Somewhere over Louisiana, a brain is abuzz

"... Boy there's some champion brush cuttin' to be done down there ... hard bike ridin, tho with all that stuff on the roads ... have ta use the truck ... wonder if Lance would wanna come? he's got such a cute little bald spot ... wonder if Bandur would like to join us ... probably not, he'll just say he's too busy being king like he always does when I want to do something special... damn Secret Service probably wouldn't effin' let me go anyway ... 9/11 ...

... What's for lunch? ... hope they don't forget the pretzels this time ... why did Cheney make me call Da and that nice smiling Clinton boy from next store to come bail me out ... it's like he thinks I'm dumb or sumthin' ... they never let me do what I want ... always making me go to damn meetings ... telling me I can't bomb Terrorhan ... making me wear that dumb thing in my ear so I always have to be listening to Rove blathering on about something when I'm trying to talk ... 9/11 ... won't even let me finish a good book when I find one ...

... And I mean who gives a frog exploding fuck about this New Orleans place ... not our kind of people ... libruls ... poor ... gays ... effin' preverts .... always yelling about the oil bizness ... always complaining about the damn river overflowin, as if spending money I needed elsewhere for the war and bribes was gonna help ... damn levees anyhow ... hey, is that a Jewish name? ... sounds Jewish to me ...gotta have Rove check it out ...

... don't see why we don't just bulldoze the damn place anyhow ... send all those smelly old poor people back to where they came from ... tho it's gonna be easier to do stuff now that the place is a chemical sty ... betcha those smartass environmentalists won't be going on about wetlands now ... just created a whole lot more for 'em, heh heh ... 9/11 ...

... and sure we're showing them Al Kayda creeps how real 'Murikans handle a disaster ... this'll make them think twice before hitting us again. ... hey, maybe this whole thing was an Al Kayda plot all along. ... did those levees really 'break' or were they 'helped' ... maybe it was a moozlum weather machine or super prayers to Devil Al Law or somethin' that steered the storm ... better ask Pat about steerin' hurricanes with prayer ... 9/11 ...

Gotta talk to Karl 'bout all that right away.
Right after I rub my hands all over his shiny, shiny bald head and calm down a bit."

...9/11 ...

"No one could have predicted that we would actually need FEMA"

And this by Kevin Drum from Washington Monthly, this timeline of bureaucratic duplicity that leaves us where we are today:

CHRONOLOGY....Here's a timeline that outlines the fate of both FEMA and flood control projects in New Orleans under the Bush administration. Read it and weep:

• January 2001: Bush appoints Joe Allbaugh, a crony from Texas, as head of FEMA. Allbaugh has no previous experience in disaster management.

• April 2001: Budget Director Mitch Daniels announces the Bush administration's goal of privatizing much of FEMA's work. In May, Allbaugh confirms that FEMA will be downsized: "Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program...." he said. "Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level."

• 2001: FEMA designates a major hurricane hitting New Orleans as one of the three "likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country."

• December 2002: After less than two years at FEMA, Allbaugh announces he is leaving to start up a consulting firm that advises companies seeking to do business in Iraq. He is succeeded by his deputy, Michael Brown, who, like Allbaugh, has no previous experience in disaster management.

• March 2003: FEMA is downgraded from a cabinet level position and folded into the Department of Homeland Security. Its mission is refocused on fighting acts of terrorism.

• 2003: Under its new organization chart within DHS, FEMA's preparation and planning functions are reassigned to a new Office of Preparedness and Response. FEMA will henceforth focus only on response and recovery.

• Summer 2004: FEMA denies Louisiana's pre-disaster mitigation funding requests. Says Jefferson Parish flood zone manager Tom Rodrigue: "You would think we would get maximum consideration....This is what the grant program called for. We were more than qualified for it."

• June 2004: The Army Corps of Engineers budget for levee construction in New Orleans is slashed. Jefferson Parish emergency management chiefs Walter Maestri comments: "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."

