Showing posts with label Hurricane Katrina. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hurricane Katrina. Show all posts

May 31, 2008

The fabulous BuZh legacy: California and NOLA

the new "Middle Class" prosperity: "Mom forced to live in car with dogs" - CNN.com

go read this.
seriously.

Mom forced to live in car with dogs - CNN.com.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Mother of three grown children says, "This is my life in this car right now"
Santa Barbara, California, allows homeless to sleep in cars in 12 parking lots
Affluent city has seen a rise in homelessness during California's housing crisis
Advocate: "It's just amazing the people that are becoming homeless"

...
Harvey was forced into homelessness this year after being laid off. She said that three-quarters of her income went to paying rent in Santa Barbara, where the median house in the scenic oceanfront city costs more than $1 million. She lost her condo two months ago and had little savings as backup.

"It went to hell in a handbasket," she said. "I didn't think this would happen to me. It's just something that I don't think that people think is going to happen to them, is what it amounts to. It happens very quickly, too."

Harvey now works part time for $8 an hour, and she draws Social Security to help make ends meet. But she still cannot afford an apartment, and so every night she pulls into a gated parking lot to sleep in her car, along with other women who find themselves in a similar predicament. Watch women who live in their cars »

There are 12 parking lots across Santa Barbara that have been set up to accommodate the growing middle-class homelessness. These lots are believed to be part of the first program of its kind in the United States, according to organizers. ...


Storm-Wracked Parish Considers Hired Guns
Washington Post: For DynCorp and other private security companies, the post-Katrina Gulf Coast, like Iraq, is a land of opportunity.
FEMA muzzles Katrina victims
Blackwater Down: Fresh From Iraq, Private Security Forces Roam the Streets of an American City With Impunity
“As business leaders and government officials talk openly of changing the demographics of what was one of the most culturally vibrant of America’s cities, mercenaries from companies like DynCorp, Intercon, American Security Group, Blackhawk, Wackenhut and an Israeli company called Instinctive Shooting International (ISI) are fanning out to guard private businesses and homes, as well as government projects and institutions. Within two weeks of the hurricane, the number of private security companies registered in Louisiana jumped from 185 to 235.
Some, like Blackwater, are under federal contract. Others have been hired by the wealthy elite
”

Fraud, Scandal and Greed Has Crippled the Gulf Coast's Recovery, But Made Some Very, Very Rich
Profiting from Disaster, By JORDAN GREEN


May 08, 2008

Nagin wants the FEMA trailers gone

May 08, 2008

Source: Associated Press

The end of the FEMA trailer in NOLA is dawning:

What we need here are some alternatives - or a reduction of the red tape that is keeping people in the trailers. Perhaps the mayor's office should look at each case, talk to the resident and come up with individual plans. That might deal with these last trailers once and for all. (Do I expect individual solutions? No, but boy I'd love to be surprised.)


May 03, 2008

Judge: Corps of Engineers can be sued over Katrina flooding

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Army Corps of Engineers can be held liable for flood damage caused by a "hurricane highway," a navigation channel that is believed to have funneled Hurricane Katrina's storm surge into the city, a federal judge ruled Friday.

The Corps of Engineers had argued that it was immune from liability because the channel is part of New Orleans' flood control system. The law says the federal government cannot be sued if something goes wrong with a flood control project such as a levee, reservoir or dam.

Judge Stanwood Duval dismissed that argument, saying the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, or MRGO, was clearly a ship channel and not a flood control project.

Plaintiffs' lawyers said Duval's decision is a victory for homeowners, who have suffered setbacks in their efforts to hold the government legally responsible for storm damage. They also said it clears the way for a Sept. 8 trial.

The corps "threw everything they had at us, every legal argument they had, their spin on the facts," said Pierce O'Donnell, one of the lead plaintiffs' attorneys.

In January, Duval ruled that the corps was entitled to immunity over flood damage from levee breaches elsewhere in New Orleans.

The government had claimed its immunity should extend to the MRGO, but Duval said that channel and the levee system are separate projects with different funding methods and purposes.

"The United States should not be immunized for a tort which occurred from an activity unrelated to a flood control project," Duval wrote Friday. "Taken to its logical conclusion, such a policy would yield absurd results."

Duval heard arguments from lawyers on both sides in March.

Charles Miller, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said he couldn't immediately comment on Duval's ruling because the department was still reviewing it.

Duval issued a similar ruling in February 2007, when he denied a motion by the government to dismiss the case. Friday's ruling was significant because Duval was not swayed by subsequent testimony or by evidence the corps brought to have the case thrown out.

The MRGO suit was filed by five residents whose homes flooded after the August 2005 hurricane.

The suit charges the agency with ignoring repeated warnings that the MRGO turned into a "hurricane highway," funneling Katrina's storm surge into St. Bernard Parish and New Orleans and overwhelming levees and flood walls.

The 76-mile shipping channel was built about 40 years ago as a shortcut to New Orleans. For years, environmentalists and emergency planners have blasted the channel as a destructive force because it has eroded enormous tracts of wetlands and increased the threat of flooding.

The Corps of Engineers has acknowledged that the channel contributed to the region's flooding, and the agency is coming up with a plan to plug it.

Associated Press writer Michael Kunzelman contributed to this report.

