Fighting Words

***WARNING: The following is pure rant. I woke up in a bad mood and then read this editorial online. I didn’t like it.***

The Pittsburgh-Tribune Review pens an editorial:

The big stupid

While the title is meant to be a play on the phrase “the Big Easy,” it is more accurately a description the intellectual worth of the article that is to follow.

The editorial fails in its opening sentence:

Madness oftentimes is defined as doing the same thing but expecting a different result.

First, this “definition” for madness (usually insanity) is used too often. It is a cliché, and not a very good one. Second, I do not agree that it is an accurate description of madness or insanity. Consider another frequently used phrase: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” In the battle of clichés, we see that “doing the same thing but expecting a different result” can have both negative and positive meanings.

Obviously, in this case, the writer uses the cliché in its negative sense. What he or she is criticizing is illuminated in the second sentence:

Such is witnessed today in New Orleans where some residents are rebuilding in the worst low-lying areas.

It is madness to rebuild Lakeview. It is madness to rebuild Broadmoor. It is madness to rebuild the 9th Ward. It is madness to rebuild Mid-City. It is madness to rebuild Gentilly. It is madness to rebuild New Orleans East. These are the implications of the editorial’s first two sentences.

The writer continues his observations on madness:

Leading the lunacy is Mayor Ray Nagin. The Washington Post reports he is allowing evacuees to rebuild as they please -- and without raising their homes as required to meet new flood guidelines.

Nagin leading? What lunacy! As far as “allowing evacuees to rebuild as they please,” I’d like to see the government stop anyone from rebuilding “as they please.” The people rebuilding know if they do not follow federal guidelines, they don’t get federal aid, including Road Home money. If you had more than 50 percent damage to your house, you must rebuild no lower than the base flood elevation and be at least three feet above the ground. Nagin can not “allow” people to ignore federal rebuilding guidelines *and* receive federal funds.

The big stupid continues:

This, after experts repeatedly have warned that broad segments of flood-prone neighborhoods should be abandoned.

Experts have also said that flood-prone neighborhoods could be protected by properly built and maintained levees.

More big stupid:

Why should homeowners care when they're receiving billions of dollars in federal aid -- even if they skirt the government's own flood guidelines?

As of January 8, 2007, 118 homeowners in the state of Louisiana have received federal rebuilding money *not due to them through the National Flood Insurance Program.* Remember, those with flood insurance paid dues.

With an average benefit calculated at $78,820.37, that comes to $9,300,803.66 in federal aid sent to homeowners to be used to rebuild. Since that covers the entire state, there is no guarantee that all of that federal aid went to New Orleans homeowners. Therefore, it is not correct to say that New Orleans homeowners are “receiving billions of dollars in federal aid” nor is it fair to conclude that receiving any aid would cause homeowners to not care how they rebuild. This is our home and the lives of our people. We want things done right.

The big stupid pre-dates Katrina:

That's because tough decisions are an anomaly in the Big Easy, as evidenced in the days before Hurricane Katrina. And as more houses go up in the wrong areas, it will be even more difficult to lead residents to higher land.

I assume from the last line that this is a reference to the evacuation. The idea that the evacuation was a failure is one of the greatest myths of Katrina. The true failure was the levees. If the levees had held, the people who stayed behind in New Orleans would have lived.

We are the big stupid because we are the big risky:

Reports due this spring from the Army Corps of Engineers on which city neighborhoods are the riskiest -- and offering homeowners commonsense incentives to build elsewhere -- could help. But remember, this is New Orleans.

Yes, remember. This is New Orleans. And remember that how “risky” a neighborhood is relies on the strength of the levees that protect it. The USACE is responsible for that, too. If they do the job that many engineers think they can do, then we won’t need “commonsense incentives to build elsewhere.”

We should absolve America from our big stupid:

If dim-witted evacuees are determined to rebuild in the worst possible areas, they should sign a waiver relinquishing any claim to future aid if their homes float down the river in the next 30 years.

I certainly hope Pittsburgh isn’t in a flood zone or protected by levees. If so, I fully expect the author of this editorial to sign a waiver relinquishing any claim to future aid if his or her home floats down the river in the next 30 years. But that won’t happen, right? The levees and dams will hold, right?

Not only are we the big stupid, we are the “apogee of stupidity”:

Paying these imbeciles again, after they rebuild in the wrong areas, would be the apogee of stupidity.

At first, I thought the title was a pun. Now I see that it is irony.

Happy Chocolate City Day

Lil po' boy has Chocolate City Day off from school, which made the following exchange possible:

da po' boy: My foot's asleep.

lil po' boy: That's called "stitches and noodles."

da po' boy: You mean "pins and needles?"

lil po' boy: Yeah. "Stitches and noodles."

Also, his first words to me when we woke up this morning: "I had a dream... [long pause for effect]."

I have high hopes for this boy.

Sunday Bob Marley

I always wanted to be the small axe that cut down the big tree. But I have come to realize that I alone can not fell the big tree.

Only all of us together can be the small axe.

WANTED

On Friday, January 12, 2007, one day after the march on City Hall, two men were shot in Central City:

At about 6 p.m., a 26-year-old man was shot several times in the 1800 block of Washington Avenue, near Baronne Street, Garry Flot, a police public information officer, said. The victim was taken to a hospital.

Sometime before 8 p.m., another man arrived at a hospital with a gunshot wound to his buttocks.

The article says neither shooting is life threatening.

However, in the first shooting, an NOPD press release paints a darker picture:

The offense occurred at approximately 5:53 p.m., in the 1800 block of Washington Avenue.

According to investigators, Sixth District officers responded to a call of a “male shot” and upon their arrival, found the victim suffering from multiple gunshot wounds to the body. Emergency medical personnel arrived on the scene and transported the victim to a local hospital where he is listed in critical condition.

Investigators learned, the victim was approached by two males that produced a handgun and began firing striking the victim multiple times to the body. Both suspects fled on foot.

Police say they think they know the identity of one of the “two males that produced a handgun and began firing.”

Here he is, the face of an accused attempted murderer:


15-year-old Alton Netter.

We need to find a way to make sure, if Alton Netter truly took part in this attempted murder, that he is the last 15-year-old to shoot or assist in shooting another person in this city. We can not lose another generation.

We can not arrest our way out of this problem. We certainly have not been able to convict our way out of this problem. We can only teach our way out of this problem - not just in the academic sense. But at home and in our communities. We teach best by example.

Be good. Teach good. And they will learn good. Real good.

SEC vs. the World

As an LSU fan, it's hard to root for Florida. But I can root for the SEC.

And, as we saw with last night's championship game, you're not the number one team in the country until you've beaten the number one team in the SEC.

That didn't happen this year.

Final poll. LSU would probably beat Ohio St., too. Six SEC teams in the top 25, three in the top 10, two in the top three.

Not bad.

Think Like a Houstonian

Cute.

Hurricane Katrina evacuees take note: You’re not in New Orleans anymore.

It’s time to “think like a Houstonian.”

That is the message from two displaced New Orleanians in a lighthearted new video prepared by Houston social agencies to help survivors of the 2005 hurricane find work and establish new roots here in the nation’s fourth largest city.

I watched the video. It has good advice for job seekers and useful information about the city of Houston.

I hope, though, that those New Orleanians who decide to stay in Houston don’t have to disavow their New Orleans-ness to assimilate:

“Now that you’re in Houston looking for work,” Mr. Johnson says, “you should think of yourself as a Houstonian, not a homesick New Orleanian.”

I suspect many New Orleanians that evacuated or were bused to Houston will choose to stay in Houston. That is, the choice, in many cases, will be made for them by the slow pace of the leaderless recovery. There is no community for many of the evacuees to return to. Nor is there adequate or affordable housing.

There will be many homesick New Orleanians looking for jobs in Houston with one foot in the Bayou City and the other in the Bayou State. But do they have to sell their New Orleans soul for a job?

A Houstonian does not keep a cellphone with a 504 New Orleans area code. “You want to make sure that the employer knows that you are planning on staying in Houston,” Mr. Johnson says.

Make sure, Ms. Jackson agrees, “to put a 713 or 832 or another local number on that application.”

Thinking “like a Houstonian” in this sense is really thinking like a good job seeker. I am confident that one can both “think like a New Orleanian” and get a job in Houston.

Now, if Houston businesses are refusing to hire people who are “obviously” New Orleanian (hmm, I wonder what that means?), then the problem lies not in the job seekers’ state of mind, but in the Houston business world. Being from New Orleans should not be an obstacle blocking one from getting a job. I have met many a Texan working here in New Orleans and, believe me, they are still thinking like a Texan.

I realize that a couple of New Orleans evacuees put the video together. I see that as an admirable response to a problem in their community and it should accomplish its intended result and help New Orleanians get jobs.

