The Second Anniversary — the Blogs

August 29th, 2007

Katrina — two years ago, today. Seems like yesterday — and oddly, seems so damned long ago, as well.

I think that time warp is happening because we’ve been caught in a loop of devastation and destruction that feels as unstoppable as was that rogue hurricane– two years later, New Orleans isn’t the only victim of similar negligence and defeat. The Constitution, Iraq, the Department of Justice, the credibility of the nation, more — gone to the same sour and corrupted end.

The next post will be a collection of bigger articles, mainstream stuff … but you know I favor the blogs — and I’ve got quite a collection of interesting “takes” on the current situation, from who’s stonewalling now to how Mississippi fared to how the doctors responded to dire emergency — last, you’ll find a magnificent post for animal lovers that you will have to open for full impact … pictures and whatnot. Bittersweet.

While people of all ages, babies too, were left behind in Katrina’s wake, it may seem irrelevant to some that animal lovers go a little ballistic on this topic. Me, I understand it. I’ve never NOT had at least one critter in my life, if not multiple numbers. Loss is loss, innocence is innocence and death … ANY death … diminishes us all — if you can’t understand that, then I don’t wanta know ya.

This whole Michael Vick flap has the nation buzzing about what animals are “worth” and I’ve heard a few times too many, now, that it was just dogs we’re talking about, not humans. I find that argument pretty lame, of course — besides, it misses the point entirely. It was cruelty, not the pecking order of the victims, that counted; and so it was in the Big Easy — cruelty and negligence and lack of foresight and even obstruction. It is character that is important in this kind of conversation. And it is the lack thereof that implicates George Bush and his Republican policies on Katrina, and will, well into history.

I saw Bush do his little dance in New Orleans this morning — he is put in a position now, by his own doing, so that everywhere he goes he’s neither welcomed nor credible; imagine a life like that.

Here’s the best of the blogs, to commemorate the occasion. Since I still suffer from molasses-like dial up, I didn’t vet the collection of videos; I’ll leave it to you.

Oh — and by the way — the Fiore ‘toon, here, points up the additional problem of crime in New Orleans; this is a dilemma for the Big Easy … they badly need visitors dollars and offer a restored tourist area, but how safe can one feel with the gigantic problems they face? Clearly — two years has not given much hope to those who love New Orleans.

Jude

Katrina, Two Years Later: Americans Are Calling Out For Help [VIDEO]
Video: Bush promised he would do whatever if takes for as long as it takes and then completely turned his back on rebuilding the Gulf Coast.

Voices From the Gulf: “They’re Using a National Disaster to Do Their Dirty Work” [VIDEO]
Two years after Katrina, the Gulf Coast is still recovering, and thousands of personal stories remain unheard. This is one of those stories.
Adam Howard, Alternet
August 27, 2007

Interactive Map: Progress in the Parishes
New Orleans Two Years After Katrina
August 27, 2007

Hurricane Katrina: Who’s to Blame for this Unnatural Disaster
A batch of new books on Hurricane Katrina investigate who is responsible for the tragedy.
Ari Kelman, The Nation

What New Orleans Looks Like Two Years Later [VIDEO]
Hurricane Katrina: Tens of thousands of families in the Gulf Coast region are still without homes, and there is something very specific you can do to help.
Robert Greenwald, Brave New Films

Violence, the New Orleans Brand
Cartoon by Mark Fiore | August 24, 2007

Katrina: A thousand words
Rick Perlstein, TomPaine
August 27, 2007

Nothing I can blog here can say more than this outstanding video, produced by Campaign for America’s Future’s Anne Thompson:

Hurricane Katrina 2nd Anniversary

And nothing I say in this post about the un-patriotism of our conservative friends’ response to Katrina—their stubborn refusal to understand that belonging to a national community means no one who lives under our flag can ever be left behind in a crisis—is better demonstrated better than their whiny comments in the YouTube thread. Comments like:

… yeah, the government didnt help all the people here in south MS a quarter as much! but look, we got just as much devistation, half the relief money, and STILL have done a billion times better. maybe those do nothing bitches in New Orleans should fix their own problems by rebuilding, instead of just waiting for someone else to do it for em and give em free money???

And this:

New Orleans, a city of jerkoffs. I went to NOLA 35 years ago. Guess what they knew they were susceptible to a hurricane disaster then. In the 35 years since then, guess what they accomplished… they named a drink ‘the Hurricane’ and they legalized gambling.

