Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen?

[thomas144]

Editor and Publisher

Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues


By Will Bunch

Published: August 31, 2005 9:00 PM ET

PHILADELPHIA Even though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of the city, the waters may still keep rising in New Orleans. That's because Lake Pontchartrain continues to pour through a two-block-long break in the main levee, near the city's 17th Street Canal. With much of the Crescent City some 10 feet below sea level, the rising tide may not stop until it's level with the massive lake.

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it coming. ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them."

The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.

The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs.

There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research was needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. As the Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:

"That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount. But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said."

The Senate was seeking to restore some of the SELA funding cuts for 2006. But now it's too late.

One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer: a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday.

The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night observed, "The Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's coast, only to be opposed by the White House. ... In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana's chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local officials say they need."

Local officials are now saying, the article reported, that had Washington heeded their warnings about the dire need for hurricane protection, including building up levees and repairing barrier islands, "the damage might not have been nearly as bad as it turned out to be."
Will Bunch (letters@editorandpublisher.com) is senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 when he reported for Newsday. Much of this article also appears on his blog, Attytood, at the Daily News.


Links referenced within this article

Editor of Biloxi Paper Surfaces With a Column
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051377
'Times-Picayune' Finds New Home, Reports Looting
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051261
For 'St. Pete Times,' Katrina Coverage is a Test of Preparedness
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051260
Baton Rouge Paper Rides Out the Storm
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001050992
Biloxi Paper Perseveres
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001050989
Hurricane Blog, Day 3
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051366
Hurricane Blog, Day 2
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001050692
Hurricane Blog, Day 1
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001050184
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[dchester]

I'm actually wondering how long it will be before someone actually blames the hurricane on Bush.
________
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[thomas144]

Originally posted by dchester
I'm actually wondering how long it will be before someone actually blames the hurricane on Bush.

I guess we need to start with the basics:

http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~tk/glob_warm_hurr.html

[The*Big*Lebowski]

I don't see that as "blaming the hurricane on Bush". But the hurricane isn't the sole reason why New Orleans is now a ****ing lake.

Cutting the money that was so desperately needed to upgrade these levees? That can certainly be blamed on Bush. Maybe he can go down there and hand out water like he did in Florida and all the sheep will forget that he's ****ed up yet again. I'm doubting he'd do that though. Even he now realizes that he's losing support fast.

PS
I typically stay out of the Bush bashing. Sorry to say that I voted for the clown. I am just tired of hearing how nothing is his fault.

[Undertaker #59]

I blame France.

[thomas144]

Originally posted by Undertaker #59
I blame France.

why?

[Undertaker #59]

Originally posted by thomas144
why?

After reading some history, I change my mind. I blame A. Baldwin Wood:

Much of the city is located below sea level between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, so the city is surrounded by levees. Until the early 20th century, construction was largely limited to the slightly higher ground along old natural river levees and bayous, since much of the rest of the land was swampy and subject to frequent flooding. This gave the 19th century city the shape of a crescent along a bend of the Mississippi, the origin of the nickname The Crescent City. In the 1910s engineer and inventor A. Baldwin Wood enacted his ambitious plan to drain the city, including large pumps of his own design which are still used. All rain water must be pumped up to the canals which drain into Lake Pontchartrain. Wood's pumps and drainage allowed the city to expand greatly in area. However, pumping of groundwater from underneath the city has resulted in subsidence. This has greatly increased the flood risk, should the levees be breached or precipitation be in excess of pumping capacity, as would later happen in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. A major hurricane could create a lake in the central city as much as 30 feet deep, which could take months to pump dry.

[Flagg the Wanderer]

I don't like Bush, but this is Monday-Morning Quarterbacking in the worst way.

Money is shifted around in budgets, you rob from Peter to pay Paul. The simple fact is that for better or worse, we're at war. That means the money comes from somewhere.

Every day, we divide our attention and resources between any number of things that are critical to our survival to varying degrees. Many are pure luxuries. But say you buy an older used car without airbags so you could have money to spend on your daughter's wedding. The wedding is a luxury purchase, while the safer car is a necessity under a certain set of circumstances (namely that you get into a bad car accident.) Every so often in this situation, whoever is making these decisions gets caught with their pants down. That does not make it a bad decision. Hell, even outside of the monetary realm: your cellphone rings, and you look down to dig it out of your pants pocket, flip it open, and take the call. 99.9% of the time, you simply increase your productivity. The one time that the 18 wheeler in front of you slams on the brakes while you're looking down doesn't make you wrong to answer your phone. All of life is a risk/reward calculation.

