I’m glad that poverty and the carnage after Katrina down in the Gulf is all the fault of the residents who didn’t have the means to leave. Neal Boortz sets the record straight on the January 30 edition of Cox Radio Syndication’s The Neal Boortz Show. (Media Matters):
“Edwards’ campaign will end the way it began 13 months ago, with the candidate pitching in to rebuild lives in a city still ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. Edwards embraced New Orleans as a glaring symbol of what he described as a Washington that didn’t hear the cries of the downtrodden.” Cries of the downtrodden, my left butt cheek. That wasn’t the cries of the downtrodden; that’s the cries of the useless, the worthless. New Orleans was a welfare city, a city of parasites, a city of people who could not and had no desire to fend for themselves. You have a hurricane descending on them and they sit on their fat asses and wait for somebody else to come rescue them.It’s almost beyond words……When these Katrina so-called refugees were scattered about the country, it was just a glorified episode of putting out the garbage.
…The primary blame goes on the worthless parasites who lived in New Orleans who you — couldn’t even wipe themselves, let alone get out of the way of the water when that levee broke.
Cox Radio Syndication
1601 W Peachtree St. NE
Atlanta, GA 30309
Phone 404.962.2078
Fax 404.897.2226
Email the Boortz show.
Surprised? I didn’t think so. At this point, there’s nothing left to shock when it comes to the handling of post-Katrina matters involving BushCo and FEMA.
[D]ocuments obtained by Salon show that FEMA also pressured scientists to water down a report on the health risks of formaldehyde. FEMA officials instructed the scientists to omit any references to cancer or other long-term health risks from exposure to formaldehyde in FEMA trailers.I guess protecting the fetus under Bush doesn’t extend to government agencies like FEMA.In a scathing letter sent today to Dr. Howard Frumkin, chief of the National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Reps. Brad Miller, chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee’s Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, and Nick Lampson, chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, wrote, “you appear to have been complicit in giving FEMA precisely what they wanted … However what FEMA wanted and what you approved giving them was not the whole truth regarding formaldehyde. It was not based on ‘best science,’ nor did it provide ‘trusted health information’ to the Katrina survivors.” FEMA and ATSDR officials are expected to testify Tuesday before the House Committee on Homeland Security, which is also investigating the matter.
After Hurricane Katrina, FEMA placed tens of thousands of displaced families in travel trailers, more than 40,000 of which are still in use. Almost immediately, hundreds of families called FEMA to complain of illnesses, from breathing difficulties, bloody noses and rashes to more serious problems, and even deaths, possibly connected to high levels of formaldehyde gas permeating the trailers. Formaldehyde is a nearly colorless gas with a pungent, irritating odor even at low levels. It is used in many products and manufacturing procedures, notably as an adhesive in plywood used to make trailers. Health reports reveal that exposure to formaldehyde can impact fertility and the developing fetus, leading to spontaneous abortion or physical malformations.
Seriously, there has been little public discussion in this election cycle about what kind of plans each candidate has for the overhaul/revitalization, quality control of FEMA. The next president will inherit a bureaucracy that has been crippled and rife with incompetence. A complete house cleaning is necessary.
According to the San Antonio newspaper, as of this morning, there are still 20,000 people stranded on roofs awaiting aid in the Mexican state of Tabasco. 1.5 million have been displaced from their homes due to heavy flooding.
There is much to be outraged about besides nature’s utter indifference to human suffering. Brownfemipower notes the racism of the coverage of the flood:
Fox News: Mexico Floods Swamp 900,000 Homes; Disease Outbreak Feared
UPDATED Fox News: Thousands Depart Mexico Flood Zone Amid Disease Fears, Reported Looting
CNN: Devastating floods prompt outbreak fears in Mexico
MSNbc: Headline news:Teacher arrested after allegedly fleeing with boy (scroll down and down and down some more, and there nestled between sports and politics, is a small little link announcing “Mexico state 80 submerged”
ABCnews: Headline News: “Teacher Arrested In Mexico” World news section: Nothing
Detroit Free Press: Mexicans flee as region floods: Infectious waterborne diseases could surface
AP: Mexico Fears Disease Outbreak From Flood
Bloomber.com:Mexico’s Red Cross Is Preparing for Disease in Flooded Tabasco
This should surprise no one; I remember how, in the wake of Katrina, conservatives were more angry that people were looting than the fact that there were corpses floating in the street, and the threat of even temporary price controls to keep people from dying of dehydration sent many a free market cheerleader straight to the fainting couch. That the majority of victims were black drove so much of the casual cruelty towards survivors.
I was getting dressed this AM and heard a CNN report on the wonderful logistical planning that went into handling the people in San Diego displaced from their homes as fires rage there. National Guard troops were in place, food, water and even yoga classes awaited Californians who needed to de-stress from the trauma of having to bunk down in Qualcomm Stadium.
About 12,000 people displaced by the wildfires sought shelter Tuesday at Qualcomm Stadium, where volunteers were on hand to provide food and other services. The evacuation operation was going smoothly Tuesday afternoon, and National Guard troops sent to maintain order were described as polite and helpful.The first thing that came to mind of course, is what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, when it took five days to get water to people in distress, despite ample time to prepare before the disaster struck as Katrina made its way to the Gulf coast.AT&T provided Internet access to the evacuees and charged their cell phones for free. Volunteers offered massage therapy, yoga, kosher food and art projects for kids.
"There was a call for artists last night," said Brian Patterson, who manages community programs at the San Diego Museum of Art. "And I thought, 'this is what I do, anyway,' so I came down here," he said.
Evacuees also had access to information on insurance and got medical help. They were given snacks and drinks and necessities such as baby wipes, tooth brushes, toothpaste and hand sanitizers.