Now all the got is a plaintive whine that the welfare isn’t good enough. This is a classic tale of the ant and the grasshopper. NOLA the city of grasshoppers. In this case I say compassion should be conserved.

Of course the devastation to Mississippi, as tragic as that was, was but a fraction of that dealt to below-sea-level New Orleans, and of their “billion times better” response—well, I’ll be dealing with Mississippi’s Governor Barbour in my next Katrina post. ++

Katrina: Haley’s Come-on
Rick Perlstein, tomPaine
August 29, 2007

I’ve written about the “golden opportunity” right-wing ideologists spied in the landfall of Hurricane Katrina for forcing what they could never accomplish through the democratic process. Now it’s time to call out the Republicans who also saw the hurricane as a golden opportunity to line their and their cronies’ pockets.

Exhibit A, B, C, and so on through Z are the associates of Haley Barbour, the former tobacco lobbyist and Republican National Committee chair who won election as Mississippi’s governor in 2003. That was a busy year for our Haley. His other super-special 2003 project was setting up a consulting company, New Bridge Strategies to help with the looting (I mean “assisting clients to evaluate take advantage of business opportunities”) of what was supposed to be—oh, those bygone days of conservative confidence!—”postwar” Iraq. Ah, the wonder-working powers of conservative public service: “One well-stocked 7-Eleven could knock out 30 Iraqi stores,” one New Bridge partner was quoted saying in The Washington Post; “a Wal-Mart could take over the country.”

So what was Haley Barbour’s contribution to the post-Katrina reconstruction?

Here’s what his Wikipedia entry says. He appears to have written it himself:

Barbour’s response was characterized by a concerted effort at evacuation, tough-minded talk on looters and an unwillingness to blame the federal government. His response was compared, favorably, to that of Rudy Giuliani in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

Barbour credited the countless government workers who helped southern Mississippi cope with the hurricane. But Barbour was praised by the coast’s citizens as a strong leader who can communicate calm to the public and provide “a central decision-making point for when things get balled up or go sideways, which they do,” as Barbour says.

Barbour was blunt with the facts about the utter devastation of the coast, but his own demeanor in public appearances suggested that the state would summon the will to rebuild. Mississippi also reopened all of its public schools by November 2005.

What a mensch.

Bloomberg News, on the other hand, recorded, in an August 16 dispatch, an alternate set of highlights: that he made of the fifteen billion dollar pot of federal reconstruction funds a hot tub in which his friends and family could frolic. There’s the Barbour nephew, a lobbyist who got into the business a block from the governor’s mansion practically on his uncle’s inauguration day, who “saw his fees more than double in the year after his uncle appointed him to a special-reconstruction panel.” Uncle Haley made him the “unpaid” executive director of the Governor’s Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal. Well and truly, there are lots of ways to get paid. (The governor’s lawyer helpfully explains: Haley Barbour is “naturally not going ot be disinclined to help those boys when he can.” For his part, young Henry Barbour claims martyr status: having “the same last name as Governor Barbour clearly puts a target on my back.” Poor kid.)

There’s another nephew’s wife, whose FEMA trailer company was raided by FBI agents in June. “On June 21, FBI agents searched three Alcatec offices, seizing computers and documents as part of an investigation into what the warrant said was possible mail fraud. The company didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment.”

“Meanwhile, the governor’s own former lobbying firm, which he says is still making payments to him, has represented at least four clients with business linked to the recovery.” To put it mildly.

The non-Barbour two-thirds of Barbour Griffith & Rogers represented, for instance, the New York company that bought the Hard Rock Casino in Biloxi—faxing their businesss forms from a Kinko’s and filing their personal addresses instead of the firm’s in an apparent attempt to hide the appearance of impropriety. “It isn’t exactly clear,” Bloomberg concludes, “what ties Governor Barbour retains to the lobbying firm.” As of last year he was listed as its president. Though unlike every other Mississippi governor he’s kept secret his tax returns.

Today, Bloomberg published an update about what he might feel like he has to hide: the fishy blind trust Barbour signed upon his inauguration as governor. It turns out Barbour still receives a secret income of $25,000 a month from his lobbying firm. He also may or may not have profited to the tune of $694,856 from stock he’s been shown to have owned in the company in 2003, in a stock buyback scheme his partners engineered in 2004.