But it also is a response to negative myths that have evolved in Houston concerning New Orleans evacuees. The evacuees have already been characterized as an undesirable group. Asking the evacuees to cover up their New Orleans-ness supports this unfavorable stereotype, even though it may get a few of them jobs.

I guess, as a New Orleanian, my problem is with the choice of words. I don’t ever want someone to tell me not to think like a New Orleanian. Plus, I want the evacuees to get jobs here in New Orleans – their home – and help spur on the recovery.

Oops, there I go exhibiting my New Orleans-ness again. You know, the eternal optimism New Orleanians have that our leaders will do the right thing to get people home and speed up the recovery, or speed up the recovery to get people home.

Eternal optimism from a life long Saints fan. Imagine that.

Five oh fo’ eva.

UPDATE: New Orleanians in Houston get a video to help them find jobs. Iraqis get a billion dollars.

President Bush’s new Iraq strategy calls for a rapid influx of forces that could add as many as 20,000 American combat troops to Baghdad, supplemented with a jobs program costing as much as $1 billion intended to employ Iraqis in projects including painting schools and cleaning streets, according to American officials who are piecing together the last parts of the initiative.

Via dangerblond, who observes:

And the president is really smart to do this, because with all the training and jobs, they will not only be able to rebuild their destroyed homes and communities, but they’ll have less of an incentive to turn to violence. What? Why are you looking at me like that?

I wonder if the new plan will teach the Iraqis to "think like an American."

Sunday Bob Marley

A song I hadn't heard before.

When You Put It That Way…

It looks pretty bad:

In the last week more Americans have died in New Orleans than in Iraq. Since Dec. 29, there have been eight military deaths. In the Big Easy, there have been 14 murders.

Please, New Orleans is not as dangerous as Iraq. I don’t want to sugarcoat the violent crime problem down here, but c’mon. Along with the military deaths, how many Iraqi troops, police, and civilians were killed? I guess Iraqis don’t count.

On the same page is a video report with this description (as of 4:24 pm):

Jan. 5: There have been 14 murders since Jan. 1 in New Orleans, outpacing any other U.S. city, and even the number of troops killed in combat in Iraq. NBC's Martin Savidge reports.

Nightly News

Besides being incorrect (as of Jan.5 there are seven or eight murders, depending who you read), that contradicts information on the same page. Admittedly, seven (or eight) is just as bad as 14. I just thought I would point out the error.

Also, while talking about exclusively American deaths, I believe Paul Gailiunas was Canadian. It says a lot about his character that he gave so much to a community so far from where he was from.

While there are many things to lament about New Orleans both pre and post Katrina, there’s one aspect I’ve always loved about our city. You don’t have to be from here to be from here.

This One Hurts

Helen Hill shot, murdered. Her husband shot, injured, holding their child. Holding their child.

It hurts. I didn’t know the family. But it hurts. It hurts all of us.

The city feels this one. We feel it through personal accounts and through the media:

After the flood, Helen Hill ached to return to her adopted city.

Her husband, Paul Gailiunas, resisted. The storm had destroyed the health clinic he co-founded in the Treme neighborhood to serve the city's poor. Gailiunas, a doctor, fretted about the quality of the air and water, and of life in general, for the couple and their baby son, Francis. Hill's parents in South Carolina, where the couple had retreated in exile, worried, too. They had seen the destruction on television.

"But she had New Orleans in her heart and imagination," her stepfather, Kevin Lewis, said Friday, a day after Hill was shot dead and her husband wounded inside their Marigny home. "She was idealistic. She wanted her family and her creative life fulfilled here."

It hurts to lose Helen Hill. It hurts even more to lose her in such a violent way. It hurts to lose anyone in such a violent way.

Anyone. The day after Helen Hill was murdered, a woman was shot and killed Uptown:

The death of Jealina Brown, 22, continued a rash of slayings gripping the city. She was the seventh person slain since 2007 began, and 13th killed in an eight-day period.

Even though I have heard of no impromptu memorials for Jealina Brown, her loss hurts, too.

And I don’t expect memorials for these murders either:

The other recent killings followed a depressingly familiar pattern. Earlier Thursday, the police found a young man with gunshot wounds lying face-down in a Central City alleyway; on Wednesday evening, they responded to a report of gunshots in the same neighborhood and found another young man dead; that afternoon, Louisiana National Guardsmen found the body of a man shot in the head in the Desire area, in the Ninth Ward; and on Wednesday morning, they found the body of a woman wrapped in a rug in the Lower Ninth Ward.

But they hurt. They all hurt. Some affect the community differently, but they all hurt. The loss of a Helen Hill gets more attention than the loss of a young, black, Central City man. But they both hurt.

It is wrong to assume that the young, black Central City men were involved in anything illegal when they were shot. But if they were (as many retaliatory Central City murders similar to these are), it would also be wrong to say that their loss should hurt any less. We are not born bad. We are taught bad. The young black men that are killing each other on our streets and the men and women of every color who commit viloent crimes were taught bad. As much as they hurt their community with their actions, they were first and equally hurt *by* their community. And their community is us.

That hurts.

When I hear about a murder – any murder – that doesn’t involve someone I know, I still hurt because I feel the loss of the family and loved ones. How can you not? But I also hurt because I realize that someone was taught bad. Someone was taught that murder is an option. My community failed for that person. I failed for that person.

Did no one see that person being taught bad? Were we too busy to notice? Did we not see the conditions at home that contributed? Did we not see the conditions in the neighborhood, or the schools, or the lack of opportunity or a future that contributed to the creation of a murderer? Dammit, what the hell were we doing that we didn’t notice?

What the hell do we do now that we have noticed? It’s too late for eight people already, just six days into the new year. One thing on our side is that, as with bad, we are also taught good. We can teach good.

Teaching good is rebuilding every neighborhood equally. Teaching good is rebuilding every school equally. Teaching good is not hording resources – money, property, wealth – amongst the few. Teaching good is not rewarding privilege but merit. Teaching good is through more education, not more incarceration. Teaching good is a bottom-up process, not a top-down mandate. Teaching good is me not sitting so much in this chair and typing so much, but doing much more. (Hey, I never said I was a saint.)

The Mayor and the Superintendent talk about the murders:

This city, which has recorded at least eight killings this year, is looking at imposing a curfew as a way to help stem the violence, police Superintendent Warren Riley said Saturday.

"It's something we're just sort of talking about, to see if that will make a difference," he said. A curfew in effect in the city in the early part of 2006, along with the hurricane-diminished population, seemed to make a difference, Riley added, giving New Orleans "our best quarter, probably, in 30, 40 years."

***

Both said they understood citizens' concerns, but Nagin urged them not to make decisions on their future in this still-rebuilding city based on the recent killings.

"This is a tragic incident, but we've had murders over the past year-and-a-half or 10 years, and I understand there are tipping points," Nagin said. This may be one such tipping point, he said, that "galvanizes our community to really step forward and help us to solve this."

The curfew may work in the short term. But a curfew doesn’t teach good. And to cite the first quarter of 2006 as "our best quarter, probably, in 30, 40 years" is crazy. The population of residents was so low the numbers can not be used in comparison to other quarters. Plus, up until January 2006, the national guard was assisting the police. Before they came back halfway through the year, the police weren’t doing such a great job even with the smaller population. The NY Times wrote an article at the end of "our best quarter, probably, in 30, 40 years" and you tell me how “best” it looked:

But crime is nowhere near its pre-storm levels. With the city's population reduced by at least three-fifths, statistics indicate that crime is down 60 percent to 70 percent over all, the department said.

There have been 16 killings this year, compared with more than 60 for the same period last year, which means quieter days for the police but still works out to an annualized rate of 32 killings per 100,000 people, ahead of Cleveland and Chicago.

According to the NOPD, there were 17 murders in the first quarter of 2006. In the next quarter there were 39 murders. With 161 by the end of the year, that means the last half of the year saw 105 murders, with just half the population back (and that’s the high-end estimate). That doesn't look like an improvement.

There are no bright spots here. When the Superintendent and the Mayor try to spin the murder rate, people get mad. The “tipping point” Nagin speaks of might not cause a galvanization of the community, but an exodus from the community.

We need to care about all of these murders to prevent more murders. But, man, this one hurts.

Where There’s a Problem, There’s a Solution

Max Mayfield is no longer the chief of the National Hurricane Center. He leaves warning of the big one to come and lamenting Americans’ penchant for building near the coast:

"We're eventually going to get a strong enough storm in a densely populated area to have a major disaster," he said. "I know people don't want to hear this, and I'm generally a very positive person, but we're setting ourselves up for this major disaster."

Well, there’s the problem. How about a solution?

He argues that his own dire predictions don't have to become reality.