Why do you think that is? dnA had something to say, and it's after the jump.
(more…)
JTrain, blogging at Majikthise, has an interesting post up about a post-Katrina situation he blogged about almost two years ago. Two years ago, the stories about doctors issuing morphine doses that may have hastened the deaths of some patients in an overwhelmed New Orleans hospital were only rumors, and at the time, J (who’s a doctor that does a lot of E.R. work) explained the concept of a triage:
“Triage”, as the word root implies, originally meant separating patients into three groups–those who would likely be OK without medical care, those who are beyond any help, and those who can benefit from medical care. The idea is to concentrate resources where they can do the most good; it’s no use spending valuable time working on someone with hours left to live no matter what when you can save decades of meaningful life for three or four other people in the same time. In that case, the right thing to do is to provide comfort for the dying, and in a serious and urgent situation, that might include active euthanasia.
If you have sufficient resources, choosing between comforting the dying and attending the salvageable isn’t necessary, but obviously in a hellhole battlefield-style situation like New Orleans after Katrina, there’s a direct conflict. The dying become a direct resource-suck that could end up killing the salvageable. In this case, J broke down the likely options for the dying:
–Evacuate the patients. It may not even be an option. If it is, they’ll probably die en route. If they do make it, it’s just so that they can wait to die in a different building, probably still separated from family, and (just to be frank about it) using resources and manpower that are already scarce to delay the inevitable for a little bit. The patients’ last hours will be spent in a flurry of activity, and on the other end comfort will almost certainly take a back seat to raw necessity.
–Leave the patients. They won’t make it, but the lack of nursing care or meds will mean their last hours will be spent alone and miserable. This is not an option, IMO.
–Push the morphine.
From a strictly utilitarian standpoint, there is only one good option, and a disaster like Katrina brings out the utilitarian in all of us. That doesn’t make it easy to do, or easy to accept.
The French Quarter, relatively untouched by hurricane Katrina, is bustling, and businesses are being courted to New Orleans, but a good deal of the rest of the city and the Gulf region remain devastated. Awash in corruption, cronyism and incompetence, the reconstruction effort is a mess. Billions of money designated to the effort is not getting to those in need — 42% of funds set aside for rebuilding and relief has not even been spent. The federal H2B “guestworker” visa program was set up for employers to hire people for the rebuilding effort. Because of the lack of oversight, abuse or workers, kidnapping and even modern-day slavery is occuring on the Gulf Coast.
To get a true sense of what it is like two years later, go to Voices from the Gulf from ColorofChange.org — unvarnished video perspectives from the region.
The Institute for Southern Studies has published Blueprint for Gulf Renewal: The Katrina Crisis and a Community Agenda for Action.
On September 15, 2005, President Bush pledged that our nation would “do what it takes, and stay as long as it takes,” to rebuild the Gulf Coast. Yet over 60,000 people are still in “temporary” FEMA trailers, and houses, hospitals and schools across the region remain shuttered. For thousands of people, the Katrina recovery has failed.
The study, published in collaboration with Oxfam America and the Jewish Funds for Justice, looks at 80 statistical indicators and draws on interviews with more than 40 Gulf Coast leaders to identify roadblocks to recovery, and ways federal leaders can tackle critical needs in the region like housing, jobs and coastal protection.
The study also features “Where did the Katrina money go?” — an in-depth analysis of federal Katrina spending since 2005. The Institute reveals that, out of the $116 billion in Katrina funds allocated, less than 30% has gone towards long-term rebuilding — and less than half of that 30% has been spent, much less reached those most in need.
Hey, everyone remember the posts about New Orleans and how the survivors of Katrina are getting screwed left right and center? Remember Leigh, who gave a lot of good information? Well, she will be one of the people speaking about the post-Katrina Gulf Coast recovery tonight at The Democracy Center from 6:00-8:00. The center is located at 45 Mt. Auburn Street Cambridge, MA.
Update: If this makes you angry, go to this site and get the contact info for your Representatives and Senators. Then, contact them and ask them why these people, who have lost everything, are still getting screwed.
The New York Times has an article today about Katrina survivors who are still languishing in FEMA trailers two years after hurricane Katrina. That would be the hurricane where we watched as our government did little to help. I’m sure it’s just a startling and amazing coincidence that many of these people are Black.
Compounding the problem is that many of these people are yet again stranded, but at least the weather is better. The problems are exacerbated–unemployment, the grocery gap, and childcare. They lost their jobs because of the storm, or because they couldn’t get to them from the parks like Sugar Hill, where, if you do not own a car, you are screwed. The bus comes four times a week, and the supermarket is only within walking distance if you can walk eighteen miles and eat only dried food. You cannot get to jobs from these parks on the scant public transport, and if you have dependents and no access to care for them (or access to nearby relatives who can help), you cannot exactly leave for work anyway. Living right in New Orleans, most people had no need of a car (and thus found themselves stranded during the hurricane, and greeted with self-righteous lectures about how they should have gotten out, likely with magic fairy transport dust or something).
Because these folks were renters, they did not get grants to rebuild their homes. Their homes have not been rebuilt. I don’t understand why it’s acceptable for us to relegate them to lives that are the equivalent of being chained in a waiting room. I don’t understand why it’s okay for people to lecture and preach about hard work and sacrifice and how people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but it’s not okay for people who are trying to get jobs and rebuild their lives to get some reasonable help. Like, say, transportation. And housing.
But they aren’t wanted. They are too brown and too poor. The apartments and public housing where they lived are either gone or slated to be redeveloped. The rents for existing units have skyrocketed, and communities that have these FEMA communities are revoking permits for the trailers or allowing the zoning to expire. They are moving against any kind of assisted housing–including housing for the elderly–because of worries about crime. And when I say crime, I’m pretty sure the meaning is “Black people.”
