Tag: New Orleans

The third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is coming up next month.

Today Dolly has been upgraded to a Category 2 hurricane.  And again there are worries about levees:

Coastal officials worried Tuesday that Tropical Storm Dolly may bring so much rain that flooding could break through the levees holding back the Rio Grande.

Some stories don’t ever seem to change.

For anybody who thought Louisiana would get a far better deal from BushCo under GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal than she did under Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco, they’d better think again. For Bush’s pattern of abuse against Louisiana seems to transcend her politics. According to the Baton Rouge Advocate,

Bobby Jindal,  angered over the increased costs that storm-wounded Louisiana must shoulder for construction of hurricane protection levees, asked Washington for more time – and a little fairness.

Under the latest war spending bill, Louisiana must kick in $1.8 billion by 2011 in order to activate $5.8 billion in federal funding needed to strengthen the New Orleans-area levee system.

Jindal said Louisiana’s share for repairs to the 360-mile, federally maintained levee system, is higher post-Katrina, than before the storm. “It seems ridiculous,” Jindal said, tersely.

Do what you can where you can when you can.

~♥~ Pony Party is an Open Thread. Please don’t wRECk the pony. ~♥~

going on regarding what politicians and other people have been saying about this current flooding and what they said after the federal flood about New Orleans and those it impacted. I was cynical enough and had had my suspicions as I noticed that something was missing.

To wit: Nobody, even though some of the currently-affected communities along the Mississippi which had also been affected in the flooding of 1993 have been flooded again, has been telling the folks in these communities that they should not rebuild……  

This diary is intended as something of a rant. Because this saddens me and makes my blood boil every time I think about it.

But before I vent, here’s a caveat: as I said in yesterday’s diary, 9/11 tore me apart. So this is by no means intended as a put-down of the trauma 9/11 survivors went through or a complaint about the well-deserved sympathy and support they’ve gotten.

Rather, what pisses me off is is the fact that survivors of 8/29–whether of Katrina, the federal flood, or of Rita–have not been receiving the equal aid, synpathy, or other treatment to that received by 9/11 survivors, that they deserve. What blueintheface brings up–the fact that Daily Kos hasn’t been paying enough attention to New Orleans and Katrina, is the tip of a very big iceberg involving the MSM and many politicians that has been keeping storm and flood survivors from getting the attention they have a right to receive.

“Mr. Cobb, how are you doing?” I asked James Cobb, a lawyer in New Orleans, Louisiana.

“It depends on what you mean,” Mr. Cobb answered. “If you mean how am I doing after losing my house and every fucking thing in it, and after being forced to live in a two-bedroom shithole with my wife and two kids and being told how lucky I am to get it, and after being fucked — and I mean absolutely fucked — by my insurance company and by the United States government (and by the way, just so you know, if anybody from New Orleans, Louisiana, tells you that they’re not getting fucked by their insurance company and by the United States government, they’re fucking lying, all right?) . . . if you mean, how am I doing after all that is factored in: Well, I guess the answer is that I’m doing fine. Now, how can I help you?”

Jim Cobb and I had never spoken before.

From the remarkable article, The Loved Ones, by Tom Junod, Esquire Magazine, September 2007.

I try not to be too cynical about government.  But I have to ask, at what point do all these cumulative failures become evidence of the inability of it to not fail?

Yesterday on a campaign stop replete with photo-ops in New Orleans, Sen. John McCain made an attempt to distance himself from the failings of the Bush Administration during Katrina and the federal flood by saying “Never again…” and spinning himself as someone who would have been more proactive than had Bush regarding this disaster.

But does McCain really represent a change from BushCo incompetence, if not outright genocide, in New Orleans? Would a McCain administration really aid New Orleans’ recovery? Is McCain a friend of New Orleans, or a foe?

This was my second NOLA/Gulf Blogathon post. Thank you for allowing me to post it here!

The US Attorney’s office in New Orleans has been one busy place, particularly since Katrina and the US Attorney purge scandal (coincidence?).

Although Congressman William Jefferson’s indictment came out of Virginia, other New Orleans politicians (including Jefferson’s brother) have been targets of corruption probes emanating from that office. Because of the nature of the political power structure in New Orleans, the vast majority of those indicted have been African American.

The Katrina diaspora has significantly altered the demographics (PDF) of the city. Post-Katrina elections in the city have reflected that shift.

In some ways, New Orleans today resembles the city in the late 50s and early 60s, before white flight to the suburbs kicked into high gear.

NPK is out of town, so instead of Friday Night at 8, welcome to a mini version of the NOLA/Gulf Coast Blogathon. I know NPK would approve!