• June 2005: Funding for the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is cut by a record $71.2 million. One of the hardest-hit areas is the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, which was created after the May 1995 flood to improve drainage in Jefferson, Orleans and St. Tammany parishes.

• August 2005: While New Orleans is undergoing a slow motion catastrophe, Bush mugs for the cameras, cuts a cake for John McCain, plays the guitar for Mark Wills, delivers an address about V-J day, and continues with his vacation. When he finally gets around to acknowledging the scope of the unfolding disaster, he delivers only a photo op on Air Force One and a flat, defensive, laundry list speech in the Rose Garden.
  

So: A crony with no relevant experience was installed as head of FEMA. Mitigation budgets for New Orleans were slashed even though it was known to be one of the top three risks in the country. FEMA was deliberately downsized as part of the Bush administration's conservative agenda to reduce the role of government. After DHS was created, FEMA's preparation and planning functions were taken away.

Actions have consequences. No one could predict that a hurricane the size of Katrina would hit this year, but the slow federal response when it did happen was no accident. It was the result of four years of deliberate Republican policy and budget choices that favor ideology and partisan loyalty at the expense of operational competence. It's the Bush administration in a nutshell.

—Kevin Drum

Paul Kugman is dead on target, as usual

A Can't-Do Government
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. "The New Orleans hurricane scenario," The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001, "may be the deadliest of all." It described a potential catastrophe very much like the one now happening.

So why were New Orleans and the nation so unprepared? After 9/11, hard questions were deferred in the name of national unity, then buried under a thick coat of whitewash. This time, we need accountability.

First question: Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive? Katrina hit five days ago - and it was already clear by last Friday that Katrina could do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you'd expect from an advanced country never happened. Thousands of Americans are dead or dying, not because they refused to evacuate, but because they were too poor or too sick to get out without help - and help wasn't provided. Many have yet to receive any help at all.

There will and should be many questions about the response of state and local governments; in particular, couldn't they have done more to help the poor and sick escape? But the evidence points, above all, to a stunning lack of both preparation and urgency in the federal government's response.

Even military resources in the right place weren't ordered into action. "On Wednesday," said an editorial in The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., "reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics. Playing basketball and performing calisthenics!"

Maybe administration officials believed that the local National Guard could keep order and deliver relief. But many members of the National Guard and much of its equipment - including high-water vehicles - are in Iraq. "The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission," a Louisiana Guard officer told reporters several weeks ago.

Second question: Why wasn't more preventive action taken? After 2003 the Army Corps of Engineers sharply slowed its flood-control work, including work on sinking levees. "The corps," an Editor and Publisher article says, citing a series of articles in The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, "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."

In 2002 the corps' chief resigned, reportedly under threat of being fired, after he criticized the administration's proposed cuts in the corps' budget, including flood-control spending.

Third question: Did the Bush administration destroy FEMA's effectiveness? The administration has, by all accounts, treated the emergency management agency like an unwanted stepchild, leading to a mass exodus of experienced professionals.

Last year James Lee Witt, who won bipartisan praise for his leadership of the agency during the Clinton years, said at a Congressional hearing: "I am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to disasters has been sharply eroded. I hear from emergency managers, local and state leaders, and first responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and worked well with has now disappeared."

I don't think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the military wasn't rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same reason nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control was neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn't get adequate armor.

At a fundamental level, I'd argue, our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.

Yesterday Mr. Bush made an utterly fantastic claim: that nobody expected the breach of the levees. In fact, there had been repeated warnings about exactly that risk.

So America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can't-do government that makes excuses instead of doing its job. And while it makes those excuses, Americans are dying.

Quote of the Day

"I think it puts into question all of the Homeland Security and Northern Command planning for the last four years, because if we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?"

-- former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R, Georgia)

This is the reality Of New Orleans. Even on Faux News.

from Crooks and Liars:

Horror Show

Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera were livid about the situation in NO as they appeared on H&C. When Hannity tried his usual spin job and said "let's get this in perspective," Smith chopped him off at the knees and started yelling at him saying, "This is perspective!" It was shocking.

