Author: Greg Saunders

Operation “blame NOLA on environmentalists” is starting to bear some fruit. That is, if you believe the right-wing blogosphere, who’s all too eager to hype this bit from a recent NY Times article on the levy breaks :

A surge from Lake Pontchartrain was the catastrophic situation that the corps had been guarding against since Hurricane Betsy 40 years ago. Initially, the corps wanted to build a giant barrier to keep water from the Gulf of Mexico from reaching Lake Pontchartrain and flooding the canals.

That project was delayed by lawsuits from environmental groups that contended the corps had failed to study ecological effects. By the late 1970’s, the corps abandoned that approach and began raising levees along the lake and the Mississippi and adding flood walls on the canals.

Is the Times burying the lede here? Well, only if you ignore this…

As a result of federal budget constraints, the walls were never tested for their ability to withstand the cascades of lake water that rushed up to, or over, their tops as storm waves pulsed through the canals on Aug. 29, corps and local officials say.

Hurricane Katrina was the first serious test of the flood walls, said Stevan Spencer, chief engineer for the Orleans Levee District, and it “just overwhelmed the system.”

…this…

Other questions surround the walls’ design, known as an “I-wall” for its slim cross section that fits easily into densely developed areas.

The corps manual for flood control construction suggests a different design for walls higher than seven feet – walls shaped like an inverted T, with the horizontal section buried in the dirt for extra stability.

But that option was never considered, corps engineers said, because “T walls” were more expensive, required a broad base of dense soil for support and were not necessarily stronger.

…and this from the same article.

The corps and local levee authorities also never tested whether the chosen I-wall design could survive if water flowed over the top and cascaded onto dirt embankments below.

Corps officials said they were proscribed from considering stronger wall designs for the canals both by the tight quarters and by federal law, which requires that they seek and study only the level of flood control authorized by Congress.

“Our hands are tied as to looking at higher-level events,” Mr. Naomi said.

All of which point to the same conclusion : The feds were unwilling to shell out enough money. I think we can all agree that testing the strength of the existing levees, making sure the levees are build to spec, and researching alternative solutions are all essential parts of a proper construction effort, but these steps are all expensive. When the flow of cash dries up the way it has since Bush took office, people start cutting corners, skipping crucial steps, and having to decide whether to do a half-assed job on the entire project or a thorough job on a project whose goals have been seriously scaled back. We won’t know the truth behind those questions until this tragedy is fully investigated, but we already know the result of those decisions :

This man isn’t dead because of thirty-year-old lawsuits. He’s dead because the federal government had “more important” things to be spending money on, like cutting taxes for wealthy people, no-bid contracts to political donors, and corporate giveaways. Only a fool would pretend otherwise.

The last time God attacked those sinners on the Gulf coast, he made the storm look like a giant fetus^[1] :

Now that Rita has been upgraded to category 5, it looks like God’s making the hurricane look like a giant boobie :



For those of you keeping score, if Katrina was divine punishment for abortion then Rita is probably divine punishment for pornography^[2]. Funny how God, in spite of all the fair-weather friend treatment he’s been receiving lately, makes an effort to shape natural disasters around the pet peeves of the religious right. So if the next category 5 hurricane is shaped like a long mushroom, I think we can all infer Jesus’s thoughts on “protecting marriage”.

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^{1 : Personally, I don’t see it, but I never saw the word “SEX” on Ritz crackers or understood John Lennon’s obsession with the phrase “turn me on, dead man” either.}

2 : To be fair, it could be also punishment for the equal rights amendment, universal suffrage, hippy chicks who don’t shave their legs, Billie Jean King beating Bobby Riggs, birth control, or women who wear pants.

Sure, the President is a dumbass, but at least he surrounds himself with smart people.

Grover Norquist, a leading advocate of substantially reducing the federal government, argued that the disaster only underlined the need for more tax cuts to spur the economy. “Step one is you deal with the problem – rebuild New Orleans,” he said, “and step two, you enact economic policies so you can afford to rebuild New Orleans.”

You can apply the GOP two-step approach to your personal finances as well. Step one is to spend a ton of money on everything you’ve ever wanted. Step two is to get a ton of money so you can afford all the things you’ve already bought. It’s easy and there’s no way it could possibly backfire.

I’m back from my extended vacation from blogging. Having avoided the blogosphere entirely during my honeymoon, I have thankfully only caught bits and pieces of the last two weeks worth of news. Playing catch-up on the plane, I read the incredible cover story in the newest issue of Newsweek. It’s a sobering look at povery in America, yet it ends with this unintentionally hilarious proposal :

Beyond the thousands of individual efforts necessary to save New Orleans and ease poverty lie some big political choices. Until Katrina intervened, the top priority for the GOP when Congress reconvened was permanent repeal of the estate tax, which applies to far less than 1 percent of taxpayers. (IRS figures show that only 1,607 wealthy people in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi even pay the tax, out of more than 4 million taxpayers — one twenty-fifth of 1 percent.) Repeal would cost the government $24 billion a year. Meanwhile, House GOP leaders are set to slash food stamps by billions in order to protect subsidies to wealthy farmers. But Katrina could change the climate. The aftermath was not a good omen for the Grover Norquists of the world, who want to slash taxes more and shrink government to the size where it can be “strangled in the bathtub.”

What kind of president does George W. Bush want to be? He can limit his legacy to Iraq, the war on terror and tax cuts for the rich — or, if he seizes the moment, he could undertake a midcourse correction that might materially change the lives of millions. Katrina gives Bush an only-Nixon-could-go-to-China opportunity, if he wants it.