Those partners wouldn’t answer Bloomberg’s questions on the subject—though one partner did claim he “earns no income” from the lobbying firm. Bill Clinton dithered about what the meaning of “is” is. Haley Barbour prefers similar jesuitical complexities when it comes to the question of what “income” is. Which doesn’t change the fact that the governor of Mississippi has a heck of a big stake in the company’s ongoing financial health—say, in the success of its plentiful contracts to lobby the state on Katrina-related matters.

Yes, Barbour’s autobiography [strike that] Wikipedia entry is right: this is just like Rudy Giuliani’s 9/11 response—exploiting human tragedy in order to shake the money tree. ++

The Consequences Of Inaction
Christy Hardin Smith
Wed Aug 29, 2007

[Open link for video of] Terence Blanchard and the Metropole Orchestra perform Funeral Dirge.

Dan Balz has a piece in the WaPo regarding the dire straits in which the Republican party finds itself in the aftermath of the many failures of the Bush Administration. That bitter aftertaste is the realization that we are, somehow, supposed to find pity in our aching hearts for their day late and a dollar short publicly staged “rejection” of Bush.

Much more than Katrina explains the continuing drop in Bush’s support in the past 12 months, but there is little doubt that the hurricane crystallized negative perceptions about Bush’s performance that he never has been able to shake. And in the fallout from the Gonzales resignation on Monday, there were renewed complaints that echoed the criticism after Katrina, that the administration lacks basic competence in dealing with problems….

What worries Republicans most is that the damage inflicted by the administration now costs them as much as it does the president, which has caused Republican elected officials, presidential candidates and GOP strategists to wish for a speedy end to the administration….

It’s like finding Jesus on the courthouse steps — not altogether plausible just as judgment day is upon you, now is it?

This isn’t just some abstract tale of political misfortune. Many in the Gulf Coast live, day in and day out, in the shadows of George Bush’s many failures. In the aftermath of all those enabling decisions for no oversight and no accountability from the rubber stamp Republicans (and, can’t forget, no oversight Joe). The folks in the Gulf Coast live the consequences of the Bush Administration’s inaction:

No, Ms. Cole was supposed to be paying $275 a month for a two-bedroom house in the Lower Ninth Ward — next door to her mother, across the street from her aunt, with a child care network that extended the length and breadth of her large New Orleans family. With her house destroyed and no job or savings, however, her chances of recreating that old reality are slim.

For thousands of evacuees like Ms. Cole, going home to New Orleans has become a vague and receding dream. Living in bleak circumstances, they cannot afford to go back, or have nothing to go back to. Over the two years since Hurricane Katrina hit, the shock of evacuation has hardened into the grim limbo of exile.

“We in storage,” said Ann Picard, 49, cocking her arm toward the blind white cracker box of a house she shares with Ms. Cole, her niece, and Ms. Cole’s three children. “We just in storage.”…

As of late May, however, there were still more than 30,000 families displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita spread across the country in apartments paid for by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and another 13,000 families, down from a peak of nearly 18,000, marooned in trailer or mobile home parks, where hunger is so prevalent that lines form when the truck from the food bank appears….

Despite their longing, some evacuees are afraid to return; they must choose between formaldehyde-laced trailers and a city they view as contaminated, poorly protected from floods and more violent than ever before….

As Douglas Brinkley said: “Too often in the United States we forget that “inaction” can be a policy initiative. For everyone who ever gave the Bush Administration a pass on all those broken promises and failed expectations? Can’t just wash it away… ++

Joe Lieberman Betrays Hurricane Katrina Victims
Obama has a plan, as does Edwards but Lieberman has sabotaged the investigation of the White House’s response to Hurricane Katrina.
Jane Hamsher, FireDogLake via Alternet
August 27, 2007

As we approach the second anniversary of Hurricaine Katrina, it’s great that Barack Obama has released as substantive plan to rebuild New Orleans, which includes measures to give the jobs to New Orleans residents and not to the corporations who are presently on the receiving end of BushCo. largesse. John Edwards has also made plans for New Orleans a pillar of his campaign, and it demostrates how both candidates would be substantively different from the present incompetent and apathetic regime.

It’s worth noting, however, that Joe Lieberman, as head of the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, promised to investigate the government’s response to Hurricaine Katrina. From January of 2006, when Joe was running for office:

The White House is dodging questions about Hurricane Katrina response and has instructed other agencies to join it in fending off investigators, Sen. Joseph Lieberman said on Tuesday. The White House denies the allegations.

Lieberman went so far as to suggest that the Department of Homeland Security is trying to kill the investigation.

“My staff believes that DHS has engaged in a conscious strategy of slow-walking our investigation in the hope that we would run out of time to follow the investigation’s natural progression to where it leads,” Lieberman said. “At this point, I cannot disagree.”