Video-WMP-very big file so I had to compress it

QT coming

Geraldo who I'm no fan of was crying, holding a little child up to demonstrate the extremely inhumane conditions these people are forced to live under. Forced is the right word because they are locked in the dome by our government and can't leave.

This goes beyond political lines and it's as sad a situation as I've seen. Let's see all the happy politicians slap themselves on their backs after viewing this segment.

Digby has more: This was some amazing TV. Kudos to Shep Smith and Geraldo for not letting O'Reilly and Hannity spin their GOP "resolve" apologia bullshit. I'm fairly shocked....read on

8:43:26 PM Comments (29) permalink

More on the state of the levees

from AndrewSullivan.com:

"I've worked closely with Corps personnel for 6 years in various scientific and regulatory capacities on wetlands issues. While the Corps is often maligned by environmentalists, I will be the first to defend the professionalism, commitment and skill of their regulatory field staff.

The Corps, however, is Army - the institutional culture is one of top-down control and damn-the-torpedoes, and a deeply-ingrained instinct against criticising the chain of command.

In an email yesterday that eventually ended up on Wonkette, I predicted that they would be good soldiers and insulate Bush against charges that the levees weren't finished, and indeed I woke up to Al Naomi saying just that on NPR. And General Strock from HQ had to be brought in to do the real damage control: "I don't see that the level of funding was really a contributing factor in this case," said Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the corps. "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." (from Chi Trib).

But there are really TWO questions that must be answered:

1) Was the levee complete and at design spec?

2) Would a design-spec levee have withstood Katrina?

1) The truth is that short of a whistleblower, we may never know the condition of that levee on 8/29. My source on its inadequate condition isn't solid enough. But I know the following things:

a) You don't finish levees and walk away. They need regular maintenance - even when you haven't built them on dewatered organic soils that settle every year.

b) A District that had just taken a one-year budget cut of $71 million will have had to make some very hard choices about whether maintenance on this particular levee fell (in Corps parlance) "above the line - priority" or "below the line - optional". Their SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) guidance might tell us, but somebody needs to get a FOIA cookin' on this right now.

c) The question of levee adequacy breaks down at least into "was it at spec height?" [yes!] and "was it structurally sound to spec?" [oops!]. Because of the nature of the levee failure (not overtopped, but burst), watch for Corp HQ to focus on the first question (which pins the deaths on nature), and ignore the second (which might pin the deaths on budget decisions).

2) Over the coming days, the Corps' message will be this: "Katrina was greater than the design storm for this levee." This is at least an open question - purportedly the levees were designed to withstand a direct hit from a Category 3 hurricane. Katrina was a Category 4 at landfall, presenting her weak side to the levees at a distance of some 40-50 miles. The question appears debatable on its technical merits, and Strock's facile answer is far too politically expedient a conclusion to take at face value from Corps HQ. I have seen them fall on their sword for Presidents before, and the need has never been greater.

To sum up: Gen. Strock is asking us to accept that the Army Corps could maintain the structural integrity of every last mile of levee built on subsiding soils in a District that had taken a $71 million budget cut in one year. AND that they would admit it if they hadn't, when the reputation of the President is at stake. All my experience rejects both propositions."


And the orignal email via Wonkette:

"We're naming it Lake George, 'cause it's his frickin fault. Have you seen all that data about the levee projects' funding being cut over the past three years by the Prez, and the funding transferred to Iraq? The levee, as designed, might not have held back the surge from a direct Class 5 hit, but it certainly would not have crumbled on Monday night from saturation and scour erosion following a glancing blow from a Class 3. The failure was in a spot that had just been rebuilt, not yet compacted, not planted, and not armed (hardened with rock/concrete). The project should have been done two years ago, but the federal gov't diverted 80% of the funding to Iraq. Other areas had settled by a few feet from their design specs, and the money to repair them was diverted to Iraq.

