be used to evacuate residents PRIOR to a hurricane as documented in the official New Orleans Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan.... THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1 - At 4:15 AM - TP reports that the Coast Guard says it has rescued 3,000 stranded victims from the city..... NOTE: This is the earliest that State & Local governments are to expect FEMA/Fed gov't assistance to begin to arrive, yet they were already on the job prior to the arrival of Katrina..... National Guard troops were mobilized immediately and 7,500 troops were on the ground within 24 hours..... The DOD response is well ahead of the 1992 Hurricane Andrew timetable. Back then, the support request took nine days to crawl through the bureaucracy. The reaction this time was less than three days officially, and DOD had been pre-staging assets in anticipation of the aid request from the moment Katrina hit. DOD cannot act independently of course; the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is the lead agency. Requests for assistance have to be routed from local officials through FEMA to U.S. Northern Command and then to the necessary components. In practice, this means state officials have to assess damage and determine relief requirements; FEMA has to come up with a plan for integrating the military into the overall effort; DOD has to begin to pack and move the appropriate materiel, and deploy sufficient forces. This has all largely been or is being accomplished. Although a disaster of this magnitude is bound to be politicized, "it is hard to understand what more should, or realistically could have been done up to this point." .... President Bush agrees to have the federal government pick up the entire tab for relief efforts..... Afternoon - The Defense Department announces the deployment of an additional 30,000 troops to the Gulf region..... FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 - Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, who is coordinating federal relief efforts on behalf of the National Guard, could not say when people can expect to be rescued..... (But) the magnitude of this problem is you cannot help everybody at the same time”.... The Coast Guard announced it has rescued more than 4,000 victims of the hurricane and flood...... Mayor Nagin explodes on live radio, railing against federal relief efforts. If you’ve come this far with me, all I ask is that you read his comments and compare them to what has been reported in this timeline previously. nola.com. Message 21673366 Saturday, September 03, 2005 - I’m a volunteer coordinator for MEMA (The Missouri Emergency Management Agency - you guys are WAAAYYY off base in criticizing FEMA. Disaster preparedness is the responsibility of State and Local authorities – in this case LEMA (The Louisiana Emergency Management Agency). There is a state-wide director for disaster relief in every state – that person is called the Governor. There is a local director for disaster relief in every municipality – that person is called the Mayor. FEMA is a coordinating body that assists State and Local authorities in getting the resources they need. Because they are the “go to” people most folks are under the impression that they are in charge, and in fact if the State and Local authorities abdicate control over a disaster area they will take over. Typically after the initial response to a disaster the local guys do just that, leave FEMA in control. That’s because they have the experience and personnel to manage disasters of this scale. I’ve been through three major floods and a few big storms that generated enough tornado damage to get the affected counties disaster relief – believe me when I tell you what we are seeing from FEMA now is lightyears ahead of what I’ve seen from them in the past. Typically it took two to three days just to get the disaster declaration, then another two to three to get FEMA deployed – of course by then the local guys had been on the ground working around the clock for five or six days and we were more than happy to dump everything in FEMA’s lap. That’s the way the system is designed. Bush saw that and tried to skip a few steps to speed things up, he pre-declared the areas disaster areas..... Bush - "despite their best efforts, the magnitude of responding to a crisis over a disaster area that is larger than the size of Great Britain has created tremendous problems that have strained state and local capabilities. The result is that many of our citizens simply are not getting the help they need, especially in New Orleans. And that is unacceptable.".... "there are more than 21,000 National Guard troops operating in Louisiana and Mississippi, and more are on the way. More than 13,000 of these troops are in Louisiana.".... "Defense has deployed more than 4,000 active duty forces to assist in search and recovery, and provide logistical and medical support.".... "Today I ordered the Department of Defense to deploy additional active duty forces to the region. Over the next 24 to 72 hours, more than 7,000 additional troops from the 82nd Airborne, from the 1st Cavalry, the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, and the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force will arrive in the affected areas.".... Sunday September 04, 2005 Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans? Access to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders. The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request -- that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city. So as I understand it, the Louisiana authorities don't want the Red Cross to provide services in New Orleans because that will discourage people from leaving? ..... Instead of acknowledging the faults that lie at city level and stepping in to organize relief efforts, Louisiana and New Orleans officials spent most of last week lashing out at the Bush administration, though its response was three times faster than the response to hurricane Andrew just 13 years ago. Government actually got quicker at doing something, in spite of the massive increase in the number of lawyers on the public dime in the intervening years. The locals blamed the feds even though the administration, whatever its faults, was ahead of all local officials when it came to declaring a state of emergency and requesting a mandatory evacuation. A massive butt-covering exercise is underway in Louisiana as I write, so massive it is second only to the actual relief and law and order efforts going on in the vast Katrina destruction zone..... Gateway Pundit has some video showing the power of Hurricane Katrina that begs the question, “What could George Bush have done to stop this?” He also asks why we aren’t hearing a lot of complaining from those in Mississippi about the relief effort. Mississippi.... had their entire cities completely wiped out – reduced to scattered rubble. Relief got to them more quickly not because many of them were white, but (among other reasons) because they were not thought to have “dodged a bullet” as New Orleans originally was earlier in the week. Watch the video..... Message 21675833 Tuesday September 6, 2005 - Was just talking to someone who knows military matters and disaster relief, and has been following the situation on the Gulf Coast very closely. Several points -- “The mayor and the governor are negligent and incompetent. The administration has tried to smooth out