Edgewise

i got the antediluvian de-stroyed de-brised de-scouraged homeland insecurity blues

Sittin’ in a friend’s Uptown shotgun listening to Bobby Lounge bang the ivories singing “do not pass on by” while the dog sleeps and the mockingbirds sing on a softly humid Monday morning. The friends are workin’, a blessing in this post-Katrina, trauma-tized, water-marked, limpin’ and hurtin’ New Orleans. “We Back” says the spray paint on the door but there’s a “for sale” sign on the porch. Uptown gardens are bloomin’, the ginger blossoms spilling over picket fences and “fleur de lis” flags fly from the house eaves in a show of hope from those who got lucky and still have an eave. But the gardens are an island in a sea of debris. Drive the boulevards - Jeff Davis, Broad, Gentilly - and mile after mile of blank, empty, forlorn houses sit waiting for a decision: rebuild, remove, repair. Noboby knows what to do until after the (mayoral) election, after hurricane season, after FEMA payments end, after the levees are repaired, the flood maps re-drawn. Though they weren’t wiped off the grid like the Lower Ninth, neighborhood after neighborhood sits deserted, one house here or there cleared of debris, gutted, and boarded up to wait. A grey water line smears across the city’s houses, and abandoned cars, a line of fate, a binding tie, a fading trail of memory back to old New Orleans.

Lyons, Carnival, and FEMA oh my!

We talked on the phone to our friends in New Orleans last night as they were out on their front porch directing traffic onto sidewalks and neighbor's driveways for Mardi Gras parking. They sounded happy for the first time in a long while. Here's some pics of their neighborhood at Inside The Bowl

The White House Lied While New Orleans Died

“FYI from FEMA” said the e-mail to Homeland Security on the night the 17th Street Canal levee broke. The White House knew of flooding, stranded people and fires in the Crescent City by midnight. Then they all went about their business as if nothing had happened. Meanwhile the City of New Orleans fought it’s greatest battle - with the elements - and lost.

Today, the streets of New Orleans are broken, empty, filled with debris. A thousand or more are dead. Hundreds of thousands are “missing” and may never return to their homes. Their homes are gone. Of the 21,000 requests from New Orleaneans for FEMA trailers, only 3,000 have gotten them—more than five months after the hurricane and flood.

That FEMA e-mail said the situation in New Orleans was, “…far more serious…” than the media were reporting. The media had not seen what the FEMA staff had seen, flying over the 17th Street canal in a Coast Guard helicopter. What happened between that e-mail message and the vacationing president’s sigh of relief that the stricken city had “dodged the bullet”? Somebody lied.

Reconstruction: Iraq vs Louisiana

The Bush administration has doled out a lot of cash for the “reconstruction” of Iraq and we now have a report from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The long story short is that $25 billion was appropriated by Congress to rebuild Iraq, including for 136 projects to improve water and sanitation and 425 projects to provide electricity; fewer than half of the water and sanitation projects will get built; 300 of the electricity projects will be completed. $400 million went to “unforseen administrative costs” which reduced the funds available for projects. Former Ambassador John Negroponte “shifted” over $3 billion from reconstruction to training Iraqi security forces, and miscellaneous “democracy institution-building” projects. A separate audit of financial practices of the American administration in Iraq revealed the disappearance of substantial sums of money, some of which shrink-wrapped piles of $100s had been cached in unlocked closets and piled on office floors.

Congress has appropriated $6.2 billion for reconstruction of Louisiana. The aid will be in the form of “block grants” to state agencies. Louisiana state officials had asked for $30 billion [see Note below] to help owners rebuild 200,000 homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and a federal program set up to oversee rebuilding efforts. The Bush administration rejected that proposal, and Donald E. Powell, son of former Secretary of State Colin Powell and now federal Gulf Coast coordinator, said to state officials, “I thinks it’s important for Louisiana to spend this money in a very prudent and wise manner” and indicated that the federal government will be keeping close watch on the Block Grant money going to the state.

Congressionally authorized funds for water, sanitation, electricity infrastructure projects, as well as security force training funds and unspecified administrative costs to Iraq = $24 billion

Congressionally authorized funds for Community Development Block Grants to Louisiana = $6.2 billion

Note: The Congressional Budget Office estimates of capital losses due to Katrina are $70 to $130 billion (287, 000 homes lost overall, with 135,000 homes damaged just in New Orleans; 90% of crude oil production and 70% of natural gas production facilities in the Gulf destroyed or damaged). The CBO compares this with the total cost of damage due to the Sept. 11 attack which was $87 billion (although only $10 billion of it was property loss).

Still somewhat slow on the uptake

Potential good news (or less-bad news) out of New Orleans

The News Blog @ i66.com relays a breaking nitem from the AP: Sweep of New Orleans finds far fewer bodies than expected

Ashes to ashes, funk to funky

(All credit belongs to the Editors at the Poor Man Institute for Freedom, Democracy, and a Pony. The image is a link to the full rock opera.)

