This will be a lengthy post, because the events it describes have unfolded over the last six months. Hang with me, and I assure you that by the end you'll be angry -- either at me for telling you this story, or at the Obama administration.
Any regular reader of my stuff here knows I've been relentless in calling for first the Bush administration and lately the current group to get serious about addressing the problems of what nearly destroyed New Orleans -- namely, the twin challenges of (a) reversing the man-caused destruction of the coastal wetlands which reduce the severity of oncoming hurricanes and (b) rebuilding the tattered federally-built "hurricane protection system" which failed so disastrously four years ago this Saturday. After I started noticing the absence of any public words (let alone actions) on this subject from the new administration, several commenters here criticized me for, in essence, just running my mouth. "You're a celebrity," they mis-advised me, "go talk directly to the White House about it, like Brad Pitt." I thought I should start my Pitt emulation slowly at first, maybe by wooing Angelina Jolie, but after a couple of weeks, I took the challenge to play the inside game. I haven't written about it until now, because I wanted to see how it would play out before drawing conclusions.
Two facts motivated my decision: a friend in Chicago told me that David Axelrod was a fan of my radio show, and a friend in New Orleans was going to the White House to participate in the Stevie Wonder tribute. So I told the latter pal that, should he meet Axelrod, he might suggest we talk about New Orleans. Message delivered. Axelrod reportedly took my phone and email information. What followed was crickets and tumbleweeds.
I then told this story to a second friend in Los Angeles, a former Clinton administration ambassador. He said he was going to the White House later that week, and he'd deliver the message to Axelrod. More crickets, more tumbleweeds.
At this point, I was about to write an angry narrative of these non-events for HuffPo, but first, I had my assistant call Axelrod's office.
Bingo. Some days later, an aide with the real-sounding name of "David Washington" called me on the best-quality telephone connection I've ever heard. He asked me to explain my position, which was, in a nutshell, that the stimulus package had included zero money for coastal restoration or stronger hurricane protection, even while the Corps of Engineers announced it was adopting a "technically not superior" approach to part of the new system because of lack of money. I suggested that this situation was irksome to people for whom "technically not superior" did not live up to promises of rebuilding better. Mr. Washington listened, and said he'd have somebody who knew more about all this get back to me. Progress.
Except... that somebody turned out to be a legislative liaison person for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. I had called to complain about a robbery in progress, and they had connected me with the P.R. woman for the robbers.
We had some desultory conversations, she peddling the Corps' line -- this, remember, is the agency that built the system wrong the last time, and excoriated the critics who were first to point out that nettlesome fact -- and I asking pointed questions. Apparently tiring of the game, she turned me over to my next point of contact, Janet Woodka.
Name doesn't ring a bell? She's President Obama's appointee as the Gulf Coast Recovery Czar. Gulf Coast What? you ask. That's a post created during the Bush administration, filled then by a Fort Worth banker. Janet Woodka is a recognizable step up, a New Orleanian who formerly worked for Senator Mary Landrieu. Only two problems: her job, which entails coordinating the recovery efforts of federal agencies which have real budgets, has minimal resources, and minimal ability to knock heads together; and, the position is scheduled to expire at the end of September. Still, she seems smart, she seems to care, and she seems to believe. I express my concerns, I connect her to David Waggonner who is almost single-handedly spearheading an effort to infuse the hurricane protection rebuilding with the insights of Dutch experts, and we engage in an intermittently interesting telephone and email dialogue.
We finally meet in person at an Aspen Institute conference on New Orleans in early August. In speaking to the public, she manages to utter the sounds that casual listeners might mistake for reports of progress, but are really just bland reassurances: we're all very focused, robust inter-agency process, that sort of thing. She's good at it, and I feel slightly sorry for her.
But none of that is helping New Orleans.
Near the end of the conference, I relate this tale to an acquaintance wise -- or at least schooled -- in the ways of media and politics. I say I might try one more time to reach out to Axelrod himself. "Don't bother with Rahm Emanuel or Axelrod," he advised. Why? "Their only interest in all of this is destroying Bobby" -- a reference to the state's fast-talking Republican governor and possible 2012 Presidential candidate Bobby Jindal.
"You mean, the same way that the Bush crowd only cared about destroying Kathleen Blanco?" I asked. His smile was part-rueful, part-"It's never too late to get wise, bud".
On Sunday, six days before the fourth anniversary of the catastrophe that almost drowned New Orleans, President Obama gave an "exclusive" interview to the New Orleans Times-Picayune. If you want to hear it for yourself, go here. Along the way, he dropped a little message: Janet Woodka's office would be allowed to expire at the end of next month.
Experiment officially over. To be clear, I'm not upset I wasn't treated like a celebrity or given ego-satisfying access. Frankly, the inside game creeps me out, the flattery that you're "connected" can bring out the late Bob Novak in anyone. I'm just angry that New Orleans, which did not bring about its own disaster, is watching a second consecutive president trash his glib promises to "rebuild it better".
Obama supporters chided me, back in January and February, to "give him some time, he's only been in office for a month/two months/three months." I guess they knew what I didn't, that the presidency gets easier as you go along, that progressively fewer surprises get dumped on your desk as time passes. Obama's remarks about New Orleans during the campaign were anodyne boilerplate, and what he's giving us now is more of the same. He won't even do the obligatory photo-op in the city on 8/29; he told the Times-Picayune he'll come down "before the end of the year". He didn't say which year.