the chain of command, but she won't do it. The constitution says that the governor is in charge of the Guard.” (The Washington Post wrote about this on Saturday...) -- “None of those poor people were moved prior to the storm. They were told to go to the Superdome, but they had to walk there. Whose responsibility is that?” -- “General Honore in one day got 20,000 people evacuated from the convention center with a ground and air evacuation. Have you heard about that in the media?” -- “There will be 50k troops there by mid-week, a combination of active duty and National Guard. Including elements of 82nd Airborne Division, First Cavalry Division, and two Marine brigades. That's in just over a week. That's amazing. But no one realizes it. They had to trot General Honore out this morning to try to explain to the media how you move troops. There were National Guard pre-positioned in the north part of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana two days before the storm, watching the storm, seeing which way it was going to go, and once the storm hit, moving troops in immediately. There was a flow-plan that's been working since.” -- “The constitution says the governor is in charge of the Guard. The president would have to invoke the Insurrection Act to over-ride that. No president has done that since the Civil War. And he would have to do it over the head of the governor. Bush is not there yet.” -- “The military is there anyway on the principle: 'It's better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.' Federal troops can't do law enforcement. So they are being creative. National Guard will embed in active military units and be there to make actual arrests. That's very similar to what has been done in past hurricanes and the Coast Guard has done the same thing with the Navy in the past.” -- “There are no law enforcement problems in Mississippi. They have been acting there with the cooperation of the governor. In New Orleans, they don't have the same kind of cooperation from the governor or the mayor. It's not as stream-lined or as effective as it could be.” -- “The New Orleans police disintegrated. The national response plan calls for state and local to be the first on the scene. But the catastrophe wiped out the whole local infrastructure and the emergency communications. 80% of the police disintegrated and they are just not beginning to re-constitute.” .... Wednesday, September 7, 2005 - The Louisiana DHS ordered the Red Cross not to enter New Orleans.... the Salvation Army confirmed that the state officials kept them away from the victims as well.... I was very specific with the American Red Cross, president and CEO Marty Evans, and said wait. Tell me clearly. Were you prepared to go in before the levees broke? Before water became an issue of any kind? She said absolutely. Were you denied access before the levees broke? She said we were denied access from minute one..... The suffering and deprivations that caused the revulsion of the nation did not result from a lack of response from FEMA.... The city failed to provide transportation to those who lacked it for the mandatory evacuation, and the state refused to allow the aid workers to go to the centers where the state and city urged the victims to congregate..... Where did the buses come from? They came from FEMA. 1,100 of them were produced in 72 hours, even though as we all saw, buses were under water all over the city, never used..... No amount of spin will overcome the heads of the Red Cross and the Salvation Army telling this story..... ...while the Red Cross was being kept out of New Orleans, refugees were being kept in... Police from surrounding jurisdictions shut down several access points to one of the only ways out of New Orleans last week, effectively trapping victims of Hurricane Katrina in the flooded and devastated city. . . . "If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged." But -- in an example of the chaos that continued to beset survivors of the storm long after it had passed -- even as Lawson's men were closing the bridge, authorities in New Orleans were telling people that it was only way out of the city..... Thursday, September 8, 2005 - Blanco caught on video admitting her screw up in not calling for troops right away.... "I really should have started that in the first call"... Here’s a brief transcript: Message 21696433 Message 21703591 Friday, September 9, 2005 - The city of New Orleans followed virtually no aspect of its own emergency management plan in the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans officials also failed to implement most federal guidelines, which stated that the Superdome was not a safe shelter for thousands of residents. Sunday, September 11, 2005 - The federal response to Katrina was not as portrayed Jack Kelly Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "The federal government pretty much met its standard time lines, but the volume of support provided during the (initial) 72- 96 hour(s) was unprecedented. The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne." ...... Why haven’t we heard about "failure" in Mississippi? Because this is how it is supposed to work..... And because that all worked as it was supposed to at the state level, we heard nothing about the failure of FEMA in Mississippi, did we? .... It appears both the governor and the National Guard of Mississippi understood and did their jobs the way they were supposed to be done without trying to pin their failures and shortcomings on another agency who had no legal control of their state's disaster relief effort..... Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - Now that survivors are speaking out, the media may need to explain why they ignored the buses in favor of bashing the feds.... Gale-Force Exaggeration Katrina’s other consequence. Katrina spawned plague of misinformation USA TODAY Message 21784170 Someone tell me, other than the position of Hurricane Katrina, what significant part of the story the media got right during the first two weeks of the coverage, especially regarding the effects on the city of New Orleans. Message 21819353 Message 22042646 Katrina Media Malpractice: Worse than we Knew! Message 22480259 Popular Mechanics Takes on Katrina Myths Message 22234648 THE BLAME GAME michellemalkin.com 'Toxic' Flood Another Example Of Katrina Hysteria Message 21706667 Louisiana DHS Officials Under Indictment As Levees Broke Message 21712281 We're starting to learn a lot about why the levees in New Orleans failed. And the picture is not pretty. Message 21852427 Message 21940185 The Katrina Evacuation: A Phenomenal Success Message 21700165 This is why we’re talking about the Katrina catastrophe in Louisiana and not Mississippi and Louisiana. Message 21696413 Supporting evidence here Message 21668473 Message 21671951 Message 21667399 Message 21668327 Message 21672256 Message 21669769 Message 21671039 Message 21672137 Message 21672187 Message 21673366 Message 21675804 Message 21676068 Message 21696810 Message 21764826 Message 21694913 Message 21700752 Message 21668391 Message 22228115 Message 21671039 Message 21672992 Message 22691079 Message 21696433 Message 21703591 Message 21704733 Message 21687086 Message 21690883 Message 21692125 Bush's actions prior to & immediately after Katrina Message 21667703 Message 21668473 Message 21672256 Message 21668391 Message 21671951 Message 21673366 Message 21673411 Message 21674104 Message 21686008

