From True Blue Liberal
By Elizabeth Walters

Would you come back?

This is the question that dogs me every morning as I drive through the streets of New Orleans. Past the rebuilt homes and ramshackle shells, past the fresh trim jobs and spray-painted search crosses, past the cleared concrete slabs and the piles of debris that still litter every block, I travel and interrogate my own strength.

I had never visited this area before Hurricane Katrina devastated it three years ago, so I am spared the firsthand comparisons of before and after that can make life here untenable for longtime residents who try to return. While I love the lessened, wounded city I currently call home, I often doubt that I could live here with the memory of what it used to be. And so every morning on my way to work, I ask myself this question, to remind myself of the strength of the people I meet, and to remind myself of the strength of the students I teach—children who had no choice in their destiny.

My morning ritual took on more urgency about 10 days ago, when it became apparent that another hurricane, Gustav, was taking aim at south Louisiana. Suddenly, everyone worried that we would get hit again. The grocery stores ran out of gallons of water. The gas pump lines were three cars deep.

Nowhere was the stress more apparent than among my students. “Ms. Walters, where will we have class if the school floods again?” one of them asked me as I was taking roll.

“I don’t want it to flood. If it floods again, we are not coming back,” another wrote in his class journal.
A land destroyed Read the rest of this entry »

From True Blue Liberal
By Stephen Lendman

Renamed and back, but first a personal note. Post-Katrina, writing about “The New Orleans Aftermath and (its) Ugly Glimpse of the Future” turned this retiree into a writer and radio host.

Now three years later, Gustav threatened and, on August 30, got New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to hype the risk, scare the public, and order a dusk-to-dawn curfew and evacuation of the city’s 239,000 residents ahead of what he called “the mother of all storms.” Many hundreds of thousands more along the Gulf coast. “Nearly two million people from Texas to Alabama,” according to an August 31 New York Times report. Thankfully without cause as “the storm of the century” made landfall as a Category 2, weakened to a tropical depression on September 2, and Louisianans were spared the worst of their fears.

According to The New York Times, New Orleans’ levees “were tested by a heavy storm surge but held, even though the repair and reconstruction work from Hurricane Katrina, is far from finished….waves pounded against a floodwall on the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal, considered a particularly weak link. Though water lapped over the wall for hours, (it) was only ankle-to-knee deep….on the edge of the (Katrina-hit) Ninth Ward.” Overall, no serious flooding or major damage occurred, and the Army Corps of Engineers expected no levee breaks. No thanks to its shoddy work as discussed below.

Over the weekend, nonetheless, Mayor Nagin was insistent and suspiciously over-eager to evacuate the city. Those staying behind, he said, were making “one of the biggest mistakes” of their lives because no emergency services were offered and no “last resort” shelters arranged like for Katrina - inadequate though they were. Case in point - residents weren’t allowed near the heavily guarded Superdome and Convention Center. Read the rest of this entry »

From AlterNet
By Brad Reed

With another enormous hurricane bearing down upon the Gulf Coast, John McCain and prominent Republican leaders have decided that this could be the perfect time to rebuild their image.

Think I’m being too cynical? Consider that McCain decided yesterday to gin up publicity for his campaign by touring the Gulf region with newly-minted vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin. While down in Mississippi, McCain announced that the Republican National Convention this week would be transformed from “a party event to the call to the nation for action, action to help our fellow citizens in this time of tragedy and disaster, action in the form of volunteering, donations, reaching out our hands and our hearts and our wallets to the people who are under such great threat.” What this means is anybody’s guess, although GOP officials have been floating trial balloons about the idea of transforming the entire RNC into a giant telethon to help the hurricane victims. Not to be outdone, Senator Norm Coleman blatantly made the case that McCain would be the best president to defend the country from both terrorism and natural disasters. The hurricane also gave Bush a convenient opportunity to skip out of town and without weighing down the party with his sub-zero approval ratings. As one anonymous Republican strategist told the Washington Post, “Now the Republican brand out there is not so bad… the does-Bush-help-or-hurt question doesn’t need to be asked or answered.”

To understand why the GOP has been so quick to cover all its bases on the current hurricane, we should consider the tremendous fallout that Hurricane Katrina had on the Bush presidency. The 2005 storm had a devastating political impact on George W. Bush and the Republican brand because it showed the American public what happens when a political party believes at its core that government should not be taken seriously.

Sound extreme? Consider Michael Brown, the woefully unqualified former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who became the public face of the disaster when Bush praised him against all evidence for doing a “heck of a job.” Prior to becoming head of the nation’s largest disaster relief agency, Brown worked for 11 years as “the chief rules enforcer of the Arabian Horse Association.” His only supposed experience in emergency management had been working for the emergency services division in the city of Edmond, Oklahoma for three years in the 1970s.

Read more Image Makeover

From Salon
By Mike Madden

John McCain may not be George Bush’s twin on everything, but when it comes to hurricanes, the rivals turned friends are inextricably linked.

