fester wrote:

Dale wrote:

"fester" <not@home.com> wrote in message
news:%PKVe.5943$Jp.549115@twister.southeast.rr.com...
[...]

And yet, as blindingly obvious as the
fact is that single motherhood leads to a host of problems, from poor

academic

achievement thus unskilled and unemployable adults, crime, drug use and an
overall lack of responsibility, Liberals continue to blame racism or lack

of

government involvement or any other excuse one can name to avoid the

truth.

Why do all contards always believe that libtards all think alike?

Liberalism, like Conservatism are words that describe an ideology. That is to
say that they are words used to identify people who think a certain way.
Therefore, when mainstream liberalism projects a certain attitude, such as the
one I described, it is legitimate to say that liberals think that way.

The key flaw to this way of thinking is in quietly, blindly accepting
the assertion that there are a group of people, be they called
"Liberals" or "Conservatives", who form homogenous groups which think
the same things, and believe the same things, for the same reasons.

It's fine to use a word to describe an ideology. The mistake is in not
being able to differentiate between a person who shares a few elements
of an ideology, and a person for whom said ideology is a complete and
accurate description. "Mainstream Liberalism" does not, in fact,
"project a certain attitude." Rather, *some* people who self-identify,
or who are identified with "Mainstream Liberalism", *may* share *some*
attitudes in common with "Mainstream Liberalism."

In short, no, it is not, in fact, legitimate to say that liberals (or
conservatives) "think that way."

It is this false idea of an ideological zero sum game, among others,
that has the American political landscape in the polarized mess it's in.

fester wrote:

Liberalism, like Conservatism are words that describe an ideology. That is to
say that they are words used to identify people who think a certain way.

While it is true that "Liberalism' denotes a certain ideology, your
mistake is in making the hugely illogical assumption that all people
who embrace this ideology "think a certain way."

Therefore, when mainstream liberalism projects a certain attitude, such as the
one I described, it is legitimate to say that liberals think that way.

"Mainstream liberalism" does not "project" anything. It is an idea,
not something animate. All you can deduce is that certain people, who
might call themselves liberals, project certain "attitude(s), such as
the one... described." Quit trying to herd everybody into some sort of
Us vs Them camp. We just won't stay there, all neat and tidy.

fester wrote:

WCB wrote:

*****. Liar! Lousiana since 2001 has repeatedly had
requests for funds denied. And had its real funding repeatedly slashed.

The pork was for Alaska, Slash Lousiana funding, add $2.3 billion for tow
massive bridges to nowhere.

Your lie about squandered money in Lousiana is just that, a lie.

Lousiana is 49th in income, 16th in local and atate taxes much of that to
keep their levees and simnilat systems intact.

Squandering money? bush! Vasttax cuts for t4eh rich, vast amounts of money
wasted on pork like massive bridges to nowhere and a war we seem to not be
exactly winning.

You toss out far right lies about Louisiana without specifics, which do not
address the problem, Systematic cenial of funding and systematic cutting of
funding to black, Democratic Lousiana while squandering vast sums on pork
spending, wars we were lied into, and massive military pork spending
on top of that while slashing taxes for the very wealthy.

Tow bridges, $2.3 billion dollars. Squandered money!

The ONLY people squandering vast sum are Republicans.
Yet you toss out a vague, factless, incompetent, lying claim it was Lousiana
that squandered money?
See? The usual right winger gambit. Faced with facts, too out emotionally
laden, hysterical lies while ignoring all facts.

In 2004, GOP Senate pork "holds" spending doubled.
Massive squandering of funds. Not Lousiana, but the GOP
lead Senate going pork wild.

A $315 million dollar bridge to connect an Alaskan town of 8,000 to an
island with 50 inhaibtatnts.

If that is not squandering of money, what is!?

Then, turn right around and deny Loiusiana $5 million to
develope evacuation centers in case of a massive hurricane,
and trasportation!

Why? Damned niggers keep votiong Democtaric.
they must be punished. Alaska, we approve your $2.3 billion
request.

And Bush, you lied us into a war, here is $79 billion.

Truely vast, huge monstrous money squandering is a GOP only
exercise.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/

CHRONOLOGY....Here's a timeline that outlines the fate of both FEMA
and flood control projects in New Orleans under the Bush
administration. Read it and weep:


January 2001: Bush appoints Joe Allbaugh, a crony from Texas, as head
of FEMA. Allbaugh has no previous experience in disaster management.