To: Sully- who wrote (18851)	8/18/2006 9:56:29 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Media get's an F on Katrina By Lorie Byrd Townhall.com Friday, August 18, 2006 In a little over a week, August 29 to be exact, the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina will be observed. Expect some pretty extensive coverage on the cable channels, especially on a certain gray-haired CNN reporters’ program, about all the lessons learned over the past year. There should be plenty of discussion about what Katrina revealed about race and poverty in America and how it exposed weaknesses in the government. What I would like, but don’t expect to see, however, are exposes of the failures in reporting the story and some explanations of how such failures could occur. It would also be nice to hear some corrections to the flawed record so many Americans have come to believe as fact. At a Duke University website I found that the “Duke faculty from a variety of disciplines offer their perspectives on some of the issues and challenges that still exist as the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches.” The list of issues faculty would be discussing included repopulation of New Orleans, lingering health issues, mental health issues, improving housing, Louisiana recovery efforts, and even “Are national disasters punishments from God?” and “Bush administration incompetence during Katrina, 9/11.” What was not offered by the Duke faculty was an examination of journalistic incompetence during Katrina, much of which, I would argue, was the result of many reporters’ rush to pin all blame for the aftermath of the storm on the federal government and the Bush administration. On the NOLA.com list of events set to mark August 29, is "Hands Around the Dome," a gathering “marking the ordeal of those who sought refuge in the Superdome.” Those at the Superdome and the Convention Center did suffer through a horrible ordeal, but some of the reporting of those ordeals was pretty horrible, too. Reporting of unsubstantiated rumors was especially rampant in coverage of the New Orleans Superdome and Convention Center. Politicians repeating the stories gave them additional credibility and resulted in them receiving even more coverage. A month after the storm hit, the Los Angeles Times described some of the misreporting: The New Orleans Times-Picayune on Monday described inflated body counts, unverified "rapes," and unconfirmed sniper attacks as among examples of "scores of myths about the dome and Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials." Indeed, Mayor C. Ray Nagin told a national television audience on "Oprah" three weeks ago of people "in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people." The Los Angeles Times story then offered some possible reasons for the bad reports. “Journalists and officials who have reviewed the Katrina disaster blamed the inaccurate reporting in large measure on the breakdown of telephone service, which prevented dissemination of accurate reports to those most in need of the information. Race may have also played a factor.” Call me crazy, but another factor may have been the eagerness of some reporters to latch onto any story that could be used as an example of government incompetence, while giving much less attention to the extraordinary and unprecedented, and extremely successful, operation by the Coast Guard to rescue thousands of people in very dangerous conditions. Stories, such as the one published by the L.A. Times cited above, did alert the public to some of the bad reporting during Katrina, but those stories got much less attention than the original reports. What was even more pervasive than the factually incorrect reports, however, were blanket statements about the racial component of the story and the tone of the reports, which were often more critical of federal government efforts than those of state and local governments. While I don’t expect journalists to point out all the mistakes they made, it will be interesting to see whether or not the politicians commenting on the anniversary will make any effort to correct the record where gross misperceptions remain. More interesting will be to observe whether any of those politicians still cite incorrect information from those original wrong reports one year later. The tone and choice of topics during coverage of the anniversary could have some significant political ramifications as the story will play a part in setting a stage for upcoming congressional elections. The story could possibly have even bigger effects felt in 2008. In anticipation of the upcoming anniversary, many politicians have made pilgrimages to the site of the most devastating storm in modern history. Not surprisingly, some of those politicians are often cited presidential hopefuls. Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu recently took Senators Barack Obama and John Kerry on a tour. John Kerry, who was making his third visit in the past year said, “It’s a time to measure what have we done. It’s a shame that it’s going to take a one-year anniversary for everybody to refocus. I think people will be shocked by how little has happened.” As I wrote last year, one potential presidential candidate, Rudy Giuliani, might have had his prospects helped by the experience of Katrina. Another politician, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, became discussed as a potential presidential candidate due to his outstanding performance in response to the storm. Other politicians faced intense scrutiny during the Katrina crisis, and results ranged even among those criticized most harshly. While FEMA director, Michael Brown wound up the butt of jokes and out of a job, New Orleans Mayor Ray (school bus) Nagin, was re-elected to office. It appears that most journalists, even those guilty of the worst of the misreporting, have come through a year later with consequences similar to those enjoyed by Mayor Nagin. townhall.com dukenews.duke.edu nola.com latimes.com www2.ljworld.com townhall.com

