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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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| 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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Katrina: The Screw-Up That Keeps Getting More Screwed Up
Posted by ueberbill
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| Hurricane Katrina, the overplayed pop song of natural disasters, was the most devastating bitch-slap ever delivered to America. From personal experience (I live here) the region is not even close to recovering. Why is that? Racists think it's black people. Other racists think it's white people. Municipal politicians blame state politicians. State politicians blame federal politicians. Federal politicians blame black people (just kidding--they blame the state and municipal politicians, of course). It's not any of that--that is a distraction. I'll boil it down for you in one word--money. Here's some more: moolah, greenbacks, cheddar, dough, cash, a wad, bread, and that sign you make when you rub your index finger and thumb together. The Gulf Coast is broke. We need cash from any and all sources. Seeing the great need for recovery in this culturally rich region, the federal government has taken the important step of turning down, wasting, or just ignoring over $800 million in aid. Say what? |
READ MORE | 5 comments since 2007-05-15 00:42:00 | Comment on this Article |
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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."
According to Pearl Jam's website, portions of the band's Sunday night set at Lollapalooza were missing from the AT&T Blue Room live webcast. Fans alerted the band to the missing material after the show. Reportedly absent from the webcast were segments of the band's performance of "Daughter," including the sung lines "George Bush, leave this world alone" and "George Bush find yourself another home."
An Arizona state lawmaker is calling for John McCain to resign from the Senate for missing too many votes. 
In what the mainstream media has largely ignored, President Bush signed an executive order on May 9th effectively making Congress and the rest of government obsolete in the event of another attack or national catastrophe. Bush basically becomes a dictator, in complete charge of the U.S. government.
The Army Corps of Engineers, the Keystone Cops of public civil engineering projects, continues its streak of crackerjack work. The Corps was shopping for bids for some new pumps for New Orleans' beleaguered canal system, so they needed to write up specifications for the pumps they were looking for. But that's a lot of work, what with the typing and drafts and spell-checking and all--so instead they decided to just cut and paste the text straight out of an existing catalog. You'll never guess whose catalog it was.
Google's popular map portal has replaced post-Hurricane Katrina satellite imagery with pictures taken before the storm, leaving locals feeling like they're in a time loop and even fueling suspicions of a conspiracy.