Let's not forget that the same people who are spouting this drivel where b!tching what, 6 months ago? that the Hummers in Iraq weren't uparmored. That was used to paint Bush as not caring about the troops. In fact, it was a calculated decision that spending that kind of scarce revenue to take a vehicle that was designed for speed and flexibility to armor it but slow it down to half it's normal speed was a bad use of money. And guess what? When the administration caved to public pressure and started uparmoring the Hummers, the insurgents just started using their heavier weapons, which they could aim at the slow moving Hummers while they friggin sip lemonade.

Look, I worked in the Department of Commerce. I know as well as most that government funds are wasted like a college Freshman on Saturday night. There are about 10,000 piddly little grants to study garbage like the post-coital behavior of the shagtoothed llama that could have been better spent elsewhere, to say the least. The point is that even in our own family budgets we make decisions that are not bad decisions, but could result in us getting caught with our pants down. Multiply that times about 2 trillion and you see the problem.

This is garbage. :cuss:

[Flagg the Wanderer]

Originally posted by thomas144
I guess we need to start with the basics:

http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~tk/glob_warm_hurr.html Geez, we might have to (horror of horrors!) adapt to our environment like every other friggin creature on the planet.

[thomas144]

Originally posted by Flagg Wanderer
I don't like Bush, but this is Monday-Morning Quarterbacking in the worst way.

Money is shifted around in budgets, you rob from Peter to pay Paul. The simple fact is that for better or worse, we're at war. That means the money comes from somewhere.


Of course, but Bush has made tax cuts for the wealthy a higher priority than fighting his "war on terror". Even if you think that it made sense to invade Iraq, how can anyone think it makes sense to go to war and not pay for it?

[thomas144]

Originally posted by Flagg Wanderer
Geez, we might have to (horror of horrors!) adapt to our environment like every other friggin creature on the planet.

You mean like by conserving energy? Reducing greenhouse gas emissions? Even the Bush administration now admits that global warming is a problem.

[Flagg the Wanderer]

Originally posted by thomas144
You mean like by conserving energy? Reducing greenhouse gas emissions? Even the Bush administration now admits that global warming is a problem. Exactly. I'm not denying that it's a problem. I question how much of it is caused by humans as opposed to natural temperature cycles - the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, as it is certainly true that we are still coming out of the last ice age.

But the point is that when and if global warming does markedly change the climate, humans will live through it and still dominate every other form of life on the planet, to the point that we will still keep even the most dangerous around as curiousities.

[thomas144]

Originally posted by Flagg Wanderer
Exactly. I'm not denying that it's a problem. I question how much of it is caused by humans as opposed to natural temperature cycles - the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, as it is certainly true that we are still coming out of the last ice age.


we are not "still coming out of the last ice age" -we are long overdue for another. I was just having this same discussion by email with my lunatic sister in South Dakota - is this something Fox news is telling people today? I think I need to check http://www.newshounds.us/ to see where this stuff is coming from...

[Flagg the Wanderer]

Originally posted by thomas144
Of course, but Bush has made tax cuts for the wealthy a higher priority than fighting his "war on terror". Even if you think that it made sense to invade Iraq, how can anyone think it makes sense to go to war and not pay for it? Well, he had a choice to make, didn't he? It was either gut it out and rob Peter to pay Paul, or face the same fate as his father on the same broken campaign promise.

Ideally he would have paid for it by stripping 20% of NOAAs budget, then clipping federal grants for extraneous research.

Look, you can ask these questions all day. The simple fact is that governments always borrow to fund wars. Always.

By the way, it's easy to say "tax the rich." But I'm curious, how much is enough?
http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates-graph.php
7% (until 1916) is too little, perhaps - though they seemed to know something about small government that we lost along the way.
94% (1944-45) seems a wee bit over the top, though, don't you think?

In any case, people like to make a big deal out of the top level rate reduction, when it was really just trimmed a smidge - 0.5% in the first year, 0.5% in the second year, and 3.6% in the third year. You're talking about the tiny corrections you make with the steering wheel, not pulling a U-turn.
Under Clinton, the top rate was 39.6%. Under Bush, it is 35%. Wowie zowie, big deal.

[Flagg the Wanderer]

Originally posted by thomas144
we are not "still coming out of the last ice age" -we are long overdue for another. I was just having this same discussion by email with my lunatic sister in South Dakota - is this something Fox news is telling people today? I think I need to check http://www.newshounds.us/ to see where this stuff is coming from... No, to my knowledge being "long overdue for another" was the vogue environmental scare during the 70s, before global warming became news.

I don't even have cable, so stop with the Fox News garbage.

[Flagg the Wanderer]

And by the way, if that's your beef, you want to talk about a friend to the wealthy? Look to Bill Clinton for the biggest in recent memory.

Yeah, he raised the top rate a good nudge, from 31 to 39.6%. But he also raised the tier break from $86k to $250k. That's quite a bump, no?

