At the start of hurricane season…

June 1, 2006

Today, officially, is the start of [tag]hurricane[/tag] [tag]season[/tag]. With this in mind, Nancy [tag]Pelosi[/tag]’s office released a really good report (.pdf) about on where we are nine months after [tag]Katrina[/tag]. The report is well done, but as FDL noted, it’s also terribly discouraging.

* Up to $1 billion dollars in [tag]waste[/tag] and [tag]fraud[/tag] for housing contractors and payments made by the government, mainly to contractors from outside the Gulf Region.

* The SBA has rejected more than 60% of small business loan applications in the wake of Katrina. Of those that have been approved, only 4% of funds have been disbursed to small business owners at this point. (Oh yeah, I got yer business friendly environment here. What was that Republican talking point that small business is the backbone of American jobs and communities?)

* Less than 2% of all Federal aid that has gone to the Gulf Coast has been used for education expenditures.

* The Rubber Stamp Republican Congress still refuses to ease Medicare restrictions for children in the Gulf Coast region, despite the fact that there is a substantial health care crisis for children in the region, stemming from infections and other issues arising from prolonged exposure to pathogens from flood waters, stress, and other factors. (1/3 of all children living in FEMA trailer parks have been found to have a chronic illness.)

* 40,000 families are still waiting for some sort of housing assistance, meanwhile there are 10,000 FEMA trailers still parked in the mud, just sitting there unused.

* Contractors with a political connection to the Bush Administration were paid up to 15 times the actual cost of jobs contracted.

And there’s more where that came from. I’d only add that, as of yesterday, FEMA announced plans to dismantle the camps that have “housed and fed 40,000 volunteers who came to Louisiana to help salvage blighted areas in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.”

Bush sat down with reporters from seven Florida newspapers in April for a roundtable interview. In response to a question about the upcoming hurricane season, the president said he is worried about the thousands of Gulf Coast residents now living in trailers. “Let’s just pray,” he said, “there is no hurricane heading that way.”

It’s supposed to be an active hurricane season. Who’s confident that the Bush administration is prepared?

Faith based prevention, baby.

And this report does not even go into the multiple and frightening levee problems they are experiencing right now and the overall crappy conditions of the current levees (as reported by the Army Corps of Supreme Screwups).

N.O. will be a chocolate city, just that the chocolate color will be that of the mississippi, Gulf and Pontchartrain mud covering the place if another storm comes near.

And nice pick up by FDL on the small business canard. Small business folk must be some of the dumbest folk around if they buy that crap the GOP.

  • I’m amazed at what passes for “hard-headed business sense” in this country. Small businesses go belly up by the millions. Really big businesses make mistakes like the Edsel and today’s SUVs. Investers rush into, and out of, the stock markets like the sheep in Brokeback Mountain — in a special cut for the DVD, the actor who plays Jack Twist expresses amazement at how dumb sheep are – then, to prove his point, he suddenly raises both arms, causing the sheep to flee in terror (I’m resisting the temptation to make reference to Reps or Dems here).

  • How about just surround NOLA with all those worthless double-wide trailers they’ve got sitting in Arkansas?

  • The whole thing is unbelievably f*ed up. My mom and my brother both had their homes destroyed (they lived by the 17th Street Canal in Lakeview) and my sister’s home was badly damaged as well. My mom’s identity was stolen by someone using her name and address with FEMA so she has never received one single penny because the investigation is still “pending.” She filed 5 days after and there was already fraud going on. My prayers that Bush will get his sh*t together, however, have not been answered. The SBA – fuhgeddaboutit. My mom sold insurance so of course she lost her livelihood and her client base, etc. The best she could get is a low-interest loan that she has to document every item as replacement cost only, i.e, massive strings attached. No rental assistance, nothing. The fact that these contractors are profiteering on this makes me sick. I have no problem with “profit” but to essentially have government subsidized profiteering is an abomination. What would Jesus do?

  • I’m still trying to deal with the new NASA data reported on NPR this morning. Some of those levees—and the ground upon which they rest—are undergoing subsidence at the rate of an inch per year. Now, for some, that might seem to be nothing at all; however, where the sub-levee base (the ground that the levee is built upon) sinks away from the bottom of the levee itself, that particular levee is going to fail—be it by the storm-surge of a Cat4, or even a simple Cat2. End result: NOLA is no longer a tenable area. It’s going to flood out every year until the ACoE sees the light, and starts building levees like they build dams. Those would hold up, for a while—at least until sea-levels top them (which should be in about another thirty years or so).

    Why not just start calculating where the “new” coastlines are going to be—and start the relocation process NOW? Coastal cities wouldn’t have to worry about future storms, and canals can be built to bring the ships inland from the open water.

    What—no one ever visited the Suez? Panama? The Welland?

  • Ot to mention those of us in Florida, who have seemingly been forgotten in the aftermath of last year’s storms, but who endured 4 direct hits back in ’04. There are still thousands of folks living in FEMA trailers, here, too. A piece on our local PBS station a few weeks ago featured one couple as an example: because a certain percentage of their house was damaged, they must rebuild to meet post-Andrew building code, and because they live within a certain distance from a body of water (in their case a canal) that means the house has to be on stilts. That means razing what’s left of the house and starting over, but because the insurance company decided the house wasn’t a total loss, the couple received about 10% of the money the need to actually rebuild legally. The state has been inept, doing nothing but allowing the insurance companies to screw us a little more each year (or a lot, really), and meanwhile literally thousands of families around the state are living in the same (tornado-magnet) trailers now, 2 years later, as they were a month after losing their homes.

    What’s up with THAT?

  • FEMA incompetence is all a part of Grover Norquist’s secret plan to wean Americans from reliance on Government to solve their problems.

    You know, like not being fed ground beef made from cows which were fed ground brains made from cows!

    Any agency that has demonstrated it’s competence over the last administration have been gutted and emasculated so Americans will (or can) no longer rely on it. That was the plan for Social Security too. Thank God we avoided that stupid idea.

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