If Congress could establish independent investigations for each of the two Shuttle catastrophes, why hasn't this been done for the levee failures?
For the Shuttles, an independent investigation cleared away the fog of denial and finger pointing. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board's final report refuted such official nonsense as NASA Administrator Sean O'Keffe's comparison of the errant foam chunk to "a Styrofoam cooler blowing off of a pickup truck ahead of you on a highway.'' At the Challenger hearings, Physicist Richard Feynman swept aside inconclusive, mealy -mouthed testimony with the simple act of dunking an O-ring segment in icewater and snapping it in half.
The Shuttle disasters claimed fourteen lives. The levee failures killed over one thousand people.
Would Americans have accepted the final analysis of the Shuttle losses from NASA internal reports or from a study paid for by the agency, and conducted by friends of the agency? That is exactly what the Corps of Engineers and the American Society of Civil Engineers hope will happen.
Congress knew better than to trust NASA to investigate its own failings. The Corps of Engineers is no different, and the precedent speaks clearly: impanel an independent commission (hopefully with at least one member to carry forward Richard Feynman's spirit) and keep this from ever happening again.
Buried Lede Department: Why No Presidential Candidate Says Anything of Substance About the Disaster in New Orleans
The president's head of Gulf Coast recovery, Donald Powell, has submitted his resignation, and, judging by the time that has passed without the naming of his successor, Gulf Coast recovery doesn't -- big surprise! -- seem to be a high priority for the administration.
Neither, according to Powell, does it seem to be one for those who would come next. Way at the bottom of a generally laudatory Times-Picayune writeup of Powell's farewell interview with the paper comes this, which should have been the lede of the story:
But none of the three U.S. senators still running for president showed much of an interest in working with him, he said. Powell recalled talking with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., a couple of times about recovery issues, but said he spoke with former President Clinton more often because of the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund. Powell said he didn't recall talking to the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, nor to Clinton's Democratic primary opponent, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, although his staff dealt with Obama when he accompanied Lieberman on a tour of New Orleans in early 2007.
Well, no wonder none of them has anything of substance to say about the disaster in New Orleans, no comment on the movement for an 8/29 Commission to examine all the causes and deficiencies in response to the flooding of the city, no comment on the affordable-housing crisis still gripping the city, no comment on the deficiency in mental-health personnel and facilities still facing the city, no comment in depth on the need for a comprehensive plan for coastal wetland restoration to protect the city. And before you Edwards fans write in, his most substantive recommendation on his website's New Orleans section was for more cops.
Maybe, someday, some enterprising reporter (do they still have those?) will ask each of the remaining candidates for the presidency why they didn't show much of an interest in working with the administration's point man for the recovery. Until then, we're free to draw our own conclusions.
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Even with this glaring example to join the host of other stellar examples of government competence: the Army Corps of Engineers, the DOD procurement offices, Immigration, the EPA just to name a few that have worked so many..."special" wonders of effective services provided for as many decades as there is history of this country...you guys want them to run the whole health care system. too?
Imagine every serious illness or need as your own personal Katrina.
Everyone going to get treatment...at the DMV.
Every 200 foot line to the nurse's station fronted by some uncaring, bored, union-protected, federal employee who will toss you for the slightest disrespect - working in clinics that can't be sued for incompetence if they kill your family member or cripple you for life - after all they are protected...they're the government!!
Thank you for rolling out this tiresome straw man (please google)...no one is talking about the government *providing health* care. We are talking about the government paying for it--"single payer"--get it--the name means what it says--I know this is different from things like "the clear skies act" from the Bush administration--it's hard to extrapolate how well a government can run if people care about it working, if you use as your model one run by people who hate government and want nothing better than to prove how useless it is.
Apologies for the run on sentence, I'm supposed to be working.
Thank you, Harry, for your legitimate criticism of this high-schoolish popularity contest being passed off to the American public as a serious presidential race. The three remaining candidates talk and talk and talk--about nothing. Who really knows what they stand for? I don't think they do. The ones who spoke about anything of substance are gone, except Nader, who no one will listen to. Whether you agree with Nader, or Paul, or Gravel, at least they could and would answer questions such as the ones you've posed. Don't hold your breath expecting answers from these three.