[thomas144]

Tax rates on capital gains and on dividends(!) were reduced. For wealthy people, reducing the tax rate on dividends to 15% is much more significant than reducing the marginal tax rate on earned income.

There were also a lot of amazingly generous tax credits and things like accelerated depreciation. I hardly paid any federal taxes in the 2003 tax year (last year seemed a little less crazy).

Regardless of the details, the bottom line is that with Clinton we had budget surpluses and a strong dollar. With Bush we have ballooning deficits and a weak dollar.

[Flagg the Wanderer]

Originally posted by thomas144
Tax rates on capital gains and on dividends(!) were reduced. For wealthy people, reducing the tax rate on dividends to 15% is much more significant than reducing the marginal tax rate on earned income.

There were also a lot of amazingly generous tax credits and things like accelerated depreciation. I hardly paid any federal taxes in the 2003 tax year (last year seemed a little less crazy).

Regardless of the details, the bottom line is that with Clinton we had budget surpluses and a strong dollar. With Bush we have ballooning deficits and a weak dollar. Okay, here's where we differ then. I tend to think of 9/11, the war in Iraq, and the worst natural disaster since the '06 quake to be more than "details."

I'm loving the tax credits, by the way. I fully plan on avoiding the vast majority of my taxation for the foreseeable future by adopting children. In terms of accelerated depreciation, that benefits small business owners and stockholders of corporations. Which is most of middle class America.

[thomas144]

Originally posted by Flagg Wanderer
Okay, here's where we differ then. I tend to think of 9/11, the war in Iraq, and the worst natural disaster since the '06 quake to be more than "details."



So why aren't we raising taxes to pay for these things? Or do you think fighting a war or disaster relief are examples of wasteful goverment spending?

[Flagg the Wanderer]

In any case, we're off track. The point is that yes some, possibly most, of the damage in New Orleans could have been prevented. But that is just monday morning QBing. This was the main point of my post, and one I notice you haven't refuted.

Well written article, though.

[thomas144]

Originally posted by Flagg Wanderer
In any case, we're off track. The point is that yes some, possibly most, of the damage in New Orleans could have been prevented. But that is just monday morning QBing. This was the main point of my post, and one I notice you haven't refuted.



I'm not sure what point you think you are making - the article makes it clear that this has been a long-standing complaint in New Orleans - that they were not getting adequate funding to prevent the catastrophe because of the war in Iraq.

"Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues"

[dchester]

Originally posted by thomas144
I guess we need to start with the basics:

http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~tk/glob_warm_hurr.html Why start there. Why not start with the big bang?
________
Ford SYNus (http://www.ford-wiki.com/wiki/Ford_SYNus)

[spiderman]

I don't really care to have this discussion, but it's important to point out that this point is moot. The portion of levee that failed was a portion that had already been upgraded. So with regards to how much money we spent on Iraq and how much money we spent on this levee, it really doesn't matter.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/national/nationalspecial/01levee.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1125634216-vUW1sfEFwPQmSTQc8nzEbw

No one expected that weak spot to be on a canal that, if anything, had received more attention and shoring up than many other spots in the region. It did not have broad berms, but it did have strong concrete walls.

Shea Penland, director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of New Orleans, said that was particularly surprising because the break was "along a section that was just upgraded."

"It did not have an earthen levee," Dr. Penland said. "It had a vertical concrete wall several feel thick."

Now the corps is scrambling. After failing to close a 300-foot break in the canal through which most of the floodwater entered the city, federal engineers decided last night to take the battle with Lake Pontchartrain to the lakefront.

- But why get the facts straight, it's much easier to point the finger when we ignore all the details and make broad sweeping accusations. Afterall I'd much rather be having another Dems vs. Repubs debate then actually figure out how we're going to save peoples lives.

[dchester]

Originally posted by spiderman
- But why get the facts straight, it's much easier to point the finger when we ignore all the details and make broad sweeping accusations. Afterall I'd much rather be having another Dems vs. Repubs debate then actually figure out how we're going to save peoples lives. Thank you. Those are my thoughts as well.

Now the one thing I will blame Bush (along with the mayor of New Orleans, and the Governor of Louisiana) is for the slow response and the failure to maintain law and order.
________
medical marijuana (http://dispensaries.org/)

[Flagg the Wanderer]

Originally posted by dchester
Thank you. Those are my thoughts as well.

Now the one thing I will blame Bush (along with the mayor of New Orleans, and the Governor of Louisiana) is for the slow response and the failure to maintain law and order. Bingo. The total lack of preparedness is unforgivable. There are STILL people stranded on I-10 who haven't eaten in almost 4 days now.

Somehow, we can get News helicopters there to film them, but not drop food and water. :confused: :cuss:

[The*Big*Lebowski]

This is what's upsetting me as well. We have all of this footage and all this equipment and none of it is being used to actually do something useful. Get these people some food and water for christs sake.