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You're right about one thing. New Orleans can't build those levees to proper specs without Washington. It's called the law, and the feds control the building of those levees.
So how do you want your federal dollars spent? Building levees that will surely fail in a major weather event, or at any moment just because they're poorly constructed?
Don't say you don't want those dollars spent at all. It's a major port. It will not be allowed to drown, and it would cost billions to move the city north or relocate it's people. Not gonna happen in the wildest dreams of the uninformed.
What say you and I chip in the price of a carton of coca cola, to protect and preserve Thomas Jefferson's historic reason for the Louisianna Purchase.
What say you and I chip in the price of a Louis Armstrong CD, as we tell ourselves WE really LOVE Jazz and DIG the Blues.
You can't really love Jazz, dig the blues or truly appreciate Rock 'n Roll if you're willing to let New Orleans become extinct.
Would you allow the tides of global warming to take The Statue of Liberty? Say they should have placed it further inland. Somewhere "safe."
This is what you're advocating if you're advocating drowning the birthplace of America's only culture.
http://gizmodo.com/5340238/worlds-biggest-water-pump-under-construction-in-new-orleans-wouldve-been-cooler-four-years-ago
World's largest water pump currently under construction. A good read and to me, completely conflicts with this article here.
http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/wwl082609cbcorps.11cf5ddfc.html
How much of a wiggle room depends on the public's patients. If people fool themselves into believing everything will work itself out on its own, it could be years to never before anything is done right. It will be up to the people of New Orleans to remind the Obama Administration that there is very little wiggle room where the levees and their public safety are concerned.
I wish they'd really take a look around at all of the things that are going wrong right now in America. The number and complexity of our problems astound me. I dare say we living through a period tantamount to a cold version of a new Civil War. Have they read any history? Do they know how hard Lincoln worked just to keep the alligators off his back?
Change is not and never has been easy especially in a country as large and divided as this one. IMO, we are in state of national emergency with no end in sight. I imagine that the President's to do list is gargantuan and loaded with contingencies that none of us can imagine. The past 30 years of Reaganomics and Clintonian neoliberalism and Georgie boy ineptitude have set the stage where we are at.
I don't understand why anyone would want his job but I believe he trying his best and my gut tells me that he probably one of the most decent men who have held that office in U.S history.
Armchair punditry is easy in comparison but criticism goes with the job and I'm sure Obama knows that too.
We also know Obama is part of what's wrong with America and he's not interested in change that a progressive would like. Just more of the Bush/Clinton type "change".
Obama was in truth never about change he's about preserving the status quo, as much as possible...!
New Orleans loses and so does America...!
Republicans succeeded at destroying government, at turning it into a machine of corrupt opportunism. They proved to Americans that government is evil. The betrayed the contract of citizenship for countless of its children. Children that it saw as subjects. And we let them, so many of us went for much of it for such a long time. So many still do...
Who would be Obama's Kanye?
Then toss in the folks that have moved in. They tend to be wealthier than those who moved out, but also have, with some exceptions, no feel or understanding for the city's heart and soul. As an example, much of Treme is all but gone and the "Musicians' District" is full of "foreigners" (non-Orleanians) who call the police on those "street people" who are making too much noise in the streets with their instruments. Those of you who know the real NO know that's where much of the city's rich musical heritage from jazz to Dixieland to bayou romps is nurtured.
The failure to immediately address the issues in NO left those people, low/middle class that were the heart and soul of the city, who could not afford to put their lives on hold waiting, to start new lives in different locales. NO will eventually be rebuilt and it will get funding and be addressed by the Obama admin, along with everything else that has to be fixed, but it won't be the same without the people.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_AJbjLfOMMSQ/RglHcc91s3I/AAAAAAAAAEE/SwJVgL7fjk8/s400/Katrina_17th_St_Canal.jpg
London Ave canal federal floodwall,post failure.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/09/21/national/21walls184.jpg
Same group repaired the breaks at the floodwalls, that built the same floodwalls. They said they'd work under much less arduous conditions than occurred August 29, 2005. It's like a warranty with no expiration date, you expect performance, if not, the builder is responsible, capiche?
Then when the flood comes, we're all treated to a few days of live news feeds showing all the people foolish enough to keep living there filling sand bags in vain, and watching the POTUS flying over in his state helicopter with the Governor of what ever state got flooded the worst and declare a national emergency.
Then the rest of the US population is asked to contribute money they don't have so the poor souls living in the flood plain, who also refused to buy flood insurance, can rebuild their homes and lives on the same flood plain that will inevitably flood again in a few years, or sooner.
I've got an idea . . . MOVE.
I'll bet you felt the same way about Bush's Iraq war.
Umm, yeah. I didn't want to contribute to that either.
So what's your point?
I'm sure that I as a resident of California and Michigan have paid for the levees that failed. Louisiana has not, as the record shows. Why should I be asked to throw good money after bad? FYI, sea levels are rising. NO is likely to continue to sink. My suggestion is MOVE now before the inevitable happens to you again . . .