Project Katrina

Kind of amazing it took this long to occur, but at least it did:

Admitting a cover-up of shocking breadth, a former New Orleans police supervisor pleaded guilty to a federal obstruction charge on Wednesday, confessing that he participated in a conspiracy to justify the shooting of six unarmed people after Hurricane Katrina that was hatched not long after police stopped firing their weapons.

The guilty plea of Lt. Michael Lohman, who retired from the department earlier this month, contains explosive details of the alleged cover-up and ramps up the legal pressure on police officers involved in the shooting and subsequent investigation. It’s unclear when Lohman’s cooperation with federal authorities began, but he presumably is prepared to testify against the officers he says helped him lie about the circumstances of a shooting he immediately deemed a “bad shoot.”

Now it is time to get after the cops that shot, in cold blood, the six unarmed individuals attempting to walk across the Danziger Bridge in search of water.

Well this is just a wonderful thing to say by current Education Secretary Arne Duncan:

I’ve spent a lot of time in New Orleans and this is a tough thing to say but I’m going to be really honest. The best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster. And it took Hurricane Katrina to wake up the community to say that we have to do better. And the progress that it made in four years since the hurricane, is unbelievable.

It seems now folks in both the Bush and Obama administration seem to think Katrina was in some way a net benefit for New Orleans. Kind of stunning.

The Associated Press (AP) is reporting that Louisiana justice of the peace Keith Bardwell has refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple because he believes that such marriages don’t usually last very long:

“I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house,” Bardwell said. “My main concern is for the children.”

Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

“I don’t do interracial marriages because I don’t want to put children in a situation they didn’t bring on themselves,” Bardwell said. “In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer.”

If he does an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.

“I try to treat everyone equally,” he said.

Like the folks in Louisiana haven’t been through enough already without bullshit like this.

Yesterday, the White House held a conference call between Vice President Joe Biden and governors of each state. The purpose of the call was to “exhort the states to collect and submit quarterly numbers of jobs created and saved by the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act by the deadline of Oct. 10.” Forty-nine state governors or their representatives joined the call. The one person who couldn’t seem to find the time? Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R). From the pool report:

The invite was sent to 55 states and territories; if the governor could not join the call, a Lt. Governor, Chief of Staff or ARRA designee called in. There was one no-show state: Louisiana. Three no-show territories: Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa.

Biden has been aggressively reaching out to U.S. mayors and governors to help them use stimulus funds as effectively as possible.

However, Jindal has been one of the most outspoken critics of the Recovery Act—at the same time he goes around the state and takes credit for the federal dollars he was handing out. In July, Jindal declared the legislation a “stimulus that has not stimulated.” Yet he had no problems with handing out giant checks with his name on them … that contained millions of dollars of Recovery Act funds for job training programs, housing assistance programs, homelessness prevention programs, police training, criminal justice technology upgrades, and community development block grants. You’d just think somebody, like maybe even Jindal himself, would be able to find the time.

I don’t have a lot of praise myself for Obama’s early efforts, but it would seem the Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal has more then a few nice things to say:

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama pledged to right the wrongs he said bogged down efforts to rebuild the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. Seven months into the job, he’s earning high praise from some unlikely places.

Gov. Bobby Jindal, R-La., says Obama’s team has brought a more practical and flexible approach. Many local officials offer similar reviews. Even Doug O’Dell, former President George W. Bush’s recovery coordinator, says the Obama administration’s “new vision” appears to be turning things around.

Not too long ago, Jindal said in a telephone interview, Louisiana governors didn’t have “very many positive things” to say about the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

But Jindal said he had a lot of respect for the current FEMA chief, Craig Fugate, and his team. “There is a sense of momentum and a desire to get things done,” the governor said.

It would seem that years and years after Katrina hit the Washington Post is just catching on that almost nothing has been changed to ensure similar events don’t occur again:

Almost four years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has failed to clarify the responsibilities of different agencies that would respond to such disasters, according to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office.

One result is that FEMA lacks assurances that the agencies have improved preparedness since the deadly hurricane in August 2005 exposed numerous flaws in the nation’s readiness for large-scale catastrophes.

[....]

The GAO conceded that FEMA lacks authority to compel other agencies to act but said FEMA should nonetheless “instill a shared sense of responsibility and accountability on the part of all stakeholders for the successful development and implementation of the national preparedness system.”

The report noted that although the post-Katrina legislation requires FEMA to track corrective actions taken in response to training exercises, it has not done so effectively.