[O_P_T]

Originally posted by thomas144
I guess we need to start with the basics:

http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~tk/glob_warm_hurr.html

Sure, like this? (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18324660.500.html)


Hurricane cycle yet to reach its peak

25 September 2004
From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.

Hurricane-battered residents of the Caribbean, Florida and Alabama are facing another 10 or 20 bad years of high hurricane activity - and it's not due to global warming.

Hurricanes have been on the increase over the past decade as part of a natural multi-decadal cycle (New Scientist, 27 September 2003, p 14). .Hurricanes are more likely to form when the Atlantic is warm, as it was in the 1930s to 1960s. The decades since the 1960s saw fewer hurricanes, but numbers have risen since 1995 and may not have reached the predicted peak yet.

This hurricane season has received more attention mainly because many hurricanes over the past few years have failed to make landfall in the US. "Look at the Caribbean and it's a different story," says Alberto Mestas-Nunez from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Miami.


As far as the levee question is concerned, this (http://www.techcentralstation.com/090205F.html) article has more to say on the topic.

[QUOTE]Worse for the editorial writers were statements by the chief engineer of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Lt. Gen Carl Strock: "I don't see that the level of funding was really a contributing factor in this case. Had this project been fully complete, it is my opinion that based on the intensity of this storm that the flooding of the business district and the French Quarter would have still taken place."

The reason: the funding would only have completed an upgrade of the levees to a protect against a level 3 hurricane. Katrina was a level 4 plus.
QUOTE]

[sonsofkraftybob]

Originally posted by The Big Lebowski
I don't see that as "blaming the hurricane on Bush". But the hurricane isn't the sole reason why New Orleans is now a ****ing lake.

Cutting the money that was so desperately needed to upgrade these levees? That can certainly be blamed on Bush. Maybe he can go down there and hand out water like he did in Florida and all the sheep will forget that he's ****ed up yet again. I'm doubting he'd do that though. Even he now realizes that he's losing support fast.

PS
I typically stay out of the Bush bashing. Sorry to say that I voted for the clown. I am just tired of hearing how nothing is his fault.

Sorry "Dude" that $$$$ was for a friggin study. Absolutely nothing was earmarked for construction....which would have been years away anyways...think Big Dig in terms of timetable.

More leftist propoganda....

[jim_vh]

Originally posted by Flagg Wanderer
By the way, it's easy to say "tax the rich." But I'm curious, how much is enough?.

much of the income of the rich is capital gains rather than income. The capital gains tax is 15%. And a drop of 39.6 to 35 is a 12% reduction in taxes. I didn't get a 12% reduction in federal taxes, especially if you include the social security which tops out at 86K anyway.

Flagg, does this impact you in person? Have you noticed this nation is $8 trillion in debt?

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

[jim_vh]

http://gov.louisiana.gov/Disaster%20Relief%20Request.pdf

so why the slow response? MS and LA voted for him, even.

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/0905/01edwitt.html

The incredibly expensive dept of homeland security is responsible to deal with natural disasters. they failed. bush should be impeached for gross negligence.

http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/theme_home2.jsp
In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will assume primary responsibility on March 1st for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation. This will entail providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort. The new Department will also prioritize the important issue of citizen preparedness. Educating America's families on how best to prepare their homes for a disaster and tips for citizens on how to respond in a crisis will be given special attention at DHS.

[Flagg the Wanderer]

Originally posted by jim_vh
much of the income of the rich is capital gains rather than income. The capital gains tax is 15%. And a drop of 39.6 to 35 is a 12% reduction in taxes. I didn't get a 12% reduction in federal taxes, especially if you include the social security which tops out at 86K anyway. I'm well aware of the first part, but that effects everyone in roughly the same proportion, because while a higher percentage of the wealthy's income goes to what we traditionally think of as investments, a much higher percentage of the middle class' income goes towards their home - a huge source of capital gains in the present economy. As for the second part, that's playing with numbers. The larger numbers need greater motion for a larger percentage bump in either direction.

Flagg, does this impact you in person?It effects everyone, doesn't it? If you're asking if I'm in that tax bracket, the answer is no, I'm not. I'm now working in the non-profit sector.
Have you noticed this nation is $8 trillion in debt?

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ Um, yeah. I understand that. You won't meet someone more pissed about that than me. What's your point?

[jim_vh]

Originally posted by Flagg Wanderer
I'm well aware of the first part, but that effects everyone in roughly the same proportion, because while a higher percentage of the wealthy's income goes to what we traditionally think of as investments, a much higher percentage of the middle class' income goes towards their home - a huge source of capital gains in the present economy. As for the second part, that's playing with numbers. The larger numbers need greater motion for a larger percentage bump in either direction.