April 2001: Budget Director Mitch Daniels announces the Bush
administration's goal of privatizing much of FEMA's work. In May,
Allbaugh confirms that FEMA will be downsized: "Many are concerned
that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an
oversized entitlement program...." he said. "Expectations of when the
federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement
may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level."


2001: FEMA designates a major hurricane hitting New Orleans as one of
the three "likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this
country."


December 2002: After less than two years at FEMA, Allbaugh announces
he is leaving to start up a consulting firm that advises companies
seeking to do business in Iraq. He is succeeded by his deputy, Michael
Brown, who, like Allbaugh, has no previous experience in disaster
management.


March 2003: FEMA is downgraded from a cabinet level position and
folded into the Department of Homeland Security. Its mission is
refocused on fighting acts of terrorism.


2003: Under its new organization chart within DHS, FEMA's preparation
and planning functions are reassigned to a new Office of Preparedness
and Response. FEMA will henceforth focus only on response and
recovery.


Summer 2004: FEMA denies Louisiana's pre-disaster mitigation funding
requests. Says Jefferson Parish flood zone manager Tom Rodrigue: "You
would think we would get maximum consideration....This is what the
grant program called for. We were more than qualified for it."


June 2004: The Army Corps of Engineers budget for levee construction
in New Orleans is slashed. Jefferson Parish emergency management
chiefs Walter Maestri comments: "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."


June 2005: Funding for the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers is cut by a record $71.2 million. One of the hardest-hit
areas is the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, which
was created after the May 1995 flood to improve drainage in Jefferson,
Orleans and St. Tammany parishes.


August 2005: While New Orleans is undergoing a slow motion
catastrophe, Bush mugs for the cameras, cuts a cake for John McCain,
plays the guitar for Mark Wills, delivers an address about V-J day,
and continues with his vacation. When he finally gets around to
acknowledging the scope of the unfolding disaster, he delivers only a
photo op on Air Force One and a flat, defensive, laundry list speech
in the Rose Garden.


So: A crony with no relevant experience was installed as head of FEMA.
Mitigation budgets for New Orleans were slashed even though it was
known to be one of the top three risks in the country. FEMA was
deliberately downsized as part of the Bush administration's
conservative agenda to reduce the role of government. After DHS was
created, FEMA's preparation and planning functions were taken away.
August 31, 2005 Print | Send this article | Feedback

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,372455,00.html
FORMER CLINTON ADVISOR

"No One Can Say they Didn't See it Coming"

By Sidney Blumenthal

In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of
the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration
cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.


REUTERS
An aerial view of the New Orleans airport underwater.
Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has left
millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter and hundreds to
thousands reportedly dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated
city of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the
damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of
nature.

A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New
Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush
administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a
flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana
Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened
and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal
Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane
striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S.,
including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal
funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was
drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding
requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent.
Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in
funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of
the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds
for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a
series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater,
reported online: "No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the
wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked
about the lack of preparation."

The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers
almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm
surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands
surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent
City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised "no
net loss" of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration
and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003,
unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental
Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands
unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.

In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental
groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that
without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by
an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. "There's
no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes
to wetlands protection," said one of the report's authors. The
chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality
dismissed the study as "highly questionable," and boasted, "
Everybody loves what we're doing."



"My administration's climate change policy will be science
based," President Bush declared in June 2001. But in 2002,
when the Environmental Protection Agency submitted a study
on global warming to the United Nations reflecting its expert
research, Bush derided it as "a report put out by a bureaucracy,
" and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's
annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its first
comprehensive "Report on the Environment," stating, "Climate
change has global consequences for human health and the
environment," the White House simply demanded removal of the
line and all similar conclusions. At the G-8 meeting in
Scotland this year, Bush successfully stymied any common
action on global warming. Scientists, meanwhile, have
continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising
temperature of the oceans, which has produced more
severe hurricanes.