“Affordable” apartments in New Orleans are affordable for people with a teacher or police officer’s wage, not a health care aide’s wage, or a maid’s wage, or a cashier’s wage. Not that it matters, because even though they want to work, and even though workers are needed, these workers, these Black workers, are apparently not what employers had in mind.
These are not people who fit the right-wing created boogeymen of welfare cheats and lazy whiners. But they are Black, and they are poor, and they apparently still don’t matter.
You gotta give it up for people who have endured so much chaos and still find it in themselves to party as hard as New Orleanians will today.
A rundown of President Miserable Failure’s miserable failure in rebuilding the Gulf Coast was at the top of my docket today. But, an extremely bright sixth-grade blogger named Kalypso derailed my plans. She made a video documentary last year (available after the jump) that both celebrates her hometown’s first post-Katrina Mardi Gras and details some of her family’s struggle to rebuild.
Newsweek’s report, Bush’s Best Democratic Buddy, reveals that Joe Lieberman has sunk to a new low of fealty to Bush.
After spending his re-election campaign damning the administration for its handling of Katrina, now that he’s in a position to take action as chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, he’s backing off for a call for transparency in the name of “bipartisanship.”
What kind of material has not been released that would uncover the incompetencies?
Sen. Joe Lieberman, the only Democrat to endorse President Bush’s new plan for Iraq, has quietly backed away from his pre-election demands that the White House turn over potentially embarrassing documents relating to its handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans.…the decision by Lieberman, the new chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, to back away from the committee’s Katrina probe is already dismaying public-interest groups and others who hoped the Democratic victory in November would lead to more aggressive investigations of one of the White House’s most spectacular foul-ups.
* the videoconference in which former FEMA head Michael Brown warned senior White House officials about the effect of Katrina’s hit on the Gulf and conditions in New Orleans — which includes the “deafening silence” of the reaction to the news.
* records of communications with Darth Cheney, Bush and their aides during the period between late August and early September 2005 as the waters rose, forcing thousands of NOLA residents to rooftops awaiting rescue and to overcrowded, dangerous shelters.
Holy Joe now doesn’t see a need for the country to know anything about this.
Lieberman has decided not to pursue the material, according to Leslie Phillips, the senator’s chief committee spokeswoman. “The senator now intends to focus his attention on the future security of the American people and other matters and does not expect to revisit the White House’s role in Katrina,” she told NEWSWEEK.Jesus. He’s disgusting. The Bush administration’s mishandling of the largest natural disaster in this country is not worth investigating — has Lieberman been to NOLA and seen the devastation? Hell, has he even tuned in to Anderson Cooper 360 to see the what the conditions are there 500 days after the storm hit?…Katrina was perhaps the government’s biggest failure ever,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a liberal watchdog group. “For the Congress not to be willing to stand up to the White House and demand to know who’s accountable is a total abdication of their responsibility. How serious about oversight are they if they’re not willing to flex their muscle over this one? Wasn’t the election about holding the government accountable? Congress has the power for oversight, and the mandate. Does it have the will?”
If we can’t count on Congress to do the right thing, at least the courts are addressing some of the pain and corruption left in Katrina’s wake. Read more after the flip.
(more…)
R. Neal at Facing South points to matters that we cannot let Republicans try to walk away from as they attempt to talk about this administration and this Congress’s “accomplishments.”
How feeble and tragic is this — nearly a year after Katrina, the situation with temporary housing is still a flipping mess.
It has been 11 months since Hurricane Katrina hit and Janice Tambrella still does not have a home. She doesn’t even have a trailer of her own.
Tambrella is currently jammed in with 10 other relatives in a single trailer delivered to a luckier relative. Sleeping on the floor, living out of cars surrounded by overgrown grass and storm-felled trees, she sighs, “I need a place to stay.”
Nearly 1,200 St. Bernard Parish families are still waiting to get into trailers that sit locked on their home sites but need utilities or other services; another 400 families waiting for trailers have none at all, FEMA said.
BTW, 10,000 FEMA trailers are rotting away in the Arkansas mud (your wallet is $1 billion lighter for that travesty), and even worse, Dear Leader’s government has unused, undeployed trailers sitting right there in Louisiana.
Maybe we just need to give more money to the highly effective contractors who are landing work with no-bid, no-scrutiny contracts. Four of those contracts are already about to top $3.4 billion (up from an initial $400 million).
What fiscal responsibility and efficient small government those Republicans on the Hill represent! Who wouldn’t want to return them to office for more of the same?
Bloggrrl Ms. Julien passed along our preznit’s readiness plan as the storm season approaches. After being told that FEMA needs to be abolished because it’s too broken to fix, this was his reaction:
President Bush on Friday rejected the idea of killing FEMA.
“The lessons of Katrina are important,'’ Bush said. “We’ve learned a lot here at the federal level. We’re much more ready this time than we were the last time.'’
“Let’s, first of all, pray there’s no hurricanes,'’ Bush said. “That would be, like, step one.'’
This man is mentally ill. The hurricane season is barreling down upon us and everyone knows the federal government is not ready.
Only a few of the 211 suggested improvements from three federal reports will be ready when the hurricane season starts June 1, and limited dollars and political squabbling already are complicating the progress.
“Nature doesn’t care about reports,'’ said Kathleen Tierney, director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado. “Nor does it care about the fact there are people still suffering, and we’re not ready.
My suggestion — in support of Dear Leader’s Plan — is tha he better get Falwell, Dobson, Bauer and all his other peeps on the heaven hotline in action pronto. And he must marshall all his flunkies on the payroll over at the newly established Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives at the Department of Homeland Security.
