The Ugly End of the Cat

[markus]

Everybody wants Category Five levee protection. As a solution, it is as obvious and simple as a bumper sticker on the back window before you at a stoplight. Or where a stoplight used to be, before. This solution not only simple, its also simplistic. There are some ugly facts staring at us on the back end of Cat 5 protection.

...

The rest on http://wetbankguide.blogspot.com.

[yankeeinlouisiana]

1. That's a good website.

Thanks!

Do you know anything about levees.org and Why Jindal's picture is on the main page?

[markus]

2. Jihndal

I'd have to ask the organizer, with whom I frequently exchange email as I try to organize NOLA bloggers around her campaign.

They are non-partisan by charter, so it's not surprising they might put up Bobby J. I think the alternative to pursuing this on a (locally) nonpartisan basis is something dangerously close to secession and civil war (see the posts that followed Ugly End of the Cat), so I don't think we want to dismiss efforts to win broad, bi-partisan support for recovery, protection and coastal restoration.

[markus]

3. Because he signed their online petition

Hell, under the current circumstances, I might cast the first vote of my life (30 years) for a Republican who supported the right positions on reconstruction. I've gotten to a point where I pretty much don't care about anything else.

Dear Members,

This past week was another banner week. Our supporters accepted the challenge to grow our petition signatures from 1400 to 2000 in just 24 hours. The purpose of the mini-campaign was to show Congressman Bobby Jindal how dedicated we are to our mission. In the final minutes, Congressman Jindal signed our online petition bringing the number to a whopping 1999. Congressman Mike Castle - Delaware witnessed.

I am so proud of the response to the challenge. We got 600 signatures in 24 hours and continued to pull in another 600 in the next 4 days bringing the total to 2608! Requests for yard signs have gone through the roof!

The third event of this banner week was the release of a letter from the American Society of Civil Engineers to Carl Strock, Lt Gen with the US Army Corps of Engineers. The ASCE had recently uncovered information so grave that the panel was compelled to release it early, citing the "potential impact" of their findings.

The information fingers the Corps for failures in the flood protection of Greater New Orleans. In their report, the ASCE faulted the Corps for using a safety margin too low for people and their property, for not taking into account the unstable soils typical of the area and for using a "standard project hurricane" that was inadequate and outdated.

The letter is significant because the ASCE has a history of being the most cautious in public criticism of the Corps.

Now that the facts of the Corps' culpability are on the table, we can truly focus on the task of deciding what Congress can do to best make the citizens of metro New Orleans whole. Now we can truly begin the dialog on deciding how Congress shall commit the funding to fortify our manmade levees and also to properly manage our coastal wetlands which act as natural levees.

Our board is working on an ambitious 10-week strategy, details about which will be released soon. Meanwhile, here is what you can do this week.

1. Order a lapel button and a bumper sticker http://www.cafepress.com/levees

2. Have no time? You are welcome to make a donation to help defray costs. On any page of the website www.levees.org just click on "Make a donation" at the bottom of the screen. (Since our mission is to influence Congress, your donation is not tax deductible.)

3. Talk and talk and talk.

Sincerely,
Sandy Rosenthal
Founder




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