The NO paper raised hell about this time and again, to no avail. And who will take the blame for it? The Army Corps, because they're good soldiers and will never contradict the C in C. But Corps has had massive budget cuts across all departments (including wetland regulatory) since Bush took office, and now we've reaped what was sown. It really pisses me off to see the Corps get used by the Administration to shield Bush -- they do great work when they're funded. This was senseless, useless death caused not by nature but by budget decisions. [LINK]

Just a thought...

Why weren't these now flood damaged and useless school buses loaded full of people and driven to safety on Saturday night?

There are over 100 buses in this photo alone. That means over 5500 people who could have been evacuated were not.

WHY?

CNN.com - Fats Domino found OK in New Orleans - Sep 1, 2005

CNN.com - Fats Domino found OK in New Orleans - Sep 1, 2005:

"(CNN) -- Rock 'n' roll pioneer Fats Domino was among the thousands of New Orleans residents plucked from rising floodwaters, his daughter said Thursday.

Karen Domino White, who lives in New Jersey, identified her father in a picture taken Monday night by a New Orleans Times-Picayune photographer.

His whereabouts since the rescue were not immediately known. Nor was there any information about his wife, Rosemary, friends said."

Fats Domino, 1928-2005(?)

from Chris Clarke at Creek Running North:

The news services have this now, but - Hat tip to Phil G. - Wikipedia has the best bio:

In the 1980s, Domino decided he would no longer leave New Orleans, having a comfortable income from royalties and a dislike for touring, and claiming he could not get any food that he liked anyplace else. His induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and an invitation to perform at the White House failed to get Domino to make an exception to this policy. He lives in a mansion in a predominantly working-class 9th Ward neighborhood, where he is a familiar sight in his bright pink Cadillac. He makes yearly appearances at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and other local events, with performances demonstrating his undiminished talents.
When Hurricane Katrina was approaching New Orleans in August 2005, Domino chose to stay at home with his wife, Rosemary, and their daughter. On September 1, Al Embry, his agent, announced that he had not heard from Domino since before the hurricane had struck. His pink-roofed three-story house was located in New Orleans' 9th ward, an area that is heavily flooded.
A rescue team dispatched to the flooded residence removed the bodies of three unidentified individuals. No positive identification has been made, but the team said they believe it to be the missing family.

Expect more news like this. This is a human, ecological, and economic disaster. What's becoming clear is that it's a cultural disaster as well.

Hurricane Relief

from billmon at Whiskey Bar:

The American Red Cross

Donation Link: Click here

Relief focus: Provides a full spectrum of services to disaster victims, including shelter, medical care, food, clean water and assisting with cleanup efforts.

__________________________________

America's Second Harvest

Donation link: Click here

Relief focus: Transports food to victims and secures additional warehouse space to assist member food banks in resuming and maintaining operations.

__________________________________

Catholic Charities USA

Donation Link: Click here

Relief focus: Community based relief efforts focused on the long-terms needs of disaster victims and affected communities.

__________________________________

Direct Relief International

Donation link: Click here

Relief focus:Serves as a private back-up support to official emergency response efforts in the United States.

__________________________________

Feed The Children

Donation Link: Click here

Relief focus: Mobilizing and distributing supplies in hurricane devastated areas.

__________________________________

Habitat for Humanity

Donation link: Click here

Relief focus: Helping disaster victims rebuild piece by piece and house by house.

__________________________________

Humane Society of the United States

Donation Link: Click here

Relief focus: Dispatching Disaster Animal Response Teams (DARTs) to rescue animals and assist their caregivers.

__________________________________

Noah's Wish

Donation Link: Click here

Relief focus: Keeping animals alive during disasters.

__________________________________

The Salvation Army

Donation Link: Click here

Relief focus: Providing hot meals to displaced disaster victims and emergency personnel working to aid those devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

__________________________________

United Jewish Communities

Donation Link: Click here

Relief focus: Community organized and administered humanitarian relief for disaster victims.