Three years ago this week, Bush was in Arizona, celebrating McCain’s 69th birthday, when Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast and nearly destroyed New Orleans. Now Gustav threatens to finish the job, just as McCain’s Republican convention gets under way. But Republicans appear to have learned their lessons from 2005. First Bush’s appearance in the convention hall Monday, and then the entire Monday program, was canceled Sunday afternoon. Some legally required business will be conducted, but there won’t be the kind of fire-breathing speeches that were expected to open the week. McCain aides are taking the rest of the week one day at a time, depending on how hard the storm hits. Both the White House and the rest of the GOP are taking pains to show the kind of concern for the people in the storm’s path that the Bush administration couldn’t be bothered with the last time around.

The federal response to Katrina was a tipping point for many people around the country. Bush, and the Republican Party, saw their approval ratings slide with each day FEMA dithered in the face of the disaster. The state and local governments (both controlled by Democrats at the time) didn’t cover themselves with glory in 2005 either, but what voters from coast to coast remember is the “heckuva job” the Bush administration did. Federal officials seemed to be oblivious to the situation, and that is still hurting McCain now.

Even before Barack Obama arrived at Mile High Stadium to accept his party’s nomination last week, the early five-day tracks had turned Gustav into a problematic metaphor for McCain. Having the unpopular Bush show up at the convention at all was going to be dicey anyway; having him speak literally at the moment another hurricane tore through New Orleans was inconceivable. (You might as well just cancel the election and have Obama take the oath of office now.) Small wonder that the first change to the schedule in response to the storm was to scrub Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney from the speakers’ roster. Even if the storm weren’t forecast to be a monster, they might have felt called to supervise the response if it meant getting away from McCain’s show for the night.

Read more Katrina 2.0

From The Boston Globe
Editorial

Hurrican Gustav has yet to make landfall, but the storm was already reshaping the presidential campaign yesterday. The storm arrives at a choke point in a tight race; the Republican National Convention is scheduled to begin today. But the party’s candidate, Senator John McCain, will be putting on an event much different from what he intended.

President Bush canceled his planned appearance, and today’s session will be stripped own considerably. Organizers, understandably, don’t want Republicans to seem to be reveling if another national tragedy unfolds.

For residents of the Gulf Coast, of course, there are more pressing concerns than politics. Gustav’s approach in recent days was more than a post-traumatic-stress-inducing reminder of the ordeal brought on three years ago by Hurricane Katrina. The new storm also presented more than a million people in southeast Louisiana alone with the immediate dilemma of when and how to leave. Imagine the difficulties if every household in Boston and its inner suburbs had to clear out in a weekend.

Fortunately, the hard lessons of the incomplete evacuation before Katrina and the inept governmental response afterward have clearly sunk in. Many residents who stayed home to ride out Katrina have opted to leave before Gustav. While any community would be hard-pressed to arrange transport and accommodation for all of its poorest, most fragile residents, well-planned bus and train service has carried thousands of New Orleanians to safer points northward.

Read more Hurricane Politics

From Wired
By Noah Shachtman

New Orleans is being evacuated once again, as Hurricane Gustav lumbers toward the Gulf Coast. Everyone from the U.S. military to the British Royal Navy to Blackwater is gearing up to respond.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin tells The New York Times that “with 1,500 to 2,000 National Guard troops coming to New Orleans, the city would have twice as much law enforcement protection as it had in the days after Hurricane Katrina. In all, 7,000 members of the Louisiana National Guard were mobilized Friday.” Coast Guard Air Force units based in Florida are on standby. U.S. Northern Command has set up a command post for the military response at England Airpark, in Alexandria, Louisiana. And they’ve begun airlifting up to 16,000 people from New Orleans to Nashville, Tennessee; San Antonio, Texas; Louisville, Kentucky; and Ft. Smith, Arkansas. Additional staging areas have been set up at Fort Rucker, Alabama; Fort Benning, Georgia; Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama; Columbus Air Force Base, Mississippi; and Naval Air Station Meridian, Mississippi.

U.S. Navy ships like the USS Bataan have been told to stand by for possible disaster relief missions. Canada has sent one of its four enormous transport planes, Boeing C-17 Globemasters, “to the region to assist with medical evacuations,” according to Canwest News Service. And Canadian Forces medical personnel [are headed to Louisiana to] conduct a mass evacuation and assist U.S. medical personnel with any medical issues over there.” Even the British military’s “Royal Navy Warship HMS Iron Duke and Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel Wave Ruler have now arrived in the vicinity of the Cayman Islands, ready to render assistance if required in the wake of Hurricane Gustav,” according to Cayman Net News.

But perhaps the most startling call for forces comes from Blackwater, the controversial prviate security contractor. The firm — which famously patrolled New Orleans after Katrina — is “compiling a list of qualified security personnel for possible deployment into areas affected by Hurricane Gustav,” according to an e-mail obtained by R.J. Hillhouse.

