Fixing The Responder, Ignoring the Cause?
FEMA was the poster child for federal incompetence, according to the consensus media narrative of the New Orleans flooding disaster. But the true poster child was and is the US Army Corps of Engineers.
FEMA was the poster child for federal incompetence, according to the consensus media narrative of the New Orleans flooding disaster. But the true poster child was and is the US Army Corps of Engineers.
Bil Browning | Posted 09.17.2008 | Living
I wanted to be sure HuffPo readers saw my post on The Bilerico Project about the Great Bilerico Soap Drive! One of our readers is a lesbian deployed t...
Harry Shearer | Posted 09.05.2008 | Politics
A couple of very prominent Senators currently running for president might want to consider something when they arrive in Oxford, Mississippi in three weeks for their first debate.
Chris Rodda | Posted 09.01.2008 | Politics
For those who don't know who Lt. Gen. Robert L. Van Antwerp is, he's the Commanding General of the Army Corps of Engineers -- the guy who's been in ch...
Harry Shearer | Posted 08.30.2008 | Politics
Is money the reason New Orleans has to wait three more years before even the semblance of protection is in place? What's the city supposed to do in the meantime?
Harry Shearer | Posted 08.20.2008 | Politics
The president's speechwriters found it advisable to ignore three independent forensic engineering studies and the Corps of Engineers' own 6000-page report.
Harry Shearer | Posted 08.02.2008 | Home
With the continued reports of water leaking and puddling in backyards on the supposedly protected side of the 17th St. Canal -- reports the Corps is still scrambling (my word) to explain -- New Orleans is once again forced to ask: is this the best America can do?
Harry Shearer | Posted 07.02.2008 | Entertainment
Pardon the George Bush 41-inspired wordplay, but what can one think of the NBA's attempt to get a P.R. handle on the refereeing scandal in the league?
Georgianne Nienaber | Posted 06.29.2008 | Green
Corps engineers in New Orleans maintain that the seepage is not cause for alarm.
Karen Dalton-Beninato | Posted 06.18.2008 | Living
As the rivers converge and and the crest moves south, national efforts to shore up our levees ought to look like someone is building the pyramids. The...
Harry Shearer | Posted 06.16.2008 | Politics
Two new reports, two more confirmations that New Orleanians are not yet out of the federal woods.
Georgianne Nienaber | Posted 06.11.2008 | Politics
It is easy to blame nature, but what or who is behind a water management policy in the United States that allowed the city of New Orleans to be ruined?
Harry Shearer | Posted 05.06.2008 | Politics
New Orleans made the good kind of news this past week -- what didn't make national news, though, was a new court decision.
Harry Shearer | Posted 04.17.2008 | Politics
Yesterday, the Times-Picayune carried a very restrained story about a potentially inflammatory subject: the Corps of Engineers has discovered a persistent leak in the 17th St. Canal floodwall.
Georgianne Nienaber | Posted 04.16.2008 | Living
Water stalks southern Louisiana like a panther seeking its prey. Hurricane Katrina was the kill, but the water never relents -- always moving, sometimes retreating, forever flowing.
Harry Shearer | Posted 02.14.2008 | Politics
Lost in all of the major-league screw-ups is one crucial fact: the Corps of Engineers did not have large sandbags pre-stationed as the hurricane approached.
Harry Shearer | Posted 12.21.2007 | Politics
Either Col. Jeffrey Bedey is living in a Corps-imposed bubble, where the insiders are rigorously shielded from outside comments and critiques, or he's being disingenuous.
John McQuaid | Posted 11.19.2007 | Politics
The Corps can tout progress building floodgates and moving earth, but if it can't figure out what the flood risks are for people, what's the point?
Harry Shearer | Posted 11.17.2007 | Politics
The new gates and levee repairs by the US Army Corps of Engineers are, it now appears, giving almost no additional protection.
Harry Shearer | Posted 10.27.2007 | Media
Unless one of the SoCal arsonists is proved to be a federal employee, the government's involvement in the causation of Louisiana's woes is the primary distinction between the Katrina and the SoCal wildfires.
Irwin Redlener, M.D. | Posted 10.04.2007 | Politics
Every day of delay in returning New Orleans families to a semblance of normal home threatens mental health and well-being of thousands of children.
Harry Shearer | Posted 09.10.2007 | Politics
Somehow the Dutch have found it useful to look back in order to plan two centuries into the future. Is there any institution in this country that can even conceive of planning in that kind of time frame?
Tina Fey graces the cover of the January issue of Vanity Fair, and in an...
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Pardon the metaphor, but Obama is trying to put lipstick on the pig that is US...
Reuters has a Q&A with John Travolta to promote his animated film "Bolt." At the end, they ask him...
President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden met in Philadelphia...
After a 12-day hiatus, Sarah Palin stepped back into the spotlight on Monday to...
NEW YORK — Rush Limbaugh has seldom been a fan of...
Now that Americans have footed the bill for more than a...
CHICAGO — Almost one in five young American adults has a personality disorder that interferes...
Dear President-elect and Mrs. Obama: I know that the greening of the White House...
Harry Shearer | Posted 11.25.2008 | Politics