The Connecticut senator, who is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, further said no real reason is being given for the administration’s reticence.

“There’s been no assertion of executive privilege, just a refusal to answer,” Lieberman said. “I have been told by my staff that almost every question our staff has asked federal agency witnesses regarding conversations with or involvement of the White House has been met with a response that they could not answer on direction of the White House.”

And once Lieberman was re-elected with no small amount of help from the GOP?

Bush’s Best Democratic Buddy Joe Lieberman gives the president a pass on Katrina.

Jan. 11, 2007 - Sen. Joe Lieberman, the only Democrat to endorse President Bush’s new plan for Iraq, has quietly backed away from his pre-election demands that the White House turn over potentially embarrassing documents relating to its handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans.

Lieberman’s reversal underscores the new role that he is seeking to play in the Senate as the leading apostle of bipartisanship, especially on national-security issues. On Wednesday night, Bush conspicuously cited Lieberman’s advice as being the inspiration for creating a new “bipartisan working group” on Capitol Hill that he said will “help us come together across party lines to win the war on terror.”

(As a side note, I think the above paragraph is a pretty clear demonstration of the fact that when Joe says “bipartisan” what he really means is “Karl Rove’s bitch.” Because nobody wants to bring the troops home more than Joe, you know.)

But since so many of our Democratic 08 candidates are current or former members of the Senate, maybe they would like to prod their colleague Joe about his promise to give residents of New Orleans an explanation for the government’s mishandling of the disaster and what happened to their lives?

Also in Katrina news — the Color of Change folks are launching their Voices from the Gulf project. Have a look, it’s an impressive project that seeks to document the experiences of Katrina survivors in their own words. ++

Unforgiveable
by digby, Hullabaloo
8/28/2007

Susie Madrak points me to this horrible story from the Katrina doctor who was accused of murder but the grand jury refused to indict. It’s a nightmare, a horror story and it makes me want to scream every time I think of George W. Bush strutting around the gulf one short day after this had happened, yukking it up with Brownie and saying:

“We’ve got a lot of rebuilding to do … The good news is — and it’s hard for some to see it now — that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott’s house — he’s lost his entire house — there’s going to be a fantastic house. And I’m looking forward to sitting on the porch.”

and this:

“I believe the town where I used to come – from Houston, Texas, to enjoy myself, occasionally too much – will be that very same town, that it will be a better place to come to.”

Meanwhile:

In normal triage situations, the sickest people are treated first. But my understanding is that conditions were so bad, you and the other medical staff switched to a reverse triage or battlefield approach. Tell me about this.

The conditions were unbearable. Inside the hospital it was pitch black, with odors, smell, human waste everywhere. It was very rancid. You would take a breath in and it would burn the back of your throat. The patients were very sick. That’s when we had to go from triage to reverse triage because we came to realize if patients aren’t being evacuated, [we had to deal with what we had]. Basically it was a general consensus that we’re not going to be able to save everybody. We hope that we can, but we realize everybody may not make it out.

What were the categories?

We divided patients into groups one, two and three. Patients in category one are able to sit up and walk and are not very sick. Patients in three are critically ill, “Do Not Resuscitate.” The ones in category two were sick, but doing much [better than those in category three]. The triage system was very crude—we’d write the number 1, 2 or 3 on a sheet of paper and tape it across the patient’s chest with their hospital records. There was limited use of flashlights. There were limited batteries. [Parts of the hospital] were pitch black. I’m talking jet black. Very dangerous. It was pitch dark in inner rooms.

What is the reverse triage process like?

Let me tell you, for a patient to be triaged—typical triage isn’t that difficult. Reverse triage is heart wrenching. Absolutely heart wrenching. You place patients into categories. With boats coming and going we could evacuate patients who could sit. There were elderly couples—how do you make that decision who can go when one was sick and the spouse wasn’t? Do you let elderly couples go together as husband and wife? Some of these couples had been married 50 years.

As Susie said:

That these BushCo hacks allowed all those Americans to suffer and die in New Orleans - and then rezoned the entire area to push out the survivors in favor of high-end developers - well, that tells you everything you need to know about their character.

++

Katrina: The “federalist pause”
That fatal gap between Katrina’s landfall and the arrival of federal assistance? Conservatives defended it—on principle
Rick Perlstein, TomPaine
August 27, 2007

In her September 1, 2005 Financial Times column, Amity Shlaes simultaneously implored the nation to foreswear partisanship, and gushed worshipfully about Bush’s manful preparation and immediate response to the disaster.