To: Sully- who wrote (18851)	8/24/2006 5:33:38 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

‘Hyper-Hype' By AMITY SHLAES New York Sun Opinion Section August 24, 2006 There is hype, and then there is hyper-hype. Hype is a pretty simple idea. Hyping is, for example, exaggerating a numbers story in order to get more people to view it on the Internet or front page. Hyper-hype happens when someone distorts numbers that were already distorted. Then the change is no longer arithmetic. It is geometric, and the event becomes unrecognizable — as unrecognizable as a former drizzle that has morphed into a category 4 hurricane. That is what happened with Katrina. Almost one year ago, the storm swamped New Orleans and killed some 1,500 people in Louisiana, as well as hundreds of others. Even as the levees broke, the rest of the world took the story away from the port city. It transformed Katrina into something it could use for its own purposes. The transformation was all about numbers. The estimates of potential casualties began on Sunday, August 28, 2005. On Monday, New Orleans Mayor, Ray Nagin, told the press that, "it wouldn't be unreasonable to have 10,000 dead in Orleans Parish." Sometime later that week, Bob Johannessen of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals said 25,000 body bags were on their way to New Orleans. Editors began phoning reporters and demanding that they confirm that number. Mr. Johannessen's factoid never developed into larger news — there weren't tens of thousands of dead. But papers and television began to hype the body-bag item as if the bodies had already been found, and as if the Bush administration were principally to blame. There was some resistance. Yes, the correspondents told their editors, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or the Army Corps of Engineers, or the state of Louisiana had failed. And yes, Mr. Bush should have shown up in Louisiana right away, as Lyndon Johnson had after Hurricane Betsy. But if 25,000 people were dead, the reporters said, they probably would know it already. Still, many correspondents were too shocked to resist. They were just coming off holiday into an appalling story. The number blew around the American media. In Europe and Asia the story went wild, a twister of its own making. New Orleans recalls another hyperhyped event — the story of Timisoara, Romania, in 1989. The news was bad. Romania's grim police, the Securitate, had killed citizens. Timisoara also broke at holiday time, when many journalists weren't around. On December 23, the Associated Press moved a story, "Mass Graves Found in Rumania." There were reports of as many as 4,500 corpses. The truth, that several dozen people had been killed, came out much later. It is clear in both instances why hype became hyper-hype. Mayor Nagin wanted to maximize New Orleans's sense of being wronged by Louisiana's governor and President Bush's Washington. The anti-Bush press wanted to find something to pin on a president in the tired fifth year of his administration. Film director and author Michael Moore, a big Bush critic, wanted fresh material. Filmmaker Spike Lee wanted to argue that Katrina proved the neglect of American blacks. Democrats wanted ammo for the 2006 midterm elections. Similar forces drove European papers covering Katrina. Europeans were aching for bad news from America and now they had it in FEMA's bungling and the failure of other federal offices. Europeans don't understand American federalism, so they didn't understand why Mr. Bush hadn't marched into New Orleans as if it were Baghdad. One foreign wire service suggested that 1,500 had died in a single suburban area. The coverage was so egregious that Tony Blair was shocked. Rupert Murdoch said the British prime minister told him the British Broadcasting Corp.'s coverage was "full of hatred for America." By September 12, 2005 British columnist William Rees-Mogg was already calling the American 2008 presidential election, saying that Katrina made Hillary Clinton "unstoppable." In Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu's opponents used the reports of slaughter as a pretext to execute him the same week, with only a brief mock trial. You can argue that spin served a good cause. Saddam Hussein is beginning his second trial this week. Plenty of Iraqis probably wish America had dispatched the murderer in the fashion that the Romanians did with Ceausescu. Katrina has focused the country on the poor in Louisiana. It has also reminded us of the importance of education. Those who didn't get out were those least able to inform themselves. There is another point here. It is that the spin obscures the tragedy. People really did die in New Orleans. Many thousands more lost their homes. Others lost "merely" their vans, their carpets, or their dental-implant records. By forcing observers to take political sides on the issue so early, the spin-meisters corrupted the mourning process. And claiming big numbers devalued the deaths of the smaller number who did die. The cultural tradition in America is to be factual about everything from earnings reports to earthquakes. Historically, our death counts have been made slowly and accurately — nothing Romanian about them. When we make a natural disaster out to be a partisan apocalypse we create skepticism about future hurricanes, earthquakes, or landslides. We erode our own veracity. You could argue that Katrina has so galvanized America that it is better prepared to handle disasters in the future. And some will do it. But that, too, would be just so much hype. Miss Shlaes is a columnist for Bloomberg News. nysun.com

To: Sully- who wrote (18851)	8/25/2006 6:02:30 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Doesn't Know Class From A Hole In The Ground By Captain Ed on National Politics Captain's Quarters One of the sure signs of an incompetent is his impulse to catalog other's failures when criticized, instead of focusing on his own responsibilities. Ray Nagin will give a demonstration of that principle on Sunday, August 27th, in an interview with CBS News. When asked about the lack of progress in clearing the rubble from Hurricane Katrina, Nagin petulantly scolded New York for its "hole in the ground": <<< Confronted by accusations that he’s taking too long to clean up his city after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin defended himself by remarking on New York City’s failure to rebuild Ground Zero. Nagin made the remarks in an interview conducted by CBS News National Correspondent Byron Pitts which will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, Aug. 27, at 7 p.m. EDT. On a tour of the decimated Ninth Ward, Nagin tells Pitts the city has removed most of the debris from public property and it’s mainly private land that’s still affected – areas that can’t be cleaned without the owners' permission. But when Pitts points to flood-damaged cars in the street and a house washed partially into the street, the mayor shoots back. "That’s alright. You guys in New York can’t get a hole in the ground fixed and it’s five years later. So let’s be fair." >>> Let's face it: Crescent City residents elected Nagin in part for his genial incompetence. Not long ago he busied himself by assuring people that New Orleans would remain a "chocolate city", then tried to explain that away by saying he meant milk chocolate. Despite these verbal gaffes and the lack of progress in the city, New Orleans continues to embrace him, even after his incompetence went from amusing to deadly in the first hours of the hurricane. Viewers can see part of the reason why in this interview. While Pitts wants to talk about a clean-up that still hasn't completed a year after the hurricane -- and for which the city is responsible -- Nagin wants to sell his city a big dose of paranoia instead. On one hand, Nagin hails the upcoming Trump Towers condominium complex, which will stand 68 stories in a city that flirts with sea level in almost every sector. Almost in the next breath, Nagin talks about the "salivating" special interests that want to exploit the disaster and drive out the poor in order to make money on the rebuilding effort. Wouldn't that describe Donald Trump and the strange 68-story complex that Nagin just promoted? Big Easy residents shouldn't worry too much about Nagin's future, though. Their city will remain a disaster area for years at the rate that Nagin has tackled the clean-up, but Nagin will find a way to blame it on Governor Kathleen Blanco, and Blanco and the media will find a way to blame it on the Bush administration. The rest of us, especially New Yorkers, will not be fooled and will see Nagin for the classless incompetent he is. captainsquartersblog.com cbsnews.com captainsquartersblog.com

