Astrodome now in chaos with refugee crisis

[Mari]

I can't believe what I'm reading here.. or the short bits I saw on the news this morning I'm so sorry for all the people who have to go through all this!

Now I heard this newsbit, maybe you can tell me if this is correct: the money that was there to make the levees in NO safer was used instead by the Bush administration for home security and the war in Iraq..

[macfanken]

Originally Posted by Mari

I can't believe what I'm reading here.. or the short bits I saw on the news this morning I'm so sorry for all the people who have to go through all this!

Now I heard this newsbit, maybe you can tell me if this is correct: the money that was there to make the levees in NO safer was used instead by the Bush administration for home security and the war in Iraq..

Hey Mari... I heard that too... don't know if it's true. Wouldn't surprise me.

[amber]

Originally Posted by Mari

I can't believe what I'm reading here.. or the short bits I saw on the news this morning I'm so sorry for all the people who have to go through all this!

Now I heard this newsbit, maybe you can tell me if this is correct: the money that was there to make the levees in NO safer was used instead by the Bush administration for home security and the war in Iraq..

The money has been used for something else (Needless Military Spending? Corporate Subsidies? So much to choose from!) by approximately the last three or four presidents, who were all warned that the levees needed improvement, (since at least Camille, I think) and that it was a disaster waiting to happen. The funding was cut/not granted/used for something else. Basically, all the presidents said it wasn't as important as whatever they spent it on.

[Mari]

Originally Posted by amber

The money has been used for something else (Needless Military Spending? Corporate Subsidies? So much to choose from!) by approximately the last three or four presidents, who were all warned that the levees needed improvement, (since at least Camille, I think) and that it was a disaster waiting to happen. The funding was cut/not granted/used for something else. Basically, all the presidents said it wasn't as important as whatever they spent it on.

So not just Bush then. I guess it often takes a disaster like this before money actually comes.

[macfanken]

Mari, here is an editorial from the New York Times that talks a little bit about the funding cuts...



A Can't-Do Government

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: September 2, 2005
Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. "The New Orleans hurricane scenario," The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001, "may be the deadliest of all." It described a potential catastrophe very much like the one now happening.

So why were New Orleans and the nation so unprepared? After 9/11, hard questions were deferred in the name of national unity, then buried under a thick coat of whitewash. This time, we need accountability.

First question: Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive? Katrina hit five days ago - and it was already clear by last Friday that Katrina could do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you'd expect from an advanced country never happened. Thousands of Americans are dead or dying, not because they refused to evacuate, but because they were too poor or too sick to get out without help - and help wasn't provided. Many have yet to receive any help at all.

There will and should be many questions about the response of state and local governments; in particular, couldn't they have done more to help the poor and sick escape? But the evidence points, above all, to a stunning lack of both preparation and urgency in the federal government's response.

Even military resources in the right place weren't ordered into action. "On Wednesday," said an editorial in The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., "reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics. Playing basketball and performing calisthenics!"

Maybe administration officials believed that the local National Guard could keep order and deliver relief. But many members of the National Guard and much of its equipment - including high-water vehicles - are in Iraq. "The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission," a Louisiana Guard officer told reporters several weeks ago.

Second question: Why wasn't more preventive action taken? After 2003 the Army Corps of Engineers sharply slowed its flood-control work, including work on sinking levees. "The corps," an Editor and Publisher article says, citing a series of articles in The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, "never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain."

In 2002 the corps' chief resigned, reportedly under threat of being fired, after he criticized the administration's proposed cuts in the corps' budget, including flood-control spending.

Third question: Did the Bush administration destroy FEMA's effectiveness? The administration has, by all accounts, treated the emergency management agency like an unwanted stepchild, leading to a mass exodus of experienced professionals.

Last year James Lee Witt, who won bipartisan praise for his leadership of the agency during the Clinton years, said at a Congressional hearing: "I am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to disasters has been sharply eroded. I hear from emergency managers, local and state leaders, and first responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and worked well with has now disappeared."

I don't think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the military wasn't rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same reason nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control was neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn't get adequate armor.

At a fundamental level, I'd argue, our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.

Yesterday Mr. Bush made an utterly fantastic claim: that nobody expected the breach of the levees. In fact, there had been repeated warnings about exactly that risk.

So America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can't-do government that makes excuses instead of doing its job. And while it makes those excuses, Americans are dying.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by Mari

I can't believe what I'm reading here.. or the short bits I saw on the news this morning I'm so sorry for all the people who have to go through all this!