Oh wait, this isn’t a joke: Hurricane Evacuees’ Trailer Explodes.
A FEMA trailer being used by a couple who lost their home in Hurricane Katrina burst into flames, severely burning the husband and incinerating most of their remaining possessions.
The blast, which followed the January explosion of another Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer, appeared to have been sparked by a lit cigarette igniting propane gas that had seeped into the travel camper, fire officials said.
Linda Meyer said she and her husband escaped through a portion of the trailer that was blown off by the explosion Wednesday morning.
Hat tip to R. Neal @ Facing South, who noted that the article also mentions the laughable briefing for trailer recipients informs them that if they smell a gas leak to contact FEMA for assistance.
Really? So, the Governor of Louisiana and the Mayor of New Orleans begged for FEMA’s help, day after day, on live TV, directly to the President of the United States, and got nowhere. Six months later they’re still waiting. Now some poor guy in a camper trailer out in the bayou somewhere is going to be able to get right through to FEMA? And they’re going to fix his gas leak?
This bit of pro-feudalism propaganda from Michael Barone at the Washington Times is being pimped by the GOP website and it’s about as ruthless and predatory as you can get–a proper neocon take on the flooding of New Orleans, except that he refrains from longing that they’d actually just bombed the city so they could have increased “defense” spending as well.
There were many fewer deaths than people feared — far fewer than Mayor Ray Nagin’s guess of 10,000. And evidently many more people managed to evacuate than we thought. Not all the horrors reported at the Superdome and the Convention Center actually occurred. The water still covering much of the city is not as toxic as was feared.
Ah, nice and vague. He forgot to add, “And space aliens didn’t come down and decimate what didn’t flood, so we got that going for us.” Reality check–the government negligently let New Orleans’ levees fall into disrepair, a mistake that so far has cost 1,599 people their lives (that we know of so far), covered the city in toxic sludge, holed a bunch of residents up into a tiny area for 5 days without even a hint of rescue, and then scattered people to the four winds and now the racist contigency is swinging into action to keep people from returning….with the President’s blessings. But it wasn’t Hiroshima, no. And it would have been worse if the FEMA had just dropped a bomb on the Superbowl, so there you go.
By no means all the worst damage was done to black neighborhoods: The 17th Street Levee break first flooded the heavily white Lakeview area west of City Park (the only part of New Orleans that voted for President Bush in 2004). Not only the heavily black Lower Ninth Ward suffered huge devastation but also heavily white St. Bernard Parish just to the east.
White people lost their homes, too, and this makes it better because the more people who lose their homes, the better.
Look at this shite; I want to hurl. Please god, tell me someone in the MSM is going to pick this up. (Houston Chronicle):
Former first lady Barbara Bush donated an undisclosed amount of money to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund with specific instructions that the money be spent with an educational software company owned by her son Neil.
Neil Bush has a colorful history, including failed S&Ls, insider stock trading scandals, and well, general Bush family corruption.Since then, the Ignite Learning program has been given to eight area schools that took in substantial numbers of Hurricane Katrina evacuees.
“Mrs. Bush wanted to do something specifically for education and specifically for the thousands of students flooding into the Houston schools,” said Jean Becker, former President Bush’s chief of staff. “She knew that HISD was using this software program, and she’s very excited about this program, so she wanted to make it possible for them to expand the use of this program.”
Related:
* No Child Left Behind: the Bush family cashes in too
* No Bush left behind: Investors from the United Arab Emirates helped fund the $23 million Neil Bush raised for Ignite!
Left: secure government video obtained by The Associated Press shows then-Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown, center, at the Homeland Security EOC (emergency operations center) in Washington Aug. 28, 2005, taking part in a government video briefing the day before Hurricane Katrina struck on Aug. 29. Right: Bush is shown responding in the briefing. (AP Photo)
[UPDATE: Freeper commentary added - true to form, it’s vile and they find ways to blame anyone, well, everyone else but Dear Leader for this.]
Didn’t Dear Leader tell us all that “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees” and that based on his review of the next day’s imaginary newspapers, that he thought that New Orleans “dodged the bullet” so he didn’t have any idea that the levees would be breached?
That’s the name of the comprehensive, 36-page report from the Institute for Southern Studies. The bottom line is that the status of New Orleans post-hurricane is a tragic mess. The Mardi Gras Index looks at 11 areas including housing, public health, the economy and disaster preparedness. Co-author of the report (and editor of the Institute’s outstanding blog Facing South), Chris Kromm: “Despite promises from national leaders to “do what it takes” to rebuild New Orleans, the devastated city has been mostly left to fend for itself — with tragic results. Without a bold, national commitment, the city won’t come back.”
The facts show the sorry state of affairs six months after Katrina, with the report reviewing over 130 indicators, with success on a few fronts, but there are major hurdles, all man-made, that are stalling much-needed progress. The big picture:
* Percent of those displaced by Katrina who were from New Orleans: 50
* Estimated loss of New Orleans’ black population if people are unable to return to flood-damaged neighborhoods: 80
* Number of FEMA trailer homes requested by New Orleans residents: 21,000
* Estimated number of those homes installed as of early February 2006: 3,000
* Percent of New Orleans small businesses destroyed by Katrina: 60
* Out of 200 samples taken in Orleans Parish, percent that exceeded the Louisiana state cleanup level for pollution in residential neighborhoods: 37
* Number of public school employees Orleans Parish is planning to lay off: 7,500
* Percent of no-bid contracts that FEMA promised to re-bid in October that have been re-bid: 0
* Number of Orleans Parish prisoners who have not seen an attorney, some since before Katrina hit: 4,500
* Number of days until the 2006 hurricane season starts: 93
* Square miles of Louisiana wetlands lost from Katrina and Rita, which experts believe are critical to reducing storm surges: 118
* Amount of federal dollars that have been committed to date for wetland restoration in Louisiana beyond existing programs: 0
* Category of storm for which the Army Corps is currently authorized by Congress to rebuild the Louisiana levees: 2
* Category of Katrina when it hit New Orleans: 3
Source: The Mardi Gras Index, February 28, 2006.