__________________________________

United Methodist Committee on Relief

Donation Link: Click here

Relief focus: General community-based disaster relief, as well as the creation and distribution of "flood buckets" -- a relief item for those who prefer to donate with a personal touch.

__________________________________

United Way

Donation Link: Click here

Relief focus: Identifying serious needs of devastated communities and helping not only with front-line disaster relief but with long-term recovery.

__________________________________

(Thanks to RenaRF for the idea.)

Posted by billmon at 12:07 AM

Get Off Your Ass

Thanks Neddie!

Just made my donation.

All of you on my blogroll are challenged to do the same to the best of your abilities and to pass the challenge on to your blogroll as well.

As Neddie so eloquently puts it,
GET OFF YOUR ASS!

from By Neddie Jingo:


Handdrummer writes in a comment to my last post:

Been listening to the podcast and trolling th net for pictures of the horror served on to my dear beloved New Orleans. Can't stop crying. Oh lord, what are we to do?

What you are to do is to stop listening to emotionally evocative music this instant and answer the Skippy Challenge:

skippy has donated $100.01 to the red cross for hurricane relief. and now, skippy challenges everyone who writes a political blog, no matter what side of the spectrum they inhabit, to do the same.

but that’s not all of the challenge. skippy then dares everyone on his blogroll (who will be receiving an email with this double-dog dare), after they donate, to (a) blog about it, and (b) send an email to everyone on their blog roll.

the $100 is to make a difference. if every political blog donates $100, think of the hundreds of thousands of dollars the red cross can use to buy food and supplies for the people that need it now.

and the 1 cent is to let everyone know where that the donations came from blogtopia (yes! we coined that phrase!) and know that for once, in reality, the blogs are making a difference.

if the server is busy, call 1-800 help now.

if you can't contribute $100.01, then make it $50.01 or $20.01, or at least $5.01 (the minimum the red cross requires, plus 1 cent). give up your saturday movie date this week, take your lunch to work instead of eating out, do something!

To donate online, that link again is The American Red Cross. Or call 1-800 help now.

Get off your ass. (Yes, I coined that phrase!)

Message from the Management

WHERE THE HELL IS THERE ANY SENSE OF LEADERSHIP IN THIS COUNTRY?

Where are the great moral leaders who step forward in times of crisis?

I know that I speak most harshly of Chimpy McRezident most of the time, but I guess in my heart of hearts I always thought he'd step it up when he truly had to. Seems I was right about him all along. Sad to say, he truly is an empty suit without a shred of humanity. And not a single member of his little NeoCon cabal has any real humanity either, it appears.

I am just mute with anger and fear over the images and words I've been seeing. I can't even pretend that blogging about it is not simply all about me and this sense of hopelessness and helplessness that is overwhelming me.

What the hell are we going to do? I feel like such a callous ass sitting here experiencing the worst disaster my country has ever faced from the comfort of my den.

This poor excuse for a blog is going on hiatus for while. I am at a loss for words, in any case

UPDATE:
A very short hiatus, it appears.
Thanks Billmon and Neddie for your work.

I remain at a loss for words.

Economic Implications of Katrina

from Information Clearing House:

The Port of Southern Louisiana stretches up and down the Mississippi River for about 50 miles, running north and south of New Orleans from St. James to St. Charles Parish.

Tthe Mississippi remains the key American shipping route, particularly for the export and import of a variety of primary commodities from grain to oil, as well as steel and rubber. Andrew Jackson fought hard to keep the British from taking New Orleans because he knew it was the main artery for U.S. trade with the world. He was right and its role has not changed since then.

The Port of Southern Louisiana is a river port. It depends on the navigability of the Mississippi River. The Mississippi is notorious for changing its course, and in southern Louisiana -- indeed along much of its length -- levees both protect the land from its water and maintain its course and navigability. Dredging and other maintenance are constant and necessary to maintain its navigability.

It is the fifth-largest port in the world in terms of tonnage, and the largest port in the United States. The only global ports larger are Singapore, Rotterdam, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Bigger than Houston, Chiba and Nagoya, Antwerp and New York/New Jersey, it is a key link in U.S. imports and exports and critical to the global economy.