Now I heard this newsbit, maybe you can tell me if this is correct: the money that was there to make the levees in NO safer was used instead by the Bush administration for home security and the war in Iraq..

I was born there. So many memories. I am devastated but in my heart reslient - deep in it. I just keep praying to God to show us the way back.

[Mari]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

I was born there. So many memories. I am devastated but in my heart reslient - deep in it. I just keep praying to God to show us the way back.

That must be hard, Jason. I look at the pictures of New Orleans and it's hard to grasp that that city will never look the same again, but if you actually know those people & places, man..

If you hear about people going there to bring food, there's still goodness out there though, you know.

thanks for the article, Ken, will read later, work now, ahum

[SuzeQuze]

Originally Posted by macfanken

Hey Mari... I heard that too... don't know if it's true. Wouldn't surprise me.

It is true. Last year they asked for 40 million and Bush cut it to 10. Where else could the money have gone but to Iraq? They also lifted the restrictons on destroying the marshland around NO that was helping to protect it. That marshland is nearly gone now.

The feds have been ignoring this for a long time though so it is not all Dubya's fault but he does have to take some of the blame. To say no one knew this would happen is an insult to all of those people in NO. My heart is so broken. If the people left there were mostly white this response would have been different, IMO, and I am beyond disgusted by that.

[GateandGarden]

Originally Posted by Nixxxed

I really don't know why they're turning away citizen donations, unless they want them to go through a clearinghouse to be safety-checked. No explanation was ever given.

On the news, they asked us not to donate any more clothes. This was just as I was thinking about all the clothes I have that I could give. We're talking about a lot of people who lost all of their belongings; they need clothes! I heard stories about some shelters having people who didn't even have one entire outfit! It's hard for me to understand why clothes are being turned down.

[GateandGarden]

Originally Posted by Mari

That must be hard, Jason. I look at the pictures of New Orleans and it's hard to grasp that that city will never look the same again, but if you actually know those people & places, man..

I can't believe it. I won't believe it until I see it and who knows when I'll see it. New Orleans, Biloxi, and Gulfport are my homes away from home. I haven't been very many places and those places are my favorites. Or they were.

[Nixxxed]

Originally Posted by macfanken

Mari, here is an editorial from the New York Times that talks a little bit about the funding cuts...

That's an amazing summation. Thank you for posting.

[Nixxxed]

Originally Posted by GateandGarden

On the news, they asked us not to donate any more clothes. This was just as I was thinking about all the clothes I have that I could give. We're talking about a lot of people who lost all of their belongings; they need clothes! I heard stories about some shelters having people who didn't even have one entire outfit! It's hard for me to understand why clothes are being turned down.

After I signed off last night, they had video on the local news of many Houstonians who had seen the coverage (at midnight last night), and had rushed to the Astrodome. If the Astrodome was gonna turn the buses away, these people were going to offer their spare rooms to the refugees. It was amazing.

I also just saw a blip on Fox, I think, where they were calling for more "plus-sized clothing". I don't know if that's the reason they are turning away clothes or not. Maybe they just don't have room to store all the donations if they can't be used. I still don't understand, but I'm *trying* to keep an open mind and good attitude - notice I said trying.

And my parents and I would love to go to the Dome to volunteer - we just can't afford the gas to get there right now. It would be close to 100 miles round-trip.

[reebokandlace]

Originally Posted by amber

Bush is saying no one could have predicted levy would break, NO says they have been warning of exactly that since the 1960's.

New Orleans city planning commission have had 10,000 body bags in a storage bunker since the 80's because they knew that this would happen someday.

[GateandGarden]

Originally Posted by Nixxxed

I also just saw a blip on Fox, I think, where they were calling for more "plus-sized clothing". I don't know if that's the reason they are turning away clothes or not. Maybe they just don't have room to store all the donations if they can't be used. I still don't understand, but I'm *trying* to keep an open mind and good attitude - notice I said trying.

Well, I wish I could bring that somewhere, 'cause all I've got are sizes 12 through 18.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by Nixxxed

Earlier today, the officials refused to let samaritans drop off food, water, and supplies/goodies to them. One guy showed up with two entire barbeque pits of fully cooked barbeque, and several coolers of hot dogs, and they wouldn't let him take them inside or hand them out on the ground.

So, he set up across the street on the sidewalk, and people walked across the street (in the mid-day blazing sun, mind you) just to get a bite.

Good for him. That is really the spirit of America and Americans.