Technology exists to build high-rise buildings capable of withstanding hurricane-force winds and tropical storm surges more powerful than experienced in the past few years. Much of Hong Kong's architecture has been built to survive typhoons, and hotels and apartments built in Kobe, Japan, after a 1995 earthquake devastated the city are touted as indestructible, he said.

The technology exists. Good to know. So why all the debate about rebuilding New Orleans?

What is lacking in the U.S. is the political will to make and impose hard decisions on building codes and land use in the face of resistance from the influential building industry and a public still willing to gamble that the big one will never hit, he said.

"It's good for the tax base" to allow developers to put up buildings on the coastline, Mayfield said in explaining politicians' reluctance to deter housing projects that expose residents to storm risks.

"I don't want the builders to get mad at me," he said, "but the building industry strongly opposes improvement in building codes."

Oh…. Wouldn’t want to make the builders mad, now would we?

Speaking of Murder Rates

New Orleans – murder capital of the universe:

Three New Year's Eve killings brought the city's murder total to 161 for 2006. Depending on which population estimate is used, that works out to a rate of 60 to 81 killings per 100,000 residents. But two-thirds of the murders were in the last half of the year.

***

National figures for 2006 won't be in for months. But in 2005, the highest rate in any city was 67 per 100,000 in Compton, Calif., a city of just under 97,000. New Orleans wasn't included in FBI crime statistics last year because of Hurricane Katrina.

It’s hard to tell what that murder rate means. Even though there are only 200,000 people living here, we still have the problems of a city built for half a million. On top of that, we have the problems of a city built for half a million people that was then hit by a hurricane and the levees didn’t work, devastating the infrastructure of our criminal justice system, which didn’t work well before the storm.

We will probably equal our pre-Katrina murder total way before we equal our pre-Katrina population total, which will make the murder rate crazy high. But, as Chris at prytaniawaterline.com points out, that just means we have the same old problems:

If the chief is trying to make the tourists feel safe then maybe he needs to tell them the truth. If you are white and you don’t do drugs your chances of being murdered in this city greatly decrease. Wake up Riley we are living on the same bloody streets that we lived on before the storm, trying to claim that you have accomplished anything is a stretch.

They know where they crime is. They know where the drugs are. They know where the murders are going to happen. It’s all in the same place it was before the storm.

The same old same old is getting old.

The Definition of Rate

From Wikipedia:

A rate is a special kind of ratio, indicating a relationship between two measurements with different units, such as miles to gallons or cents to pounds. For example, suppose one spends 9 dollars on 2 pounds of candy. The rate $9 / 2 pounds compares the money spent to the number of pounds of candy.(or money)

So the “murder rate” of a city would be the ratio of the total number of murders to another number, like the total population. The murder rate is usually presented as the number of murders per 100,000 residents.

There is a difference between the murder rate and the total number of murders in a city.

The *total number of murders* in Houston was up 13.5 percent in 2006 when compared to 2005:

In 2006, the Houston Police Department recorded 379 homicides as of Dec. 31, a 13.5 percent increase from the 334 homicides recorded in 2005. The 2006 total is the highest since 1994, when 419 homicides were reported in the city.

But the *murder rate* was up 5.57 percent:

Despite another annual increase, residents here are not necessarily at greater risk of becoming a homicide victim. That's because Houston's homicide rate per 100,000 residents rose only incrementally in 2006 — since the city's population is estimated to have surged by more than 148,000 people, due largely to an influx of Hurricane Katrina evacuees.

***

Despite the upward trend, Houston's homicide rate per 100,000 residents hardly changed at all. That number increased from 16.33 in 2005 to 17.24 in 2006.

The FBI says that in 2006, cities with more than 1,000,000 people (that includes Houston) had an average increase in their murder rates of 6.7 percent.

Given the national trends, I just don’t understand how the Katrina evacuees that went to Houston can be blamed entirely for Houston’s higher murder rate:

"We did have a surge in population from a city where the homicide rate is eight times the national average," said Houston Mayor Bill White, referring to New Orleans, hometown of many of the evacuees. "The last 2 1/2 months, we have seen a return to homicide rates typical of the 2000-to-2004 period prior to Katrina."

Yes, more people were murdered in Houston last year. But there were more people in Houston to be murdered. If nearly 200,000 people had come to Houston in a matter of months from anywhere in the world, the total number of murders would have gone up, even if the murder rate had stayed the same.

I am still not sold on the Katrina Criminals Myth.

Not on the List

AP’s top news stories in 2006:

1. IRAQ
2. U.S. ELECTION
3. NUCLEAR STANDOFFS
4. ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
5. SCANDALS IN CONGRESS
6. SADDAM CONVICTED
7. MIDEAST FIGHTING
7. (tie) RUMSFELD RESIGNS
9. AIRLINER PLOT
10. DISASTER IN DARFUR

Honorable mention:

Just missing out on the Top 10 was mounting concern over climate change and global warming, highlighted by the release of Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," and alarming new warnings from many scientists.

Yep, the hurricane recovery is not on the list. I guess the AP saw nothing to report there. Does that mean there was no recovery?

Also not on the list, but that’s because no one really reported the significance of it when it was released on June 1, the Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force (IPET) report saying, “The hurricane protection system in New Orleans and southeast Louisiana was a system in name only,” which lead to the now retiring head of the USACE saying:

"This is the first time the Corps has had to stand up and say we had a catastrophic failure of one of our projects," says chief engineer Lt. Gen. Carl Strock.

That should have made some list.

AP list as seen on Daily Kos.

UPDATE: The Advocate's list of the top ten Baton Rouge stories:

1. New Orleans rebuilding goes slowly
2. Storms fuel economic growth in BR
3. Property insurance costs increase
4. Doctor, two nurses arrested in N.O. hospital deaths
5. BR man accused of killing five
6. LSU men's and women's basketball teams advance to Final Four
7. Nagin wins re-election
8. Voters OK independent Central school system
9. Jefferson wins, denies wrongdoing
10. Bertman faces questions about program

Behind Schedule

Who, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers? No way!

Way:

The Corps is about six months behind schedule in issuing an all-important "risk analysis," a massive body of work that is intended to tell the public how likely New Orleans is to flood again from a big hurricane.

The analysis is supposed to explain in precise detail how well specific sections of the city are protected against hurricanes, using evidence that hurricanes have intensified in recent years. The analysis would produce detailed maps.

I am sure no one’s waiting for that:

The Corps' analysis will play a major role in determining the city's future — including whether more than 200,000 former residents could rebuild abandoned neighborhoods and whether insurers can provide coverage at an affordable rate.

That’s okay. It just affects us little old New Orleanians:

The stakes are high, not only for the integrity of the levees around New Orleans but for similar levees that protect millions of Americans who live along vulnerable coastlines and rivers across the nation. Many were built on the same mucky foundations and with the same flawed engineering assumptions as the notorious failed 17th Street levee in New Orleans.

The suspect levees stretch from Florida's Lake Okeechobee to the rivers of California's Central Valley and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which has 2,300 miles of levees that protect cities and farmland.

The Corps' investigation is essential to understanding California's situation, said Les Harter, the levee chief at the California Department of Water Resources.

"The floodwalls in New Orleans were 15 years old, and they failed," Harter said. "Our levees are 100 years old. We estimate we have one-half the level of protection that New Orleans had."

Well, at least something has happened in those six months:

Three top-ranking Army Corps of Engineers officials who led the agency's reconstruction work after Hurricane Katrina are stepping down, prompting critics to again question whether the Corps is able to protect the city from future disasters.

The latest retirements include two top civilians and the New Orleans district engineer. They come on the heels of the retirement of the agency's chief, Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, who said in August he was leaving his post for "family and personal reasons."

***

Last month, Col. Richard Wagenaar, the New Orleans district's engineer chief who was assigned his post one month before Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005, asked the Army to let him retire next summer.

He cited the "mental challenges and physical challenges" of handling the district since Katrina.

***

Dan Hitchings, a 55-year-old civilian who oversaw the agency's reconstruction mission after Katrina, Task Force Hope, said he is retiring at the end of January.

Hitchings said the change in leadership will not diminish the agency's ability to get the job done.

***

The third top engineer to retire is Greg Breerwood, the New Orleans district's 59-year-old deputy district engineer for project management. With 37 years of experience, he is the senior civilian in the district.

Breerwood said the Corps is about to start the next phase of long-term flood and hurricane protection for Louisiana. His last day on the job is Jan. 3.

Hey, where is everybody going?

Just Revenge

Written on the side of the Criminal Courts building on Tulane and Broad is the following quote:

This is a Government of Law not of Men

The statement is overtly sexist, but it is meant to describe the democratic government we have set up here in the U.S.A. (Some would say, then, that the overt sexism is accurate.) This is also supposed to be the democracy we are spreading to the Middle East.