It effects everyone, doesn't it? If you're asking if I'm in that tax bracket, the answer is no, I'm not. I'm now working in the non-profit sector.
Um, yeah. I understand that. You won't meet someone more pissed about that than me. What's your point?


There are lifetime and one time exemptions for capital gains from home sales. The point is increasing taxe rates reduces debt and improves the economy as the Clinton years shows.

[jim_vh]

Gov. Jeb Bush sought federal help Friday while [Hurricane] Charley was still in the Gulf of Mexico. President Bush approved the aid about an hour after the hurricane made landfall. By Monday afternoon, the cavalry seemed to be in place . . . Cargo planes were shuttling FEMA supplies from a Georgia Air Force base to a staging area in Lakeland, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had shipped 11 truckloads of water and 14 truckloads of ice. The first assistance checks to victims were to be shipped Monday night.


http://tinyurl.com/dt87y

So why the fast response for Charly but not Katrina? Was it because it was an election year? Or because LA has a Dem governor? How about the victims were poor and black?

[Flagg the Wanderer]

Originally posted by jim_vh
There are lifetime and one time exemptions for capital gains from home sales.How many times have you moved? I'm only 28, and I've already bought twice, sold once, and I'm going on the market again in the next couple of weeks.
The point is increasing taxe rates reduces debt and improves the economy as the Clinton years shows. The Clinton years show that if you happen to preside over a period coming out of a recession and the beginning and bulk of the largest boom in the history of the country as a totally new industry blossoms from nothing into the driving factor of the economy in less than 10 years, the economy will be good.

There's a reason that leaders since Adam Smith have responded to a recession by cutting taxes. As long as it is temporary, government taking on debt is good for the economy. More money being kept in business owners pockets stimulates growth and jobs. Increasing tax rates increases revenue in the short term, but over time limits growth and business expansion. All tax is by definition a drag on the economy. The question is how much of it is necessary.

The point of my question was that there are two sides to the equation. You say raise taxes. I say cut spending. Spending is totally out of control. And I agree, therefore, with the premise that Bush has done a bad job of presiding over the economy and that this is witnessed by ballooning debt.

[freak]

Originally posted by thomas144
I'm not sure what point you think you are making - the article makes it clear that this has been a long-standing complaint in New Orleans - that they were not getting adequate funding to prevent the catastrophe because of the war in Iraq.


Where, exactly, does the Constitution require the federal govt to provide for the prevention of natural disasters?

THE CITY WAS BUILT BELOW SEA LEVEL. WTF DID YOU EXPECT?!!!

:banghead:

[jim_vh]

I am fine with cutting spending to go along with the tax cuts. This is where Dubya and the Republican right failed. And this is not a minor failure, this is huge and unacceptable. He blew 12 years of hard bipartisan work out of the water.

[dchester]

Originally posted by jim_vh
So why the fast response for Charly but not Katrina? Was it because it was an election year? Or because LA has a Dem governor? How about the victims were poor and black? Do you seriously think that Bush (or FEMA) decided to wait longer because it was mostly poor black people??? Maybe it was due to the Dem governor. Isn't it the governor who is supposed to call out the National Guard and provide the initial response in times of disaster? The federal role in the past has been to supplement the state role. In this case they feds had to take over completely (on Friday I believe) because the local and state officials were so utterly incompetant.

While it may be fun for people to blame Bush for the hurricane, the reality is that gov't at all levels (local, state, and federal) did poorly. I suspect the main reason for that, is due to the people in charge not forseeing that the retaining walls would fail (the day after the hurricane), which drastically changed the scope of this calamity. If blaming Bush is what people need to do, then so be it. I just people would consider that there were numerous other factors that made this much worse than anything Bush did (or didn't do). How about blaming the mayor for not providing buses for people willing to leave, but without transportation? How about the Governor, who did as close to nothing as anyone has ever done during a disaster in their state? Where were the State Police and National Guard?
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[dchester]

http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/nm/20050905/2005_09_05t163808_450x300_us_katrina.jpg

Is this really Bush's fault?

:confused:
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[dchester]

Pruden on Politics (http://www.washtimes.com/national/pruden.htm)

George W. finally gets it -- in more ways than one. The tardy president was back on the Gulf Coast yesterday, bucking up the spirits of the damned and stiffening the resolve of the slackers.

He's getting it as well from his critics, many of whom can't believe their great good luck, that a hurricane, of all things, finally gives them the opening they've been waiting for to heap calumny and scorn on him for something that might get a little traction. Cindy Sheehan is yesterday's news; she couldn't attract a camera crew this morning if she stripped down to her step-ins for a march on Prairie Chapel Ranch.