To: Sully- who wrote (18851)	8/29/2006 1:18:51 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Katrina, lies and videotape By Star Parker Townhall.com Columnists Monday, August 28, 2006 Spike Lee took his cameras and crew to New Orleans to film a documentary about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. The four-hour production, which aired on HBO, is, unfortunately, about as destructive as was the disaster it depicts. At a time when we need light and understanding, Lee has delivered darkness, anger and hatred. Those who will be hurt the most by the distorted and untruthful picture that Lee has concocted are the poor blacks he purports to want to help. It's clear that Lee did not go to Louisiana in search of truth. He went to Louisiana to carefully construct a documentary that would support the conclusion he had already reached. That conclusion: poor blacks suffered and died as result of the indifference of a detached and racist Bush administration in general and President Bush in particular. The film commits egregious journalistic sins of commission and omission, carefully selecting and editing footage to indict Bush, including only commentators who support the conclusions that Lee had already reached, and selectively omitting reams of information relevant to the complex truth of what actually happened. Since Lee already knew the truth, he didn't have much need to examine material such as "A Failure of Initiative," Congress' investigation into Katrina, which shows failure and breakdown at all levels of government _ local, state and federal. It also was of little interest to Lee that primary responsibility for disaster preparation and management is at the level of local and state government, not federal. But New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin comes off in the production as just one cool dude. He shows up at regular intervals over the four-hour production, talking New Orleans jive and being one straightforward sincere guy who was trying to do his job. No mention is made of the hurricane simulations and emergency evacuation plans that he totally ignored. No reference is made to the famous picture of the parking lot filled with flooded school buses that Nagin chose not to use to evacuate residents in poor areas. Central to the Katrina story is the failure of the levees. Indeed, Lee's film is called "When the Levees Broke." But who is responsible for ignoring the warnings over the years that the levees protecting New Orleans were inadequate? Bush? Of course not. It was Louisiana's congressional delegation that was responsible to ensure that their constituents' interests were being represented and that funds were being appropriated to fix sub-standard levees. But not a single Louisiana senator or congressman is ever mentioned or appears in "When the Levees Broke." William Jefferson, New Orleans' congressman for the last 16 years, has been under FBI investigation over the last year under bribery charges. However, Jefferson is a Democrat and a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. To shine a light on his possible, and likely, neglect of representing his constituents' interests would have distracted from the single message that Bush was the evil genius behind this tragedy. Of course, no mention is made of Jefferson's trip home, when he commandeered a National Guard truck in the middle of rescue efforts to take him to his house to retrieve personal property. Given what Lee leaves out, it's particularly cheap and sick that he felt it relevant to include footage of Condoleezza Rice supposedly shopping for designer shoes at the time the disaster was sweeping New Orleans. As we know, Condi is our secretary of state, who has no responsibility for any of these matters. After showing what appears to be a disengaged Bush, assuring that help is on the way, Lee pans, in contrast, to Harry Belafonte, who talks about the generous offers of help that came from President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. I have written previously of the love of affair of the black left, particularly the Rev. Jesse Jackson, with Third World dictators. There is virtually no freedom of the press and speech in Venezuela. If Lee were a citizen of Venezuela and made a similar film attacking Chavez, he would disappear forever after the first showing. Perhaps most sad is that in four hours Lee has nothing positive to say about America and Americans. No mention is made of the $700 million from private citizens and churches that were committed in the first few days of the tragedy. No mention is made of the thousands of homes across the nation that welcomed evacuees. No mention is made of the tens of thousands who have successfully rebuilt their lives. Spike Lee clearly has little affection for the country that gives him free expression and has made him wealthy. He has produced a self-indulgent, deceitful and exploitive film about a tragedy. His message will give poor blacks more reasons to feel powerless, to feel lost, to feel that others bear responsibility for their lives, to hate, and to stay poor. townhall.com