But this morning, I read this NY Times account of Saddam Hussein’s execution with this chilling lead sentence:

BAGHDAD, Dec. 30 — Saddam Hussein never bowed his head, until his neck snapped.

It is clear that in the government sanctioned death of Saddam Hussein, men killed the ex-dictator, not law:

His executioners wore black ski masks, but Mr. Hussein could still see their deep brown skin and hear their dialects, distinct to the Shiite southern part of the country, where he had so brutally repressed two separate uprisings.

Hussein represented Sunni Iraq. The current government is dominated by Shiite Iraq. The sectarian violence in Iraq – the civil war – is, put simply, the Sunni militias versus the Shiite militias.

Hussein’s execution at the hands of a Shiite government, and more intimately by the hands of Shiite men, can be seen as a Shiite victory over the Sunnis in Iraq – hardly a way to bring the two sides together.

And the two sides were at war even at the scene of the execution:

The room was quiet as everyone began to pray, including Mr. Hussein. “Peace be upon Mohammed and his holy family.”

Two guards added, “Supporting his son Moktada, Moktada, Moktada.”

Mr. Hussein seemed a bit stunned, swinging his head in their direction.

They were talking about Moktada al-Sadr, the firebrand cleric whose militia is now committing some of the worst violence in the sectarian fighting; he is the son of a revered Shiite cleric, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, whom many believe Mr. Hussein ordered murdered.

“Moktada?” he spat out, mixing sarcasm and disbelief.

As Hussein is the symbol of Sunni Iraq, Moktada al-Sadr is the symbol of Shiite Iraq. The guards were obviously supporters of Moktada al-Sadr, therefore Shiite.

The inappropriate wordplay continued:

Mr. Rubaie [Iraq’s national security adviser], standing shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Hussein, asked him about the killing of the elder Mr. Sadr.

They were standing so close to each other that others could not hear the exchange.

One of the guards, though, became angry. “You have destroyed us,” the masked man yelled. “You have killed us. You have made us live in destitution.”

Mr. Hussein was scornful: “I have saved you from destitution and misery and destroyed your enemies, the Persians and Americans.”

The guard cursed him. “God damn you.”

Mr. Hussein replied, “God damn you.”

In a government of law, not of men, the guard present at an execution does not curse the condemned.

Michigan professor Juan Cole has more at Salon.com:

One thing is certain: The trial and execution of Saddam were about revenge, not justice. Instead of promoting national reconciliation, this act of revenge helped Saddam portray himself one last time as a symbol of Sunni Arab resistance, and became one more incitement to sectarian warfare.

***

Even the crimes for which he was tried were a source of ethnic friction. Saddam Hussein had had many Sunni Arabs killed, and a trial on such a charge could have been politically savvy. Instead, he was accused of the execution of scores of Shiites in Dujail in 1982.

***

When Saddam visited Dujail, Dawa agents attempted to assassinate him. In turn, he wrought a terrible revenge on the town's young men. Current Prime Minister al-Maliki is the leader of the Dawa Party and served for years in exile in its Damascus bureau. For a Dawa-led government to try Saddam, especially for this crackdown on a Dawa stronghold, makes it look to Sunni Arabs more like a sectarian reprisal than a dispassionate trial for crimes against humanity.

***

The tribunal also had a unique sense of timing when choosing the day for Saddam's hanging. It was a slap in the face to Sunni Arabs. This weekend marks Eid al-Adha, the Holy Day of Sacrifice, on which Muslims commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son for God. Shiites celebrate it Sunday. Sunnis celebrate it Saturday –- and Iraqi law forbids executing the condemned on a major holiday. Hanging Saddam on Saturday was perceived by Sunni Arabs as the act of a Shiite government that had accepted the Shiite ritual calendar.

I will never agree with a state sanctioned execution. But this one is certainly consistent with the United States’ current foreign policy. You’re either with us, or against us. And if you are our enemy, and we can find you, we’ll kill you.

This is the foreign policy of the weak. Only the weak must kill all their enemies to claim victory. The strong do not fear the mere existence of their enemies. The strong are confident in their decisions and are not worried about any challenge their enemies may mount.

I believe the United States is strong. I believe Americans can be strong. We do not have to rule the world to be the leaders of the world. The strong are merciful precisely because they are strong. The weak can never show mercy because of fear.

We should have shown mercy with Hussein. The United States should have lobbied for Hussein to not be executed, but to spend his life in prison. In a country torn in half by sectarian violence, a show of mercy would have been the right message to send, not another merciless killing.

Yes, I know. Hussein showed no mercy to the thousands of people he ordered killed. This is true. But Hussein was weak. He could show no mercy. The life he saved might have come back to kill him one day and he feared this.

If we are strong, we should not fear a living, breathing Saddam Hussein. But it is too late to be merciful. Hussein is dead. Was it justice? Or, just revenge?

The D.A. and the NOPD Working Hand in Hand

Make that fist to fist.

The D.A. announces indictments in the Danziger Bridge shootings on Wednesday. Seven NOPD officers are indicted on first-degree, attempted first-degree, and/or attempted second-degree murder. The D.A. adds this to his announcement:

"We cannot allow our police officers to shoot and kill our citizens without justification like rabid dogs," District Attorney Eddie Jordan said.

Superintendent Warren Riley hears this and the next day responds:

Riley called Jordan's comments "highly unprofessional, highly prejudicial and highly undignified."

"We want justice first and foremost ... but for the district attorney to try and prejudice the community against these officers before all the evidence is heard is really, I think, a sad day for the city."

So, the D.A. is saying “our police officers” are acting like “rabid dogs” and Riley is calling the D.A. “highly unprofessional” and that the D.A.’s actions are a “sad day for the city.”

Just another week in the NOLA criminal justice system.

This is how it is supposed to work. The NOPD arrests the bad guy. The D.A. tries to put the bad guy in jail. The courts make sure the bad guy really is the bad guy and not the wrong guy.

Can that system work when two of the three parts can’t seem to get along?

Meanwhile, in Gotham City:

Two New Orleans men were killed in separate shootings Thursday, including a prominent New Orleans musician slain while driving through Mid-City with his wife and two children, a police spokesman said.

Dinerral Shavers, 25, died from a gunshot to the back of his head at about 5:30 p.m. while behind the wheel of his black Chevrolet Malibu in the 2200 block of Dumaine Street, police said.

And on Friday:

A 17-year-old boy who was feuding with the 15-year-old stepson of a New Orleans musician was arrested Friday in the shooting death of the musician inside the family car on Thursday, police said.

David Bonds, 17, is accused of fatally shooting Dinerral Shavers, 25, a snare drummer for the Hot 8 Brass Band and a band teacher at L.E. Rabouin High School.

Now, the “rabid dogs” of the NOPD turn David Bonds’ case over to the “highly unprofessional” D.A. with hopes of a conviction.

My question: Will our criminal justice system work in this case? If it fails, who will it fail for? Dinerral Shavers? David Bonds? Both?

If it fails for one of us – any one of us – it fails for all of us.

Where's Batman when you need him?

Repopulate Downtown

American Zombie recounts a “depressing rumor” which outlines a scenario in which major downtown hotels leave New Orleans:

Imagine a Canal Street with two to three towering empty buildings...no lights, no people...nada...just dead, monolithic, hulls. Combined with our inability to get adequate flights into the city, it could be a 1-2 knockout punch to our convention industry: no way to get here and nowhere to stay when they do get here. We've already lost one major convention (Microsoft) due to the lack of flights...I think that single issue could set off a chain reaction into oblivion.

As I am not a fan of the tourism industry, this doesn’t really depress me. If these “dead, monolithic, hulls” were bought by HANO/HUD and redeveloped as mixed income (meaning a fair amount of low income) apartments for rent or purchase, our housing problem would be solved. Canal Street would blossom as a retail center because all the new residents would need services, like places to buy groceries, wash clothes, buy things for the house, buy parts for the car, etc. Tourism service jobs would be replaced by retail jobs and people would be able to live close to where they worked. Restaurants would stay in business because residents like to eat out, too, though they won’t be able to charge tourist prices.

Repopulate downtown. It would solve the lack of housing and it would promote development in a section of the city that’s high and dry.

Major Wisdom

From Minor Wisdom:

Each of us may be wiser today than we were yesterday, but that may only mean that we're slightly less of an idiot today than we were yesterday. In any event, there's a good chance we'll be wiser tomorrow than we are today. So next time we have the urge to fire off a correction to someone else's opinion, let's consider waiting until tomorrow, and thinking about it in the meantime.

Take that into account when responding to Maxim's latest list of the Worst Sports Arenas. Look who's #10:

10. Louisiana Superdome, New Orleans
Even before Katrina, the place came across as drab and soulless as a long-abandoned warehouse. Great symbol of New Orleans' resilience, lousy place to see a game.