Visit Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch for more information.
***
And Mardi Gras itself? Look at the revelers’ dark humor about the state of things, after the jump…
Charlotte Allan invokes the specter of the grim, humorless liberal and tries to position herself as the defender of drunken orgies Mardi Gras. I can’t keep up–are liberals the end of everything good and wholesome in society this week, or are we prigs who want to prevent people from partying down?
I applaud the brave and resourceful residents of that city for refusing to be demoralized by an appalling catastrophe, who want to pick the pieces and return to life as usual, including Mardi Gras as usual. Only the most dour of liberal-elite puritans would want to deny them this simple pleasure.
This post is even worse than this quote would indicate–she actually spends a paragraph explaining what Mardi Gras is, the first real evidence that bloggers may indeed need editors that I’ve seen. I hate to rain on Charlotte’s parade, but this liberal puritan would like to go on record saying I fully support the existence of Mardi Gras, even though my ability to handle it pretty much petered out a few years ago and I have no idea where my collection of favorite beads from years passed has gone. And I love that some New Orleans residents are celebrating this year with the sort of decadent, dark humor that is one of the few saving graces of the South. This float for instance made me smile:
I also heard rumors that one float was themed “C’est Levee”, but I haven’t seen any pictures. I’d like to hear Charlotte’s empassioned defense of Mardi Gras celebrations as they actually are, frankly.
I think Skeletor better start cleaning out his desk and polishing up his resume (One can only hope his isn’t as uniquely padded as “Brownie’s”). The White House says it stands behind Chertoff.
Michael Chertoff did a tap dance yesterday, saying he’s getting that whole Homeland Security thing down pat and bringing some common sense and preparation to FEMA.
It’s a wonder people didn’t break out into hysterical laughter, knowing this was nothing more than a dog and pony show to deflect the butt-scorching he, his agency and his incompetent Chimperor were going to receive in the 520-page House report, “A Failure of Initiative,” released today (highlights here).
Last night, Anderson Cooper had a report on about more mind-blowing FEMA incompetence. It makes you sick to see the pictures of over 11,000 empty, new mobile homes sitting in the middle of an Arkansas field when 12,000 Katrina victims are being kicked out of hotels and are homeless once again.
In — in case you think this disaster is over, remember, there are tens of thousands of people without homes, families who face eviction from the hotel rooms they have been crammed in to, and still bodies unidentified and missing.
And, in Arkansas — take a look at the pictures on the screen there — 11,000 mobile homes that have been sitting empty in the city of hope for months now, tied up in red tape. And now, according to a Homeland Security inspector who testified yesterday, they are literally sinking in the mud.
Yesterday, federal officials said the trailers may end up in the dumpster, unused by Katrina victims. They were meant to shelter them. And they — according to this inspector, they may be unused. The math behind this is mind-boggling. It’s enough to make you scream — 10,777 mobile homes sitting empty in Hope — the average cost per trailer, almost $28,000 — that’s the number we came up with when we did the math, based on the numbers that FEMA has so far released — which adds up to a potential loss of $301.7 million.
That’s taxpayer money, your money, my money. Why aren’t the mobile homes installed where they’re needed? FEMA’s rules and red tape.
Here’s the AC360 blog by CNN Correspondent Susan Roesgen.
Scout Prime at First Draft has a great post on two examples of the lack of accountability in the Chimp’s “faith-based initiative.”
Case 1: The WaPo features the tale of House of Refuge in Salt Lake City. An alleged rehabilitation program at a church, the entity is facing allegations that it forced people to work as telemarketers for 28 cents an hour under the threat they could go back to jail. Oh, and the church withheld even those pitiful wages and pocketed it all.
Case 2: The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports an outfit called Lighthouse Disaster Relief, hastily put together by Pastor Gary Heldreth in the aftermath of Katrina, was hired by FEMA to construct a base camp for first responders and St. Bernard Parish employees. For this, Lighthouse was paid $5 million taxpayer dollars — and didn’t do the work according to the GSA.
The General Services Administration spokespeople couldn’t even confirm how Lighthouse cropped up on the list of approved, qualified contractors or whether anyone ever vetted Heldreth’s “faith-based firm.” Jeebus, in a PBS interview, Heldreth didn’t even claim that Lighthouse had any experience: “About the closest thing I have done to this is just organize a youth camp with my church.”
Even worse, after FEMA shelled out the $5.2 million and ended its contract with Lighthouse — the incompetent agency had to bring in another company to finish the job.
Scout nails this outrage cold.
Can anyone claiming to work for God belly up to Bush’s faith-based tit and suck away with no questions asked? I’m sorry Pastor Gary, if you are indeed a pastor, the taxpayers have the right to ask questions and receive answers before, during and after your work for us. As we can see now it would have been best to ask question BEFORE hand. Better yet dump the Christian moocher initiative all together and give us good government.
BTW, there is a fundraising drive to send Scout Prime, who has done superb reporting on Katrina-related events, to NOLA to do on-site reporting in March. Check it out.
***
[UPDATE: Scout emailed to say that the fundraising goal was met in less than 24 hours!!! She’ll be blogging from NOLA Feb. 27-March 7.]
