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PATH: BS | Government | Feds
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Only A Fraction Of Promised Money Spent Rebuilding New Orleans
Posted by wizeGurl
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 On the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, President Bush made yet another visit to the Mississippi Gulf Coast and New Orleans, where he told astonished residents that, as an occasional visitor to the city, he could see all kinds of improvements that they--being merely residents who see the city every day--could not. And he repeated constantly the huge numbers to show that the federal government had showered the area with as much cold, hard cash as Katrina had showered it with rain.
But the people of New Orleans, who deal daily with the stalled reconstruction, the funds mired in red tape, the gutted health care system, the schools that were failing before the storm and are now only half-rebuilt, the closed day care and the public housing that has not yet reopened--even the undamaged parts--and the rebuilding of which has not even begun--well, they see things differently.
And on their behalf, New Orleans City Councilwoman Shelley Midura sent the following open letter to President George Bush. (Emphasis added.) |
READ MORE | 1 comment since 2009-03-12 07:19:32 | Comment on this Article |
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Time Magazine Story Identifies What Really Destroyed New Orleans
Posted by Pile
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[Environment] |
| The most important thing to remember about the drowning of New Orleans is that it wasn't a natural disaster. It was a man-made disaster, created by lousy engineering, misplaced priorities and pork-barrel politics. Katrina was not the Category 5 killer the Big Easy had always feared; it was a Category 3 storm that missed New Orleans, where it was at worst a weak 2. The city's defenses should have withstood its surges, and if they had we never would have seen the squalor in the Superdome, the desperation on the rooftops, the shocking tableau of the Mardi Gras city underwater for weeks. We never would have heard the comment "Heckuva job, Brownie." The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was the scapegoat, but the real culprit was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which bungled the levees that formed the city's man-made defenses and ravaged the wetlands that once formed its natural defenses. Americans were outraged by the government's response, but they still haven't come to grips with the government's responsibility for the catastrophe. |
READ MORE | 3 comments since 2007-08-14 06:44:40 | Comment on this Article |
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Here is a multi-part video documentary on how the banking system works: Money As Debt. It's quite enlightening.
With its snack-food sponsorship, Democratic and Republican affiliations, and Sen. Larry Craig as a possible running mate, Stephen Colbert's run for the presidency is hardly serious business.
It's now been two years since the destruction of New Orleans caused by defective flood protection built by the US Army Corps of Engineers following Hurricane Katrina. Check out the video of the "progress."
As if it wasn't bad enough for the Bush Administration already, contempt charges are flying in Montana.
A small South Carolina parts supplier collected about $20.5 million over six years from the Pentagon for fraudulent shipping costs, including $998,798 for sending two 19-cent washers to a Texas base, U.S. officials said.