The anniversary just passed, and there’s a lot of coverage about the reconstruction. Hilzoy runs down the state of the reconstruction. It doesn’t look good. BTW, I just found out that Hilzoy is a professor at Johns Hopkins. I knew there was something about her I liked. Beyond the fact that she’s an excellent writer, I mean.

On top of that, Sen. Chris Dodd has proposed legislation to help close some of the funding and federal leadership issues with the reconstruction. Another reason to vote Dodd in 2008.

While our senior senator is showing leadership on this issue, our junior senator, Sen. Joe Lieberman, is, once again, going back on his word and abandoning the people in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

Look, I can respect the desire to avoid a partisan blamefest. The problem here is that Lieberman is in charge of the committee that would investigate the matter. He sets the tone of the hearings and he is in a key position to lead the committee away from being a partisan hunt. That would be leadership, though, and that’s something that Joe Lieberman lacks. So, instead of having public hearings where we can shed some light onto what happened over those few days, and perhaps work out a better response system, we’re going to have to trust that FEMA and DHS have fixed things. Those hearings are also a way to learn from our mistakes.

After all, considering the track record of this administration on, well, anything, do you trust them to fix the FEMA issues without external guidance?

Editors note: Payal volunteered down in New Orleans from January 2-7. She was there to help residents with legal issues around demolitions. She emailed this update to friends and family after returning. The hearing she talks about will be this week on the 19th, so you can keep an eye on the news to see what happens.

I was in New Orleans this past week working with a grassroots organization (the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund) on the anti-demolitions case in the Lower Ninth Ward. This ward was the section hardest hit by Katrina, due in large part to the fact that the levees were the weakest there and the area is one of the poorest in the city. The experience was, probably needless to say, incredibly intense. For those of you that don’t like to read, here are the photos:

http://flickr.com/photos/87748367@N00/sets/1786858/

(Click here to read the rest of this post)

The New Orleans Times-Picayune runs a followup on the stories of rapes and violence in the convention center and the Superdome. It’s an interesting read. The good news is that most of the stories seem exaggerated or at least the product of communications that mirrored the “telephone game” rather than first hand journalism.

MSNBC’s Brian Williams has more on his blog.

Mike Brown may not be gone. TPM reports (and I just watched Olbermann talk about this on Countdown):

CBS says FEMA has rehired Brownie as a consultant “to evaluate it’s response following Hurricane Katrina.” The Times-Picayune says merely that he “is continuing to work at the Federal Emergency Management Agency at full pay, with his Sept. 12 resignation not taking effect for two more weeks.”

While there, says, DHS spokesman Russ Knocke, said Brownie will advise the department “some of his views on his experience with Katrina.”

Long goodbye or not, aren’t pearls of wisdom such as Brown appears to have on offer usually extracted not with paychecks but with subpoenas?

This seems short sighted. Even if he’s just getting paid until his resignation takes effect, just send him home…

Kevin Drum has a list of newspaper reaction to Bush’s speech.

Here’s our wonderful president again:

I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. Kevin Tibbles was positively jubilant on the live update edition of Nightly News that we fed to the West Coast. The mini-mart, long ago cleaned out by looters, was nonetheless bathed in light, including the empty, roped-off gas pumps. The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It’s enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it… jump to certain conclusions.

That’s Brian Williams of MSNBC. This isn’t isolated, of course. The President had crews clearing debris from the areas he was visiting during his last trip to Mississippi. They left when he did, leaving the locals to fend for themselves. I had chalked that up to security reasons, but the translation provided above, which I just found, shows that they went well beyond just clearing the road where the President needed to walk. There was advance work done for appearances sake, and that’s the unfortunate.

(found via Atrios)

I actually watched a good deal of the President’s speech today from New Orleans. I’ve taken to reading transcripts after the fact because Bush’s speaking style is often distracting. Today, however, he was actually not that bad. I think this was a heartfelt speech, well written and well delivered. It’s about time.

I’ll link up to some commentary about the speech at the end, but I’d like to focus on one thing going through my head during the speech. The speech had two major thrusts. The first was to blunt the bulk of the criticism and the second was to remind his base why they love him as President. What’s interesting to me is that I don’t think he’d be giving this particular speech right now if it weren’t for the job the media has done covering this story. The reporters on the scene really delivered to America a picture of the problems that existed in New Orleans and around the area. Watching CNN the next day was like looking at the aftermath of some natural disaster that happened in a third world country. Watching Anderson Cooper get testy with a Senator giving a laundry list of meaningless “thank yous” to other Senators and Washington leaders gave us a hint that, hey, this might be serious.