Related News

See also:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=900
Hurricane Katrina: No One Can Say they Didn't See it Coming


 "indigo" <nobody at spamcop.net> wrote in message
| news:dfksvl$s46$1 at news.spamcop.net...
| > Dollars to donuts they ain't made up of simple piles of dirt
| > too........downtown Richmond and Wilkes-Barre are protected by enormous
| > concrete dikes with huge steel gates to allow water access during
| non-flood
| > periods. I'll allow that the cost to totally surround a town the size of
| NO
| > like that would be enormous, but.........plain dirt? That's just nuts.
|
| I don't suppose they can ever just let the water go in NO, except into the
| river and out to sea. But for sure they need to build 'real' barriers, not
| just walls of earth. I heard some folks on the news yesterday accusing the
| powers that be of blowing the levee so that the poor areas would be
| inundated so that the rich parts would be saved. However, I have my doubts
| about this LOL.


River level varies by what happens up stream. I've seen it to the point
were there are only very few (as in 1 or 2) inches from the water level to
the physical top of the levee. In 1927 the have to dynamiting levees the
levee to protect NOLA.

Interesting quote protecting NOLA 'but at the cost of dynamiting levees and
intentionally flooding the poor and politically disenfranchised parishes
downstream.'

Kinda make me laugh at the min-America that hammers folk in NOLA for living
in flood prone local.

http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2002AM/finalprogram/abstract_44272.htm

THE 1927 MISSISSIPPI RIVER FLOOD AND ITS IMPACT ON U.S. SOCIETY AND FLOOD
MANAGEMENT STRATEGY
BARRY, John M., Center for Bioenvironmental Research, Tulane and
Universities, 1430 Tulane Avenue, SL-3, New Orleans, LA 70112,
jvbarry at aol.com.

March 18, 2008

"SENATOR DAVID VITTER SHOULD RESIGN" , by Matt Janovic

"Anybody who looks at the two cases will see that there is an enormous difference between the two of them. The people that are trying to draw comparisons to the two cases are people who've never agreed with me on important issues like immigration and other things." --Louisiana Senator David Vitter

New Orleans
--You think he should resign? Who doesn't these days? The Republicans have no reason to protect him anymore, he's served his usefulness. Do it now, he's hoping you'll forget again. If Spitzer had to go, so does Senator Vitter, the only difference is the statute of limitations. It's great that Republicans in Congress held-up any potential ethics investigations of the Louisiana senator for about nine months, but then, so did Barbara Boxer. You might ask her why sometime.

Sitting-on any inquiries gave the Republicans time to wait-out the outgoing Democratic governor Kathleen Blanco who had been in a great deal of conflict with Vitter's bosses (he was literally the errand-boy for Karl Rove during the aftermath of Katrina) in the White House. It seems she didn't want to be their scapegoat, but she wasn't running around having-sex with prostitutes, and touching escorts:

Until recently, Vitter at least had a political rationale for not resigning. When he was first ensnared in the D.C. Madam criminal case last June, Republicans were one vote shy of controlling the U.S. Senate. Had he quit then, Louisiana's Democratic governor, Kathleen Blanco, might have named a Democrat as his interim replacement. Now, however, Louisiana has a Republican governor in Bobby Jindal, who can name a Republican to replace Vitter. Thus, there no longer is any rational basis for the GOP to protect Vitter. Indeed, Republicans in and out of New York did not hesitate to demand that Democrat Spitzer resign as that state's governor last week. Like Vitter, Spitzer had been a crusading moralist. Unlike Vitter, Spitzer recognized and admitted his sins, including that of rank hypocrisy. He resigned within days.

David Vitter should do likewise. (www.bestofneworleans.com, 03.18.2008)

The ditching of Vitter could be coming very soon, and most definitely for the reasons enumerated in the words of bestofneworleans.com. They aren't the only voices calling for Vitter to resign--he has enemies within his own party in Louisiana, and they've been trying to make him accept responsibility for his serial-solicitations of escorts and prostitutes for many years now. But enough on Wendy Vitter, some marriages-of-convenience can become so...inconvenient.

For enemies of Vitter within the Louisiana GOP, their time appears to be ripe and they are already striking. David Vitter's days in office are probably being numbered to the single-digits as this is being written, a happy thought indeed. What we know is that in 2001--shortly after some of his contact with escorts of Deborah Jeane Palfrey--Vitter was flying down to New Orleans to have sex with prostitutes around Canal Street.

The FBI was recording phone "chatter" to-and-from the brothel he solicited, entered into logs, and then they sat on it. This wasn't under Clinton, it was under the current administration during their first term. The timing puts it with former Attorney General Ashcroft, and continued into the embarrassing tenure of Alberto Gonzales.

Vitter couldn't be more wrong in the above quote. There are many Republicans who agree with him on the issues of "immigration and other things," but they can say it more articulately under duress. Maybe not. Stammering and stuttering seem to be an acquired-habit in the current GOP incumbency, and it's likely to become contagious in the next few weeks when the economy keeps crashing and the dollar keeps plummeting globally.

The public isn't having it anymore, and the outrage isn't likely to end with former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. Corruption is in the air, and Spitzer was the least of it--but David Vitter is someone who is up-to-his-neck in it, and so is the entire Republican Party. They don't even have Lincoln Chaffe to kick-around anymore. It's time that they be held-responsible for their actions. All you have to do is look at their voting-patterns and their lockstep unanimity. How much of it is ensured through sexual blackmail?

BestOfNewOrleans.com, 03.18.2008: http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2008-03-18/commentary.php

Search my site for more on the Palfrey/Vitter saga (An exciting new film noir!):
http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/search?q=Vitter


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