In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists,
including 20 Nobel laureates, warned in a statement,
"Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking":
"Successful application of science has played a large
part in the policies that have made the United States
of America the world's most powerful nation and its
citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ...
Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by
presidents and administrations of both parties in
forming and implementing policies. The administration
of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this
principle ... The distortion of scientific knowledge
for partisan political ends must cease." Bush
completely ignored this statement.

In the two weeks preceding the storm in the Gulf, the
trumping of science by ideology and expertise by special
interests accelerated. The Federal Drug Administration
announced that it was postponing sale of the morning-after
contraceptive pill, despite overwhelming scientific
evidence of its safety and its approval by the FDA's
scientific advisory board. The United Nations special
envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa accused the Bush
administration of responsibility for a condom
shortage in Uganda -- the result of the administration's
evangelical Christian agenda of "abstinence." When the
chief of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Justice
Department was ordered by the White House to delete its
study that African-Americans and other minorities are
subject to racial profiling in police traffic stops a
and he refused to buckle under, he was forced out of
his job. When the Army Corps of Engineers' chief
oversight analyst objected to a $7 billion
no-bid contract awarded for work in Iraq to Halliburton
(the firm at which Vice President Cheney was formerly CEO),
she was demoted despite her superior professional ratings.
At the National Park Service, a former Cheney aide,
a political appointee lacking professional background,
drew up a plan to overturn past environmental practices
and prohibit any mention of evolution while allowing
sale of religious materials through the Park Service.

On the day the levees burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered
a speech in Colorado comparing the Iraq war to World War
II and himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt: "And he knew
that the best way to bring peace and stability to the
region was by bringing freedom to Japan." Bush had
boarded his very own "Streetcar Named Desire."

Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to
President Clinton and the author of "The Clinton Wars," is
writing a column for Salon and the Guardian of London.



RELATED SPIEGEL ONLINE LINKS

September 5, 2005
latimes.com : National News
Single page Print E-mail story Change text size
KATRINA'S AFTERMATH
Why FEMA Was Missing in Action
Most of the agency's preparedness budget and focus are related to terrorism,
not disasters.

By Peter G. Gosselin and Alan C. Miller, Times Staff Writers


WASHINGTON ? While the federal government has spent much of the last
quarter-century trimming the safety nets it provides Americans, it has
dramatically expanded its promise of protection in one area ? disaster.

Since the 1970s, Washington has emerged as the insurer of last resort
against floods, fires, earthquakes and ? after 2001 ? terrorist attacks.

But the government's stumbling response to the storm that devastated the
nation's Gulf Coast reveals that the federal agency singularly most
responsible for making good on Washington's expanded promise has been
hobbled by cutbacks and a bureaucratic downgrading.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency once speedily delivered food, water,
shelter and medical care to disaster areas, and paid to quickly rebuild
damaged roads and schools and get businesses and people back on their feet.
Like a commercial insurance firm setting safety standards to prevent future
problems, it also underwrote efforts to get cities and states to reduce
risks ahead of time and plan for what they would do if calamity struck.

But in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, FEMA lost its Cabinet-level
status as it was folded into the giant new Department of Homeland Security.
And in recent years it has suffered budget cuts, the elimination or
reduction of key programs and an exodus of experienced staffers.

The agency's core budget, which includes disaster preparedness and
mitigation, has been cut each year since it was absorbed by the Homeland
Security Department in 2003. Depending on what the final numbers end up
being for next fiscal year, the cuts will have been between about 2% and
18%.

The agency's staff has been reduced by 500 positions to 4,735. Among the
results, FEMA has had to cut one of its three emergency management teams,
which are charged with overseeing relief efforts in a disaster. Where it
once had "red," "white" and "blue" teams, it now has only red and white.

Three out of every four dollars the agency provides in local preparedness
and first-responder grants go to terrorism-related activities, even though
a recent Government Accountability Office report quotes local officials as
saying what they really need is money to prepare for natural disasters and
accidents.

"They've taken emergency management away from the emergency managers,"
complained Morrie Goodman, who was FEMA's chief spokesman during the
Clinton administration. "These operations are being run by people who are
amateurs at what they are doing."

Richard W. Krimm, a former senior FEMA official for several administrations,
agreed. "It was a terrible mistake to take disaster response and recovery
and disaster preparedness and mitigation, and put them in Homeland
Security," he said.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff acknowledged in interviews
Sunday that Washington was insufficiently prepared for the hurricane that
laid waste to New Orleans and surrounding areas. But he defended its
performance by arguing that the size of the storm was beyond anything his
department could have anticipated and that primary responsibility for
handling emergencies rested with state and local, not federal, officials.