The vultures of the venomous left are attacking on two fronts, first that the president didn't do what the incompetent mayor of New Orleans and the pouty governor of Louisiana should have done, and didn't, in the early hours after Katrina loosed the deluge on the city that care and good judgment forgot. Ray Nagin, the mayor, ordered a "mandatory" evacuation a day late, but kept the city's 2,000 school buses parked and locked in neat rows when there was still time to take the refugees to higher ground. The bright-yellow buses sit ruined now in four feet of dirty water. Then the governor, Kathleen Blanco, resisted early pleas to declare martial law, and her dithering opened the way for looters, rapists and killers to make New Orleans an unholy hell. Gov. Haley Barbour did not hesitate in neighboring Mississippi, and looters, rapists and killers have not turned the streets of Gulfport and Biloxi into killing fields.

The drumbeat of partisan ingratitude continues even after the president flooded the city with National Guardsmen from a dozen states, paratroopers from Fort Bragg and Marines from the Atlantic and the Pacific. The flutter and chatter of the helicopters above the ghostly abandoned city, some of them from as far away as Singapore and averaging 240 missions a day, is eerily reminiscent of the last days of Saigon. Nevertheless, Sen. Mary Landrieu, who seems to think she's cute when she's mad, even threatened on national television to punch out the president -- a felony, by the way, even as a threat. Mayor Nagin, who you might think would be looking for a place to hide, and Gov. Blanco, nursing a bigtime snit, can't find the right word of thanks to a nation pouring out its heart and emptying its pockets. Maybe the senator should consider punching out the governor, only a misdemeanor.

The race hustlers waited for three days to inflame a tense situation, but then set to work with their usual dedication. The Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, our self-appointed twin ambassadors of ill will, made the scene as soon as they could, taking up the coded cry that Katrina was the work of white folks, that a shortage of white looters and snipers made looting and sniping look like black crime, that calling the refugees "refugees" was an act of linguistic racism. A "civil rights activist" on Arianna Huffington's celebrity blog even floated the rumor that the starving folks abandoned in New Orleans had been forced to eat their dead -- after only four days. New Orleans has a reputation for its unusual cuisine, but this tale was so tall that nobody paid it much attention. Neither did anyone tell the tale-bearer to put a dirty sock in it.

Condi Rice went to the scene to say what everyone can see for himself, that no one but the race hustlers imagine Americans of any hue attaching strings to the humanitarian aid pouring into the broken and bruised cities of the Gulf. Most of the suffering faces in the flickering television images are black, true enough, and most of the helping hands are white.

Black and white churches of all denominations across a wide swath of the South stretching from Texas across Arkansas and Louisiana into Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama and Georgia turned their Sunday schools into kitchens and dormitories. In Memphis, Junior Leaguers turned out for baby-sitting duty at the city's largest, most fashionable and nearly all white Baptist church, cradling tiny black infants in compassionate arms so their mothers could finally sleep. The owner of a honky-tonk showed up to ask whether the church would "accept money from a bar." A pastor took $1,400, some of it in quarters, dimes and nickels, with grateful thanks and a promise to see that it is spent wisely on the deserving -- most of whom are black.

The first polls, no surprise, show the libels are not working. A Washington Post-ABC survey found that the president is not seen as the villain the nutcake left is trying to make him out to be. Americans, skeptical as ever, are believing their own eyes.
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[jim_vh]

LINK (http://www.t-g.com/story/1116806.html)

A co-owner of Shelbyville-based Gowen-Smith Chapel has been deployed to Gulfport, Miss., to help with recovery since Hurricane Katrina, and his business partner here has described the grim task there.

"DMort is telling us to expect up to 40,000 bodies," Dan Buckner said, quoting officials with the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team, a volunteer arm of Homeland Security.

[jim_vh]

August 26

5 a.m.: After weakening briefly to a tropical storm, Katrina regains
hurricane status and moves on to the Gulf of Mexico.

11:30 a.m.: The hurricane is upgraded to Category 2, with the storm's feeder bands continuing to pound the lower Florida Keys.

4 p.m.: The National Hurricane Center warns that Katrina is expected to reach dangerous Category 4 intensity before making landfall in Mississippi or Louisiana. Hours later, in anticipation of a possible landfall, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco declare states of emergency.

August 27

5 a.m.: Katrina is upgraded to a Category 3, or major hurricane, with the Gulf Coast in its path. During the day, residents of Louisiana's low-lying areas are told they must evacuate; residents in other low-lying areas are urgently advised to do so. President Bush declares a state of emergency in Louisiana.. Highways leading out of New Orleans are filled with bumper-to-bumper traffic. Several major interstates are converted to one-way routes away from the city.

11 p.m.: The National Hurricane Center issues a hurricane warning from Morgan City, Louisiana, to the Alabama-Florida border, an area that includes New Orleans. A warning means that hurricane conditions are expected within the warning area within the next 24 hours.

