Project Katrina

Nearly five months after Katrina destroyed New Orleans and much of the gulf coast region in general, Bush’s repeated promises to rebuild the area have been slowed by bureaucratic failures and competing priorities. The below information, taken from a Washington Post article are how some of the major promises Bush made in his Jackson Square speech have fared to date (much more information here):

• Housing. Bush promised to empty shelters quickly, meet the immediate needs of the displaced, register victims, and provide housing aid in the form of rental assistance and trailers. In Mississippi, 33,378 occupied trailers are meeting 89 percent of the estimated housing needs. But there have been 34,000 repair requests and maintenance complaints, according to Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.). In Louisiana, trailers have been provided for about 37 percent of the estimated 90,000 displaced families in need of housing. Officials acknowledge production bottlenecks and in-state battles over sites. Trailer costs have swelled from $19,000 to $75,000 apiece.

• Cleanup. The president vowed "to get the work done quickly . . . honestly and wisely," but a key first step — cleanup — has not gone smoothly. Thirty million cubic yards of debris remain uncollected — enough to build a five-sided column more than 50 stories tall over the Pentagon — provoking environmental concerns, fears of runaway spending abuses and a spirit-sapping despair. Layers of subcontractors have caused debris removal costs to quadruple from $8 per cubic yard to $32 per cubic yard, said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who visited the region on Jan. 17 as part of a Senate delegation.

• Rebuilding. On the broader question of rebuilding, Bush promised "a close partnership" with state and local leaders, with the federal government playing a secondary role. But the U.S. government is the key player because it provides money, determines access to flood insurance, and takes primary responsibility for infrastructure and cleanup.Officials from both parties credit the president for committing $85 billion in federal funds and for approving tax relief and incentives such as the Gulf Opportunity Zone, which provides tax breaks for businesses in Mississippi and Louisiana. Still, they say the overall cost of the rebuilding is a major concern. "I want to remind the people in that part of the world, $85 billion is a lot," Bush said at a news conference on Thursday.

• Levees. Bush said New Orleans and Louisiana "will have a large part in the engineering decisions" to protect New Orleans. But clear differences in federal and local interests are emerging. State and local officials have said employers and investors will not take the risk of returning unless New Orleans’s flood defenses are strengthened to withstand the strongest, Category 5, storms, an undertaking that could cost more than $30 billion. Because of budgetary constraints and the approaching hurricane season, the administration has committed to spending $2.9 billion to restore levees to pre-Katrina (Category 3) design standards, with additional floodgates and concrete and steel reinforcement, and $8 million to study going further.

When is the American public going to, for once, just once, hold the Bush administration accountable for their promises.

President Bush claimed earlier this month that “the American people can be rest assured this administration understands the task, and understands the challenges, and understands our obligation to protect you, to protect the American people.”

The Bush administration’s failed response to Katrina proves these statements are nothing but empty political speak. In the face of the worst natural disaster in U.S. history, the White House did not appreciate, much less understand the gravity of the situation, showed a total lack of leadership, and demonstrated how incompetent they are to handle future emergencies unless dramatic changes are made.

All of this is why Congress is looking into the government’s response. From today’s NY Times:

The White House was beset by the “fog of war” in the crucial days immediately after Hurricane Katrina, leaving it unable to respond properly to the unfolding catastrophe, House investigators said Friday after getting the most detailed briefing yet on how President Bush’s staff had handled the events. […]

“We are left with a picture of a White House that was plagued by the fog of war,” said David Marin, the Republican staff director to the House committee investigating the government’s response to the hurricane. “The committee is likely to find a disturbing inability by the White House to de-conflict and analyze information—and that had consequences.”

But even now, the White House is stonewalling the investigation with claims of executive privilege. Of course this means “it will be hard” for investigators “to pinpoint where failures occurred within the White House.” And it also means we won’t be prepared for future diasters and terrorist attacks. Thanks President Bush.

The city of New Orleans could lose up to 80 percent of its black population if people displaced by Hurricane Katrina are not able to return to damaged neighborhoods, according to an analysis by a Brown University sociologist.

Professor John R. Logan, in findings released yeesterday, determined that if the city’s returning population was limited to neighborhoods undamaged by Katrina, half of the white population would not return and 80 percent of the black population would not return.

"There’s very good reason for people to be concerned that the future New Orleans will not be a place for the people who used to live there, that there won’t be room in New Orleans for large segments of the population that used to call it home," said Logan, who studies urban areas.

The study used maps from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that detailed flood and wind damage and compared them to data from the 2000 U.S. Census to determine who and what areas were affected.