To: Sully- who wrote (18851)	8/31/2006 1:38:04 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Be prepared for disaster By Marvin Olasky Townhall.com Columnist Thursday, August 31, 2006 As comedienne Joan Rivers used to say, "Can we talk?" Now that the networks have done their Katrina anniversary Bush-bashing, may we (I'm avoiding the grammar sheriff) say something about individual responsibility? The thing is this: Some folks who suffered at the Superdome or Convention Center were there not because their homes were flooded, but because they were foodless. Had some of these individuals kept a week of food, water and other supplies at home, they might have spared themselves much misery. The politically correct police are on my tail: I'm "blaming the victim." Well, some folks victimize themselves -- and not just in New Orleans, and not just poor people. When Hurricane Rita in September seemed about to hit Houston, many who evacuated by car and found themselves in multi-hour traffic jams had not brought with them grab-and-go backpacks with food, water, medicines, personal-care products and cash. So how should we prepare? Heads of households should keep in mind that: -- The average person should drink at least two quarts of water or other liquids per day. An additional gallon per day is typically used for washing, food preparation and washing clothes and dishes. The best way to store large quantities is in 55-gallon drums, which can be cleaned of bacteria by the addition of 10 teaspoons of scent-free bleach. Other water can be stored in two-liter soda bottles, with freshening by four drops of bleach. Water from clean bathtubs and hot water heaters is also usable. -- Wise people stockpile food; fools rush in to supermarkets when a crisis occurs and shelves may be empty. The key is to buy some extra food that stores well, especially if kept in a cool, dark place. Canned meats and vegetables, protein or fruit bars, dry cereal or granola, peanut butter, nuts, dried fruit, crackers and canned juices all require no refrigeration and little preparation. Those with camp stoves or other non-electric means of boiling water may add rice, beans and pasta, kept in a rotation system so that new purchases are put at the back. -- Health supplies should include not only prescription medicines and basics like vitamins and aspirin, ibuprofen, or Tylenol, but also moist towelettes, cleansing agents such as isopropyl alcohol and hydrogen peroxide, antibiotic ointment, antiseptic, cotton balls, scissors, tweezers, needles, bandages, thermometers, medicine droppers, tongue depressor blades, anti-diarrhea medication, antacids, laxatives, syrup of ipecac, burn ointment and various sizes of sterile gauze pads, bandages and dressings. -- Other useful items include a Bible and other books, vitamins, a supply of cash, extra pairs of prescription glasses or contact lenses, matches, paper towels and plates, toilet paper and garbage bags, plastic utensils, pens and paper, materials to keep children busy and a battery-operated radio with a large supply of batteries. The very young will need diapers and perhaps formula, the old may need extra hearing aid or wheelchair batteries. -- Hurricanes and earthquakes often knock out power sources, so provision for light, heat and cooking is still important. Lanterns, flashlights and matches, warm clothing and blankets and outdoor grills or camping stoves with a supply of propane all are useful. This list is obviously not comprehensive, but it suggests the need for some planning. Planning is also important in the selection of family-rendezvous sites, escape routes and out-of-state contact persons for times when communications go down and confusion goes up. Planning also reminds us of the limitations of the "soft despotism" warned of by Alexis de Tocqueville, in his wonderful 1830s book "Democracy in America." He feared that Americans might slowly submit to "an immense, protective power which tries to keep them in perpetual childhood. It provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry." Well, maybe we have submitted, but New Orleans residents learned last year that soft despots are not reliable. townhall.com

To: Sully- who wrote (18851)	8/31/2006 3:55:52 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Katrina: The good, the bad and the ugly Hot Air TV original conservative video programming hotair.com

To: Sully- who wrote (18851)	8/31/2006 10:32:20 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Revisiting Katrina, Revisiting Truth By Captain Ed on Current Affairs Captain's Quarters A year ago, many of us watched in horror while New Orleans disappeared under the raging flood waters released from the levees containing Lake Pontchartrain. At the time, we all assumed that the hurricane brought down the walls and that the federal government failed because of their lack of foresight in that regard. Over the past year, however, we have learned much more about the levees of the Big Easy, and Kevin Aylward argues in today's Washington Examiner that Katrina may have saved tens of thousands of lives: <<< In the year since Katrina, we’ve learned that the storm was a Category 1 by the time she hit New Orleans. We’ve also learned that the primary levee breach — the one that caused 70 percent of the flooding in the city — was not caused by the storm surge but by poor engineering. After months of dissembling and obfuscation by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — the designers of the levee system — the Corps was forced to admit what all the outside experts were saying; critical engineering mistakes caused the walls that were supposed to protect the city to collapse before they were overtopped by the storm surge. And on the east side of the city, the flooding was largely caused by a shipping channel the Corps dug three decades earlier. ... All this leads to the even more shocking conclusion that Hurricane Katrina probably saved 50,000 lives. That levee was doomed. While Katrina was the last straw, it was destined to fail. Studies done before the storm indicated that if a major hurricane overwhelmed the city’s levees, as many as 100,000 people would die as a result. If the levee had failed without warning, there would have been no evacuation, no preparation, no state/federal support, no Coast Guardsmen in helicopters etc. If you think Katrina was bad with governmental preparations, consider an event half that size without it. >>> The same bad reporting that happened when the eyes of the nation were fixed on New Orleans -- do you recall news reports of cannibalism, roving bands of rapists, hundreds of homicides, toxic flood waters that would kill on contact -- persisted in the weeks afterwards. The news agencies seemed so intent on scoring points off of the Bush administration that they neglected to research the real problems in New Orleans: the lack of any coordinated local response, the refusal of Louisiana to authorize military intervention, and the real reason for the levee failure. Incredibly, the evidence was available almost from the start. A video taken by firefighters at the start of the collapse showed the water levels behind the levees as far below what had been assumed, and far below water levels in the past. This led investigators to look further into symptoms of an engineering failure -- and they discovered that residents had warned for months about seepage under the levees, a sign that the walls had already begun to catastrophically fail. The media showed little interest in pursuing the truth, as documented by many in the blogosphere, including myself. They still seem more attracted to political football than honest reporting on the anniversary of the disaster, a disaster that would have happened without Katrina, with a much greater loss of life. Kevin does a good job in reminding all of us of the media's failure to properly inform the public of the nature of New Orleans' destruction. UPDATE: It's Wizbang Day at the Examiner. Lorie Byrd writes about the political benefits of embracing blogs: <<< As much as the Internet and blogs have changed journalism and politics, many candidates have yet to fully utilize the new medium. That, however, is quickly changing. With every election comes the realization by more candidates that engaging the blogosphere is smart politics. >>> It's always smart politics to listen to your constituents, and more than ever, they include bloggers and their readers. captainsquartersblog.com examiner.com examiner.com