"Before this happened, I said, we need to build a preparedness capacity
going forward," Chertoff told NBC's "Meet the Press." He added that that
was something "we have not yet succeeded in doing."

Under the law, Chertoff said, state and local officials must direct initial
emergency operations. "The federal government comes in and supports those
officials," he said.

Chertoff's remarks, which echoed earlier statements by President Bush,
prompted withering rebukes both from former senior FEMA staffers and
outside experts.

"They can't do that," former agency chief of staff Jane Bullock said of Bush
administration efforts to shift responsibility away from Washington. "The
moment the president declared a federal disaster, it became a federal
responsibility?. The federal government took ownership over the response,"
she said. Bush declared a disaster in Louisiana and Mississippi when the
storm hit a week ago.

"What's awe-inspiring here is how many federal officials didn't issue any
orders," said Paul C. Light, an authority on government operations at New
York University.

Evidence of confusion extended beyond FEMA and the Homeland Security
Department on Sunday.

Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said that conditions in New
Orleans and elsewhere could quickly escalate into a major public health
crisis. But asked whether his agency had dispatched teams in advance of the
storm and flooding, Leavitt answered, "No."

"None of these teams were pre-positioned," he told CNN's "Late Edition."
"We're having to organize them as we go."

Such an ad hoc approach might not have surprised Americans until recent
decades because the federal government was thought to have few
responsibilities for disaster relief, and what duties it did have were
mostly delegated to the American Red Cross.
century ago, no one would have expected a massive federal response. Most
people viewed natural disasters mainly as things to be endured on their own
or with the help of their neighbors and communities," said Harvard
University economic historian David A. Moss, whose recent book, "When All
Else Fails: Government as the Ultimate Risk Manager," traces Washington's
expanding duties in protecting Americans from all sorts of risks.

In 1927, President Coolidge described the federal role in aiding victims of
a devastating flood of the lower Mississippi River this way: "To direct the
sympathy of our people to the sad plight of thousands of their fellow
citizens, and to urge that generous contributions be promptly forthcoming."

But starting with the New Deal of the 1930s and with increasing vigor in
recent decades, Washington sought to prevent disasters, both natural and
man-made, and to partially compensate state and local governments,
companies and even individuals when calamities did strike.

The government reacted to Tropical Storm Agnes in 1972 by providing victims
with grants and low-cost loans. It responded to a flood of the upper
Mississippi in 1993 by approving $6.3 billion in aid. Comparing the federal
government's response in 1927 to its efforts in 1993, Moss concluded that
Washington made up less than 4% of the estimated losses in the earlier
flood, but more than 50% in the later one.

Within 10 days of the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress and Bush had OKd $40
billion in aid, including $15 billion in grants and loans for the
staggering airline industry and $4.3 billion to compensate the families of
victims.

"The federal government has dramatically increased its role in absorbing
disaster losses after the fact," Moss said. "Until recently, many may have
assumed we'd made similar strides in disaster prevention."

FEMA was created in 1979 in response to criticism about Washington's
fragmented reaction to a series of disasters, including Hurricane Camille,
which devastated the Mississippi coast 10 years earlier. The agency was
rocked by scandal in the 1980s and turned in such a poor performance after
Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida in 1992 that President George H.W.
Bush is thought to have lost votes as a result.

But according to a variety of former officials and outside experts, the
agency experienced a renaissance under President Clinton's director, James
Lee Witt, speedily responding to the 1993 Mississippi flood, the 1994
Northridge earthquake and other disasters.

Witt's biggest change was to get FEMA to focus on reducing risks ahead of
disasters and funding local prevention programs.

After the 1993 flood, for instance, Witt's agency bought homes and
businesses nearest the water and moved their occupants to safer locations.
The result in one Illinois town was that although more than 400 people
applied for disaster aid after the flood, only 11 needed to apply two years
later when the river again jumped its banks.

