Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? (E&P)

[swag]

Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313

Excerpt:

There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research was needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. As the Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:

“That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount. But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said.”

The Senate was seeking to restore some of the SELA funding cuts for 2006. But now it's too late.

One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer: a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday.

The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night observed, "The Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's coast, only to be opposed by the White House....In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana's chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local officials say they need."

Local officials are now saying, the article reported, that had Washington heeded their warnings about the dire need for hurricane protection, including building up levees and repairing barrier islands, "the damage might not have been nearly as bad as it turned out to be."

[Liberty Belle]

1. Nominating! Kick -- This was Bush's fault.

[swag]

6. The devastation of the original storm was awful, and could not be said

to be Bush's fault, but the neglect by his administration of domestic infrastructure in favor of disastrous foreign adventuring certainly made the worst case scenario happen when it didn't have to.

[indepat]

9. Could be argued this mindset is symptomatic of the entire neocon agenda

[Bluerthanblue]

14. InDEED this devastation WAS predicted- all the way back in the '80's

This article is one I linked to another thread- And we KNEW that a category 4-5 Storm would kill THOUSANDS of people-

http://www.pubs.asce.org/ceonline/ceonline03/0603feat.html

What totally pisses the hell out of me, is the stupid- flat out ignorant reality that 'terror' is something we will NEVER stop- And all this waste of lives, energy, manpower and effort to destroy Iraq is that much less we have to combat the 'trouble' that will ALWAYS be a part of living in this world-

What we see now in the Gulf, is that devastation on a scale unlike anything this country has ever known but many other 'third world' countries have lived through often- Once again we are tasting the REAL LIFE that we have been sheltered from for so long.

The song
"Don't go looking for trouble,
trouble will find you,
trouble will find you,
deaf, dumb and blind you,
Don't go lookin for trouble,
let me remind you- there's trouble in your own back yard.."
(the late Steve Goodman)

Sung in that 'bluesy style, with alot of guitar".... GOD damn this administration- for what it has done.... and failed to do....
for how they've helped to destroy what we might have been.

[Erika]

2. The word is getting out.

New Orleans was not Bush friendly and the funds were deeply cut.

[wli]

3. nope... spread the word, this was LIHOP genocide. n/t

[thethinker]

4. It did not have to happen

America is not spending any money on it's infrastructure. Our tax dollars are being used for wars instead.

Other countries have historic cities that are below sea level. They maintain them.

New Orleans can never be replaced. There is not another city like it in the United States. The culture and architecture are unique.

We have got to change our priorities!

[swag]

5. Oh, priorities. Forgot about those.

[rodeodance]

7. kick and pass around to all you know (and do not know)

[swag]

8. Also a good discussion going on over here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4523034

[teryang]

10. Casualty of the Iraq War; How NO was lost: Paul Craig Roberts

How New Orleans was Lost
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

http://www.counterpunch.org

<Distracted by its phony war on terrorism, the US government had made no preparations in the event Hurricane Katarina brought catastrophe to New Orleans. No contingency plan existed. Only now after the disaster are FEMA and the Corp of Engineers trying to assemble the material and equipment to save New Orleans from the fate of Atlantis.

Even worse, articles in the New Orleans Times-Picayune and public statements by emergency management chiefs in New Orleans make it clear that the Bush administration slashed the funding for the Corp of Engineers' projects to strengthen and raise the New Orleans levees and diverted the money to the Iraq war.

Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune (June 8, 2004): "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Why can't the US government focus on America's needs and leave other countries alone? Why are American troops in Iraq instead of protecting our own borders from a mass invasion by illegal immigrants? Why are American helicopters blowing up Iraqi homes instead of saving American homes in New Orleans?
<snip>

[teryang]

11. Why is the National Guard in Iraq? (Counterpunch)

New Orleans after Katrina:Cockburn & St. Clair

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn08312005.html

<As the war's unpopularity soars, there will be millions asking, Why is the National Guard in Iraq, instead of helping the afflicted along the Gulf in the first crucial hours, before New Orleans, Biloxi, and Mobile turn into toxic toilet bowls with thousands marooned on the tops of houses.

As thousands of trapped residents face the real prospect of perishing for lack of a way out of the flooding city, Bush's first response was to open the spigots of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at the request of oil companies and to order the EPA to eliminate Clean Air standards at power plants and oil referiners across the nation, supposedly to increase fuel supplies--a goal long sought by his cronies at the big oil companies.

It didn't have to be this bad. The entire city of New Orleans needed have been lost. Hundreds of people need not have perished. Yet, it now seems clear that the Bush administration sacrificed New Orleans to pursue its mad war on Iraq.<snip>

<This year the Bush administration slashed funding for the New Orleans Corps of Engineers by $71.2 million, a stunning 44.2 percent reduction from its 2001 levels. A Corps report noted at the time that
"major hurricane and flood protection projects will not be awarded to
local engineering firms. . . . Also, a study to determine ways to
protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for
now."<snip>

[KamaAina]

12. Nominated. Now suppose Crawford were facing a natural disaster

instead of the man-made one it has endured this entire month. Do you suppose for one minute that Bush** would have spent whatever it took to preserve all that brush, and of course the horses he loves to milk so much?

I'm starting to get mad. :grr: In the words of the Incredible Hulk, "You won't like me when I'm mad..." :grr: :banghead: :nuke:

Edit: speling in header

[mom cat]

13. The 17th St. Canal Project...Bush may you burn in Hell!

One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer: a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday.

[Karenina]

15. No surprise.

:grr:

[Igel]

16. So, what the article's saying is that

a study that was to conclude in 2-3 years would have been handy to have funded for next year. The study would have produced useful conclusions in 2008 or so, and then people would have proposed projects and funding for them. Then they could have made the repairs and use 29th century technology to transport the completed projects back to last week.

And the article also say that money was made for finishing the project on a levee that failed. Which obviously in some sort of counter-logic means that the funding never arrived and nothing was being done.

The overall impression was that the funding was inadequate and led to this disaster. As facts come out, that impression seems harder and harder to maintain.