Hurricane Katrina fully exposed the soft and corrupt underbelly of the Cheney/Bush administration and the media, for the most part, has let them get away with it. Multiply the Cheney/Bush administration's Katrina failures by ten and your looking at Iraq: Allen L Roland
On the second anniversary of hurricane Katrina ~ New Orleans is a never ending reminder of the soft and corrupt underbelly of the Cheney/Bush administration with its running themes of social injustice, political corruption, economic inequity and racial discrimination.
Multiply the Cheney/Bush administration's Katrina failures by ten and your looking at Iraq ~ and yet, the media continues to ignore this monument to ineptitude.
Adding to this administration's shocking indifference is the very real possibility that the administration was aware the levees were going to breach approximately 24 hours before they did and chose not to announce this to the public ~ thus avoiding the financial responsibility for this catastrophic breakdown and resultant surge, which claimed 1836 lives, blaming it instead on an act of nature.
Here are the facts, 30,000 families are scattered across the country in FEMA apartments, 13,000 are in trailers, and hardly any of the 77,000 rental units destroyed in New Orleans have been rebuilt. To share some of these people's stories, watch this short Robert Greenwald 4 minute film, "When the Saints Go Marching In." and then Sign the petition urging the Senate to pass the Gulf Coast Recovery Bill of 2007 (S1668).
“Katrina was perhaps the government's biggest failure ever,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight. “For the Congress not to be willing to stand up to the White House and demand to know who's accountable is a total abdication of their responsibility."
And who did Bush appoint as his Recovery Czar in an obvious attempt to avoid any political fallout from his well publicized ineptitude and indifference ~ Karl Rove.
“Under the command of President Bush’s two senior political advisers, the White House rolled out a plan…to contain the political damage from the administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina.” President Bush’s comments from the Rose Garden Friday morning formed “the start of this campaign.” [New York Times, 9/5/05]
Here is a short update on recovery efforts some two years later.
Allen L Roland http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2007/08/29.html
Sandlines: Katrina recovery updateWelcome to New Orleans--it is nearly two years after Hurricane Katrina, and your federal tax dollars are asleep on the job. You won’t disturb the slumber of dumb money should you come to Mardi Gras or Jazz Fest, two essential sources of local revenue, where you will register few traces of Katrina's destructive power. Only by venturing beyond the warm embrace of the restored French Quarter, with its familiar old-world charms, can one experience the vast stretches of physical devastation and ruined lives that federal and state monies have yet to address.
Today the City Council and local government paint a prosperous, resilient image of New Orleans. It is, after all, cheaper to spin a hopeful message than to rebuild residential areas, schools, commercial centers and the levees to protect the city against future replays of the tragic storm. In the face of FEMA’s failure, and the less-documented, glacial slowness of the ‘Road Home’ program, the New Orleans power elite are cheerleading the city’s boot-strapped recovery efforts, while playing down remaining needs. This serves both to allure tourists frightened by the lawlessness of the Katrina aftermath and to minimize their own failures in leadership and management of the crisis response.
Hurricane Katrina struck the New Orleans area early morning August 29, 2005. The storm surge breached the city's levees at multiple points, leaving 80 percent of the city submerged, tens of thousands of victims clinging to rooftops, and hundreds of thousands scattered to shelters around the country. Three weeks later, Hurricane Rita re-flooded much of the area.
The storm is estimated to have been responsible for $81.2 billion in damage, making it the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. At least 1,836 people lost their lives in Hurricane Katrina and in the subsequent floods, making it the deadliest U.S. hurricane since the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane. Katrina redistributed New Orleans' population across the southern United States: Houston, Texas had an increase of 35,000 people; Mobile, Alabama gained over 24,000; Baton Rouge, Louisiana over 15,000; and Hammond, Louisiana received over 10,000, nearly doubling its size.
Allen L Roland http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2007/08/29.html
Freelance columnist Allen L Roland is available for comments , interviews and speaking engagements ( allen@allenroland.com )
Cartoon courtesy of Steve Benson / Arizona Republic