It is the key port for the export of grains to the rest of the world -- corn, soybeans, wheat and animal feed. Midwestern farmers and global consumers depend on those exports. Fifteen percent of all U.S. exports by value go through the port. Nearly half of the exports go to Europe.

The United States imports large quantities of crude oil, petrochemicals, steel, fertilizers and ores through the port.

• The port might become in whole or part unusable if more levees burst.
• The damage to the river and port facilities probably will not be repaired before the U.S. harvests are at their peak. The effect on global agricultural prices will be substantial and immediate.
• There is a large refinery at Belle Chasse. It is the only refinery that was seriously threatened by the storm.If it were to be inundated through another levee failure, 250,000 barrels per day would go off line. Moreover, the threat of environmental danger would be substantial.
• About 2 percent of world crude production and roughly 25 percent of U.S.-produced crude comes from the Gulf of Mexico. Platforms in the path of Katrina were evacuated but others continued pumping. If this storm had followed normal patterns, most production would have beeen back on line within hours or days. It was not a normal storm.
  
• A narrow, two-lane highway that handles approximately 10,000 vehicles a day, used for transport of cargo and petroleum products and provides port access for thousands of employees is closed. A closure of as long as two weeks could rapidly push gasoline prices higher. At a time when oil prices are in the mid-60-dollar range, the hurricane has had an obvious effect.

Feds used disaster preparedness funds to fund Iraq war/ latest tax cuts

An amazing article from Editor & Publisher:

Bottom line: Experts knew this was coming, and all the preparations ground to a halt because the federal government used New Orleans' disaster preparation money to help pay for the Iraq debacle.

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.

...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."...

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.

Update:

Lest you think the above is just a bit of partisan blowing of smoke, read this.

from dadahead:

New Orleans CityBusiness, Jun 6, 2005 by Deon Roberts

In fiscal year 2006, the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is bracing for a record $71.2 million reduction in federal funding.

It would be the largest single-year funding loss ever for the New Orleans district, Corps officials said.

I've been here over 30 years and I've never seen this level of reduction, said Al Naomi, project manager for the New Orleans district. I think part of the problem is it's not so much the reduction, it's the drastic reduction in one fiscal year. It's the immediacy of the reduction that I think is the hardest thing to adapt to.

There is an economic ripple effect, too. The cuts mean major hurricane and flood protection projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now.

Money is so tight the New Orleans district, which employs 1,300 people, instituted a hiring freeze last month on all positions. The freeze is the first of its kind in about 10 years, said Marcia Demma, chief of the Corps' Programs Management Branch.

Stephen Jeselink, interim commander of the New Orleans Corps district, told employees in an internal e-mail dated May 25 that the district is experiencing financial challenges. Execution of our available funds must be dealt with through prudent districtwide management decisions. In addition to a hiring freeze, Jeselink canceled the annual Corps picnic held every June.

Here's another couple of people who were "too dumb to evacuate."

from cnn via Chris Clarke at Creek Running North:

Evelyn Turner cries Tuesday beside the body of her husband in New Orleans.

A wife's desperate journey with her husband's corpse

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- When Xavier Bowie died in a flooded New Orleans neighborhood, his wife did the best she could in a city so preoccupied with saving the living that no one can deal with the dead.

She wrapped his body in a sheet, laid him on a makeshift bier of plywood boards, with a little help, and floated him down to the main road.

For more than an hour, Evelyn Turner waited along Rampart Street outside the French Quarter, her husband's body resting on the grassy median as car after car passed, their wakes threatening to wash over the corpse.

"This is ridiculous," Turner, 54, said as she sobbed into a dirty washcloth.

Bowie, 57, a truck driver who had been with Turner for 16 years, had advanced lung cancer and could not be easily moved. When Turner could find no one to take them out of the city, she decided to stay home and hoped the storm would spare them.