It found the storm-damaged areas had been 75 percent black, compared to 46 percent black in undamaged areas of the city. It also found that 29 percent of the households in damaged areas lived below the poverty line, compared with 24 percent of households in undamaged areas.

You can learn more about this stud and view interactive maps of damaged areas here.
 

George Rodrigue is famous the world over for his "blue dog" paintings. And as of January 18, 2006 Rodrigue has donated $300,000 to the American Red Cross (Southeast LA Chapter). Go purchase one of his prints and support the rebuilding of New Orleans. The below is from his site:

Those of us from South Louisiana grew up with the aftermaths of hurricanes Audrey, Betsy, Camille…and now Katrina. As with times before, "we will rise again." Tears and rising water threaten to drown us. But don’t be deceived. The land may be under water, but the spirit of New Orleans and the culture of Louisiana hold their heads high.

We Will Rise Again shows the American flag covered with water. The blue dog is partly submerged, and its eyes, normally yellow, are red with a broken heart. Like a ship’s S.O.S., the red cross on the dog’s chest calls out for help.

Katrina hit me personally at Ground Zero. My immediate thought was for the safety of people I know, followed by the shock of seeing helicopters and boats alongside familiar street signs, as rescuers assisted people from rooftops and attics. For the second time in this young 21st century I sat at my easel weighted by personal sorrow and my desire to help, this time also reflecting on the devastation of my city and the suffering of my neighbors.

New Orleans has been home to my gallery and studio for sixteen years; it is where the Blue Dog was born. My wife is a third generation New Orleanian, and the Big Easy remains the ‘big city’ to my Cajun hometown of New Iberia. Wendy and I join thousands of New Orleans residents in our pledge to go HOME, to re-build our city, and to pay tribute to those who lost their lives with a commitment to care for our citizens, embrace our culture, and make the good times roll … again.

From the Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, a great site about recovery effforts:

The U.S. Department of Transportation may hold the key to one of the biggest unanswered questions from Hurricane Katrina: Why did it take nearly a week for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to mobilize private buses to evacuate thousands of city residents desperately seeking rescue from the horrific conditions in the Superdome, the Convention Center and the open tarmac of Interstate 10?

Reconstruction Watch reports that clues to that mystery will come in the form of an audit into a FEMA contract for hurricane evacuation services awarded in 2002 to the Federal Aviation Administration. An initial report on the audit, which was quietly opened last October by the DOT’s Office of Inspector General, is nearing completion and will be released to the public soon, a DOT official said.

This news story from Friday’s New Orleans Times-Picayune caught my attention:

Months after Congress passed legislation to speed the delivery of federal money to Louisiana’s storm-ravaged health-care system, local hospitals are still waiting for the first payments, while their costs climb into the hundreds of millions of dollars, hospital administrators told a congressional subcommittee Thursday in New Orleans. The Times-Picayune reports that stunned subcommittee members said officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency had assured them that the agency had sent $400 million to Louisiana to pay for storm-related health-care services. The members also said they thought Congress had removed the main policy barriers that were blocking funding from flowing through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services immediately after the storm.

I had to post in full. From the Huffington Post:

On Tuesday night President Bush will stand before the Congress and the nation to deliver his annual State of the Union address. We are sure to hear a rosy tale of an economy on the rebound, a blossoming democracy in Iraq, a terror network on the run, and a Gulf Coast region rebuilding better and stronger than ever before. As is most often the case with this Administration, the rhetoric does not match reality.

The facts are clear. Our economy is struggling and leaving tens of millions of Americans behind. According to the non-partisan National Journal, since President Bush first stood before Congress and the nation in 2001, the median income in this country has decreased, the jobless rate has jumped from 3.9% to 4.9% and the number of families living in poverty has increased from 8.7% to 10.2%. Our trade deficit has doubled. Inflation has gone up. Personal bankruptcies have gone up. Consumer debt has gone up. College tuition has gone up. And, the price of gas has gone up. All the while, this Administration has turned a $128 billion federal budget surplus into a $319 billion deficit.

Today, almost 6 million more Americans do not have any health insurance than when President Bush took office. In total, over 45.5 million Americans, or over 15% of our total population, have no health care coverage at all.

During his 2003 address, President Bush told the nation that Saddam Hussein "had biological weapons sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax", "materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin", "as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent" and "upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents".

Today, almost three years after the start of the President’s war of choice, we know Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, had no connection to al-Qaeda and posed no threat to our nation. Yet, our armed forces are bogged down in the middle of civil war that our own generals say cannot be won by military force. Our presence in Iraq is counterproductive and has cost the lives of over 2,200 US troops and $250 billion.