I'll give you drab. But soulless?

La. Representative U.S. 2nd Congressional District Election

Overall stats:

62,106 people voted.
26,985 (43.4%) for Karen Carter.
35,121 (56.6%) for William Jefferson.

Jefferson Parish stats:

16,901 people voted.
4,967 (29.4%) for Karen Carter.
11,934 (70.6%) for William Jefferson.

Orleans Parish stats:

45,205 people voted.
22,018 (48.7%) for Karen Carter.
23,187 (51.3%) for William Jefferson.

Looking at those numbers, we can make various conclusions. But, we CANNOT make ANY conclusions about the motive of individual voters. However, a lot of people are making a few conclusions about the motives of Jefferson Parish voters.

Mr. Clio, from World Class N.O.:

I would like America to know that Congressman William Jefferson, while under investigation for corruption, took 70 percent of the vote in Jefferson Parish (the Westbank portion of his district). That suburban vote (which looks demographically a lot like Houston or Atlanta)--not the city of New Orleans--is what put Congressman Jefferson back in D.C. for another term. THANKS WESTBANK! THANKS HARRY LEE!

Wet Bank Guide:

If you voted for Dollar Bill or stayed home and let him be re-elected; if you voted Republican in the past and acquiesce in (if not endorse) the sort of politics that left him unindicted on the odd chance he might be re-elected to provide some future political advantage or a West Banker who helped send a future felon back in our name on the odd chance you might do better next time, don't be putting on your Bush jersey tomorrow. You don't deserve to wear it. If you want to be part of team New Orleans, then you damned well better start acting like it.

Moldy City:

I heard some Jefferson Parish official say something about electing somebody from Jefferson next time; apparently, they want both of the Jefferson/Orleans seats. With people on the east bank of Jefferson thinking in terms of Jefferson/Orleans, and people on the west bank of both parishes thinking East Bank/West Bank, it could happen. Anyone but Shepherd.

People Get Ready:

Meanwhile, it’s disheartening for us in Orleans Parish, who have been working so hard to cleanse Louisiana of its stain of corruption, that white Jefferson Parish voters cynically voted for the crook thinking that he’d be indicted, and they’d then be given an opportunity to elect someone who more closely resembles voters in white-flight Jefferson Parish.

***

How incredibly ironic it is that, for all of the criticism we get in New Orleans for corruption, it’s actually Republican voters in Jefferson Parish who are voting against Louisiana’s best interests. Is cynicism a “conservative” value? What do those people tell their children about how they voted?

Jefferson Parish is making a lot of money on New Orleans’ problems — all the big box hardware retailers in Jefferson are booking record sales, and record tax receipts (and … ahem … Sheriff Harry Lee, who had his little tantrum over Karen Carter’s candidacy, is the official Jefferson Parish tax collector). It’s really a shame, then, that Jefferson Parish wouldn’t be working harder to help New Orleans, and cooperate in political decisions that benefit the region and the state, not political parties and personal vendettas.

***

I only hope the rest of the country won’t punish New Orleans for the political errors of politicians elected by the bastard political coalition of white Republican racists, and distrustful blacks who vote loyalty more than their consciences.

Your Right Hand Thief:

Unfortunately, Jefferson Parish was also involved. And they thought it was important to elect the crook, because otherwise dehydrated disaster victims might storm across the bridge to loot food and water and wine coolers from Greatna's precious bedroom communities.

***

So da "Best Bank" elects a legislator who supposedly understands "their side of the river" to a Congress where he will be an ineffectual outsider. In doing so, they reinforce the national impression that New Orleans is too stupid to self-govern, and utterly hopeless.

Cliff’s Crib:

The most important thing is that the numbers from this election prove why this area will always be a joke. Look at the numbers from Jefferson Parish. I know the people in Jefferson Parish don't like the fact that they look racist to the rest of the country after the Spike Lee movie. They may not be racist as much as they are stupid.

***

Basically, the people of Jefferson sold the city out for a personal vendetta. Jefferson and Nagin together is like political suicide for the most part. They don't care what Jefferson does in DC because most of their houses are dry and their families are not split. Their side of the levee didn't fall. This is why the people that live in the New Orleans city limits cannot be tricked into buying into that regional approach bullshit. The regional approach is going to end up just like the levee system, public schools and every other thing. In the end the people living in the city will get the short end of the stick.

First, let’s talk numbers. Only 16,901 people voted in Jefferson Parish out of 62,106 overall. That’s 27.2% of the all voters in the election. 11,934 Jeffersonians voted for Jefferson. While that is 70.6% of the Jefferson Parish vote, it is only 19.2% of the overall vote. In a runoff, you can’t get elected with 19.2% of the vote. Therefore, to say Jefferson Parish elected William Jefferson is wrong. He got the bulk of his votes from New Orleans.

Yes, the percentages were close in New Orleans. But William Jefferson won there. If he had won in Jefferson Parish by the same margin, he still would have won the election.

Second, Louisiana’s 2nd U.S. Congressional District is not only made up of New Orleans. Jefferson Parish voters will, and it is their right to, vote in their interests. Karen Carter did not appeal to Jefferson Parish voters *at all*, much less as the lesser of two evils, which JP President Aaron Broussard pointed out:

Broussard said the congressman won overwhelmingly in suburban precincts because "Karen Carter was a stranger to Jefferson Parish." Even Shepherd, whose state Senate district covers parts of downtown New Orleans in addition to most of Jefferson Parish's West Bank, enjoyed some crossover appeal.

We can not and never will know the motives of Jefferson Parish voters. But, I think it is logically wrong to conclude that it means the people of Jefferson Parish don’t want to be on “team New Orleans.” Karen Carter may have been the best candidate for New Orleans. But, I think it is obvious that she wasn't the best for JP.

Third, Louisiana’s 2nd Congressional District is gerrymandered to include districts in both parishes which would tend to vote for an African-American candidate. While racism could explain why a “bastard political coalition of white Republican racists” would stay home and not vote at all, I don’t think it explains why those who did vote voted heavily for Jefferson.

Fourth, I don’t believe that Jefferson Parish voters went to the polls believing they could install one of their own in the seat in a second-chance election after the (in my opinion, not-so) inevitable indictment of William Jefferson. Given that there are so many more New Orleans voters than Jefferson Parish voters in the district, I can’t see how a Jeffersonian could win without broad crossover popularity, in which case everyone would like that candidate and not have a problem that he or she is from JP.

Fifth, not everyone thought that Karen Carter was the better candidate for New Orleans. This is why we have elections. A person is not stupid because they don’t vote for the candidate you support. They may be stupid because they believe stupid things that lead them to vote for their candidate. But you can not use the evidence of who they voted for to label them stupid.

Adrastos, as always, has a good read on why Carter lost:

The biggest mistakes the Carter camp made were fueled by overconfidence. It was a *terrible* mistake to refuse to appear on TV with Dollar Bill unless he was in the studio with Princess BOLD. Dollar Bill was willing to appear via satellite from Washington but Carter's handlers denounced that as an attemp to control how he was presented. Yo, Ms, Carter, you were the challenger, you were not well known; ANY appearance with the incumbent put you on an equal footing. The reason for this monumental cockup seems to be the Carter people's belief that victory was inevitable. That led them to act as if she were the incumbent instead of an unknown and untested challenger.

Could it be that Carter discounted the JP vote because she thought she would get a higher percentage of the more populous New Orleans vote? It’s not a bad strategy because almost three times more people voted in New Orleans than JP. If that was her strategy, then she did not get enough *New Orleans* votes. That turns things around a little.

After saying all that, I don’t think Jefferson Parish is doing enough to help New Orleans recover. JP is in a unique position to be a positive force in the recovery of NOLA. New Orleans is geographically isolated from St. Tammany. St. Bernard and Plaquemines are in the midst of their recoveries which, by scale, are worse than New Orleans. But Jefferson Parish is right there, watching and, for some reason, waiting. A JP-NOLA combo would be a juggernaut.

I respect all the bloggers I referenced above. They are on my blogroll because I admire them and have learned from them. Please do not take this disagreement with you as a personal attack. I am not calling anyone out.

I just think blaming Jefferson Parish for William Jefferson’s election and then piling on everything else you don’t like about the parish is a distraction from the goal of recovery… and not a good distraction like the Saints.

The Legend of Michael Brown

Every time he speaks, the legend grows:

Brown faulted those New Orleans residents who failed to have their own hurricane plan, believing it was the government’s duty to keep them safe.

“The government cannot save you,” he said. “We’ve got to get away from this culture of dependency and go to a culture of preparedness in this country … Every one of us has things we can do in our lives and our businesses to be better prepared.”

And grows…

He criticized Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin for pointing the finger of blame at each other instead of working together to solve the problem.