I'm sure you're not as cynical about politicians as I am, but your post exposes you as someone who expects intellectual integrity from our presidential candidates and the journalists who are supposed to inform the public about them. Don't hold your breath for that, either--because neither the candidates nor the journalists who cover them have any integrity. They're all part of the same club. I hold to the belief, passed down to me from my grandfather, that the great majority of politicians are nothing more than liars and egomaniacs. As far as I can tell, the three we have left to choose from (two empty suits and one empty pantsuit) fit Gramps's description perfectly. And the so-called "journalists" are their biggest fans.
newslamp sez: "They're all part of the same club."
Sadly, that sort of thinking brought us eight years of George W. Bush and an endless war.
No matter what you may think of Al Gore, sometimes the lesser of two evils really is preferable to the greater of the two.
By the way, just what *is* Ralph Nader's position on New Oreans reconstruction?
Just askin'.
Steve--
I don't pretend to be an expert on everything Ralph Nader says, but since I'm sitting at my computer, and you asked what his New Orleans reconstruction position is, I went to this neat thing called "Google" (it's an on-line thing; maybe you've heard of it), typed in "Ralph Nader New Orleans" and Bingo! I found the following article, written by Nader himself:
http://www.counterpunch.org/nader10182005.html
It's way too long and detailed to post here, so, Steve, if you have time, copy and paste it into your browser, and you'll be able to read it! It took me about fifteen seconds to find it. It's a bit dated. He wrote it shortly after Katrina happened. I'm sure that if one wanted to find more, one could, if one bothered to look.
As far as the "part of the same club" v. "lesser of two evils" thing, I'll take Nader over the creator of the internet and ghost author of "Love Story" any day.
Since you asked.
HARRY RESPONDS: Dated? It's from the 30s. Aside from conflating what happened in New Orleans with what happened on the Gulf Coast (the city wasn't "flattened", Ralph, honest), the whole piece is a well-intentioned call for the recovery to spotlight cooperatives instead of corporations. Nothing about the flood-control system, nothing about coastal restoration. Without strong planks on those two key issues, and aid for the return of affordable housing in the meantime, the national political class has nothing to offer the city.
Harry and Steve--
I appreciate your responses. I confess that I am not as knowledgeable about the continuing problems in New Orleans as perhaps I should be and am most certainly not as well-informed about them as either of you. You guys are probably right about Nader's "solutions" or lack thereof. But, and correct me if I'm wrong here, I thought our original discussion had to do with what the remaining candidates bring to the table and whether journalists are "holding their feet to the fire."
We can denigrate where Nader posted his article, but he wrote it. We can continue to go back and forth about whether he's a dinosaur. He may be. But who among the remaining candidates has offered more ideas on this issue?
newslamp: Since you replied.
Apparently someone's sarcasm detector is on the blink.
Oh, boy. Counterpunch. Now there's a source for you. Edited by Alex ("Glolal Warming is a scam and we're not running out of oil") Cockburn.
Nader's "program" is not a program at all -- it simply rehashes all of the starry eyed populist panaceas which he's been trotting out for decades. Hey, I'd love to live an a populist paradise, too, where we all were part of anarcho-syndicalist co-ops and took our week at being chairperson in strict rotation but I've got this real world with which to contend first.
And he says exactly zero about the massive engineering failure which brought New Orleans to this unpretty pass.
And, since you brought them up, Al Gore's "invention of the internet" is an invention of libertarian internet writer Declan McCullagh, who distorted Gore's response to an interview question beyond recognition -- Senator Gore *was* one of the few in Congress that recognized this thing called the Internet back in the late 1980s (when some of my colleagues *were* actually inventing it).
The "Love Story" story can be dispensed with similarly -- go forth and Google. Apparently you know how.
I once respected Nader -- I'm old enough to remember the first printing of _Unsafe at Any Speed_ -- but now? Methinks Ralph is running on empty.
Obama can't touch it for fear of looking too black and Hilary won't since the A.A. community has ditched her.....
not that they were going to anyway , too busy courting hedge fund managers.
But hey , I heard Trump is busy building stuff there.
Like so much other talked of "rebuilding", Trump's rebuilding is still only on paper.
The plight of New Orleans, joins that vast rat's nest of that which we dare not speak of.
Actually Harry, Obama speaks quite a bit about New Orleans. He spoke a lot about it when he was in Louisiana campaigning, and he constantly ties it into his themes of bring ethics, competence, preparedness, transparency, etc.
HARRY RESPONDS: Actually, I read the text of his speech at Tulane, his major pre-Louisiana primary appearance, and it was short, very short, on specifics.
B.O.talking about the abandonment of N.O.in Tulane or La. is just pandering,.Including it on his platform in national talks would mean Obama is serious. Even if he was short on specifics at this point in time, he could start working with someone from the area with ideas and make them prominent., He could communicate urgency and prioritization. But he hasn't , Why? Because he wants to pose as the "post racial" candidate!.
How could what happened in N.O be left out of his so- called national conversation on race?!
Both. Dem candidate need to address the mistakes Bush has made and this is a outrageous one. Voters need to be reminded over and over of that ....the dem candidates seem like they're running to the Repugs , not to Democrats.....
HARRY NOTES: This is the second comment in this thread to repeat a canard, so let me go duck-shooting: the flooding of New Orleans was not a racial event, despite what you saw on TV (it was logistically easier for the nets to get to downtown, where black people predominated, than to St. Bernard Parish, where the people on their roofs for four days were white. It would be a supremely post-racial stance to point this out.
The racial distribution and geography of New Orleans make it quite impossible to break any levee and affect one race at the expense of another.
In the case of the Corps' flood following Hurricane Katrina, the devastation crossed all racial, social and economic distinctions.
Of course it was not a racial event , but the decisions made it about were based on racism.
HARRY ASKS: Or incompetence?
Or sexism?
On January 19th, 2007, former FEMA director Michael D. Brown , speaking to a group of graduate students at the metropolitan College of N.Y.charged that partisan politics had played a role in the White House's decision to federalize emergency response to the disaster in Louisiana only rather than along the entire affected Gulf Coast region, which Brown said he had advocated. "Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking, 'We had to federalize Louisiana because she's a white, female Democratic governor, and we have a chance to rub her nose in it,'"
"'We can't do it to Haley [Mississippi governor Haley Barbour] because Haley's a white male Republican governor. And we can't do a thing to him. So we're just gonna federalize Louisiana.'"
HARRY ASKS: "Or incompetence?"
Or maybe a little of each?
HARRY RESPONDS: "Actually, I read the text of his speech at Tulane ... and it was short, very short, on specifics."
So?
I hate to break it to you but Mr Obama is a politician running for office and politicians running for office are always "short, very short, on specifics".
I can't pull the exact quote up right now (it's in my notes somewhere at work) but I believe that when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was criticized for being short on specifics for economic recovery in his 1932 Presidential campaign, he responded that a campaign is not the time to teach a course in economics.
I was just reading a science-oriented newsletter a few minutes ago that was critical of the candidates for not talking about science and science funding. I'm sure farmers feel the same way -- not enough specifics on farm policy. Fans of wind energy decry the paucity of specifics on wind farm subsidies.
Everyone's got their "thing" that they wish the candidates would talk about but let's face it, candidates *aren't* going to get into specifics.
A specific is something is something which the opposition can attack as too much, too little, a "flip-flop", etc., so they tend to speak in somewhat elliptically, and besides, dwelling on specifics, in general, will get them branded as "wonks".
That's too bad, of course, because it would be nice to see which direction our new President, whomever she or he turns out to be, will take us.
Mr. S, I understand your ire and I don't think much will happen until it becomes in the self interest of someone to do something which is why I think John Edwards is your guy. I respected Mr. Edwards views on many issues but could never really buy into his credentials as a populist. Honest to God though when he dropped out of the race I thought to myself, "If that guy wanted to make another run in 2012 the best thing he could do would be to go to NO, work with the local residents and produce some long term, fast track results for the area." As much as one would like to think that things happen because people are benevolent and generous, it takes a leader to put these things together and many times leaders are motivated by what's in it for them. So, John, here you go 2012 on a platter. Get to work.
http://strictlyanecdotal.com
Hurricane Katrina devastated cities from Alabama to Texas, and everyone wants to focus on what the Federal Government did wrong in New Orleans. The Federal Government sent millions of dollars to New Orleans over the years for levee maintenance and flood control. Those funds were misused by the local politicians in control. Nagin sat up in a high rise hotel while the people suffered down below. Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi, took the oposite approach. He hit the pavement and organized a very successful relief plan. The people in Texas and Alabama did the same thing. The problem in New Orleans was devastating, because the local politians let the state down. Louisiana's problem would have been much less devastating if the state politicians had done their job properly. With a little investigative work, you can see how Nagin diverted federal levee funds to other areas he was more interested in.
HARRY RESPONDS: So many non-facts and half-truths, where to begin? Nagin had nothing to do with levees, the local levee boards did. The local levee boards neither designed nor built the levees, and you cannot maintain a poorly designed and built structure into being a proper one. Cities from Alabama to Texas were hit by a hurricane, a one-day disaster. New Orleans was flooded by more than fifty breaches in its flood-control "system", resulting in a weeks-long flooding that affected not only 80% of the above-ground city, but also below-ground infrastructure, a unique problem. Read up.
No, YOU read up. Bush, for at least three years, cut the money to rebuild the levees to as much as one fifth. The lack of money stopped repair work on the levees that failed. THE ACOE pleaded for the money, and Bush was warned that the levees needed work. Bush was shown the plan and, typical, he ignores it. Sure, the ACOE is responsible, but "you can't do nothin' without money to do it with". And Bush used the tried & true Republican tactic of starving the beast. Bush lied to LA leaders- it isdocumented and he played politics (and guitar) while New Orleans was underwater. Bush refused to put emergency preparations in place before katrina hit and refused to put post emergency relief in action, unlike the way Nixon, his Dad and Clinton did.
You go read up.
HARRY RESPONDS: I have, the three independent investigations of the Katrina event (or at least the exec summaries). Nowhere is there evidence, pre-K, that the Corps acknowledged the design and engineering flaws that doomed the so-called system. Bush may have cut the budget the Corps requested, but they were't requesting money to deal with problems they had not yet even acknowledged, and those were the problems that caused the drowning of the city. Just one example: they were not proposing replacing I-walls with stronger T-walls pre-K.
I have read, and continue to read, very closely three major independent studies of the Corps' flood of August 29, 2005. I continue to be shocked and amazed at what I read; I have no doubt that the next page I turn will reveal yet more horrors. This is a partial list of all the blunders committed by the Corps:
They designed for the wrong storm.
They ignored their own design standards
They ignored their own test results.
They used the wrong elevation datum.
They failed to account for subsidence of the datum benchmarks and of the "system" (ahem) components.
They used soil with too much organic and aggregate content and not enough clay.
They built sheetpile walls that cut the levees in half and made them weaker.
The sheetpiles weren't designed to go deep enough.
They used a too-low factor of safety.
They incorporated no redundancy in the design.
They allowed navigation canals to destroy the shield wetlands.
There are no gates or locks on the navigation canals that funneled the surge directly to the heart of the protected area.
They didn't armor any levees, even though they expected wave action and overtopping.
They routinely told the public that the levees provided 200-to-300-year protection.
These blunders were mostly committed long before Mr. Bush began his service as president. Likewise, none were committed by any Mayor of New Orleans or any Governor of Louisiana or any of the local levee boards.
Absolute nonsense. Your entire post. Pure fiction from beginning to end. Not even worth responding to in detail. Propagndist lies. You go read up.
The federal government doesn't "send money" to the state for the levees. The money is controlled 100% by the US Army Corps of Engineers who are - by mandate - solely responsible for design and construction of the flood control system.