* Scout Prime has two great Katrina-related posts up:
— “Consistent Info” on Missing Persons Leads to Search of 400 NOLA Homes for Bodies” . This is heartbreaking and enraging because we are five months out from the hurricane and Louisiana officials are now calling for the search of 400 homes “because authorities have consistent information about people missing from those locations.” Many of us, including Scout, believes there are still bodies in the rubble and filth in of NOLA — some remaining homes in Ninth Ward have never been searched.
— “More Housing Discrimination Against Katrina Victims.” The second post, well, who can be surprised that the government has had to start an ad campaign to remind tenants and landlords that housing discrimination against people of color is illegal. Complaints have been lodged against five apartment complexes in Texas, Florida and Alabama for doing so.
* MadKane’s latest Sam Alito poems are up, for your reading pleasure.
* Reader Val points to this mind-blower, “The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion,” about anti-choice women that choose to have an abortion. From the site:
Abortion is a highly personal decision that many women are sure they’ll never have to think about until they’re suddenly faced with an unexpected pregnancy. But this can happen to anyone, including women who are strongly anti-choice. So what does an anti-choice woman do when she experiences an unwanted pregnancy herself? Often, she will grin and bear it, so to speak, but frequently, she opts for the solution she would deny to other women — abortion.
* Michael Stickings, Shakes Sis and Carla at Premptive Karma mull over Kevin Drum’s post on last week’s missile attack in Pakistan and a moral dilemma posed — whether the bombing of the village (intended to kill al-Zawahiri) was or was not justified when innocent civilians die, even if the benefit is that top al Qaeda officials were killed.
What is the level of comfort for those of us on the Left with the use of force as in the war on terror, given at some point the Dems will return to power — and it’s not like the WoT will be over when the Chimp departs.
I have mixed feelings about this, because the whole issue is clouded by the complete incompetence and criminal behavior of this administration. Military action has its place, but I think the whole “surgical strike” BS is just a term tossed out to soothe people that are repulsed/offended by violence and death. For all the “precision” there are countless (and officially uncounted in Iraq) civilian casualties, er, collateral damage, involved in these strikes.
Force of this nature is sometimes necessary, but it should be paired with good human and electronic intelligence - the U.S. seems to be hopelessly under-resourced on the former, and when they don’t have it, they just make sh*t up to justify an action. This government seems to ignore clear evidence that this type of military action creates even more terrorists. We blow up countries on a whim, leave people to live in an obliterated society, and then wonder why our men and women in uniform are getting killed. These terrorist networks are headless, as opposed to a terrorist state, so our ham-handed military tactics aren’t effective. One would think that a better approach would be to have covert assassin teams trying to take these al Qaeda heads out. We actually probably do, but they clearly haven’t produced the desired result.
(AP Photo/Ben Margot)
This man needs meds. It’s bad enough that he made a DVD to tell the underclass without transportation in his city to fend for themselves, now he wants to blame the whole mess on God and the poor displaced people for the lack of progress there.
Mayor Ray Nagin suggested that recent destruction from hurricanes Katrina, Rita and other natural disasters is a sign that “God is mad at America,” and also mad at black communities for tearing themselves apart with violence and divisive politics.
“Surely God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it’s destroyed and put stress on this country,” Nagin said as he and other city leaders commemorated Martin Luther King Day. “Surely he doesn’t approve of us being in Iraq under false pretenses. But surely he is upset at black America also. We’re not taking care of ourselves.”
Joking that he may appear to have “post-Katrina stress disorder,” Nagin, who is black, talked of an imaginary conversation with the late civil rights leader. They “talked,” he said, while he was thinking Monday about what to say at the ceremony outside City Hall to kick off a walking parade in King’s honor.
“I said, ‘What is it going to take for us to move on and live your dream and make it a reality?’ He said, ‘I don’t think that we need to pay attention any more as much about other folks and racists on the other side.’ He said, ‘The thing we need to focus on as a community — black folks I’m talking about — is ourselves.’”
Nagin told the crowd that he also asked, “Why is black-on-black crime such an issue? Why do our young men hate each other so much that they look their brother in the face and they will take a gun and kill him in cold blood?”
Good question, Ray. Not that you — or Kathleen Blanco — were doing anything to really tackle these problems in New Orleans before Katrina, with its corrupt police, terrible schools, and a disproportionately poor and underemployed population that made it a toxic social gumbo. These are complex problems that have no easy answer, but it’s clear nothing serious had been done for years.
Anyone that thought Nagin wants to deal with the issue of the underprivileged in his city post-Katrina is smoking something. Too many on the Left gave him a pass during the hurricane — the bottom line is that the mayor couldn’t identify with someone that couldn’t get a ride out of town because of classism and incompetence.
According to Roxanne, the alt weekly for the New Orleans area called the Gambit is finally about to release their “Best of” issue, which was scheduled to go out when Katrina hit. It’s a great look into the many fine things this city has to offer, many fo which are in danger of disappearing forever. To help raise money to preserve New Orleans’ culture, they are selling hard copies for $10 a piece, details here.
In other blogging Katrina news, scout is blogging furiously on the subject of missing people in the wake of Katrina and the struggles people are having with FEMA when trying to find out information on missing relatives. There are currently 465 children still missing in the wake of Katrina. Scout has all the info at her blog.
After much toil and driving around the state of Texas in the days after Katrina started driving evacuees into shelters all over the state, my friend Erin Prather finally has her article about the relief effort in Texas, particularly the parts coordinated by the Texas Medical Association, up in their monthly magazine. It’s a really great read for people interested in both the relief effort post-Katrina and views of Texas outside the standard issue Evil Redneck lens. The swiftness and size of the response of health care professionals in this state is awe-inspiring.