Dispatch: Heroic Imp

Earlier today, my pal Heroic Imp sent me this chilling vision of the future I thought was worth sharing:

New Orleans has one of the world's greatest international ports, one of the largest in the nation, and it is a major focus of the city's economy. New Orleans is home to the corporate offices of oil companies with major offshore operations in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as the distribution and service centers of offshore equipment suppliers and fabricators.

The manufacturing industry is a significant part of the economy, with petroleum, petrochemical, shipbuilding, and aerospace industries all playing a role. The New Orleans region also functions as a mining, processing, and transportation center for other minerals, principally sulfur. Service industries are playing a larger role, with health care and telecommunications leading the way. The New Orleans region is widely regarded as a leading center of medicine and health care in the South.

The city was allowed to be destroyed, MARK THESE WORDS...it will be rebuilt, like Iraq, as a major "revitalized" oil refinery port. An all new "illuminated" oil town, afterall improved refineries, production, will "help our energy problems." Get us away from the dependency on foreign oil. Cheney is behind this. Halliburton, according to today's New York times, has just won the open "bidding" for the first round of re-building, $500 million to whet the taste buds.

Like Iraq it was destroyed to be rebuilt as an oil capital.

A Little Understanding, Please...

Aside from the very slight chances of a hurricane and a flood occurring coincidentally, planners had to identify and assign personnel according to their skills. It must be remembered:

--Every hurricane or flood is different. Some call for public-safety skills, boats and sandbagging, while others require clockmakers and paleontologists.

--The records had to be, by definition, antediluvian. [Def: "Bible. Occurring or belonging to the era before the Flood."]

--Hence, they were written in cuneiform. [Def: "Characters formed by the arrangement of small wedge-shaped elements, used in ancient Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian."] Many of our cuneiform translators are currently on assignment overseas.

--Finally, we know from President Bush's own case, the Guard keeps its records in unmarked cartons, distributed at random locations throughout the country

Is the national guard stopping aid from getting in to New Orleans?

That's the word on indymedia.org and getyouracton.com.

One show-stopping excerpt:

Also heard that part of the reason our house flooded is they dynamited part of the levee after the first section broke - they did this to prevent Uptown (the rich part of town) from being flooded. Apparently they used too much dynamite, thus flooding part of the Bywater. So now I know who is responsible for flooding my house - not Katrina, but our government.

Donate to Habitat for Humanity

Help Hurricane Victims Rebuild Their Lives

Katrina was nothing short of catastrophic--especially for families in low-income housing and mobile home parks. In a disaster like this, families who were hanging on by a thread before the hurricane will sadly suffer the most in its aftermath.

They have lost so much. We must help them piece their lives back together.

Please respond without delay.

Click to donate by mail.

Help rebuild the lives of the victims of Hurricane Katrina, piece by piece, house by house. The sooner we know how much support we can count on from partners like you, the sooner we can get to work.

Make your online donation now.

What took so long

Can anyone verify the following assertions (from a mailing list I'm on)?

Halliburton hired for storm cleanup 01 Sep 2005:
The Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. to restore electric power, repair roofs and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Halliburton subsidiary KBR will also perform damage assessments at other naval installations in New Orleans as soon as it is safe to do so.

Halliburton gets contract to repair damage from Hurricane Katrina (HalliburtonWatch.org) 01 Sep 2005:
The US Navy asked Halliburton to repair naval facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina, the Houston Chronicle reported today. The work was assigned to Halliburton's KBR subsidiary under the Navy's $500 million CONCAP contract awarded to KBR in 2001 and renewed in 2004. The repairs will take place in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Blackwater USA Joins Hurricane Katrina Relief Effort:
On September 1, 2005, Blackwater USA joined the ongoing relief effort in the Gulf Region devastated by Hurricane Katrina by dispatching a SA-330J Puma helicopter to help assist in evacuating citizens from flooded areas.... The following services are available: Airlift Services, Security Services, Communication Support, Crowd Control, Humanitarian Support, Services Logistics, and Transportation Services.

Have these people NO SHAME?

Peter

BTW, Mike ***** reports that Homeland Security FORBADE the Red Cross to enter New Orleans.

Government by photo-op

Is this really the best way to help the relief effort?

It goes to show how overwhelming things are here right now that I encountered the First Lady yesterday and I almost forgot to put it in this e-mail. It actually couldn't have been a worse experience; a team of us were working to put up a website with directions to every Red Cross shelter in the region when we were evicted from the computer room by the Secret Service.

There's only one room in the Cajundome with telephones and internet access for refugees, and Laura Bush shut it down for eight hours (along with the food service rooms to the side and the women's showers). You may have seen it on CNN; apparently seven refugees were allowed back so Laura could help them in front of the cameras. If you saw that footage, that's where I put in half my volunteer hours.