"He got communities to take practical steps like encouraging homeowners to
bolt buildings to foundations in earthquake-prone areas and elevate living
space in flood-prone ones," said Howard Kunreuther, co-director of the
Wharton Risk Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

But with the change of administration in 2001, many of Witt's prevention
programs were reduced or cut entirely. After Sept. 11, former FEMA
officials and outside authorities said, Washington's attention turned to
terrorism to the exclusion of almost anything else.

*

Times staff writer Judy Pasternak contributed to this report.

fester wrote:

WCB wrote:

fester wrote:

<quote>
Liberalism's post-Katrina fearlessness in discovering the obvious -- if
an inner city is inundated, the victims will be disproportionately
minorities -- stopped short of indelicately noting how many of the
victims were women with children but not husbands.

The question is, why did Bush and teh GOP Congress continually deny
Lousiana funding and slash funding for Lousiana over loud complaints,
while awarding GOP voting Alaska $2.3 billion for tow bridges to nowhere?

Simply. Them damned niggers keep voting Democratic.

That is it ina nutshell and all the squid ink clouds of racist far right
excuse mongering cannot hide that simple fact.

States that reliabakly vote 100% Repuiblican get pork, states full
of Democrat voting niggers get their funding slashed.
Who cares about THEM!

The only other alternative possibility to this is that Bush, the Bush
adminstration, the GO leadership of House and Senate and
rank and file of House and Senate are all abysmally stupid,
callous and ignorant.

Either scenario is reason enough to state plainly that Republicanism
is evil, incompetent and in holding political partisanship and pork for
those who support partisanship more important that saving lives
and cities, deeply un-American and unpatriotic.

Corrupt little men for whom the thought of a hurricane drowning
a city in a Democratic state full of blacks simply does not concern
them any more than death of a nest of roaches sprayed with
bug spray under the refrigerator.

"Damn niggers keep voting Democratic! ***** 'em!"

Hastert and Frist need to step down. Will needs to resign and shut up.

Your response is as incorrect as it is vulgar. Louisiana has been the
grand-prize winner when it comes to pork for decades. The problem is that
the state and locals who have received all this largess chose to squander
it on patronage.

*****. Liar! Lousiana since 2001 has repeatedly had
requests for funds denied. And had its real funding repeatedly slashed.

The pork was for Alaska, Slash Lousiana funding, add $2.3 billion for tow
massive bridges to nowhere.

Your lie about squandered money in Lousiana is just that, a lie.

Lousiana is 49th in income, 16th in local and atate taxes much of that to
keep their levees and simnilat systems intact.

Squandering money? bush! Vasttax cuts for t4eh rich, vast amounts of money
wasted on pork like massive bridges to nowhere and a war we seem to not be
exactly winning.

You toss out far right lies about Louisiana without specifics, which do not
address the problem, Systematic cenial of funding and systematic cutting of
funding to black, Democratic Lousiana while squandering vast sums on pork
spending, wars we were lied into, and massive military pork spending
on top of that while slashing taxes for the very wealthy.

Tow bridges, $2.3 billion dollars. Squandered money!

The ONLY people squandering vast sum are Republicans.
Yet you toss out a vague, factless, incompetent, lying claim it was Lousiana
that squandered money?
See? The usual right winger gambit. Faced with facts, too out emotionally
laden, hysterical lies while ignoring all facts.

In 2004, GOP Senate pork "holds" spending doubled.
Massive squandering of funds. Not Lousiana, but the GOP
lead Senate going pork wild.

A $315 million dollar bridge to connect an Alaskan town of 8,000 to an
island with 50 inhaibtatnts.

If that is not squandering of money, what is!?

Then, turn right around and deny Loiusiana $5 million to
develope evacuation centers in case of a massive hurricane,
and trasportation!

Why? Damned niggers keep votiong Democtaric.
they must be punished. Alaska, we approve your $2.3 billion
request.

And Bush, you lied us into a war, here is $79 billion.

Truely vast, huge monstrous money squandering is a GOP only
exercise.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/

CHRONOLOGY....Here's a timeline that outlines the fate of both FEMA
and flood control projects in New Orleans under the Bush
administration. Read it and weep:


January 2001: Bush appoints Joe Allbaugh, a crony from Texas, as head
of FEMA. Allbaugh has no previous experience in disaster management.


April 2001: Budget Director Mitch Daniels announces the Bush
administration's goal of privatizing much of FEMA's work. In May,
Allbaugh confirms that FEMA will be downsized: "Many are concerned
that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an
oversized entitlement program...." he said. "Expectations of when the
federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement
may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level."