Read more Blackwater

From TruthOut
By Bill Quigley

Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast three years ago this week. The president promised to do whatever it took to rebuild. But the nation is trying to fight wars in several countries and is dealing with economic crisis. The attention of the president wandered away. As a result, this is what New Orleans looks like today.

0. Number of renters in Louisiana who have received financial assistance from the $10 billion federal post-Katrina rebuilding program Road Home Community Development Block Grant - compared to 116,708 homeowners.

0. Number of apartments currently being built to replace the 963 public housing apartments formerly occupied and now demolished at the St. Bernard Housing Development.

0. Amount of data available to evaluate performance of publicly financed, privately run charter schools in New Orleans in 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 school years.

.008. Percentage of rental homes that were supposed to be repaired and occupied by August 2008 which were actually completed and occupied - a total of 82 finished out of 10,000 projected.

1. Rank of New Orleans among US cities in percentage of housing vacant or ruined.

1. Rank of New Orleans among US cities in murders per capita for 2006 and 2007.

Read more Pain Index

From The Seattle Times
By Leonard Pitts Jr.

You cannot watch Laura Belsey’s movie without ruminating upon the myriad ways we fail our young.

There are many wrenching scenes in “Katrina’s Children” but arguably the most wrenching is not the girl crying because the hurricane left her so fearful of water she can no longer swim, or the boys touring the wreckage that once was home, or the children recalling how corpses floated by, writhing with maggots. No, the most wrenching scene comes when Tyronieshia tries to read.

She pauses before the sign warning of penalties for bringing firearms onto the elementary school campus — yes, they need a “no guns” sign at an elementary school — but she can’t read it. She struggles to do so, but it’s no use. She can’t decipher “carrying,” can’t figure out “firearms.”

Ten years old and she was already well on the way to illiteracy and the life of don’t-have and can’t-get that usually comes with it. You realize, here is a child who was failed by her school, failed by her community, failed by her family. Then, three years ago this week, the storm came and she was failed by everything else.

“Katrina’s Children” is not coming soon to a theater near you. It can, however, be purchased online (www.katrinaschildren.com). A portion of the proceeds will go to help children’s programs in New Orleans.

See it if you can. It will claw at your heart.

Read more Katrina’s Children

From The Pgh Post Gazette
By Cain Burdeau

Signs are emerging that history is repeating itself in the Big Easy, still healing from Katrina: People have forgotten a lesson from four decades ago and believe once again that the federal government is constructing a levee system they can prosper behind.

In a yearlong review of levee work here, The Associated Press has tracked a pattern of public misperception, political jockeying and legal fighting, along with economic and engineering miscalculations since Katrina, that threaten to make New Orleans the scene of another devastating flood.

Dozens of interviews with engineers, historians, policymakers and flood zone residents confirmed many have not learned from public policy mistakes made after Hurricane Betsy in 1965, which set the stage for Katrina; many mistakes are being repeated.

“People forget, but they cannot afford to forget,” said Windell Curole, a Louisiana hurricane and levee expert. “If you believe you can’t flood, that’s when you increase the risk of flooding. In New Orleans, I don’t think they talk about the risk.”

Tyrone Marshall, a 48-year-old bread vendor, is one person who doesn’t believe he’s going to flood again.

“They’ve heightened the levees. They’re raised up. It makes me feel safe,” he said as he toiled outside his home in hard-hit Gentilly, a formerly flooded property refashioned into a California-style bungalow.

Read more Levee Blunders

From The Regressive Antidote
By David Micheal Green

The thing about Katrina was that you could see the results right away, so that even famously ignorant and deluded Americans finally began the process of understanding their president.

The thing about Iraq is that it’s taken a bit longer.

True, some of it began to be painfully obvious, even relatively early on. For example, when an absurdly arrogant president, whose preening was matched only by his gross incompetence, stood on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln to declare victory in a war which essentially hadn’t even begun yet. It wasn’t long before people began to notice that the mission wasn’t exactly, er, accomplished.

But even today, five years later, we are only beginning to take stock of the consequences of neocon hubris. For anyone paying sufficient attention to make the connections, we got a whopping dose of that reality this week as Maximum Leader Putin did his Vlad the Impaler trick on the tiny neighboring republic of Georgia.

Surely this will be seen by almost everyone as a wholly separate affair from the Iraq invasion. And, indeed, idiotic neocon commentators – the same people, mind you, who brought us the Iraq debacle – are already haplessly foaming at the mouth about Russian aggression in the Caucuses, demonstrating as always, but now more emphatically than ever, how irony and hypocrisy coexist so comfortably in the (puffed out) regressive chest.

In fact, Iraq and the Georgia war are joined at the hip in too many ways to recount, and must be understood as just such. Altogether, we are now beginning to see the consequences of the Bush Doctrine of foreign policy in all its full glory. And if you liked Katrina, you’re really gonna dig this.

Read more Reality