August 31, 2005
Bush plays the guitar while New Orleans drowns
William Bunch, senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily News, writes on his blog, Attytood: "One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer was a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach." The comments on Attytood are fascinating, as some right wing posters try to whistle it all away. Ohmigod, libs politicizing the disaster! Indeed. Very highly recommended. The photograph of Bush playing the guitar is from today's AP. Elsewhere in the news, Newsroom-l subscriber reports that Joseph Farah, publisher of the rabidly right wing World Net Daily, is calling for Bush's impeachment.
By William Bunch
[Excerpts]
"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."
-- Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 8, 2004.
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.
Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.
Yet 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.
One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer was a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach.
The president told us that we needed to fight in Iraq to save lives here at home, and yet -- after moving billions of domestic dollars to the Persian Gulf -- there are bodies floating through the streets of Louisana. What does George W. Bush have to say for himself now?
Daily Kos: State of the Nation
Katrina
by kos
Wed Aug 31st, 2005 at 00:04:42 CDT
[Excerpts]
The last four days I was in an isolated cabin in Clinton, Montana, with
only tenuous links to the outside world. Today was the first time I was
able to truly get a handle on the New Orleans disaster, and it's almost
too staggering to comprehend. It's downright biblical.
I just wish that the president gave a damn about what's happenend.
Unfortunately, he's too busy playing "country rock star".