So far, the media has to be given credit (or blame) for putting Bush on the defensive. They surveyed the destruction and what their eyes were telling them and then told it like they saw it to the American people. No, he said/she said nonsense, no false balance. They looked at the situation and made a call that the response wasn’t fast enough. The call was intellectually honest and not contrived like many common claims about political reporting.

And if Bush’s unprecedented (for him) acknowledgment of mistakes made on his watch was a result of the reporting, think of what they could do if they took their daily jobs as seriously as they took this disaster.

Because we’re going to need the scrutiny over the next few years. In Bush’s speech and in Congress this week, an unprecedented amount of money has been allocated for the reconstruction and revitalization of New Orleans, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. The funds have been allocated in the same chunks Congress allocated for Iraq. Oversight will have to come from the public by way of the media with Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court in the hands of Republicans or their appointees. Omitted from the President’s speech today was that Bush put Karl Rove in charge of the reconstruction. His chief political advisor who, by the way, is as qualified as Mike Brown in disaster recovery…

Then there’s that whole Tom DeLay thing… Can’t we cut anything to pay for these expenses? We have military operations and reconstruction going on in two foreign countries. Then, we have the reconstruction along the Gulf Coast. How about a 1 point rate increase for the top bracket? The size of their 2001 tax cut would be the same as the rest of us. Or, let’s cut some of the pork.

Here are some of the folks commenting on the speech:

ThinkProgress has GOP talking points for the speech.
MyDD has some thoughts on the speech.
Billmon has commentary on DeLay’s foolishness.

I’ll have more in the micro blog to the right as I find it.

Update:Another blog commentary at ReidBlog.

I’m not so fond of the headline, but it is what it is. The article provides one of the better summaries of the previous two weeks. I want to highlight a couple of things, though, as I don’t think people are making enough noise about this now:

Mr Bush’s personal weakness is shaming; but the structural failures in government that Katrina has revealed are perhaps more worrying. After September 11th Mr Bush poured billions into creating the Department of Homeland Security, but the department has flunked its first big test.

…

The second structural problem is Washington’s addiction to pork-barrel spending. The anti-war left is keen to blame the Iraq war for depleting government’s resources. The real problem, however, is not a lack of resources—Mr Bush has increased discretionary spending faster than any president since Lyndon Johnson—but the way they are allocated. The funding for New Orleans’s levees, which has fallen by nearly half over the past four years, started dropping in 2001—before the Iraq war, but after Bob Livingston, a Louisiana congressman and erstwhile chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, left politics under a cloud. The recent transport bill contains some $24 billion-worth of pure pork—including $231m for a “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska. Although this sort of thing is endemic in Washington, it has got far worse since the Republicans took over both the White House and Congress. (emphasis added)

A LOT of pundits often claim that the deficit is no big deal. They miss the fact that while the long term effects of a deficit are debatable, the causes of this deficit are really the issue. We hear that the President was saddled with 9/11 and that our response to that attack has been the primary cause of our large deficits. It’s not true. Think about what the Economist reported above: “Mr. Bush has increased discretionary spending faster than any president since Lyndon Johnson.” Think about that… more than Reagan, who “outspent” the Russians into oblivion. More than the surplus-generating, Internet boom Clinton presidency.

Of course, reality doesn’t matter to the modern Republican leadership. This was Tom DeLay earlier this week:

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said yesterday that Republicans have done so well in cutting spending that he declared an “ongoing victory,” and said there is simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget.

Mr. DeLay was defending Republicans’ choice to borrow money and add to this year’s expected $331 billion deficit to pay for Hurricane Katrina relief. Some Republicans have said Congress should make cuts in other areas, but Mr. DeLay said that doesn’t seem possible.

“My answer to those that want to offset the spending is sure, bring me the offsets, I’ll be glad to do it. But nobody has been able to come up with any yet,” the Texas Republican told reporters at his weekly briefing.

Asked if that meant the government was running at peak efficiency, Mr. DeLay said, “Yes, after 11 years of Republican majority we’ve pared it down pretty good.”

Congress has passed two hurricane relief bills totaling $62.3 billion, all of which will be added to the deficit.

