WHY?

I was watching the news tonight and the focus of the story was on a shop owner who had returned to see the damage done to his home and his shop. While the news woman made a comment about the damage that had been done by Katrina, the shop owner chimed in with a yes, and said that the looters had caused problems as well. Now when he was talking about how his inventory was low due to the storm and the looters, the camera was panning around the room; what I noticed was the fact that the shelves were full-the garment racks were full-and yes even the display case looked untouched. Now if-and I do mean if-the establishment had been looted I would think that the garment racks close to the doors and windows would be empty, IMHO, of course. So why did the reporter and the shop owner stand there in front of America and tell a Bold Face LIE?


FEMA Claims New Orleans Was Disaster Priority; Bush 2005 Budget Drastically Cut Lake Pontchartrain Levee Funding
Army Corps levee project manager criticizes Bush administration for the steepest reduction in hurricane and flood control funding in New Orleans history.1 Sep 2005
By Greg Szymanski

While the Bush administration spends billions in Iraq, a project manager for the repair of the New Orleans levee system said "President Bush
’s 2005 budget is totally inadequate, providing only $3.9 million of the $20 million needed before Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast".

Al Naomi, head of the Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project, told a group of New Orleans business men in early 2004, as the cost of the Iraqi conflict skyrocketed, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Army Corps. of Engineers said was needed to shore up the levee system.

After the Category Four hurricane battered New Orleans this week, the levee system collapsed in three vital areas, flooding 80 percent of the city and leaving thousands dead, according to city officials.


"The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain project remains about 20 percent incomplete due to a lack of funds,"
said Naomi about the project, consisting of protection for pumping stations and building up levees on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson parishes.

According to local papers, in June of 2004, at the height of the hurricane season, Naomi went before the East Jefferson Levee authority, begging for $2 million in “urgent emergency funds” since Washington refused to allocate proper funding to strengthen the levee.

After the levee system failed this week, critics of the Bush administration quickly cited the “lack of priority funding” for the Lake Pontchartrain project, adding the administration failed in its duties to the people of New Orleans by not providing the needed money even though the danger of a major catastrophe was well-known.

"The longer we wait without funding, the more we sink," Naomi told the New Orleans City Business magazine last year. "I've got at least six levee construction contracts that need to be done to raise the levee protection back to where it should be (because of settling). Right now I owe my contractors about $5 million. And we're going to have to pay them interest.
"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don’t get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can’t stay ahead of the settlement. The problem that we have isn’t that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can’t raise them."
In its article concerning the lack of funding for the levee system, the New Orleans City Business article added that despite of the 2004 hurricane being one of the worst on recorded record, the President’s budget came back “with the steepest reduction in hurricane funding and flood control funding for New Orleans in history.”

Regarding the lack of federal priority funding, the article added:

“The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also not going to pay for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.

Two days after the New Orleans was left in chaos, Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the government’s point man for hurricane assistance, said the New Orleans levee system was always one of the government’s highest priorities.

However, his statements issued to the nation on CNN, appear to directly conflict with the stark reality that the Bush administration cut funds to repair the levee system even though it was a known danger if a major storm hit.

New Orleans has long been known as a flood threat from a direct hit from a hurricane, the federal government working with state and local officials since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts.
And when flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people in New Orleans, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA).
Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid.
But Naomi pointed out that at least $250 million in crucial projects remained under funded, even though New Orleans had a near miss in 2004 from a major hurricane.
Due to the cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs,” according to New Orleans City Business magazine in a June 5, 2004 article.
The disaster surrounding Hurricane Katrina, largely affecting Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, is still unfolding, officials saying recovery is going to take years not months since it has been declared the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.
Two days after the storm’s devastating blow, looting and lawlessness has been reported in New Orleans, but police have largely ignored the problem due to its first priority of looking for survivors.
It is estimated that 250,000 people remained in the city despite a mandatory evacuation order. New Orleans city officials feared the death toll could reach as high as one-third of that figure, since many people were trapped in their homes unable to escape from rising flood waters that reached 20 feet high in some parts of the city.
The federal government has not yet arrived with mass assistance, although officials said late Wednesday evening, help was on the way with food, water and other necessities. In the interim, New Orleans remains primarily a “refugee city” with no power or fresh water, officials estimating it could be more than two months before services are restored.