Not knowing Bush was still back there later I tried to insist on being allowed back into the room to a "Red Cross" guy who must have been a Secret Service agent undercover. A hint for future Secret Service agents: The real Red Cross guys don't look like they want to break your legs for walking too close to the barricade, because they're too busy passing out food and helping people. They're also less likely to use phrases like "Stand fast, sir!"

Now, I know this is the sort of thing that happens whenever a VIP tours a disaster site, and maybe Laura Bush handing out that loaf of bread really will lead to an increase in donations. All I can say is, to have paralyzed a third of a day of operations at this stage of the game, it fucking well better. And I tried to position myself to say this to her in front of the television cameras too, but instead I only got a wave and a smile as she hurried past me. Looks like I'm going to have to become nationally infamous another day.

FEMA Chief Brown: An Unqualified Success

Talking Points Memo on the qualifications of FEMA chief Michael Brown (aka "Brownie"):

The news out today about FEMA Director Michael Brown tells the ugly tale. So let's just review what we now know -- with key new details first from a diarist at DailyKos and now confirmed in more depth in this morning's Boston Herald.

Michael Brown is a lawyer and GOP party activist. Before he came to FEMA in 2001, he had a full-time job overseeing horse-shows as the commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. He started with them in 1991. But he was eventually fired because of what the Herald describes as "after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures." (The Kos diary has some more details.)

But the stars were shining on Brown because President Bush had just been elected. And he appointed his chief political fixer Joe Allbaugh to replace James Lee Witt as head of FEMA.

That was a good break for the recently-canned Brown, because, as we learn from the Herald, he and Allbaugh were college roommates. He hired Brown as his General Counsel at FEMA in February. And then, by the end of the year, he promoted him to Deputy Director.

Then, little more than a year later, Allbaugh left FEMA to set up New Bridge Strategies, a consultancy to cash in on the Iraqi contracts bonanza. On Allbaugh's departure from FEMA, Brown became Director, in charge of federal domestic emergency management in the United States.

So, just to recap, Brown had no experience whatsoever in emergency management. He was fired from his last job for incompetence. He was hired because he was the new director's college roommate. And after the director -- who himself got the job because he was a political fixer for the president -- left, he became top dog. And President Bush said yesterday that he thinks Brown is "doing a helluva job".

Sympathy for the FEMA

"In Louisiana's capital, Baton Rouge, the head of FEMA, Michael D. Brown said power outages, rising waters and violence by looters and others shooting at rescuers had complicated relief efforts." .-LA Times

How is FEMA supposed to function effectively under these kind of adverse conditions? Rising waters! Power outages! Looters! Who can be expected plan for that?

Let's please remember how proudly FEMA shines when they have good weather and well-functioning transportation and communications systems to work with.

Let's face it. This place is a disaster area!

Deep Thinker at the Helm

And they say his imagination is limited...

...in Air Force One. Turning to his aides, he said: "It's totally wiped out. ... It's devastating, it's got to be doubly devastating on the ground." (Newsweek)

Looting

Have you been watching Fox and Fox type TV this past couple of days? Their coverage of the looting is making me insane.

Poor people who've lost everything, even lost the city they were poor in, stealing food, stealing clothes, stealing TVs, I really don't care. Who are we to judge them? Who is the hell is Fox News to judge them? People hurting people, mugging people, gun fire -- that I care about. Getting people out of town, rescuing people trapped in hospitals, trapped in projects, figuring out what to do with hundreds of thousands of refugees, rebuilding the city, that I care about

But good God. People stealing food, stealing clothes, stealing TVs, while New Orleans and Gulfport lie in ruins? That really is the least of our damn worries right now.

Yes, I get sophomoric when I vent.

President Bush has announced his first priority response to the disaster in New Orleans has been to head off flooding in all major waterways surrounding Crawford, Texas. "We are not about to fall back into a passive, reactive, defensive strategy on this. If we do not fight flooding in Crawford today, we will be fighting it in New Orleans tomorrow."

Bush pointed to a sharp decline in population density in the New Orleans area in recent days as a sign that the threat there was diminishing. "The is a very positive sign, a milestone." However, "There is still a lot of hard work to be done, before the process is complete."

Today, on the heels of his success against Crawford flooding, Bush is shifting location to tackle the crisis in New Orleans itself, or possibly in Washington, or in other appropriate vital locations--despite the fact that emergency-response units in these areas are not even equipped with the same model of bicycle on which Mr. Bush has qualified in the course of his training.

Bush has not actually been seen in any of those places, however there are official records of his having kept a dental appointment "directly in the very heart of some very same vicinity."

The President refused to set a date on when his long, strategically planned vacation might end, saying that information would only give encouragement to the flooding, disease, and economic hardship we are suffering, and would send absolutely the wrong message that these problems are seriously impacting us.

"Indeed, I have no information to indicate that any of these conditions have actually had any substantial impact on us at all, based on what I have seen personally, nor from the high-level daily briefings I receive--briefings which he emphasized were maintained "without fail, every single day," even during the most intense periods of vacation.