“I felt like strangling them both,” he said. “I probably should have … In Katrina, I was never able to establish a unified command structure because Louisiana was so dysfunctional and so overwhelmed.”

In fact, the legend has grown to such proportions that Michael Brown himself must refer to the Michael Brown of Katrina in the third person:

After Katrina struck, Brown said, the White House was more interested in political damage control than in actual damage control in New Orleans.

“One of the biggest mistakes Mike Brown made during Katrina was not crumpling up the White House talking points and saying ‘Folks, here’s the truth,’” he said.

This Mike Brown he speaks of. He is a legend in this part of the world.

It Ain’t What You Say, It’s What You Do

But I like what Ed Blakely is saying:

"The city needs a modern infrastructure, and you have to build something better," Blakely added. "New Orleans needs a modern economy, a new economic base, because you can't live on tourism alone."

***

"First we have to bring back the infrastructure -- across the entire city," he said. "We need sewer lines, streets, street lights, traffic lights. ... Power is still out in some quarters. All of that has to be put back before you can begin to put up houses."

***

Blakely said his office will develop a master plan for the city, which currently is home to about 200,000 residents but that he envisions may one day include up to a half-million people. His work will focus on rebuilding the city's core, and he said a bill before Congress would provide funding to modernize the levee system in the Gulf Coast region to avert another such disaster.

"We are very far behind the Japanese and the Dutch in putting in the types of flood-control systems that we need down here," he added.

I have always liked the idea of rebuilding from the center out so that the city doesn’t spread its diminished resources too thin. However, that would only work if two things happen: (1) the city must guarantee that every neighborhood will be rebuilt, and, (2) the city must provide affordable, temporary housing in the “core” to all displaced residents who want to return.

Without a guarantee that every neighborhood will be rebuilt, the patchwork rebuilding would have to occur so that neighborhoods could prove their viability. And, affordable, temporary housing in the “core” would allow residents from the more heavily flooded areas to live in a functioning part of the city while the infrastructure in their neighborhoods, and ultimately, their homes are rebuilt. When they move back to their homes, they would leave behind an invigorated “core” ready for new people to move in. A thriving “core” combined with newly rebuilt neighborhoods with sound infrastructure would allow New Orleans to transcend its World Class status.

Oh, yeah, and the levee thing is important, too.

So That’s Why My Internet was Slow Today

Mayor Nagin to USA Today:

"There is (federal) money out in cyberspace, there is money in the mail … but very little of that money has made it to our local governments and our citizens."

Dammit. All that federal money in cyberspace is clogging up the tubes. Get it out.

Don’t Pick on FEMA

FEMA Director R. David Paulison says it’s not easy being FEMA. You think you know. But you have no idea:

I believe many Americans have little awareness of:

- FEMA’s size, which is about the size of many high schools—or 2500 full time employees;
- FEMA’s mission, which is to help America mitigate against, prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters;
- FEMA’s reliance upon partners—be it the States, the Department of Defense, or others in the federal, state or private sector—to accomplish nearly all that we do, and
- Citizens’ personal roles and responsibilities, along with state and local jurisdictions, in the emergency management process.

Now, part of this is our fault. We in FEMA simply haven’t done as good a job as we should explaining our roles and responsibilities, managing expectations and communicating the urgent need for personal preparedness. Although FEMA can—and will do a better job of framing our respective roles and responsibilities within an emergency management context, I want to make it crystal clear that every American has a part to play in achieving national preparedness.

You see, FEMA is the little guy. They just didn’t do a good job letting you know about how little they were. They’re like a high school… a high school that can be allocated millions of dollars by Congress and can “rely on” the Department of Defense to accomplish its mission. Didn’t your high school have those kinds of resources? (Okay, okay, maybe my alma mater did.)

Paulison gave the above speech to the National Press Club last week. He was talking about the “New FEMA.” It seems he wanted to make us aware that FEMA’s mission isn’t to actually do anything. They just “help America” do things. That way, because FEMA doesn’t actually do anything, they aren’t responsible when things aren’t done right. So who, according to Paulison, is responsible?

You are:

Any American who fails to prepare for potential disasters not only places the lives of their loved ones in jeopardy, he or she also may put the lives of first responders at risk and contribute to a more difficult response. The extent to which any one of us is victimized by disaster is determined, at least in part, by how well—or how poorly—we personally prepare ourselves and our loved ones for disaster.

Only you can prevent a failed response to a natural disaster. So be prepared.

Be prepared, because you never know when $1 billion will go to the wrong people:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has recouped less than 1 percent of an estimated $1 billion in fraudulent or unjustified payments that it distributed after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, a new report by congressional investigators says.

At the same time, the agency continued to wrongly send out millions of dollars of new aid this year, including $17 million in rental assistance to families living rent-free in FEMA trailers, the Government Accountability Office report says.

Be prepared, because the *right* people might stop getting help and not know why:

FEMA has to restore housing assistance and pay back rent to thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees who had been deemed ineligible for long-term housing assistance, a federal judge ruled yesterday [Nov 29].

The judge, Richard J. Leon of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, wrote that the agency also had to improve an appeals process that evacuees had long said was confusing, contradictory and amounted to an arbitrary denial of help.

***

The judge said that the lack of clarity deprived evacuees of their rights of due process, pointing out that the agency had conceded that thousands of families had been incorrectly ruled ineligible.

Be prepared, because FEMA may fight for their right to not give housing assistance to eligible families:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said Tuesday that it will appeal a judge's order that the agency resume housing assistance and make retroactive payments to thousands of hurricane evacuees.

The appeal notice came just hours after lawyers for evacuees asked a federal judge in Washington to order FEMA to provide a plan for compliance with the Nov. 29 order. FEMA's notice did not specify grounds for the appeal.

Be prepared, because the director of FEMA, addressing the court ruling, might say something like this:

"No good deed goes unpunished," Paulison said, adding that FEMA helped more people than it ever has despite overwhelmed systems, huge work volumes and pressure to fight victim fraud. "We felt like we did a good job."

He added: "We have to resist the call for additional investigations unless they're based on new evidence and allegations. Rather than conduct additional studies, inquiries, analysis that look backward and tell us what we really already know, we should continue to focus on correcting the problems."

Be prepared, because FEMA’s “good deed” may keep you from coming home:

By summer, four out of five recertification requests were denied, said Heather Godwin, a lawyer with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid. Advocates and court records show that FEMA refused, against agency rules, to give aid to more than one member of a family, even if they were separated across the country; that the agency concluded erroneously that many homes were not severely damaged by the storms; and that FEMA relied on computer systems that were unable to keep track of applicants' documents and were plagued by overloaded workers' data-entry errors.

Other bureaucratic measures, designed to combat abuse, required applicants to provide written documentation of pre-storm housing payments, which was unavailable to some evacuees, or to meet inspectors even if they were living miles away.

***

Liberal analysts also cite other indicators that aid cutoffs are leading to de facto relocation decisions as poor families, unable to get back to New Orleans, begin to seek local aid where they are. In Austin, the wait list for public housing has grown from 8,200 to 10,000 families, Godwin said.

Be prepared, because your state might not be able to question how FEMA spent recovery money:

Who should pay for the federal government’s mistakes in handing out disaster aid to the wrong people? Not Louisiana, say state officials, who have gone to court to try to prevent the Federal Emergency Management Agency from collecting about $60 million from the state

The federal government has asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit, contending that Louisiana cannot refuse to pay charges it disagrees with — even when the charges are the result of fraudulent claims — and that the state has no right to audit FEMA’s spending. A hearing on the lawsuit is scheduled for Monday in Federal District Court in Baton Rouge.

Be prepared, and heed the word of FEMA:

So, what does personal preparation mean? This means having a plan, understanding that plan, and exercising that plan; and, It also means having adequate homeowners and flood insurance to recover after disasters strike. America must continue to develop a culture of preparedness.

Yes, have a personal plan, understand that plan, and exercise that plan when the US Army Corps of Engineers comes to your town and builds a levee system “in name only.”

Yes, we do need to “develop a culture of preparedness” now that we know our government is not prepared.

Better Late Than Never?

Let the recovery begin!

More than 15 months after Hurricane Katrina, Mayor Ray Nagin is ready to open a city office to direct New Orleans' recovery, with a leading regional planner and disaster recovery expert in charge.

***

Nagin said in a recent interview a recovery director previously didn't make sense because "I couldn't really communicate to the person their authority, how the money was flowing, how (the recovery) would be set up. All that clarity is in place (now)."

The city has made strides, Nagin said. "I just need somebody to take me to the next level."

Ed Blakely is Nagin’s choice for recovery director. From what I’ve read about Blakely on the internet, he is as good a choice as any other person not from the New Orleans area.