Well, conservatives throw a lot of bovine fundament to the wall. This particular chunk didn’t stick. So—on September 11!—she tried again. Of course the federal government’s response was slow, she reassured her readers. George Washington wouldn’t have had it any other way.

The critics are right on one point. There was hesitation. That hesitation at times represented incompetence. But it was also something else: what we might call the Federalist Pause.

The Federalist Pause is that little intake of breath, that clearing of the political throat that American leaders instinctively demonstrate before plunging forward. Mr Bush provided a classic demonstration of the pause last week when he considered invoking a little-known law, the Insurrection Act, to take over Louisiana – and chose not to, out of deference to the authority of Kathleen Blanco, the governor.

You disagree? What, do you hate George Washington? You’re silently counting the rotting corpses that were already floating down streets during that delightful pause that refreshes? You cad. President Bush, that gentleman, was but “deferring” to Governor Blanco. But what: are you one of those pinkos angrily reflecting, “What happened to the Bush regime’s vaunted ‘unitary executive’ theory, which doted upon ‘the unity in purpose and energy in action that characterize the presidency’ when it came to authorizing torture”?

Perish such thoughts, you anti-American goon. Writes Shlaes:

…to argue that Mr Bush should have jumped into New Orleans like a crisis dictator is to superimpose a European sensibility on an American crisis. Mr Bush is commander-in-chief when it comes to war but, when it comes to disasters, he is still only a chief executive in a system of checks and balances…

As for the value of increased federal bureaucracy, a bureaucracy with a mandate larger than Herbert Hoover ever dreamed of - the Department of Homeland Security - is getting poor marks for its Katrina rescue. New Orleans is a tragedy, but a larger tragedy still would be to sacrifice federalism in its name.

Here’s the problem: her theory that FEMA must await word from the governor before descending upon a disaster scene is bullshit. Check out this report prepared in 2002 by the Department of Transportation praising the coordinated governmental response to the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, “one of the largest and most costly federal disasters with initial cost estimates of total damages at $25 billion”:

Time__Elapsed Time__Event/Actions Taken

4:30 a.m.:_0 minutes_An earthquake of a magnitude of 6.8 occurred in the Los Angeles area, centered in Northridge. Damage spread over 2100 squaremiles and through three different counties.

4:31 a.m.:_[1 min.]_5.9 aftershock.

4:35 a.m.:_[5 min.]_Los Angeles City and County Emergency Operations Centers are activated.

4:45 a.m.:_[15 min.]_FEMA Response began.

5:45 a.m.:_[1 hr. 15 min.]_Los Angeles Mayor Riordan declared a state of emergency.

6:00 a.m.:_[1 hr. 30 min.]_FEMA Headquarters Emergency Support Team was activated.

6:45 a.m.:_[1 hr. 45 min.]_As many as 50 structural fires were reported, in addition to numerous ruptures in water and natural gas mains. Power outages reported

9:05 a.m.:_[4 hr. 35 min.]_California Governor Pete Wilson declared a State of Emergency….

What ho! Apparently the Bush Department of Transportation, in 2002, found nothing to object to when FEMA hit the scene within fifteen minutes of the quake, four hours and twenty minutes before the governor’s state of emeregency.

But by 2005 and Katrina, suddenly conservatives are finding that the very American republic requires systematic Heck-of-a-Job-Browny-ism if it is to survive.

How con-veeeeen-ient. ++

Going to the dogs after Katrina
by feduphoosier, ePluribusMedia
Aug 29, 2007

Like many countless other Americans from all over the country, I somehow found a way down to Louisiana after Katrina. I wasn’t trained as a medic or in rescue, I wasn’t a ‘trained Red Cross volunteer,’ and so they wouldn’t take me. My car barely ran and I had no money. I have a chronic health problem (but I had been doing a lot of walking, so I hoped…)

Honestly; it hurt too much to watch. Watching the slow drowning death of New Orleans broke my heart more badly than anything I have ever witnessed before, in my entire life. In fact, my heart is still broken. I can tell; right now, as I am sitting here writing this. The feelings are just as raw as they were two years ago. It has forever changed me, remade me, and I will never be the same person I was before the storm blew ashore two years ago today.

Sometime shortly before Rita, I was in my car and on my way to Louisiana to volunteer in an animal rescue shelter…

[open link for remarkable article]

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves