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Government Floods City, Then Poisons Survivors
That would be the tabloid, but not entirely inaccurate, version of the New Orleans story to date.
The first half--the city being flooded by the poor design and construction of the Corps of Engineers' "flood control system", should be well-known to Americans by now, if we lived in an alternative universe. In that same universe, the unfolding scandal of the FEMA trailers would be front-page news (Instead, the Tribune Compay's new "innovation guru" is busy making front pages the place where you go to find maps).
In this universe, there's almost no coverage outside the affected area of the growing state of the scandal: the CDC announcing a five-year health study of the effects of FEMA-trailer formaldehyde on children, and its toxic-substance director in effect apologizing for the agency's lateness in realizing the scope of the problem; and the fact that CDC's own top toxicologist warned of the danger of trailer fumes, and his warnings were ignored.
The plain fact is that citizens of the United States who relied on federal assurances of safety and flood protection were misled (to put it mildly), then relied on federally provided "temporary" housing (for more than two years), only to find the interior air of those housing units seriously compromised, to the detriment of their and their children's health. If this ain't a scandal of breathtaking proportions, what is? Britney's knickers catching fire?
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Does anyone know if the Federal gov came through for all the tornado victims, etc, that bush the chimp was hugging and promising? or was it the same as for us in NO?
so far as i know, the "outgassing" for the tralers fema bought in such a hurry after the katrina and levee disasters takes two years.
of course if the levees had held, there would have been less need of trailers as new orleanians would have been able to stay in their homes.
i makes one wonder how many trailers fema has bought in anticipation of the next disaster where their need will be great.
We should have learned by now that no lie is too great, no injustice too despicable, if the cause of private profit is served. It's been the mantra of Republican politicians since the Reagan Revolution. Get used to it.
Keep up the good work Harry- we need your voice of truth and outrage about the destruction of one of Americas top most beautiful ( in all ways) historically and culturally rich cities.The fact is the crisises and outrages under this administration are mounting up so fast and furiously America is overwhelmed.That the children of new Orleans are now part of a research experiement after being poisoned is scarily reminiscent of Tuskogee.
You (we ) need a bullhorn to break through the white noise...but unless the media publishes it , it won't get heard. Whats the solution?Maybe the city could hire Britney to walk through the streets of destruction or trailer parks.Or she could do it and use as a tax write off.
I just don't know, man.Its a heartbreaker.
OttoMann wrote: "Because if the media organizations, with their time and money, can't (won't?) do it, how can us ordinary shmucks take this on?...I think Harry has the right approach: keep hounding the media outlets to do their real jobs...."
Even the best educated and relatively well-informed and engaged citizens , to do their jobs, and pay taxes, MUST daily take for granted intrinsic government assurances of basic personal and community safety. Otherwise, they'd go neurotic.
A friend living in the vast Mississippi River "delta" lands recently remarked that he was considering building an underground tornado shelter/panic room, should civil order in his area ever break down after a terrorist attack. He had somehow totally forgotten that a Mississippi River levee breach would be a much more likely rare catastrophic event for his area, that his own house had taken on water in the '27 Flood, and that if MS River levees fail, holes in the ground fill with water.
My friend didn't think about the Flood of 27, because the federal government, via the Corps, thinks of it for him, 24-7. That way, citizens like him can go about their business raising families, buying consumer goods, and paying taxes instead of fretting over whether they have enough guns, ammo, and bottled water.
If leaders at the top, controlling the Corps, admittedly "don't do nuance", and "journalists" are busy covering Britney's flaming panties, then who's holding down the fort for hard-working Americans?
So how come HuffPo never felt a need to lament the toxic problems with trailers prior to the Katrena survivors receiving them? There are many sales of these homes to people all over the country. Why hasn't the CDC made a statement on this previously? Just asking.
It is my understanding that, due to the rush to get them out (months to years) they were not properly cured (or ventilated). When people started getting sick, they were told they were crazy. Then they were told everything woud be OK if they just opened their doors and windows several hours a day. It took citizen action, like EVERYTHING associated with Katrina, for the government to even acknowedge there was a serious problem.
Keep posting these articles, Harry....I realize some poeple are "tired" of hearing the "same" story over and over...but that's the only way to drive it into the brains of Americans...repetition....
It's really clear that the Bush facists wanted to demonstrate how bad government is, and they got the chance to do it their favorite way...on the backs of the working poor.
As far as I'm concerned there should only be two lead stories on the major news outlets:
1) the war in Iraq and why we will never leave;
2) New Orleans and the total complicity of the Dem-publicans (over 30+ years) in it's ruin....
Something I'm interested in, related to NOLA....what exactly did KBR/Haliburton DO when they deployed...and was it legal?
Know anything about that?
HARRY RESPONDS: The city was rife with rumors about private security services (Blackwater, Israeli Mossad--(!)) protecting certain unflooded residences during the flooding. KBR doesn't do private security, they do all sorts of other services, and the city certainly wasn't receiving any of those....
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Your work on this issue is award winning work.
My Mom runs the Council of Aging for Seniors down here. She met with Jindal when he came to town because he cut their funding. She asked him how much was his parents welfare worth and would you cut their funding. He shrugged it off and offered her job. Mom turned him down.
The moral of the story is you get what you vote for.
Mom voted Dem because she knows the gop hate welfare unless it is corporate welfare for Wall Street or the military industrial complex.
When reverend Wright shouts against the government's actions, he's a racist and unpatriotic. Heh!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1SD5Gv4UGw&eurl=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/03/lieberman-slams-obama-on_n_94835.html
How about this for a tabloid but accurate headline:
Government Floods City, Poisons Survivors, Then Invites Final Deluge
What is it going to take for people to wake up? I shudder to think...
