Not much to expand on here, so you will have to accept it for what it is.
CNN reports this morning on the value of supplies actually given to Katrina storm victims. The Bush Administration, GSA and FEMA proudly claimed they had given away $85 million in relief supplies, but apparently this total was accomplished by assigning the value of a crate of toilet paper to a roll of tp, etc. The real value was a paltry $18 million and not all of that was distributed. Imagine that! A whopping $18 million to an entire city destroyed with hundreds of thousands of people displaced, and much of it never distributed. How generous!
The General Services Administration, which manages federal property, over-counted cases of toilet paper, plastic sporks and other cutlery, by mistakenly counting a single item as being worth as much as multiple items contained in a package of goods.
I recently completed a bicycle tour from the Georgia coast through southwest Louisiana to west Texas. For years I have looked forward to cycling through the marshlands of coastal Louisiana, a remote region of unique beauty and Cajun culture. This is the story of Cameron, Louisiana.
What I saw stunned me. I had long known of our nation's failure to address the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The impacts of Hurricane Rita were just as severe and remain largely ignored two and a half years later.
Hurricane season is about six weeks away. The Mississippi River is very high due to heavy rains in the MidWest. The Bonne Carre Spillway has been opened for the first time in 11 years to let some river water flow through Lake Pontchartrain into the Gulf of Mexico.
Things are tensing up down along the Gulf Coast. Less than three years after hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck and the levees failed in New Orleans, nature is reminding us of what a tenuous hold we have on the lives we've created and are still rebuilding for ourselves down here.
We don't want to — and can't — go through another disaster again. Especially with the current administration in place. Real help will not come.
The hard and, yes, bitter lessons learned along the coast over the past two-and-a-half years are going to come in handy for the rest of the country it focuses on the coming federal elections.
The core lesson is this: Republican crony capitalism doesn't fix anything that's broken. It's all about them taking care of their own while the rest of us are left on our own. The proof is being lived out daily on the coasts of Louisiana and Mississippi.
Conventional wisdom has been that the true friends of New Orleans and other parts of the Gulf Region during the federal flood and the onslaught of Katrina and Rita were not FEMA or any other organization of the federal government. They include several big-box stores including a much-maligned Walmart. But there's far more to this story than meets the eye. More below the fold.....
First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who participated in last week's NOLA Blogathon and made it a success.
The diaries were all first-rate. And the Blogathon went well in spite of the fact that one of the participants kept getting error codes which kept her from posting, another who had been scheduled did not post a diary, and several diaries quickly slipped off the front page and attracted very little exposure and comments because of the crush of diaries on several "scandales du jour" which could not have been foreseen.
As anybody who regularly watches candidates' debates knows, questions about Katrina and New Orleans have been extremely rare, even though this is a valid national campaign issue. Here's a chance to vote for such a question to be asked during either of the two debates, one Republican, one Democratic, which are slated for Los Angeles on Jan. 30th and Jan. 31st, and will be aired on CNN.
An aerial view of Pontchartrain Park from the early 1950s. The area in the top left corner is Camp Leroy Johnson, an army supply depot. That land was turned over to the University of New Orleans in the 1960s, and is now the university's East Campus. On the right, jutting out into Lake Pontchartrain is Lakefront Airport (NEW). The top left corner of the undeveloped area is now the campus of Southern University in New Orleans. The drainage canal separating the park from the rest of Gentilly on the left is the Florida Avenue canal. Next to the canal are the tracks for the Southern Railroad. They head from in town, curve right then travel east across the Industrial Canal and out to the train bridge across the lake that runs parallell to US90 and I-10. The canal and the train tracks make for a significant geographical boundary between the established part of Gentilly on the left and the new Pontchartrain Park subdivision on the right.
Sign the petition at WhentheSaints.org and urge the Senate to pass Senator Dodd's Gulf Coast Recovery Act of 2007 (S1668) to assist the Gulf Coast region rebuild. Two years after disaster struck, is long past time.
Here is a taste of what we Louisianans are cooking over at Daily Kingfish, a community blog where the progressive and Democratic Louisiana communities discuss Louisiana politics.
This is a relatively easy analogy to unpack: Landrieu engages in oversight, while Jindal is derelict in his duties as Congressman of LA-01.
Secretary of State Jay Dardenne, (R-Baton Rouge) in testimony to the House Government Affairs Committee on 2 May 2007 used a racist code word in support of his position to deny Louisianans displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita the right to vote in Louisiana elections.
He was invited to give his opinion on Jalila Jefferson-Bullock's HB 619, which would extend the right of displaced persons to vote in Louisiana elections for the upcoming gubernatorial election this fall.
The code word used by Secretary Dardenne? Chaos.
UPDATE: Don't believe this? Then click here and go to 2 May 2007, and click on House Gov Affairs. It'll launch Real Player, and in the interest of saving you 3 hours, skip to 2:40, and watch from there.
18 months after the Afghanistan of the 2005 storms, some people still do not know the location of their loved ones that were displaced by Hurricane Rita. I posted on coffins across the gulf coast that got washed away on October 14th, 2005.
There have been many stories told, and there will be many stories to tell, of how New Orleans and the communities to the southeast struggle to recover from the hurricanes of 2005.
Before I began researching this story, I assumed that pattern would be the same across the entire Louisiana Gulf Coast.
As Mardi Gras approaches in New Orleans, the time is ripe to stop and remember what the city and region has been through. Less than two years ago, we saw an American city inundated by negligence, and anyone who had a heart--even many of the talking heads--broke from their mundane routine to report the raw truth. It took corpses floating in flooded (American) streets and carcasses cooking on (American) rooftops to snap the traditional media out of its zombie walk of half-truth. These people were shocked that this was happening in America, not some strange second-class country thousands of miles away. We were supposed to be so powerful, so capable of preventing disasters like this. After all, the story went, we were supposed to be able to save the Iraqis from certain doom. We were in control, but Katrina quickly shattered that media farce.
Now, unfortunately, these same outlets are back to their old ways, only finding news in crazy astronauts, controversial bloggers, and dead celebrities. I want to remind them (and you) once again of what they felt:
Somehow I found myself on Bobby Jindal's mailing list (I think because of some messages I sent his office in the aftermath of Katrina). Anyway, I figured there was no reason to unsubscribe. Tonight he sent out an email to his "supporters" announcing that he is taking the preliminary steps to challenge Kathleen Blanco (D) as the governator of Louisiana.
The entire (long) text of his email will be in the comments. Below the flip for my thoughts.
What. Ever. Kinky ain't cool and last I checked the most popular guy in school usually didn't do shit after graduating. Kinky admits he doesn't have a plan and doesn't even know how to find one if you rolled it up and beat his ego down with it.
Endorsed by the state, but financially abandoned nationally, Mike Stagg presses on with his progressive message. In a time where we are talking about money from safe districts needing to be moved to competitive races, Stagg is a poster child for what could be a competitive race for 100k from a national democratic committee.
A recent article from Lafayette shows his activity despite financial problems.
After reading Buffy's diary I remember an experience I had with my pets, getting sick, having to sell my home and close my business. My family wanted me to move with them but refused my animals. After about a year I found a temporary option with a friends and now I am in my own home safe with my furry friends again. It's very difficult to find a place to stay when you make the decision not to abandon your furry friends.
As much as I dislike the republican leadership in this country, they passed one great bipartisan act:
This past Friday at the White House, President Bush signed the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards (PETS) Act into law.