2001: FEMA designates a major hurricane hitting New Orleans as one of
the three "likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this
country."


December 2002: After less than two years at FEMA, Allbaugh announces
he is leaving to start up a consulting firm that advises companies
seeking to do business in Iraq. He is succeeded by his deputy, Michael
Brown, who, like Allbaugh, has no previous experience in disaster
management.


March 2003: FEMA is downgraded from a cabinet level position and
folded into the Department of Homeland Security. Its mission is
refocused on fighting acts of terrorism.


2003: Under its new organization chart within DHS, FEMA's preparation
and planning functions are reassigned to a new Office of Preparedness
and Response. FEMA will henceforth focus only on response and
recovery.


Summer 2004: FEMA denies Louisiana's pre-disaster mitigation funding
requests. Says Jefferson Parish flood zone manager Tom Rodrigue: "You
would think we would get maximum consideration....This is what the
grant program called for. We were more than qualified for it."


June 2004: The Army Corps of Engineers budget for levee construction
in New Orleans is slashed. Jefferson Parish emergency management
chiefs Walter Maestri comments: "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."


June 2005: Funding for the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers is cut by a record $71.2 million. One of the hardest-hit
areas is the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, which
was created after the May 1995 flood to improve drainage in Jefferson,
Orleans and St. Tammany parishes.


August 2005: While New Orleans is undergoing a slow motion
catastrophe, Bush mugs for the cameras, cuts a cake for John McCain,
plays the guitar for Mark Wills, delivers an address about V-J day,
and continues with his vacation. When he finally gets around to
acknowledging the scope of the unfolding disaster, he delivers only a
photo op on Air Force One and a flat, defensive, laundry list speech
in the Rose Garden.


So: A crony with no relevant experience was installed as head of FEMA.
Mitigation budgets for New Orleans were slashed even though it was
known to be one of the top three risks in the country. FEMA was
deliberately downsized as part of the Bush administration's
conservative agenda to reduce the role of government. After DHS was
created, FEMA's preparation and planning functions were taken away.
August 31, 2005 Print | Send this article | Feedback

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,372455,00.html
FORMER CLINTON ADVISOR

"No One Can Say they Didn't See it Coming"

By Sidney Blumenthal

In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of
the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration
cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.


REUTERS
An aerial view of the New Orleans airport underwater.
Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has left
millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter and hundreds to
thousands reportedly dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated
city of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the
damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of
nature.

A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New
Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush
administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a
flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana
Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened
and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal
Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane
striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S.,
including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal
funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was
drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding
requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent.
Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in
funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of
the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds
for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a
series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater,
reported online: "No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the
wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked
about the lack of preparation."

The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers
almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm
surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands
surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent
City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised "no
net loss" of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration
and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003,
unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental
Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands
unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.

In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental
groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that
without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by
an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. "There's
no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes
to wetlands protection," said one of the report's authors. The
chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality
dismissed the study as "highly questionable," and boasted, "
Everybody loves what we're doing."



"My administration's climate change policy will be science
based," President Bush declared in June 2001. But in 2002,
when the Environmental Protection Agency submitted a study
on global warming to the United Nations reflecting its expert
research, Bush derided it as "a report put out by a bureaucracy,
" and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's
annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its first
comprehensive "Report on the Environment," stating, "Climate
change has global consequences for human health and the
environment," the White House simply demanded removal of the
line and all similar conclusions. At the G-8 meeting in
Scotland this year, Bush successfully stymied any common
action on global warming. Scientists, meanwhile, have
continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising
temperature of the oceans, which has produced more
severe hurricanes.

In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists,
including 20 Nobel laureates, warned in a statement,
"Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking":
"Successful application of science has played a large
part in the policies that have made the United States
of America the world's most powerful nation and its
citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ...
Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by
presidents and administrations of both parties in
forming and implementing policies. The administration
of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this
principle ... The distortion of scientific knowledge
for partisan political ends must cease." Bush
completely ignored this statement.

In the two weeks preceding the storm in the Gulf, the
trumping of science by ideology and expertise by special
interests accelerated.