The story goes on to highlight that FEMA has almost no communication with other government agencies that might be called on during a disaster much less defined how improvements will be monitored.

Update: Reading the report in more detail, the GAO Report found 68 percent of the plans needed to implement a national preparedness system have not yet been completed, although 41 of the 50 policies needed to define the roles and responsibilities of those who must implement the plan have been completed.

It just makes you wonder how much one city/region can endure. New Orleans had almost 64 homicides per 100,000 people last year, even with a generous estimate of the total population. That is far higher than St. Louis, the runner-up with 47 homicides per 100,000. Even if New Orleans had jumped back to its pre-Hurricane Katrina population it would be tied for second place with Baltimore.

The Rockefeller Institute of Government released a report last week calling for drastic legislative change that would authorize a presidential appointee to take charge of the government’s response to major disasters like Hurricane Katrina.

The report, Who’s in Charge? Who Should Be? The Role of the Federal Government in Megadisasters: Based on Lessons Learned from Hurricane Katrina, suggests amending the Stafford Act so that it better serves those affected by natural disasters, creating a central body and/or governmental leader—an “Officer-in-Charge”—with the authority to make plans actionable at a federal level in order to better coordinate federal, state, and local governments’ responses. The Officer-in-Charge would report directly to the POTUS and could “enable the president and Congress to consider extraordinary national action.” I think it is safe to say this is a change that is needed sooner rather than later.

GQ has a devasting and power article this month about former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. While the bulk of the article focuses on Iraq, his lack of management skills, turf battles, and biblical quotes on the cover of military reports he sent to the White House, there are several small sections towards the end about Hurricane Katrina that left me speechless.

A final story of Rumsfeld’s intransigence begins on Wednesday, August 31, 2005. Two days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans—and the same day that Bush viewed the damage on a flyover from his Crawford, Texas, retreat back to Washington—a White House advance team toured the devastation in an Air Force helicopter. Noticing that their chopper was outfitted with a search-and-rescue lift, one of the advance men said to the pilot, “We’re not taking you away from grabbing people off of rooftops, are we?”

:No, sir,” said the pilot. He explained that he was from Florida’s Hurlburt Field Air Force base—roughly 200 miles from New Orleans—which contained an entire fleet of search-and-rescue helicopters. “I’m just here because you’re here,” the pilot added. “My whole unit’s sitting back at Hurlburt, wondering why we’re not being used.”

The search-and-rescue helicopters were not being used because Donald Rumsfeld had not yet approved their deployment—even though, as Lieutenant General Russ Honoré, the cigar-chomping commander of Joint Task Force Katrina, would later tell me, “that Wednesday, we needed to evacuate people. The few helicopters we had in there were busy, and we were trying to deploy more.”

You read that correctly. The military had hundreds of rescue choppers, many with airlift equipment, within range of New Orleans. But because Rumsfeld was engaged in a turf war, so it would take days before he finally sent in both the needed active duty troops (not just the Louisiana Guard) and released the much needed air support.

Even a shit all stupid George Bush began understanding something was wrong, and in the end turned on Rumsfeld:

Bush convened a meeting in the Situation Room on Friday morning. According to several who were present, the president was agitated. Turning to the man seated at his immediate left, Bush barked, “Rumsfeld, what the hell is going on there? Are you watching what’s on television? Is that the United States of America or some Third World nation I’m watching? What the hell are you doing?”

Rumsfeld replied by trotting out the ongoing National Guard deployments and suggesting that sending active-duty troops would create “unity of command” issues. Visibly impatient, Bush turned away from Rumsfeld and began to direct his inquiries at Lieutenant General Honoré on the video screen. “From then on, it was a Bush-Honoré dialogue,” remembers another participant. “The president cut Rumsfeld to pieces. I just wish it had happened earlier in the week.”

Just when I think I can’t read anything that will stun me about Hurricane Katrina, well I am proven wrong. Ad to think, this man ran the Department of Defense for years. It boggles the mind.

Politifact is a site run by the St. Petersburg Times. They have complied a detailed checklist of  all Barack Obama’s statements on the needs of New Orleans and the Southern Louisiana and his promises to help meet those needs, measured against what he’s actually proposed and/or done.

If the 16 promises about Katrina Obama has 15 “No Action” and one “Compromise.”

The farther we get into this administration, the clearer it becomes to me that New Orleans is now enjoying its second strat White House that just doesn’t give a shit about fixing what the Federal government broke in the first place.