To: Sully- who wrote (18851)	1/5/2007 10:04:48 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

New Orleans: The City That Learns Nothing And Forgets Everything John Hawkins Right Wing News New Orleans set new standards for incompetence during Hurricane Katrina... *"Ok, everybody! Go to the Superdome if there's an emergency! There's no food, water, or doctors there, but that's ok! Doh! You policemen? Start looting and running away and then as a reward, we'll send you to Las Vegas on vacation! Yeargh! We could bus people out of here, but we left all the buses on a flood plain! Dur dur-duur!"* ...so, is it surprising, that the citizens of New Orleans, after reelecting America's most incompetent Mayor, Ray Nagin, are moving right back into the areas most prone to flooding? Sigh, idiots, idiots, idiots, idiots... <<< "...After Katrina, teams of planners recommended that broad swaths of vulnerable neighborhoods be abandoned. Yet all areas of the city have at least some residents beginning to rebuild. With billions of dollars in federal relief for homeowners trickling in, more people are expected to follow. Moreover, while new federal guidelines call for raising houses to reduce the damage of future floods, most returning homeowners do not have to comply or are finding ways around the costly requirement, according to city officials. "It's terrifying: We're doing the same things we have in the past but expecting different results," said Robert G. Bea, a professor of civil engineering at the University of California at Berkeley and a former New Orleans resident who served as a member of the National Science Foundation panel that studied the city's levees. "There are areas where it doesn't make any sense to rebuild -- they got 20 feet of water in Katrina," said Tom Murphy, a former Pittsburgh mayor who served on an Urban Land Institute panel for post-Katrina planning. "In those places, nature is talking to us, and we ought to be listening. I don't think we are." ...Mike Centineo, the city's building chief, said, "Legally and morally, we're doing the right thing," but he acknowledged that most returning homeowners are not raising their houses to meet the new flood guidelines. "You wouldn't want to put people through more than they can endure. It's a catastrophe that happened. No one wants it to happen again. But they're just rebuilding as best they can." ...In the fall of 2005, planners from the Urban Land Institute, working with the city's Bring New Orleans Back Commission, recommended that large sections of Lakeview, Gentilly, New Orleans East and the Lower Ninth Ward be abandoned, at least temporarily. The panel called for the government to purchase homes at pre-Katrina prices. There were two reasons for the planners' proposals. First, the levees had proved catastrophically fallible. Even now, they are not guaranteed to stand during the strongest hurricanes. Moreover, the wetlands that once protected the city from storm surges continue to erode, and hurricane experts, including Max Mayfield, the outgoing director or the National Hurricane Center, have repeatedly warned that many homeowners are taking on unacceptable risks in U.S. coastal areas. Second, it seemed likely that New Orleans's post-Katrina population was destined to be smaller. It made sense to consolidate neighborhoods, planners said, to prevent blight from overtaking sparsely populated, partially abandoned areas. "What we said was that, in the areas that had gotten 10 feet of water, don't commit to rebuilding anything yet, because it probably won't happen anyway," said Joseph Brown, head of the urban design panel at the Urban Land Institute. But Nagin, who was hearing complaints that shrinking the city's footprint was unfair, particularly to African Americans, rejected the idea. Everyone should be able to return to their homes, he said." >>> American tax dollars should not be spent on building homes in a bowl, 20 feet below sea level, in a city that shouldn't even exist anymore because it's so prone to hurricanes. Oh, but it would be "unfair" to make people move to an area where their whole home won't end up under water if there's a hurricane, -- give me a break. These dopes don't seem to get that Mother Nature doesn't care about "diversity." If there is another hurricane next year, "Gaia" isn't going be thinking, "You know, we already hit New Orleans and a lot of black people got hurt. Maybe I should hit Vermont this time just to mix things up a bit." There COULD BE another hurricane that hits New Orleans next year. It COULD flood the city. Then what? Besides, half the city never came back after Katrina, so it's not like there isn't plenty of room for people to move. Anyone who had the modicum of common sense could figure out that homes should be built in the higher parts of the city in New Orleans at this point! In fact, this is such a no-brainer that anyone moving back into these 10ft-20ft below sea level portions of New Orleans should be pre-approved to win a Darwin Award if they get killed in another hurricane. rightwingnews.com washingtonpost.com washingtonpost.com