This was 2 days before landfall. The mayor DID issue an evacuation order, as you can see by the traffic leaving New Orleans. The next morning, he issued another, MANDATORY, evacuation order, making it the second evacuation order
he issued.

[jim_vh]

LINK (http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3004197)

ATLANTA - Not long after some 1,000 firefighters sat down for eight hours of training, the whispering began: "What are we doing here?"
As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters - his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week - a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta.
Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.
Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.

[dchester]

Multiple failures caused relief crisis (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4216508.stm)

Analysis
By Paul Reynolds
World Affairs correspondent, BBC News website

The breakdown of the relief operation in New Orleans was the result of multiple failures by city, state and federal authorities.

There was no one cause. The failures began long before the hurricane with a gamble that a Category Four or Five hurricane would not strike New Orleans.

They continued with an inadequate evacuation plan and culminated in a relief effort hampered by lack of planning, supplies and manpower, and a breakdown in communications of the most basic sort.

On top of all this, there is the question of whether an earlier intervention by President Bush could have a made a big difference.

The planning

Before Hurricane Katrina struck, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) was confident that it was ready. Its director, Michael Brown, said: "Fema has pre-positioned many assets including ice, water, food and rescue teams to move into the stricken areas as soon as it is safe to do so."

Mr Brown even told the Associated Press news agency that the evacuation had gone well. "I was impressed with the evacuation, once it was ordered it was very smooth," he said.

Yet on Saturday 28 August, the day before the evacuation was ordered, Mr Brown did not say that people should leave the city. All he said was:

"There's still time to take action now, but you must be prepared and take shelter and other emergency precautions immediately."

This has made Fema appear complacent in the period immediately before the hurricane arrived. If it did not expect the worst, it would not have prepared for the worst.

The Brown statement went out on the same day that the National Hurricane Center was warning that Katrina was strengthening to the top Category Five. Everyone knew the dangers of a Category Five. A Fema exercise last year called "Hurricane Pam" had looked at a Category Three, and that was bad enough.

The evacuation

It was announced at a news conference by the Mayor Ray Nagin on Sunday 28 August, less than 24 hours before the hurricane struck early the next morning.

The question has to be asked: Why was it not ordered earlier?

The Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco said at the same news conference that President Bush had called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation.

The night before, National Hurricane Director Max Mayfield had called Mayor Nagin to tell him that an evacuation was needed. Why were these calls necessary?

Again, as with Fema, the New Orleans mayor should have known that on the Saturday, Katrina was strengthening to Five.

It was already clear on the Sunday that the evacuation would not cover many of the poor, the sick and those who did not pay heed.

The mayor said people going to the Superdome, a sports venue named as an alternative destination for those unable to leave, should bring supplies for several days. He also said police could commandeer any vehicle for the evacuation.

But how much support was there at the Superdome? And how much city transport was actually used? There is a photo showing city school buses still lined up, in waterlogged parking lots, after the hurricane.

Update: a reader has pointed out that there are detailed plans for Louisiana and the City of New Orleans for an evacuation and these make it clear that buses should be used to transport those without cars.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40765000/jpg/_40765970_buses.jpg
School buses still lined up after the hurricane

There are questions for the mayor, dubbed heroic by some, to answer.

The relief operation

The scenes which most shocked the world were at the Superdome and the Convention Center. Yet it turns out that neither Mr Brown nor his boss, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, knew about the crises there until Thursday.

This, despite numerous television reports from the scene. It was not until Friday that the first relief convoy arrived.

"The very day that this emerged in the press, I was on a video conference with all the officials, including state and local officials. And nobody, none of the state and local officials or anybody else, was talking about a Convention Center," Chertoff told CNN. Note how he blames local officials.

Nor did he know about the significance of the breach in the floodwalls until a day later.

"It was midday Tuesday that I became aware of the fact that there was no possibility of plugging the gap, and that essentially the lake was going to drain into the city," he said on NBC.

update: it is possible of course that the engineers had not themselves concluded that before Tuesday but the potential could have been realized.

Other, more successful operations, notably the airlift by the Coast Guard, should be acknowledged.

And in a disaster area the size of Great Britain, resources were stretched.

But ironically the failure at the Convention Center would have been fairly easy to put right. Reporters drove there without problems. One took a taxi.

What, one wonders, was Fema/the mayor's office/the governor's office doing while all that was played out on live TV?

One lesson agencies might want to learn is that someone senior should do nothing but monitor TV.

Some of this might explain why people at the Superdome and the Convention Center had to wait so long. It does not explain why communications were not better.