Republican leaders have been under pressure from conservative members and outside watchdog groups to find ways to pay for the Katrina relief. Some Republicans wanted to offer an amendment, including cuts, to pay for hurricane spending but were denied the chance under procedural rules.

OMG. Please just shoot me now.

…and I don’t care.

From the CNN.com story:

“Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government and to the extent the federal government didn’t fully do its job right, I take responsibility,” Bush said during a joint news conference with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

I’ve heard people say, “About time” and “Hell must have frozen over for him to admit culpability.” Frankly, his statement is pure, worthless, feel good garbage.

Why? This is a hollow, meaningless statement, even if I did believe he was sincere, which I really don’t. Usually with responsiblity comes change or more often punishment. He didn’t acknowledge that he made an error (or that anyone did really). He didn’t try to identify where improvement can be made. He isn’t up for re-election. He didn’t resign or offer to pay for losses and suffering out of his pocket. I doubt that he will flagilate himself, go to bed without supper or even put himself in time out over this one. Nothing is going to change and there will be no punishment.

I’m pretty open to accepting blame for things if there are no consequences and I don’t have to do anything differently. You can only go up in the standings when that is the case.

The President may actually have done better, politically, if he had done this a few days ago. People on both sides of the aisle get to feel good about this one. The Dems feel like they “scored a point” and will likely press the issue less. The Reps feel like they have a true leader and his approval rating may improve. The reality is that nothing is different and there is no accountability.

Congratulation Mr. President, you snowed ‘em.

Do we pin this on the media? Sensationalism? Classism or racism? The police?

If you’re interested in these sorts of things, NPR’s All Things Considered put together a long timeline of the events leading to and following the landfall of hurricane Katrina. Atrios has links up to the transcripts and information. NPR , of course, has audio of Part 1 and Part 2. They go through most of the local and federal efforts and detail several different things I, quite frankly, didn’t know. I’ll have more on this later this weekend.

Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum has a good roundup of the Bush administrations attempt to quash reporting of the situation out of New Orleans. Apparently, if you’re being criticized for something, it’s better to hide from people than actually, say, improve what you’re doing (or explain why you aren’t screwing up, for that matter).

For all the faux comparisons to totalitarianism, this is the most real and frightening step. Between the government propaganda (see the link in my micro blog to the right), and this type of stuff, we’re becoming all the things we said were bad about the USSR and is bad about China and numerous little banana republics around the world. The reporters are providing a vital check. On this story, the TV reporters on the scene have filled their role most admirably, being agents of change and improvement. Think about it… the situation at the Superdome and the convention center all were identified and described first by the media. They didn’t spin, didn’t try to present both sides, they said loudly and honestly, “People are dying, please come help!”

The government is wrong in this instance and should back down from this policy.

Atrios highlights some commentary by Keith Olbermann, anchor at MSNBC, about the government response to Katrina. If you wanted to know why I’m so upset and concerned about the response so far, just read or watch what he says. You can see the video here (search for Olbermann).

An excerpt:

But no. The incompetence and the ludicrous prioritization will forever be symbolized by one gaffe by of the head of what is ironically called “The Department of Homeland Security”: “Louisiana is a city…”

Politician after politician — Republican and Democrat alike — has paraded before us, unwilling or unable to shut off the “I-Me” switch in their heads, condescendingly telling us about how moved they were or how devastated they were — congenitally incapable of telling the difference between the destruction of a city and the opening of a supermarket.

And as that sorry recital of self-absorption dragged on, I have resisted editorial comment. The focus needed to be on the efforts to save the stranded — even the internet’s meager powers were correctly devoted to telling the stories of the twin disasters, natural… and government-made.

But now, at least, it is has stopped getting exponentially worse in Mississippi and Alabama and New Orleans and Louisiana (the state, not the city). And, having given our leaders what we know now is the week or so they need to get their act together, that period of editorial silence I mentioned, should come to an end.

No one is suggesting that mayors or governors in the afflicted areas, nor the federal government, should be able to stop hurricanes. Lord knows, no one is suggesting that we should ever prioritize levee improvement for a below-sea-level city, ahead of $454 million worth of trophy bridges for the politicians of Alaska.

But, nationally, these are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping the country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressure the news media in this country to report the reopening of a school or a power station in Iraq, and defies its citizens not to stand up and cheer. Yet they couldn’t even keep one school or power station from being devastated by infrastructure collapse in New Orleans — even though the government had heard all the “chatter” from the scientists and city planners and hurricane centers and some group whose purposes the government couldn’t quite discern… a group called The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

And most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection — or at least amelioration — against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological.