The hospital district erected the 100,000-square-foot “Katrina Clinic” to care for evacuees. The clinic included 20 curtained exam rooms, mental health service facilities, a laboratory, and radiographic capabilities.
In a personal report to the critical care community, Ken Mattox, MD, cochair of the medical effort at Katrina Clinic and chief of surgery at Ben Taub General Hospital, recounted medicine’s determination to have the clinic operational when evacuees arrived.
“Imagine designing a clinic facility for a town of 23,000 in four hours,” he wrote. “We did it, went out to the Astrodome and with almost military-like command authority, got it staffed, equipped, computerized, telephoned, curtained off, office, medical recorded, etc. in about eight hours. The voluntarism for doctors, nurses, and technicians has been overwhelming. I am very tired, and many of you never thought you would ever hear me say that. I plan to sleep an hour and be out there at midnight when they arrive.”….
By the time Carlos Vallbona, MD, chief of staff of Baylor’s community health program, arrived at the Katrina Clinic for his Thursday evening shift, more than 1,000 evacuees were congregated in the clinic’s small waiting area. They were registered as quickly as possible, triaged, and escorted to one of nine separate treatment areas.
Dr. Sweeney also volunteered that evening for the 7 pm to 7 am shift and was directed to the Katrina Clinic command center, staffed by hospital district employees. For him, the starkest memory is passing a message board covered with hundreds of messages from evacuees looking for the family members.
“It was surreal, reminded me of a scene in the latest War of the Worlds movie where Tom Cruise’s character walks by notes left by people looking for their missing loved ones,” he said.
Most of the evacuees requiring medical care suffered from conditions typical of primary care clinics. They had skin infections, diabetes, asthma, and heart conditions; many were dehydrated. The majority also needed their prescriptions refilled, and some required mental health services.
I had a brief visit with Erin right after her first trip to the Astrodome in the wake of Katrina, and she was pretty zombie-like from exhaustion. But I think the effort to record the various experiences of health care professionals in the wake of this disaster was a valuable one and I hope everyone can take some time to read it. Fascinating stuff.
And totally OT, but I thought I’d cram it somewhere–one more reason that Texas maybe has its moments of decency.
The continuing Shame of America. No respect for the poor and disenfranchised, even when you’re dead.
On Anderson Cooper 360 last night there was a report that just makes you sick. I don’t know how the clowns in the Bush Admin thought they could convince the public that they found all the bodies after this disaster. When they called off the search in October, there was such an outcry that the effort continued, but folks are coming home and finding the corpses of loved ones rotting in homes. (CNN):
The official search-and-rescue effort was called off October 3, but there was such a backlash, crews resumed searching demolished neighborhoods. They have cleared areas zip code by zip code.Hat tip, ScoutPrime, via AmericaBlog.There was no joy for Paul Murphy (ph) in this homecoming. When he walked into his house in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward last month for the first time since Katrina, it was shock and anger.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, I’m thinking that, OK, I was going to come and salvage a few pictures or something. And I walk in here. I found my grandma on the floor dead.
DORNIN: Since November 1, 10 bodies have been found in the ruins of the Ninth Ward. The last area, known as the Lower Ninth, will open to residents December 1. Coroner Frank Minyard worries about what people will find.
(on camera): You’re fully expecting that more bodies will come in once they open the Ninth Ward?
FRANK MINYARD, ORLEANS PARISH CORONER: Yes. And I think it’s — it’s going to come in for a good while. There’s so much rubbish around that they might find people in the rubbish. DORNIN (voice-over): They already have. And there are still many bodies left unidentified and unclaimed.
MINYARD: We have 150 autopsies left to do, all on unidentified people. Hopefully, that — that will help us identify that person, if we can find a pacemaker or an artificial hip or something. Then we’re into DNA.
DORNIN: Susan Eaton (ph) asked if she could send a DNA sample and was told DNA samples were not being accepted. Nearly 80 days after Katrina, not one DNA test has been done.
Also see: Katrina body counting duties given to firm tied to Bush family
Halliburton and its subcontractor KBR hired hundreds of undocumented Latino workers to clean up, treated them like animals, and threw them out without paying them.
Slavery is alive and well if you’re an undocumented worker on the post-Katrina clean-up effort, according to a Salon article (day pass or registration req’d).
Folks were worried about low wages, no-bid contracts and general corruption in the Gulf region, but this is the height of immorality, courtesy of Bush/CheneyCo’s friends at Halliburton/KBR.
Arnulfo Martinez recalls seeing lots of hombres del ejercito standing at attention. Though he was living on the Belle Chasse Naval Base near New Orleans when President Bush spoke there on Oct. 11, he didn’t understand anything the ruddy man in the rolled-up sleeves was saying to the troops.At least slaves picking cotton got a meal and a shack to live in. This is so base that it boggles the mind. As Blender and Julien’s List contributor ‘Bean said:Martinez, 16, speaks no English; his mother tongue is Zapotec. He had left the cornfields of Oaxaca, Mexico, four weeks earlier for the promise that he would make $8 an hour, plus room and board, while working for a subcontractor of KBR, a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton that was awarded a major contract by the Bush administration for disaster relief work. The job was helping to clean up a Gulf Coast naval base in the region devastated by Hurricane Katrina. “I was cleaning up the base, picking up branches and doing other work,” Martinez said, speaking to me in broken Spanish.
Even if the Oaxacan teenager had understood Bush when he urged Americans that day to “help somebody find shelter or help somebody find food,” he couldn’t have known that he’d soon need similar help himself. But three weeks after arriving at the naval base from Texas, Martinez’s boss, Karen Tovar, a job broker from North Carolina who hired workers for a KBR subcontractor called United Disaster Relief, booted him from the base and left him homeless, hungry and without money.