To: Sully- who wrote (18851)	1/30/2007 10:28:46 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Businessmen And Bureaucrats By Bill Murchison Townhall.com Columnist Tuesday, January 30, 2007 This just in: "Bureaucrats Slower, Less Efficient Than Capitalists." Hard to digest, I know. Yet consider the front-page account in the Wall Street Journal of the recovery process after Hurricane Katrina wiped out two bridges connecting the Mississippi towns of Bay St. Louis and Pass Christian. "Sixteen months later," notes the Journal's Christopher Cooper, "the automobile bridge remains little more than pilings. The railroad bridge is busy with trains. The difference: The still-wrecked bridge is owned by the U.S. government. The other is owned by railroad giant CSX Corp. of Jacksonville, Fla. Within weeks of Katrina's landfall, CSX dispatched construction crews to fix the freight line; six months later, the bridge reopened. Even a partial reopening of the road bridge, part of U.S. Highway 90, is at least five months away." The Journal story goes on: delays, delays, delays, all across the region; growing frustration among citizens; "spools of red tape spawned by a bevy of old and new government procedures." I might argue, picayunishly, that fish and suchlike get "spawned," whereas tape spools get manufactured. The point would remain: Government efficiency is a contradiction. It wasn't private enterprise that gave us the invaluable acronym SNAFU: "Situation Normal -- All Fouled Up." The reason is, private enterprise ponders, decides, acts. Government ponders, asks for studies, distributes forms for filling out, ponders, holds hearings, ponders, hands out new forms, ponders... It is the way of things, like cracked ground in a drought, like spaghetti sauce on white shirts. We should be used to it by now. Yet with each election cycle come the repeated avowals of government's unparalleled efficiency in solving all our problems. We are inevitably in such a cycle now. The government -- by which I mean the establishment that comprises both political parties -- has plans to give everyone generous health care, make energy ample and cheap (well, cheaper) and minister to a supposedly overheating environment. All while doing everything else we could want, such as promoting good education. I think the indicated response is: Oh, yeah? Democratic government is probably a good thing, under the aspect of eternity, but the less we see of it, and the more we see of private initiative and creativity, the better we're likely to appreciate the results. The Bush administration has caught a hurricane of grief and ridicule for the government response to Katrina. The rock-bottom question, I think, really isn't: Where did the Bush White House and the Federal Emergency Management Agency go wrong? It's, instead, would the Clinton White House have done better? Or the earlier Bush White House? Yes, who might have done better, given the storm's extraordinary dimensions, New Orleans' extraordinary moral-cultural decay and the genetic inefficiencies of bureaucracy? "Antifraud rules," the Journal glumly notes, "slowed tasks as basic as ditch-digging" in Bay St. Louis. Paperwork and approvals were just part of it. There were also surprise inspections to make sure no featherbedding went on. "Start to finish," says the Journal, "it took just over a year to complete a job that involved only about a month of shovel work." The Journal's story is a depressing chronicle of overlapping, often competing, procedures and concerns on government's part. We conclude that, indeed, the U.S. government wants to do this job right. It just can't. At disaster relief, and most other things, government is elephantine compared to the more nimble, less inhibited private sector, whose constituency is customers, whose aim is customer satisfaction. Here's the moral. Take any domestic problem on the table this year -- for starters, health, energy efficiency, energy supply, college costs, public school quality. The government is going to sort it out? As Eliza Doolittle so memorably put it, not bloody likely! Not with interest groups to placate, appropriations to pass, approvals to secure, and forms -- yes, forms -- to fill out and read and re-read and pass on and return for review and re-review. We weren't really wanting to use that bridge anyway, were we? Bill Murchison is a senior columns writer for The Dallas Morning News and author of There's More to Life Than Politics. townhall.com

To: Sully- who wrote (18851)	3/22/2007 12:03:13 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

It's Time For Katrina Victims To Get Off The Dole John Hawkins Right Wing News From the liberal blog, Think Progress, <<< The House today is debating the Gulf Coast Hurricane Housing Recovery Act of 2007. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, introduced an amendment that would require victims of Hurricane Katrina to perform 20 hours/week of approved “work activities” to receive financial aid for housing. ...In an impassioned speech, Rep. David Scott (D-GA) addressed Hensarling on the House floor: This amendment is cruel, it is cold, it is calculating, and it is pandering to the schizophrenic dichotomy that has plagued this nation since they first brought Africans on these shores from Africa. And that is the issue of race and poverty. >>> Katrina occurred in late August of 2005, which means it has been about a year and a half since the storm. Yet, you have liberals complaining about people being asked to work 20 hours a week to qualify for hurricane welfare? Give me a break. Just because people suffered through Katrina doesn't mean that you receive a get out of work for the rest of your life free card and are entitled to mooch off of your fellow citizens in perpetuity. Does that sound harsh? Well, let's just put it this way: people in the United States suffer through disasters of one sort or the other every year. There are hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, fires, you name it and none of them have ever had as much spent on them as the people of New Orleans after Katrina. So now, 18 months later, it's long since time for the people who were affected by Katrina to get off the dole and start taking care of themselves. rightwingnews.com thinkprogress.org

To: Sully- who wrote (18851)	3/22/2007 12:58:16 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Who Drowned New Orleans? Media Blog Stephen Spruiell Reporting Yet another report puts the blame on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Read the executive summary (pdf) for a prime illustration of bureaucratic bungling and inefficiency resulting in catastrophic failure. Worse, the Corps does not appear to have learned from its mistakes. A horrifying excerpt: <<< Today, the USACE seeks funds to rebuild flood defenses for a ruined city that will offer a level of protection originally conceived in the late 1950s. The evolution of the Standard Project Hurricane shows that this level of protection was known to be inadequate by at least the early 1970s. Since Katrina, elements of the 1950s era plan that were not built... have been retrieved from mothballs, and are now being included in virtually all restoration plans. >>> Yet the media consistently downplay the Corps' responsibility for drowning New Orleans and consistently play up FEMA's minor (by contrast) failures during the rescue effort. Any guesses why that is? Here's a hint: The Corps' failures predate the 2000 presidential election. media.nationalreview.com nola.com dotd.louisiana.gov

To: Sully- who wrote (18851)	3/22/2007 2:02:53 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

House GOP on Offense Kate O'Beirne The Corner This afternoon, Republicans got a good vote on a motion to recommit offered by Rep. Bobby Jindal to a Katrina housing recovery bill. The Jindal motion would bar anyone convicted of drug dealing, a sex crime, or domestic violence from occupying public housing. Other housing assistance would be available to such felons, but the intent was to prevent public housing from returning to its pre-Katrina disgraceful state. A London School of Economics study found that the level of violence at one public housing complex was more than seven times as high as the overall rate in New Orleans. The motion to recommit passed, although 175 Democrats voted (apparently at the vehement insistence of Rep, Maxine Waters) to house drug dealers and predators among the needy of New Orleans. corner.nationalreview.com