Also, Harry, don't forget that New Orleans is geographically an island surrounded by many miles of various water bodies. So, after Katrina, there was no water, no electricity, no a/c, no sewage, no traffic lights, no stores, no phones, no medical service, no internet, and almost no police & fire protection for a week or more post-K. , with some of these services not returning to some areas at all, in any form for a year or more. For weeks there was no real emergency communication between rescuers, or to the outside world. The MS Gulf Coast was very hard-hit, true, but not nearly so isolated for so long.
This was nothing short of an American Apocolypse.
Excellent point Harry. The press has failed to ask the key questions on the issues that actually affect people's lives. It makes me yearn for the likes of the young Dan Rather and Sam Donaldson, who asked real questions!
I'm afraid the NOLA will continue to be ignored, as they'll be no money left in the Treasury by the time Bush and his bandits leave office.
IS there any federal land adjacent to the recovered areas of New Orleans that can be used to rebuild the destroyed sectors. If so, then the home insurance monies from the homes in these areas along with federal money can be pooled together to build New NewOrleans. The lower lands can become new federal lands and allow nature to take them over.
Except, contrary to your belief, only half of the city of New Orleans is below sea level and much of that area did not flood- the Garden district and the French Quarter- go read up. And while you are at it, go read about how the Dutch handle their sub sea level land. And how the Dutch offered to help Ne ORleans, but Bush stopped them.
azureblue
The Dutch had their famous submersible pumps loaded in transport planes and waiting on the tarmac within the first 24 hours of levee breaches, probably before Bush & Brownie managed to figure out which way to turn the Louisiana road map. Because these particular pumps and their specialized crews were not part of an existing private no-bid military contract procurement system, their arrival and deployment was delayed by weeks, well after the crucial first few hours when some of the levee breaches might have actually been pluggable to some degree. The Dutch did eventually arrive with their equipment and machines and amazingly efficient crews, and Louisianans who know all about it are forever grateful to their new/old friends across the Atlantic.
Wonder if they ever got paid for all the work they did (and are still doing?) down there?
Harry.
Is a fire station not essential public infrastructure?
If so, then why according to last night's "This Old House" PBS TV home improvement show, is the fire station that protects the French Quarter being rebuilt completely by volunteers, led by New York City fire fighters appreciative of all the help Louisiana sent to them after 9-11? (Besides manning a 24-7 gumbo pot at Ground Zero for months, ordinary citizens across Louisiana led by Republican former Governor Mike Foster, put together their nickels and pennies in the post-9-11 months, and sent several million dollars worth of custom-made fire fighting equipment and vehicles to New York, dubbed "The Spirit of Louisiana")
Maybe we do need an independent 8-29 Commission to hold some entities accountable and provide better motivation for the public sector to make it right, since they don't respond to fact, reason, and fairness, and they apparently can't be embarrassed. Maybe some of those same New York City fire fighters thankful for our post-9-11 help, AND their wintertime heat & lights, will help us out in making our case.
The reason is that it didn't happen on their watch..............but it will eventually end up on one of the candidates' watch.
Exactly. It's Dub's flub, but it will be whomever becomes president to have to really deal with the issues surrounding this. Not their fault -- but will be their responsibility. I consider it to be a major national issue, and I want to know what these presidential hopefuls plan to do a) to correct N.O.'s levee problems, and, b) to make FEMA an efficient agency for disasters everywhere. I believe that might start with getting rid of DHS -- just another layer of bureaucracy.
True and this is how Bush has always operated. He makes a mess, destroys lives & property, takes money, & walks away from it, expecting some one else to fix it. he think he was born on third base and hit a home run....
Liar. Every word.
True. They should have said long before the disaster than any idiot living below sea level in hurricane alley is on his own, rather than signing up to be liable for it.
HARRY RESPONDS: Before you call people idiots, two facts: more than half of populated New Orleans (the city also includes a wildlife refuge) is at or above sea level, and what flooded New Orleans was not a hurricane, it was the failure of federally designed and built levees to operate at anywhere near their specs.
and any idiot living in a flood plane, too close to the sea, in an earthquake area, tornado area, too dry, too cold, deserves what happens? Get real.
Posted March 27, 2008 | 08:10 PM (EST)