Another sign of slowness was that the Department of Homeland Security did not issue the first ever declaration of an "incident of national significance" until the Wednesday. Such a declaration allows the federal government a greater role in taking decisions.

In fact, the arguments between federal and state authorities about who was able to do what is another part of this story.

The Department of Homeland Security said the local authorities were inadequate. The locals responded that Fema had been obstructive - it had, for example, stopped three truckloads of water sent by the store Wal-Mart. And so on.

It took days to sort out who should send troops and from where.

Indeed, the intricacies of the various responsibilties of state and federal authorities do not always allow for quick decision making, though that did not stop rapid action in New York City on 9/11.

Nor does Governor Blanco escape criticism. It took until Thursday, for example, for her to sign an order releasing school buses to move the evacuees.

The president's response

Mr Bush has been blamed for failing to rise to the occasion. His critics argue that he took too long to get back to Washington and did not provide the inspirational leadership needed at such a time. Nor, it is said, did he intervene early enough to get things moving.

Washington Post correspondent Dan Balz concluded:

"Anger has been focused on Bush and his administration to a degree unprecedented in his presidency. Senator Mary Landrieu [a Louisiana Democrat] said in an ABC News interview that aired Sunday that she would consider punching the president and others for their response to what happened there. Local officials, some in tears, have angrily accused the administration of callousness and negligence."

The president's defenders point out that it was he who urged an evacuation of New Orleans (he has no legal power to order one) and that he did acknowledge the "unacceptable" pace of the relief effort. Further, they say that aid is now flowing and reconstruction will take place.

Another issue for Mr Bush is why Michael Brown was appointed director of Fema. He had previously been its deputy and had been hired as its general counsel by the director Joe Allbaugh, George Bush's chief of staff when he was Texas governor. Mr Brown, a lawyer from Oklahoma, played a role in studying the government's response to national emergencies. Before that he had run the Arab horse association.

Senator Hillary Clinton has said that Fema should be removed from the Homeland Security Department and made an independent agency again.

The gamble

When Hurricane Camille, a rare top Category Five storm, hit Mississippi in 1969, just missing New Orleans, the levees around the city were strengthened - but only enough to protect against a Category Three hurricane.

The gamble was taken that another Category Five would not threaten New Orleans anytime soon. This attitude prevailed among successive administrations.

Lt General Carl Strock, the Army Corps of Engineers commander, admitted that there was a collective mindset - that New Orleans would not be hit. Washington rolled the dice, he said.

After flooding in 1995, the existing system was improved. However, the sums were relatively small. About $500m was spent over the next 10 years.

From 2003 onwards, the Bush administration cut funds amid charges from the Army Corps of Engineers that the money was transferred to Iraq instead. The latest annual budget was cut from $36.5m to $10.4m.

A study to examine defences against a category Four or Five storm was proposed, at a cost of $4m. The Times-Picayune quoted the Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi as saying: "The Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies."

But in any event, there was no plan for a major strengthening. This would have taken billions of dollars and many years.

And an Army Corps of Engineers spokeswoman, Connie Gillette, said there had never been any plans or funds to improve those floodwalls which had failed.

Update: a reader has pointed out a quote in the New York Times indicating that the failed floodwalls had in fact previously been strengthened.

'"Shea Penland, director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of New Orleans, said [it] was particularly surprising because the break was "along a section that was just upgraded." "It did not have an earthen levee," Dr. Penland said. "It had a vertical concrete wall several feel thick."' It is a long and complex chain of responsibility.

All these issues, and many more, will now be the subject of congressional and other inquiries.
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[dchester]

Here's one you can blame the feds for.
:donkeys:

Right city, wrong state (http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/06/katrina.charleston/index.html?section=cnn_latest)

FEMA accused of flying evacuees to wrong Charleston

(CNN) -- Add geography to the growing list of FEMA fumbles.

A South Carolina health official said his colleagues scrambled Tuesday when FEMA gave only a half-hour notice to prepare for the arrival of a plane carrying as many as 180 evacuees to Charleston.

But the plane, instead, landed in Charleston, West Virginia, 400 miles away.

It was not known whether arrangements have been made to care for the evacuees or transport them to the correct destination.

A call seeking comment from FEMA was not immediately returned.

"We called in all the available resources," said Dr. John Simkovich, director of public health for the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control.

"They responded within 30 minutes, which is phenomenal, to meet the needs of the citizens coming in from Louisiana," he said.

Simkovich said that the agency had described some of the evacuees as needing "some minor treatment ... possibly some major treatment."

"Unfortunately, the plane did not come in," Simkovich said. "There was a mistake in the system, coming out through FEMA, that we did not receive the aircraft this afternoon. It went to Charleston, West Virginia."

A line of buses and ambulances idled behind him at Charleston International Airport as he described what happened.

"This is a 'no event' for today," Simkovich said.
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