"I've got electric and stuff right now," Turner told herself. "I can keep going. I've got oxygen. I can keep going."

But Hurricane Katrina left her neighborhood under several feet of water. By Tuesday, with no phone and only a small tank of oxygen left, Turner slogged out into the streets for help.

By the time she got back, Bowie had died.

Grief-stricken, Turner walked 2 miles to a neighborhood police precinct and asked someone to come get the body. An officer told her a truck would be along.

When more than an hour passed, she started down the road again. When she got to the station this time, there were no more promises.

"There's nothing we can do right now," an officer said. "We don't have any equipment."

"So what I'm supposed to do? Sit with the body until you get somebody?" Turner asked.

"Unfortunately, yeah," the officer replied. "That's the only option I can give you. Because we have no way of getting to him."

With hundreds, if not thousands, of residents still stuck on roofs and in attics across the city, officials have concentrated on saving survivors of Katrina and floodwaters. "We're not even dealing with dead bodies," New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said Tuesday.

When Turner got back to the corpse, she collapsed onto the plywood sheets and wept.

Curtis Miller, a former city employee, helped float the body down the road, hoping a passing military truck would pick Bowie up. He was disgusted.

"I'm hurt to my heart with this," the grizzled man said. "To see the city stoop this low. It shouldn't be, mister. It should not be."

Finally, about three hours after Bowie died, Miller flagged down a passing flatbed truck filled with downed tree limbs. After some heated words and an offer of $20, he persuaded the driver to take the body to Charity Hospital, where the police had directed them.

Turner helped load the body into the truck bed, then climbed aboard.

The truck turned and made its way into the French Quarter, where jazz bands are known to lead joyful funeral processions through the storied streets. But the streets were deserted Tuesday, and there was no music for Bowie, just the whirring of helicopter blades above.

When the Levee Breaks

Billmon' at the Whiskey Bar on the real environmental meaning of Katrina:

Crying won't help you, praying won't do you no good
Now, crying won't help you, praying won't do you no good
When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move.

Memphis Minnie McCoy
When the Levee Breaks
1929

There's something peculiarly horrible about the way the worst-case scenario unfolded in New Orleans, as the most unique city in America gradually filled with water -- like a child's toy in a bathtub -- after the worst of the danger had appeared to pass. It seems Katrina was only toying with her prey when she wobbled a bit to the east just before landfall. She left the death blow to the waters of Lake Pontchartrain.

There have been storms far worse than this -- like the 1971 cyclone and tidal wave that killed an estimated 300,000 people in what is now Bangladesh. Even in this country, the Galveston hurricane of 1900 killed at least 6,000 people and dealt the city a blow from which it never really recovered. (In the end, this may also be the Big Easy's fate.)

Likewise, the Great Mississippi flood of 1927 -- which inspired Memphis Minnie to write one of Led Zeppelin's best songs -- broke levees from St. Louis to New Orleans and turned most of the Delta country of eastern Mississippi (the state, not the river) into an inland sea. Thousands died, many of them African-American sharecroppers rounded up at gunpoint and set to work shoring up the levees. When the rainsoaked barriers finally gave way, hundreds of them, many chainganged together like convicts, were swept to their deaths.

God willing, the death toll from Katrina won't be as high as those earlier disasters. But property losses obviously will be vastly greater, even in inflation-adjusted terms. If the '27 flood turned the Delta into an inland sea, Katrina has turned most of New Orleans into a toxic cesspool: (more)

Poem of the Day

Do you know what it means to miss new orleans by Louis Armstong

Do you know what it means to miss new orleans
And miss it each night and day
I know I’m not wrong... this feeling’s gettin’ stronger
The longer, I stay away
Miss them moss covered vines...the tall sugar pines
Where mockin’ birds used to sing
And I’d like to see that lazy mississippi...hurryin’ into spring

The moonlight on the bayou.......a creole tune.... that fills the air
I dream... about magnolias in bloom......and I’m wishin’ I was there

Do you know what it means to miss new orleans
When that’s where you left your heart
And there’s one thing more...i miss the one I care for
More than I miss new orleans

(instrumental break)

The moonlight on the bayou.......a creole tune.... that fills the air
I dream... about magnolias in bloom......and I’m wishin’ I was there

Do you know what it means to miss new orleans
When that’s where you left your heart
And there’s one thing more...i miss the one I care for
More.....more than I miss.......new orleans

"Gulfport is just gone."