George W. Bush caring about the poor? That’s like saying Hamas has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reach out to the Jewish community. It ain’t gonna happen, buddy.

George W. Bush isn’t going to do anything to stem the tide of poverty because he doesn’t understand poverty. He doesn’t know what it’s like to have to decide which bill to pay this month. He’s never had to memorize a bus schedule. He’s never had to live on ramen noodles and whatever food he can get for free at his shitty restaurant job. If he really knew what it was like to be poor, he’d understand that a few hundred bucks isn’t going to be enough to undo the damage of a dead-end job and crushing debt.

Tonight Bush gave a speech which many observers were saying would make or break his presidency. It was the standard laundry list of things he’d be throwing money at mixed with rhetoric that would sound impressive coming out of the mouth of someone who understood what it meant, but here’s how the President squandered his opportunity to actually do something to help the poor :

Within the Gulf region are some of the most beautiful and historic places in America. As all of us saw on television, there is also some deep, persistent poverty in this region as well.

That poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America. We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action.

So let us restore all that we have cherished from yesterday, and let us rise above the legacy of inequality.

When the streets are rebuilt, there should be many new businesses, including minority-owned businesses, along those streets.

When the houses are rebuilt, more families should own, not rent, those houses.
. . .
It is entrepreneurship that creates jobs and opportunity. It is entrepreneurship that helps break the cycle of poverty. And we will take the side of entrepreneurs as they lead the economic revival of the Gulf region.

Yeah, it’s just a bunch of recycled “ownership society” garbage from last year, polished up a bit so it doesn’t smell as much like shit.

I agree with the President’s stated goals, but let’s get real here. Poverty has gone up over the last four years, yet the President’s only plan to deal with a problem he’s been forced to address is to do the same thing he’s been trying to do all along? The problem here isn’t that there aren’t enough government incentives to help minority-owned small businesses, it’s that tens of thousands of people are living in makeshift homeless shelters. They don’t need chatter about home ownership, they need to know where the hell they’re going to get food, clean water, and a bed to sleep on. Telling a poor family with minimum wage earners that they should run their own business and own their own house sounds great on paper, but these patronizing ideas are about as constructive as telling someone with a broken leg that they should try to run a marathon.

I really hate to be the first person to “go there”, but I’m a firm believer in the notion that it’s during the tough times that you find out who your real friends are. Not to draw too fine a parallel or anything, but the President sure has a knack for skipping out on a crisis until other people have the situation under control. For example, there’s this largely forgotten bit of trivia from a couple days after 9/11:

Over now familiar refrains of “that’s unreal,” and “I can’t believe it,” and pregnant moans of “wow,” a spectacle of a different kind captured unblinking New Yorkers yesterday afternoon. Out of Manhattan’s Union Square came a welcome and commanding sight: former President Bill Clinton, surrounded by a growing mass of people.
. . .
Clinton, who was in Australia when New York and Washington, D.C., were attacked, said he had spent the previous 24 hours flying to New York on an Air Force plane.
. . .
Many said Clinton’s short appearance both magnified and made up for what they called President George W. Bush’s shortcomings during this crisis. The White House announced that the president would visit New York, for the first time, today.

“So far he has not been a comforting presence,” said Emily Vacchiano, 26, who lives in SoHo. “He has not conveyed compassion or strength. Just the sight of him [Clinton] cheered everyone up today.”

At the same time, the recently departed Peter Jennings was taking flack from the right-wing for justifiably asking “Where is the President of the United States?”. It’s not that anyone expected him to jump into the rubble and start pulling out bodies, but it would be nice for our leaders to actually…y’know, lead every once in a while.

With that situation, of course, you could make the argument that Bush was being held back by the Secret Service or that there was enough uncertainty to make the case that traveling to New York or Washington might put the President in danger. (Besides, why rush back when Giuliani is doing a better job for him?) But this is a different matter entirely. The full potential of the levee breaks in New Orleans has been known for almost 24 hours now (3-4 days if you count the warnings over the weekend), yet the President has still been mostly M.I.A. Curious about how he’s been spending his day??

Speaking to a crowd of sailors and Marines near San Diego, Bush described the Iraq war and World War II as crucial tests of American resolve in the face of evil. He also painted a grim picture of the consequences of failure, warning that Iraq could turn into an oil-rich haven for international terrorists.
. . .
The president’s visit to Naval Air Station North Island was part of a White House effort to shore up support for the war. Recent polls show widespread unease over the war. An Aug. 5-7 Gallup Poll, for example, found that 54 percent of Americans thought the war was a mistake. Still, most Americans said they opposed a quick withdrawal.

And this was all after the levees broke. Thousands of people are missing or dead in what’s being called one of the worst natural disasters in the nation’s history, but the President is still worried about his poll numbers? Here’s one small example of what’s happening while the President tries to convince people that he’s FDR :

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said hundreds, if not thousands, of people may still be stuck on roofs and in attics, and so rescue boats were bypassing the dead.

“We’re not even dealing with dead bodies,” Nagin said. “They’re just pushing them on the side.”

And I haven’t even mentioned the declaration of martial law, the increased threat the flood will take as the waters become more polluted by toxic chemicals, the looming disease outbreak that will happen due to standing water and the rotting corpses of humans and animals, rampant looting, and the refugee situation in the Superdome. The news coming out of Louisiana has been growing steadily worse since last night and the country could really use a leader right now. Delaying your return to work for something as unimportant as a stump speech isn’t gonna cut it. I wonder if Rudy is doing anything today?