He penned this online opinion a couple of weeks after Katrina hit:

There is little doubt that the “essential” New Orleans will be rebuilt and probably resettled. More than one third of the residents will not return for a host of reasons, including the traumas of the incident. But most will return. The best way to cater for this is to rebuild the city section by section, so large numbers can come back and resurrect their neighbourhoods again.

In this process each neighbourhood should be rebuilt with locals taking part, including working with one another, to help rebuild their homes and parks. My experience is that this process binds neighbours back to the neighbourhood. Therefore we should avoid contractors doing all the work.

Physical inputs and planning designs from the community - and even from the children - are therapeutic and make the community a community again. The communities we rebuilt in Los Angeles and Oakland are stronger today than they were before the events.

Reading that opinion piece, he seems to understand what “community” is – although, he might have to unlearn a few myths:

Obviously, the central business core will need to be rebuilt too. It should be rebuilt around some form of New Bourbon Street, just like San Francisco created New Montgomery Street after the 1908 fires that destroyed the entire city.

The “old” Bourbon Street is still there, and I don’t see a lot of business taking place there. Lots of businesses, but not a lot of business. You know what I mean.

I’m not sure, though, that Blakely will be able to do anything:

Blakely said he knows from past experiences that "leadership makes all the difference." In New Orleans, he said, the recovery has been bogged down by the number of bureaucracies and people involved and by the lack of a modern, citywide master plan.

What does that say about Nagin? If we accept that “leadership makes all the difference” and that “the recovery has been bogged down,” then shouldn’t we assume that Nagin up to this point has been a poor leader? Conversely, if the recovery’s slow pace is due to “the bureaucracies and people involved” and not Nagin, then shouldn’t we assume that Nagin is powerless to the forces around him and, in fact, the leader of nothing when it comes to the recovery?

By the future recovery director’s own admission, he is either dealing with an ineffective leader or an impotent one. Let the recovery begin!

“Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing?”

Seriously. I wish there was an alternative to 870 AM in the morning.

I could just turn the radio off. But, I want to here the local news updates at the top and bottom of the hour.

The discussion topic for the second hour of Spud’s show today was Keith Ellison’s choice to use a Koran to be sworn in to Congress. He went to a commercial break saying “Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing?”

Hmm… the 1st Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing?

Hmm… being Muslim. Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing?

What a stupid question. How about we analyze the un-American, anti-Constitutional reaction to Ellison’s attempt to freely practice his religion? That’s what I want my AM talk show to discuss. The erosion of the rights granted by the Constitution affects both liberal and conservative Americans.

I suppose the next topic will be: What version of the Bible should Congressmembers use to be sworn in?

A caller reminded Spud of the 1st Amendment, quoted above, and the more relevant section of the Constitution, Article VI:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

Hmm… the Constitution. Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing?

T’was the Night before the Budget Vote

That’s plenty of time to review $33 million in sanitation contracts for the first time, right?

On the eve of the New Orleans City Council's vote today on the 2007 budget -- which will include $33 million for three new trash-collection deals -- top officials for Mayor Ray Nagin delivered long-awaited final versions of two of the contracts and announced the winner of a third trash pickup deal in the French Quarter.

***

Moreover, sanitation Director Veronica White made clear that the council's options -- despite its power of the purse over Nagin's proposed budget -- were severely limited, given that the deals are slated to begin Jan. 2.

"What would you do at this late date if we should not approve this?" Midura asked.

"What would be the alternative? There would be no garbage pickup," White said. "That would be the alternative."

It’s C. Ray or the highway.

Why are the details of the contracts being released the day before the Council must vote on them?

It is not clear, however, why the city did not disclose the contracts sooner, despite numerous inquiries in person and in writing. The public records law generally requires public entities to provide public documents "immediately," or within, at most, three days. Mayoral spokeswoman Ceeon Quieet said Thursday that she did not receive such inquiries after Nov. 13.

Oh, I see. There were “numerous inquiries” before November 13, but none after November 13. That’s why no one got to see the contracts before yesterday, not even Councilwoman Midura, a member of the budget committee that “monitors contracts for collection and disposal.”

From the T-P article:

With the contracts in her hand, Midura pressed Wilde on why the city attorney's office, which provides legal counsel to the mayor as well as the council, refused to clue her in over the past six weeks to the bulk of the agreements' content. Instead, she said, they responded to her repeated requests for draft versions of the contracts -- in whole or in part -- with dubious explanations, including the assertion that the public records law specifically exempts lawyers' work product.

What does that say for Nagin’s pledge of “transparent spending policies”? Moldy City clues us in.

Also from the T-P article, the true litterbugs are the rats:

"Hiring a bunch of people to go around and pick up manually, you're defeating your purpose," she [sanitation Director Veronica White] said, noting that uniform carts with lids that are part of the new deals will stop rodents from tearing through plastic bags, which she called a major factor in loose litter.

Some of us are worried about a different type of rats.

Making More Connections

The President thinks our allies are not spending enough money on war:

President Bush's agenda at a NATO summit this week will include pressing alliance members to increase defense spending. Aides say many U.S. allies are ill-equipped for modern military operations.

The defense outlays of some NATO partners are less than half those of the United States as a percentage of gross domestic product.

I wonder how our allies are spending all that money that the President thinks would be better used to create more modern ways to kill people.

Oh, that's how.

Infrastructure is for cut-and-run cowards.

(previous post: Making Connections)

Making Connections

In his radio address to the nation Saturday, President Bush mentioned the wars overseas and the hurricane recovery separately:

Americans believe that every person has the right to live, work, and worship in freedom. And we're thankful to the men and women of our Nation's armed forces who risk their lives to protect those rights. This Thanksgiving, we are mindful that many of our finest citizens are spending the holiday far from their homes and loved ones, and we know that their service makes it possible for us to live in freedom.

***

During this holiday season, we also think of those still working to recover from the devastating hurricanes that struck our Nation last year. We are grateful to the armies of compassion who rallied to bring food, water, and hope to those who had lost everything, and we renew our commitment to help those who are still suffering and to rebuild our Nation's Gulf Coast.

On Friday, while gutting a veteran’s house with the Arabi Wrecking Krewe, an AWOL American soldier mentioned the wars and the recovery but made some connections:

"There are so many engineering units of the U.S. military - they should be here and not Iraq," Pte. Kyle Snyder, 23, of Colorado Springs, Colo., said Friday.

Instead of flexing our military muscle to destroy buildings and lives in other parts of the world, we could be using that muscle to rebuild cities and lives in this part of the world.

A better world will not come by pointing the barrel of gun at it and commanding it to be better. You have to put the guns down and get in there and work on it.

The President said it himself at the end of his radio address:

Thanksgiving reminds us that the true strength of our Nation is the compassion and decency of our people. And as we count our blessings, we remember that those blessings are meant to be shared. I encourage all Americans to look for a way to help those in need -- from tutoring a child, to working in a shelter, to giving a hand to a neighbor. I thank all those Americans who volunteer this season, and Laura and I wish every American a safe and happy holiday.

So, this Thanksgiving I give thanks to Kyle Snyder for putting his muscle where his guns are not. If that makes me un-American, then so be it. My only response to such an accusation would be: I was born in New Orleans.

Take from that what you will.

This is Not a Prediction

But I think Jefferson will beat Carter in the runoff.

I came to this non-prediction after Derrick Shepherd’s endorsement of Jefferson and after looking at two maps: the 2nd Congressional District Primary results and the New Orleans Mayoral Runoff [PDF] results.

In Orleans Parish, the precincts Jefferson won are almost the same as the ones Nagin won. Karen Carter and Lavigne split most of Landrieu’s precincts, with Troy Carter and Shepherd in there somewhere.

Nagin supported Jefferson. While I do not think Mitch Landrieu supported any one candidate in the congressional primary, Karen Carter has supported Landrieu in the past. So, my read for Orleans Parish is that Jefferson versus Carter is Nagin voters versus Landrieu voters. Nagin won in New Orleans and I think Jefferson will, too.

Which leaves the Jefferson Parish precincts. Another look at the primary map shows Shepherd winning most of the JP precincts, especially on the West Bank. Jefferson and Lavigne won the rest. Karen Carter won none of the JP precincts.

Shepherd endorsed Jefferson. That doesn’t mean all of Shepherd’s JP votes will go to Jefferson. But, Jefferson doesn’t really need all of them. He already has a lot of support in Jefferson Parish, based on his winning a few precincts.

My conclusion: Bill Jefferson wins Orleans Parish because the Nagin voters will vote for him and he wins Jefferson Parish because enough Shepherd voters will vote for him. Winning both parishes, obviously, Jefferson will win re-election.

This is not a prediction. I am not good at predictions. This is more like a “best guess.”

Of course, you don’t win a Congressional election by precincts, but by individual votes. And, although most analyses of this election I have read say the race of the individual voters doesn’t matter, I disagree. Race always matters.