Pictures from
New Orleans TV Station
WWL

Quote of the Day

Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing quotes Ned Sublette:

The poorest 20% (you can argue with the number—10%? 18%? no one knows) of the city was left behind to drown. This was the plan. Forget the sanctimonious bullshit about the bullheaded people who wouldn’t leave. The evacuation plan was strictly laissez-faire. It depended on privately owned vehicles, and on having ready cash to fund an evacuation. The planners knew full well that the poor, who in New Orleans are overwhelmingly black, wouldn’t be able to get out.

The resources

— meaning, the political will —
weren’t there to get them out.

White people find things. Black people loot things.

This is a catastrophe of the worst sort. We must not let the right lay the responsibilty for the chaos at the feet of those who were abandoned and are now fighting to survive. As I sat here doing a slow burn about the racist coverage of the 'looting' in New Orleans, the folks at Making Light were doing this:

Jim Macdonald started it. He said, in AIM:

White people find things. Black people loot things.

This was literally just as Patrick was about to post:

Yahoo News photos:

Photo number one: “Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store”.

Photo number two: “A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store”.

Two guesses as to the relative melanin levels of “two residents” and “a young man”.

Remember, white people “find” things; black people “loot”.

(Via pecunium.)

I was about to post my own piece. While the three of us were sorting all this out, a further story turned up:

Cops Looting New Orleans.

I hadn’t yet seen the photo of the lighter-skinned couple making their way through the water. My own piece went like this:

“Looting” in New Orleans:

I keep hearing on the news about looting in New Orleans. But what I’m seeing—everybody has digital cameras these days, especially reporters—are pictures of people slogging through filthy water with stashes of food, diapers, bottled beverages, etc.

The picture I’ve seen most often is a kid in his teens, up to his chest in black muddy water, trying to carry away a not-very-substantial load of black-bagged groceries plus (I believe) some cans of soda.

First, I believe it was St. Thomas Aquinas who said that if a man’s family is going hungry, it’s no sin for him to steal a loaf of bread.

Second, anything salvageable the kid finds in a grocery store is something that won’t have to be cleaned up later. Besides, where’s the store where he can make legitimate purchases?

Third, yes, I absolutely agree that looting has to be suppressed. Some people will loot any time they think they can get away with it. Others will loot if they see those first people getting away with it. It’s a behavior that’s guaranteed to snowball (which is why I still say we were at fault for allowing the large-scale looting of Iraq to get started and perpetuate itself, right after the first wave of the invasion). Civil order is important.

Fourth, I have yet to hear one mention, one murmur of a hurricane evacuation plan, that didn’t consist of “everybody gets in their cars and drives somewhere else.” This, in a city which was guaranteed to sooner or later need evacuating, and which had something on the order of 100,000 citizens who didn’t drive cars.

New Orleans kept its light rail system during that period when other cities were going over to an all-highway system. It has streetcars. It’s a walkable city. That’s a mercy to the poor: you can live a poor but decent life, get to your job, do your shopping, without having to support a car. Until, of course, the day comes when any prudent person would get out of town.

I heard the city officials, before the storm hit, explaining that the Superdome would be a shelter for people with medical problems, people with special needs, who weren’t prepared to evacuate the city. Malarkey. It was, as they knew all along, the first last and only refuge for tens of thousands of New Orleans citizens who had no way to leave the city.

Not all of them are in the Superdome, or the other refugee centers; but no matter where they are, the majority of New Orleans’ beleaguered and flooded-out residents who’ve remained are the city’s poor.

That’s not looting. That’s plain old survival.