It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.

…

“The responsibility,” of government, Churchill told the British Parliament “for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence.”

You can read the whole thing on MSNBC’s site. Let me know if that link doesn’t work, as they seem to move things around.

I’m glad he’s doing hard news instead of just sports. He was awesome when he was at ESPN.

It seems like the administration is going to participate in the finger pointing… Chertoff (head of the Dept. of Homeland Security) was on TV saying this:

MR. RUSSERT: People were stunned by a comment the president of the United States made on Wednesday, Mr. Secretary. He said, “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.” How could the president be so wrong, be so misinformed?

SEC’Y CHERTOFF: Well, I think if you look at what actually happened, I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, “New Orleans Dodged The Bullet,” because if you recall the storm moved to the east and then continued on and appeared to pass with considerable damage but nothing worse. It was on Tuesday that the levee–may have been overnight Monday to Tuesday–that the levee started to break. And it was midday Tuesday that I became aware of the fact that there was no possibility of plugging the gap and that essentially the lake was going to start to drain into the city. I think that second catastrophe really caught everybody by surprise. In fact, I think that’s one of the reasons people didn’t continue to leave after the hurricane had passed initially. So this was clearly an unprecedented catastrophe. And I think it caused a tremendous dislocation in the response effort and, in fact, in our ability to get materials to people.

I don’t think this needs much commentary, but if you want, Wonkette is as funny as can be on this subject.

I’d rather just point you all at the Newseum archive of Tuesday’s front pages.

And, I’ll leave you with this question: Why lie about this?

(and there are other incidents, like the state of emergency anonymous comment and other stuff…)

I’m already tired of the blame game. Fact is that no one looks good in the preparations going into Katrina. I just think it’s silly to focus on satellite photos of school buses or funding cuts for levee repair right now. The focus (and any criticism) should be focused on saving lives and getting supplies in. We need a dispassionate appraisal of what everyone could’ve done better later. Not now.

The Washington Post is the latest site to integrate blog commentary (provided by Technorati) into their news coverage. Well done, Technorati and WaPo.

Please, if you haven’t donated to the Red Cross or other relief agencies, consider doing so. I’ve been working so hard that I’ve had little time to read the news beyond what I hear in the background on CNN while at work. Today, I had a chance to take a long break and read news stories and reports from CNN and other news sources. The stories coming out of New Orleans are heartbreaking. Dead bodies lying in the streets, looting being the only source for food and water, and an enormous amount of damage that’s impossible for me to comprehend. New Orleans is in dire straits, one of our major and most beautiful cities. The images and reports make it seem like a third world city and the slow response by authorities seems hard to understand.

I’d also encourage people to contact their representatives and senators and encourage them to support measures to ease the burden on the affected citizens. There’s a move right now to shield affected residents of Louisiana and Mississippi from the recently passed bankruptcy bill. The school districts taking on refuge students need extra funding, too. Congress also needs to evaluate seriously whether we’re planning and staffing key agencies correctly. The head of FEMA and disaster investigators should not be political appointees but career staffers with expertise in disaster recovery. Four years after 9/11 and we still seem slow to react to a disaster like this. It’s disappointing to say the least.

I’ve been watching a lot of CNN today where the news has obviously been hurricane Katrina and the damage in Mississippi and Louisiana. It’s been amazing seeing the damage that’s happened there because of this hurricane, especially since for New Orleans this was nowhere near the worst it could have been.

I got a little irked earlier today when one of the mayors down there compared the damage to the tsunami. We had warning, the death toll is nowhere near the same as the hundred thousand plus that died in that catastrophe, and our resources are far greater. After seeing footage all day about the damage, I realize that I’ve been too hard on the mayor. This is one of the worst natural disasters to hit the U.S. that I’ve seen in my lifetime. The worst part of the whole situation is the flooding that doesn’t seem like it’s going down as fast as it might in other areas.

My thoughts and prayers go out to those that are affected. Those residents face a long road ahead to rebuild and recover. If anyone has particular charities they know about that would be good to donate to, please leave comments below. The American Red Cross web site is swamped right now, but as soon as I can donate I will be giving some money there.

People are posting photos if you want a different perspective on the thing.

Update: Kevin Drum links to a good list of relief organizations.