In the precincts that were 50 to 75 percent African-American, Jefferson only won a couple of percentage points of voters more than Karen Carter, but still the most. In the precincts that are more than 75 percent African-American, Jefferson almost won a majority of the votes with 49.5 percent.

To me – and I am no expert, I am just reading the numbers available to me – that indicates African-American voters, more than not, tend to vote for Jefferson. In Jefferson Parish, Bill Jefferson only needs African-American voters, more than not, to vote for him and he wins. I think he will get that vote.

The “whiter” sections of Jefferson Parish in Kenner, Metairie, Gretna, and Terrytown have been gerrymandered to be in Bobby Jindal’s district. It’s funny how the 1st Congressional District goes from the north shore, jumping over the Lake through parts of Kenner, all of Metairie, through a small section of Uptown New Orleans, jumping over the river and sticking close to the river in Westwego, Marrero, and Harvey, dipping south through parts of Gretna and just the middle of Terrytown. Funny how that goes.

Assuming that the trend of African-American precincts going to Jefferson equates to a tendency for African-Americans to vote for Bill Jefferson, and also assuming a similar turnout in Orleans Parish as the Mayoral race, then I believe Orleans Parish’s overwhelming African-American majority will make up for the underwhelming white majority due to gerrymandering in Jefferson Parish which would give Bill Jefferson a whole lot of African-American votes and enough non-African-American votes to win.

Having said that, I do not believe African-American voters will vote for Jefferson because of any genetic reasons. That would be stupid and quite racist. I have never bought into the “people vote for people who look like them” idea. I think people vote for people who, at least in public, *act* like them. We vote for the candidate we most identify with. Often, that candidate looks like us, but not necessarily.

Also, this race has two African-American candidates in the runoff, so to say African-American voters will vote for the African-American candidate means nothing. Karen Carter seems to be getting more “white” endorsements (Boysie Bollinger and Joe Canizaro aren't on the endorsement page but are mentioned on another page on her website). But this has nothing to do with the color of her skin and everything to do with her political philosophy or the fact that those endorsing her identify more with her than with Jefferson.

Sure, there are some holes in my analysis. For example, many African-Americans didn’t vote for either Jefferson or Carter. Who will they vote for? But that’s where my assumptions come in. Plus, remember, I am no expert. Agree with my analysis at your own risk.

Federal Money Watch

FEMA press release:

More than $30.1 billion in federal funds have been obligated for Louisiana residents in Individual and Public Assistance programs, National Flood Insurance claims and SBA housing money as the state continues to recover from the devastation caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

How FEMA arrives at that number:

$5.2 billion – Individual and household assistance
+
$4.2 billion – Public assistance
+
$6.7 billion – SBA loans
+
$14 billion – Flood insurance claims
=
$30.1 billion

That’s a lot of money. I am not complaining. But that $30.1 billion number doesn’t accurately portray the federal government’s investment in the Louisiana from those four programs.

The $14 billion in flood insurance claims is not exactly recovery assistance because the government is required to pay that whether there is a disaster or not, a topic I have covered before. It certainly helps, though. It would also help if the private insurance companies would pay up, too.

The $6.7 billion in SBA loans are assistance, but we have to pay those back – with interest (thankfully, low interest). And they might interfere with the assistance we don’t have to pay back:

Separately, the recovery authority unanimously asked the Small Business Administration on Monday to stop demanding that homeowners or small businesses pay off their SBA loans when they get other forms of federal storm relief.

Just to keep things in perspective, the amount of money coming from those four programs listed in FEMA’s press release that the federal government is not *required to pay* or that is not money that recipients *have to pay back* is $9.4 billion.

Once again, I am not complaining about totals. I am not saying they should be higher or lower. I only want to keep in perspective how much federal money we are receiving in our recovery and what those numbers mean.

In the case of the LRA, Congress allocated $7.5 billion for the Road Home program. That money is now in the state’s hands. The federal government can brag about that allocation. The state, however, can’t:

Kopplin said the program has received and processed 80,000 applications, and 20,000 appointments have been held — resulting in more than 1,700 awards averaging $68,000.

But only 22 checks have been received by residents to date.

Only 22 checks. And those checks don’t always go straight to the homeowner.

For homeowners who are rebuilding their houses, their LRA money is managed through “disbursement accounts” (word doc). The check only goes into the homeowner’s personal account if he or she has already spent his or her own money to make the repairs. If the homeowner is buying a new house, the homeowner receives the money at the time of closing – so it never really goes into the homeowner’s account but into the seller’s pocket.

My point: We are not swimming around in 100 dollar bills down here.

Katrina on Their Minds

Apparently, voters outside of the Gulf Coast consider Katrina an election year issue:

Katrina -- or more specifically, how the government reacted to the disaster -- is an issue in some congressional races far removed from the Gulf Coast, popping up during candidate debates and in political ads. It could make the difference in close races as Democrats try to capture a majority in Congress.

***

"But Katrina was a long time ago," Munger said of the August 2005 storm. "People have an electoral attention span of about 9 months."

Still, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., says she is asked often about the status of recovery efforts as she campaigns for Democratic candidates outside her home region. "It's still very much on the minds of rank and file voters, and that's very encouraging to me," Landrieu said.

That *is* encouraging. This is not:

Some Republicans, like Kuhl in New York, are raising Katrina as an example of how the GOP Congress responded to tragedies by quickly appropriating more than $100 billion in assistance.

Once again, I refer to the Government Accountability Office:

To date, Congress has appropriated approximately $88 billion of federal support through emergency supplemental appropriations to federal agencies for hurricane disaster relief and recovery efforts related to the 2005 hurricanes.

The “more than $100 billion” number has become so accepted that politicians are using it to get elected. It seems to me that $88 billion is still a big number. Why not use that number – the real number – in political campaigns?

And don’t forget that as of August 2006, one year after Katrina, only half of the money that was appropriated had gotten “into the hands.”

Run on that.

Why Is Michael Brown Still Talking?

He already had his chance:

Michael Brown was trying to explain the scope of the disaster facing New Orleans to President Bush when Bush cut the discussion short to meet with the press.

That’s when Bush uttered the famous quote — “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job” — that caused Brown to pale.

“You just said I was doing a heck of a job, when I know things are going to heck in a handbasket,” Brown recalled thinking. “It’s a nickname he gave me a long, long time ago when I first met him.”

***

Brown blames himself for not speaking up when he saw how dysfunctional the state and local governments were in the face of disaster.

“I should have talked about how things weren’t working in Louisiana,” Brown said. “It would have been the right thing to do.”

In fact, he had been holding something back for a while before the storm:

Before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on Aug. 25, 2005, Brown said he was ready to quit his position at FEMA because Congress and the administration would not plan for such disasters.

He planned to resign as chief of FEMA on the day after Labor Day 2005, he said.

“I didn’t leave soon enough,” Brown said.

I can’t argue there.

Kerry Called Bush Stupid

Not the troops. Keith Olbermann elaborates:

Sen. Kerry, as you well know, spoke at a college in Southern California. With bitter humor he told the students that he had been in Texas the day before, that President Bush used to live in that state, but that now he lives in the state of denial.

He said the trip had reminded him about the value of education — that “if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you can get stuck in Iraq.”

The senator, in essence, called Mr. Bush stupid.

The context was unmistakable: Texas; the state of denial; stuck in Iraq. No interpretation required.

And Mr. Bush and his minions responded by appearing to be too stupid to realize that they had been called stupid.

They demanded Kerry apologize to the troops in Iraq.

And so he now has.

If the troops don’t already feel like pawns in a deadly political game, I don’t know how they can come to any other conclusion today. The President and his political pals inserted the troops into the campaign trail, not for any direct benefit for the troops, but for the benefit of their Republican friends who were trying to get elected. After all, neither Bush nor Kerry is on any ballot.

Bush claimed to be defending the troops from defamation, even when no defamation had occurred. In doing so, he defamed a former soldier.

I would expect our Sen. David Vitter to seize an opportunity to bash a Democrat. But Sen. Mary Landrieu disappointed me. Both were quick to defend the troops, but not the truth. I can only conclude that the truth would benefit neither.

If Bush is surprised to hear that Kerry was actually calling him stupid, he may consider suing Kerry for defamation. However, he must be careful. In cases of defamation, truth is an absolute defense. A statement can not be defamatory if it is true.

The media has also proved itself to be a willing pawn in the President’s game. Until Kerry did apologize, the media had no problem asking him why he would not apologize for something he did not say. Instead of spreading the truth, the media spread every demand for Kerry to apologize, not to Bush, but to the troops.

Bush didn’t get it. The press didn’t get it. Louisiana’s senators didn’t get it. It’s no wonder we are stuck in Iraq.

Who is going to apologize to us?