This week Bill Moyers’ takes a look at the waste and contractor fraud going on in Iraq. Last week the House Armed Services Committee said that $6 billion worth of military contracts are under criminal review, and another $88 billion (think the folks in New Orleans could use some of this money?) in contracts are currently being audited for suspicion of fraud. When the Associated Press (AP) recently took a look at the auditing process required by law, it found the DoD had not "met even basic accounting requirements, leaving them vulnerable to waste, fraud and abuse."
BILL MOYERS: As Inspector General of the State Department, Howard Krongard—known as "Cookie"—was supposed to be the watchdog guarding against corruption there. But he’s a political appointee with strong partisan loyalties, and now seven people on his staff have accused him not only of failing to do his job but of actively blocking their efforts to do theirs. The reason? Quote: "To protect the State Department and the White House from political embarrassment."
You know, I am thinking the folks in New Orleans could use a couple of these billions. And by the way, I will admit the state and local governments in Louisiana doesn’t have a greatest track record in how they spend money, but it ain’t like the Bush White House does either at this point.
Here is an excellent op-ed from Douglas Brinkley. And I couldn’t agree with him more. Many people are trying to help rebuild New Orleans and they feel like they are just beating their heads against the wall, with only verbal support from Washington, which does nothing to help them. If our political leaders are not going to do what needs to be done to rebuild New Orleans then they just need the balls to say so.
Over the past two years since Hurricane Katrina, I’ve seen waves of hardworking volunteers from nonprofits, faith-based groups and college campuses descend on New Orleans, full of compassion and hope. They arrive in the city’s Ninth Ward to painstakingly gut houses one by one. Their jaws drop as they wander around afflicted zones, gazing at the towering mounds of debris and uprooted infrastructure. After weeks of grueling labor, they realize that they are running in place, toiling in a surreal vacuum.
Two full years after the hurricane, the Big Easy is barely limping along, unable to make truly meaningful reconstruction progress. The most important issues concerning the city’s long-term survival are still up in the air. Why is no Herculean clean-up effort under way? Why hasn’t President Bush named a high-profile czar such as Colin Powell or James Baker to oversee the ongoing disaster? Where is the U.S. government’s participation in the rebuilding?
And why are volunteers practically the only ones working to reconstruct homes in communities that may never again have sewage service, garbage collection or electricity?
Eventually, the volunteers’ altruism turns to bewilderment and finally to outrage. They’ve been hoodwinked. The stalled recovery can’t be blamed on bureaucratic inertia or red tape alone. Many volunteers come to understand what I’ve concluded is the heartless reality: The Bush administration actually wants these neighborhoods below sea level to die on the vine.
People have the will, both the residents and volunteers to rebuild New Orleans, there is simply no political well in Washington to help them in this long and hard process.
Two years after Katrina, everywhere you turn, there are people carping, whining, and kvetching. Just why hasn’t the pity party for the citizens of New Orleans run out of booze and chips yet?
It’s not as if hurricanes are a once a millennium event in the United States. In fact, residents of Florida have so many of them that they don’t even cancel a barbecue for anything under a Category 3.
Moreover, people lose their homes in this country every day of the year. If it isn’t a hurricane, it’s an earthquake. If it isn’t an earthquake, it’s a tornado. If it isn’t a tornado, it’s a fire. If it isn’t a fire, it’s a flood.
[…]
But, we’re all supposed to eternally sit around and weep tiny little tears of sadness for the people who really took it on the chin in a hurricane because they chose to live in a city shaped like a soup bowl on the coast. Let me tell all the citizens of New Orleans something that should have been told to them 18 months ago: it’s time to stop playing the sympathy card and get over it.
Memo to Josh. The folks in New Orleans lost their homes cause the levees, maintained by the US Corp of Engineers failed.
Robert Greenwald, the filmmaker behind Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, and many others, has just released a film about New Orleans, When the Saints Go Marching In. Here is a short clip:
When the Saints Go Marketing In tells the stories of some of the tens of thousands of people who just want to return home. These are our fellow citizens that are still scattered across the country, many in FEMA trailers, wondering they can return (if ever) home to rebuild. Two years after Katrina, anybody that is paying attention knows much work is left to be done, but Saints gives it to you on a painfully personal level. Kudos yet again Mr. Greenwald.
One of the possible replacements for Idaho Sen. Larry "Wide Stance" Craig is the lieutenant governor (and former governor) Jim Risch. This guys is a real tool. Here’s what he said last year after Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast:
Hurricane Katrina—they heaped that on George Bush!" said Mr Risch, in his shirt-sleeves in the blasting dry heat of an afternoon in Boise, the state capital. Here in Idaho, we couldn’t understand how people could sit around waiting for the federal government to come and do something. We had a dam break in 1976, but we didn’t whine about it. We got out our backhoes and we rebuilt the roads and replanted the fields and got on with our lives. That’s the culture here. Not waiting for the federal government to bring you drinking water. In Idaho there would have been entrepreneurs selling the drinking water."
Is this the kind of tool that Idaho plans to send to the United States Senate? I can only assume it’s easy for Risch to run his mouth about Katrina since there is no chance in hell that a hurricane will ever threaten Boise with a 30-foot storm surge. With that said, the audacity to compare a dam break to a hurricane that displaced hundreds of thousands, did hundreds of billions in damages and killed 2,000 people is beyond words?
He was referring to the 1976 collapse of the Teton Dam, which was built entirely by the federal government, for the benefit of a handful of whining millionaire ranchers, and when it collapsed (which had been predicted) it was not the entrepreneurs of Idaho who fixed things up, but once again, the federal government, which rebuilt the irrigation systems and paid hundreds of millions of dollars in claims, far more promptly than in Louisiana.
Interesting. Perhaps those Idaho ranchers can come on down to New Orleans and show everyone how it’s done. Ya think?
As you might expect Keith on MSNBC’s Countdown took an extended look at New Orleans on the anniversary.
USA Today also has a wonder set of articles on the state of affairs two years after Katrina hit. Good articles, photos, interactive charts and graphs, as well as videos. Well worth spending a few minutes with over a cup of coffee.
I think it is important that Bush words are read and reread by every American on each anniversary they were made (September 2, 2005):
PRESIDENT BUSH: Listen, I want to thank the governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans, Senator Landrieu, Senator Vitter and Congressman Jefferson, Congressman Jindal and General Blum.
I’ve just completed a tour of some devastated country. We started in Alabama, worked our way down to Mississippi and ended up here in one of America’s great cities and saw firsthand the devastation that this city has gone through.
I know the people of this part of the world are suffering. And I want them to know that there’s a flow of progress. We’re making progress.
Bill Scher’s Liberal Oasis radio program had on guest Rick Perlstein focused on the failures that Conservatism played on the Gulf Coast before and after Katrina. He is well worth a listen.
Part I: That Alberto Guy
Part II: Rick Perlstein on Katrina
Part III: More Perlstein on Conservatism’s Failures
It is hard to believe that the good people of Colorado actually elected Tom Tancredo (R-CO). And to think he is actually running for President (on one issue, immigration) is beyond words. This is what he had to say about funding, Katrina, and government spending.
It is time the taxpayer gravy train left the New Orleans station. The amount of money that has been wasted on these so-called "recovery" efforts has been mind-boggling. Enough is enough. At some point, state and local officials and individuals have got to step up to the plate and take some initiative. The mentality that people can wait around indefinitely for the federal taxpayer to solve all their worldly problems has got to come to an end. This whole fiasco has been a perfect storm of corruption and incompetence at all levels.
I encourage everybody to click on this link and send him a message. This guy is a tool!