When I woke up today, the only thought that came to mind was Reverend Jesse Jackson's indignant cry, "This is the bottom of the slave ship we are looking at." I think Jesse actually put his finger on what happened to all of us this week. Those shots we've seen are, as he said, the bottom of the slave ships. I think that really goes to why all the rest of us watching are so traumatized. And I think it is necessary to repeat what he has said about how the people in this country have a high tolerance for viewing "black pain." Yes, while we are asking the unheard question as to why a third of New Orleans' population is poor and near all black, everyone from the president on down is comfortable with these realities of our ongoing unemployment, overcrowding, homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction, neighborhood crime and despair. Jesse's metaphor is also so apt in that you only had to listen to five minutes of reporting to know families had been separated in ways that could be irreparable – across states, even mothers from month-old babies...just evacuating babies without contact with the parents is such a nightmare; I hate even hearing about it. These are the people who were marginalized from the Internet as well; are they going to run to a computer site?
African Americans in this crisis are further having the devastating experience of watching parents suffer and die right in their faces on sidewalks where people were forced to stand-not sit, stand-for days. And the people crowded next to them experienced the same deaths. And like our ancestors, the poor today will have no access to therapeutic treatment. This is where you just have to agree with Jesse that the people in charge have the capacity to tolerate scenes of suffering they know have been suffered by blacks for generations. At the same time, people among the stranded have been made aware that they are being portrayed as lawless by media people who are freaking out at the idea of thousands of black people not guarded by police. That in itself is a legacy of slavery. And even as we watched, the reporters and anchors on both NBC and CNN last week both misidentified Congressman John Lewis as Congressman Elijah Cummings for hours. This is one of the staples of the era when I was young and black people first appeared on TV and no one could tell one of us from another. This is really tired, old nonsense. I found myself filing email complaints to the networks, even though I know John Lewis and many others probably told them. Lastly, there is now what is called the Katrina Diaspora. This diaspora of people without resources puts the restoration of families and community at risk, and in the case of New Orleans' black community, probably makes that impossible. Even people who own land there are going to be in deep trouble trying to hold onto it when the real estate boondoggle gets in the courts. I'm afraid we'll be reading a lot of stupid crap about how they couldn't be found, taxes were owed, etc. as in times past throughout the South. That's why I hope Jesse gets someone to bring people like Congressman Bennie Thompson into the fold, as he is familiar with the commission that had to be set up in the Delta because people are still trying to get back land stolen in the 1930s. And the developers are probably asking for eminent domain to be declared even as I'm typing.
Will Jackson, Rev. Al, Rep. Elijah Cummings, et. all will be asking after the fact, after they've read about development plans in the papers that the black community be represented at the table of planning "the NEW New Orleans?" The cultural heritage of New Orleans, which is so singular, is in serious jeopardy. The perfect mix of forces and cultures was based in a particularly unique feature of the dispersion of Africans during slavery: a disproportionate share of the Yoruba brought here (who were a minority within the groups in Middle Passage) landed in that area. What happened after that in encounters with the French, the Caribbean and the peoples of the States, cannot be replicated. Replacing the architecture with vinyl versions of shotgun and camel back houses will not produce any Buddy Boldens, Jelly Roll Mortons or Louis Armstrongs. As a writer, I myself have used the invaluable records kept there of this unique heritage. Just as one had to worry in the several rounds of the bombing of Baghdad that not only were untold people being killed but some of the oldest treasures of human life, I feel even more concerned that no one will care that thousands have died in New Orleans, others thousands dislocated and that one of our own cultural treasures, the city of New Orleans itself, will be deprived of its cultural engine.
This is a tragedy not only for the millions there on the ground, and the national economy but for the culture at large. We are witnessing in a matter of days a dislocation one-fifth the size of Middle Passage – which took place over more than 200 years. And all those conveniences of modern social organization which would mitigate its effects for most of us – phone, internet, cars, gasoline, and family with ample housing – do not apply to this country's poor. For them, getting lost may mean not being found any more easily than in 1865 when people went on foot and in wagons following word of mouth leads to find where family members may have been sent.It is unbearable, and unconscionable.