Two things are true:
1- It was the ACOE's fault for building sub standard laves. their own specs for New Orleans levees are the same as for pasture land, BUT
2- The ACOE had rebuilding & restoration plans in the works, and partially operating. Work was in progress in the area where the levees failed. Every one knew the levees needed work & inspection. So what happened? Bush cut the money for the program to less than one fifth, stopping work in progress. Not once did he cut the money- he did it three times, until there was no money left to proceed with the work, and it was halted.
Conclusion:
1- You can't do work without paying people. Sure the ACOE did substandard work, but they can't fix anything without money to pay their contractors, inspectors, own people.
2- Bush intentionally stopped work on the levees. He was warned over and over again. He knew. He used the tried & true government method of stopping programs by cutting off the money, plain & simple.
Bush is responsible for the flooding of New Orleans. Bush broke it. Bush should fix it.
HARRY NOTES: You keep repeating the latter point, but you never cite any sources for the claims therein. The Corps not only didn't ackowledge weaknesses in the levee system pre-K, it denied there were any post-K until confronted with the evidence by independent investigators (whom the Corps tried to discredit).
they also purposefully withheld helping the survivors for days: the purpose- they were waiting for black on white violence which they could use on talk radio and fox for several elections. where were the false rumors of black on white violence coming from? does anyone really believe we couldn't get water in to those people? and of course the appeal of redoing NO for their friends and oil companies.
I read a whole back that Van Herrlin (sp?) the man in charge of Hurricane research at LSU- said that FEMA, the ACOE, and the Whitehouse all knew on Monday that the levees and the canals had cracks and were going to break- but they kept it from the State of Louisiana-- I was still in the FQ at this time-- left 2 days later. The point is that they wanted the blame to be on Katrina-- not the fed gov for failure of federal infrastructure- and because of that, Louisiana stopped evacuating people. Therefore, the federal government is directly responsible for drowning deaths. Harry- what do you know about this- and if it is true why aren't we screeming it from on high?
Jack Ox
HARRY RESPONDS: Dr. Ivor van Heerden, of the LSU Hurricane Center, among others, maintains that there is documentary evidence of the ACOE (by 11 Monday a.m;.), later FEMA, and late Monday the WH, knowing of the breaches. It has never been contradicted by official sources, partly because no journalist has ever asked official sources about it. We should be screaming from on high, you bet.
Harry, Jackox
Despite no a/c, no electricity, and no working phone or internet, I heard about it as it happened that Monday on live radio, using a cheap battery-powered device most people would have tossed years ago. My neighbor in the marine supply business also managed to hear about it on his ship to shore utility band radio, as authorities frantically considered using a "crane barge" to attempt to plug one of the breaches. Apparently, if one can believe certain accounts, even our auto mechanic knew about it before our President and his top appointees did.
Guess a steak dinner over at Ruth's Chris is just not to be disturbed, ever, for any reason.
This report prepared for Rep. Charles Melancon of Louisiana includes e-mails (on page 5) related to levee breaks.
http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2005/images/11/03/brown.emails.analysis.pdf
As early as 9:39 a.m., FEMA knew that the MRGO levee (Arabi) had failed, by 9:53 a.m., that the Industrial Canal levee (Lower Ninth Ward) had failed, and by 11:57 a.m., FEMA knew that the 17th Street Canal (Lakeview) had failed.
There are other e-mails here from Marty Bahamonde of FEMA (to various FEMA, DHS and other agencies), reporting deteriorating conditions in a running narrative:
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/20051022_FEMA2.pdf
It's pretty hard to establish when they first informed City or State officials. I don't think Federal withholding of this information had an effect on the timeline of NO or La evacuation efforts. AFAIK, La W&F began evacuation as soon as conditions abated enough for them to do so.
The real Federal responsibility for drowning deaths really begins with the Corps' levees, as has been stated here many, many times. The levees failed under stress far below their design load. Had they held, as they should have, there would have been minimal flooding and probably no drowning.
,as appaling as this extrapolation of "Way to go Brownie" willful incompetence from Bushco, is , lets not also fail to include the $600,000,000 of federal rebuilding funds that the ever-oleaginous republican Guv-nah of Mississippi, Haley Barbour recently re-directed recently away from home reconstrructions in order the make the Gulfport resort area the glittering "New Vegas" of the Deep South....to paraphrase the King himself.."Viva, Viva Cronyism!"....
I never thought that Reagan was right about anything, but remember his quote "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." "
Maybe it was some weird self-fulfilling prophecy. Now in 2008, is it too much to ask that our government be not toxic.
this isn't an american govt- it was stolen by the same people who gave us the original october surprise to get carter and his solar collectors out.
HuffPost's Pick
Exactly. There is a balance. Small government by the people, with power in the states, is what any functioning society needs. But government run amok, at the behest of big business and cronysim, is a threat. That is the fear Reagan tapped into, and yet has helped usher in. The reliance on privatization, which has stockholders as it's constituents, not the good of the public, is what we have now. The government is just its beard. And that is the government that Bush - with no sense of history or propriety, has juiced up in monstrous fashion.
What I wouldn't give for a government of the people for the people.
We in this area have known about the formaldehyde for about a year. We're also not at all surprised.
Louisiana - Third World and Proud of It.
Don't worry MetryJen,
If you compare the financial policies of the US and the third world, we have had the government of a third world country in every year of every repub administration of the last 3 decades. I refer to deficit spending, negative balance of trade, and govt spending to benefit the rich and ignore the poor. Doubt any Dem can fix the damage in less than 30 years, so expect the other 49 states to join you in the 3rd world soon.
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