President Bush has delivered four State of the Union addresses since the attacks on our nation on 9/11. In four speeches, the President has never once mentioned Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the terror attacks on this nation. The status of the FBI’s most wanted man apparently is not important to the state of our union. Yet, in the same four speeches, President Bush has mentioned Saddam Hussein 24 times, and Iraq 78 times.

President Bush used the opening of his 2003 State of the Union to praise the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. This year our nation, and the world, saw the result of the failure of this massive reorganization of our government. As Katrina rolled ashore, destroying large cities and small towns in four states, it was FEMA, once an independent cabinet level agency–but now rolled into Department of Homeland Security–that failed to react. The searing image of thousands of Americans stranded without food and water dying on American streets will be the lasting legacy of the Department of Homeland Security, not a reorganized government "mobilizing against the threats of a new era" as the President described in his speech.

In his 2004 and 2005 addresses, the President spent a considerable amount of time advocating policies that would roll back much of the social progress made since the New Deal. In 2004, the President touted a Medicare prescription drug bill that will fatten the pockets of the pharmaceutical industry, endangering the future finances of the entire Medicare program, while leaving seniors confused and empty handed as they try to fill their prescriptions under the new plan. In 2005, the President used his address to promote his plan strip seniors of the guaranteed promise of Social Security, and replace it with a risky scheme to gamble their future in the stock market.

What the President has in store for his message this year is not known yet. But, we do know the President Bush will speak in glowing terms about the state of our union. The truth is the state of our union is in great peril. This Administration is conducting a war with no end in Iraq, illegally spying on Americans at home, overseeing an economy that is increasingly leaving more and more Americans behind and abandoning Gulf in their hour of great need.

If recent history is any precedent, then next week we should see more of the same old dance around reality that has been the hallmark of President Bush’s annual address.

President Bush stood in Jackson Square on September 15, 2005 and proclaimed that he would "do what it takes" to make New Orleans rise again. Yet almost five months later that doesn’t seem to be the case. In a story in the Washington Post, we learn:

With the onset of the hurricane season just four months away, there is no agreement on how to rebuild New Orleans, how to pay for that effort or even who is leading the cross-governmental partnership, according to elected leaders. While there is money to restore the city’s flood defenses to protect against another Category 3 hurricane, it remains unclear whether merely reinforcing the levees will be enough to draw residents back.

New strains emerged this week when Bush aides rejected a plan by Rep. Richard H. Baker (R-La.) to set up a government corporation that would buy back the mortgages of storm-damaged homes around New Orleans. Instead, the government limited the use of $6.2 billion in grants to the rebuilding of 20,000 homes destroyed outside federally insured flood zones.

Dismayed state and local officials said the president’s approach does not provide help for an additional 185,000 destroyed homes. They warned that the federal government’s halting recovery effort is undermining, at a critical juncture, the confidence of homeowners, insurers and investors about returning.

"They gave us a ladder to reach all of our housing needs, but the top rungs are missing," Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) said in statement from Baton Rouge. "You can’t fix a $12 billion problem with $6 billion."

It is really hard to hold this administration accountable when you get stories like this in the New York Times:

The Bush administration, citing the confidentiality of executive branch communications, said Tuesday that it did not plan to turn over certain documents about Hurricane Katrina or make senior White House officials available for sworn testimony before two Congressional committees investigating the storm response.

The White House this week also formally notified Representative Richard H. Baker, Republican of Louisiana, that it would not support his legislation creating a federally financed reconstruction program for the state that would bail out homeowners and mortgage lenders. Many Louisiana officials consider the bill crucial to recovery, but administration officials said the state would have to use community development money appropriated by Congress.

The White House’s stance on storm-related documents, along with slow or incomplete responses by other agencies, threatens to undermine efforts to identify what went wrong, Democrats on the committees said Tuesday.

Today’s Washington Post and New York Times both have stories noting that the White House did anticipate that the levees in New Orleans would breach during Hurricane Katrina. From the Post story:

A 41-page assessment by the Department of Homeland Security’s National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC), was delivered by e-mail to the White House’s "situation room," the nerve center where crises are handled, at 1:47 a.m. on Aug. 29, the day the storm hit, according to an e-mail cover sheet accompanying the document.

The NISAC paper warned that a storm of Katrina’s size would "likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching" and specifically noted the potential for levee failures along Lake Pontchartrain. It predicted economic losses in the tens of billions of dollars, including damage to public utilities and industry that would take years to fully repair. Initial response and rescue operations would be hampered by disruption of telecommunications networks and the loss of power to fire, police and emergency workers, it said.

Interesting. Cause on September 1, President Bush went on TV and said, "I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees. Now we’re having to deal with it, and will." Lies, lies, and half-truths. We deserve better.