“After all, the last five years have shown American Values means the only people we put first are the ones we like - the ones in our OWN church, with our OWN speech pattern, with our OWN skin color, with our OWN orientation, right?”But ‘Bean, you forgot the most critical factor: putting your rich base first is always the overriding concern in this corrupt, guilt-free Administration.
I met the talented and hard-working Chris Kromm, executive director of the Durham-based Institute for Southern Studies and the editor of Facing South last night at the Durham premiere of Robert Greenwald’s Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. [It’s a hard-hitting documentary, and it confirms all the evil — and just plain criminal activity — behind the retailer’s business practices. That deserves a whole separate post.]
Chris also let me know that ISS’s Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch is up and running. It is a new project designed to document and investigate the rebuilding of the Southern Gulf in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Millions of your tax dollars are pouring into the area as we speak, and do you know how it is being spent, or who is in charge of determining which companies get the contracts? I don’t think those in the government that should know even have a clue at this point.
Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch is an effort by the Institute for Southern Studies (a non-profit research and education center), and its investigative reporting magazine, Southern Exposure, involves original reporting and features, community voices and with a blog. It aims to hold folks accountable during this period of reconstruction now that the cameras are not there 24/7, and there is little oversight as the tax dollars flow freely. Check out the site.
From Jake at Lying Media Bastards, it turns out one of the most damaging rumors during Katrina–that rescue helicopters were being shot at, which caused rescue missions to halt temporarily–was not true. And itshould be considered a national disgrace that this sort of rumor-mongering actually slowed down federal rescue operations.
This racist reading of the events in New Orleans is getting more and more troublesome. This country, especially the South, has a long and troubled history of pumping up and outright inventing crimes committed by black people in order to justify all sorts of mistreatment from government neglect to lynching. The icing on the cake of all this is Bill Bennet’s suggestion that aborting all black women’s pregnancies would dramatically reduce the crime rate–doubtful, but it would probably reduce the crime conviction rate, especially with regards to the drug war, since politicians would lose their favorite scapegoat.
All this has been bothering me immensely since I read this article at Alternet the other day that made the case that school shoot-ups and office place meltdowns are the result of people snapping from grave injustice. What bothers me is that the people who snap, while indeed suffering from injustice, do not have problems near the scale of, say, those who fled to the hellhole of the Superdome only because their homes were under alligator-infested waters. The ugly truth underlying the school and workplace rage phenemenon is that the people who snap are generally straight white men.
I mean, there’s no doubt that large groups of people suffering political oppression snap–that’s what causes riots, after all–but the kind of psychopathic lashing out that people assumed was going on in New Orleans just isn’t a feature of that kind of violence. No, we reserve that kind of lashing out for white men who are angry that their lives aren’t going as well as the other white men they see around them.
Over and over and over again in the aftermath of Katrina, I heard people trotting out mythical stories of the supposed violence against rescue workers in New Orleans and it was always the same tune–”Why aren’t they grateful that the government bothers to help them at all?” And now of course, New Orleans is being blamed on welfare by conservatives who are angry that black people supposedly feel so entitled. Nothing could be more ludicrious. The cries of “help us” that came from crowds in New Orleans weren’t entitlement–that was just basic cries for help. But I would say that entitlement does play a role in a lot of spree murders that happen in America–guys like the Columbine killers grow up in a culture where they are taught that their being white middle class males entitles them to a certain amount of respect and when they don’t get it, they lash out. Other people–racial minorities, women, gays and lesbians, the poor, etc.–who get mistreated and disrespected don’t lash out like that and I really do think it’s because of lowered expectations of what they are entitled to receive.
Not that I think someone like Klebold or Harris deserved the bullying they got at the hands of their tormenters, by any stretch. My point is that no one deserves that–everyone should be accorded the respect that is reserved for the straight white men, especially the privileged bullies like the Columbine jocks or even our President, gets. All people are entitled to that basic respect, but I do find it interesting that historically speaking, the vast majority of people who are so angry that they aren’t getting it that they shoot up a school or workplace are white men.
This does seem to be pretty outrageous–the search for bodies is being called off before sections of the 9th Ward in New Orleans has been completely searched.
Five weeks after Katrina, New Orleans is calling off the house- to-house search for bodies. Teams have pulled 964 corpses from storm- ravaged areas across southeastern Louisiana. Authorities admit more bodies are probably out there. They’ll be handled on a case-by-case basis. The count is far short of the 10,000 dead once predicted by New Orleans mayor. As of today, the death toll from Hurricane Katrina stands at just under 1,200.
Searchers and residents insist there are still plenty of dead to find in New Orleans. Once again, they say the Ninth Ward is being ignored because it is poor and black. Here’s CNN’s Jeanne Meserve.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: (voice- over): In pulverized portions of New Orleans’s Ninth Ward, where water flows, instead of traffic, most homes bear the signs that search teams have been in to look for the living and the dead, but not in one area that spans several blocks. Here, house after house after house is unmarked.
EDWARD MENDEL, SEARCH VOLUNTEER: From here back, I estimate 100 to 150 homes that are still unsearched. And I do expect we will probably find some bodies.
MESERVE (on camera): Why do you think that?
MENDEL: You can smell them as we drive by.
As Scout reminds us, despite the fact that it was much harder to find and identify bodies in the debris that was the WTC, that search wasn’t ended until every bit was picked up and cleaned up. Granted, that was in the process of cleaning up, but I think that it’s generally indicative of the general disregard for New Orleans and their future that this process was called off before the searchers were actually done.
They sure know how to pick ‘em in Alabama.
