Work Your Brain — 09/02/06

First Some Fun

• Thursday Thirteen #3 — Baggage @ Baggage That Goes With Mine wrote thirteen reasons why the internet is better than real life. This is my favorite.
  

  11. On the internet, you can pop into a forum or a blog and tell a person that their beliefs are dumb, they should be breastfeeding, they should never co-sleep, they should divorce their husband, they should shave their legs, and they should stop wearing mom jeans. In real life, people would punch you in the face.

In Memory Of Katrina

• But you can keep them for the birds and bees — Mac @ PeskyApostrophe wonders about all of that Katrina aid money the U.S. asked for and got from other countries last year. She comes to the same conclusion I did.
  

  I’m appalled at a variety of things when it comes to the Katrina rebuilding effort and FEMA’s role in it all, but this is a whole new level of incompetence. As part of my new job, I am now involved in grant-writing. In a good portion of grants, the grantee expects a report as to how the money was used. While I’m sure these gifts did not come with any reporting requirements, if one of our grantees found out their money had been either wasted or didn’t got to the program for which it was intended that would pretty much guarantee they’d never give money to us again. And you have to wonder if, should another emergency situation arise, these countries would think twice about giving aid money to the U.S. if we’re not going to use it and use it wisely.

• First the Flood, Now the Fight — Spencer S. Hsu @ WashingtonPost.com wrote a special report on the butting of heads between FEMA and state and city officials in the rebuilding of the Gulf States and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. FEMA swears it’s not trying to be difficult but the process seems to be designed to wear down those requesting help until they just give up and either take what little they’ve been given, which isn’t much if anything.
  

  Through hundreds of such disputes large and small, the most costly disaster in U.S. history is fast becoming its most contentious, with appeals and disputes worth nearly a billion dollars bogging down repairs of critical public systems and delaying the return of residents.

  Current and former officials at all levels blame FEMA workers’ inexperience with eligibility rules, weaknesses in U.S. disaster laws and inconsistent treatment by Congress for much of the wrangling. The huge scale of the storm and honest disagreement over whether federal or local taxpayers should pay the tab add to the conflict.

  “Disasters should be difficult to declare. . . . But once you get them, FEMA should not worry about cutting costs,” said Daniel A. Craig, who stepped down in October as head of FEMA’s recovery division and is now consulting for New Orleans. “Public entities are eligible for everything they have lost due to the disaster. It is not up to FEMA to cut corners or makes sure money is saved.”

  Gil H. Jamieson, FEMA’s deputy director for Gulf Coast recovery, agreed that “we’re in this to rebuild the city” and added: “We are not in it to delay for the sake of delay. Are there folks who sometimes hose it up? Absolutely. But I think we’re doing a good job of helping it recover.”

  The disputes come as the costliest part of the recovery begins: restoring water, power, roads, bridges, schools and other public facilities along the Gulf Coast. Agency veterans said the spending will have more impact on the physical rebuilding of the Gulf area than anything else FEMA does over the next decade, possibly eclipsing its role in aiding individual victims of the storm.

  The Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans, for instance, sustained $446 million in storm losses, said Executive Director Marcia St. Martin. But FEMA has committed just $113 million so far.

  FEMA notes that New Orleans promised U.S. environmental regulators $640 million in repairs before Katrina, and that the antiquated system is too big for the Crescent City’s reduced population.

  “That’s what makes a city — if you don’t have water, sewer and drainage, you don’t have a city,” lamented Robert Jackson, spokesman for the sewer board. “The money so far only scratches the surface of the devastation.

  Hat Tip: Susie @ Suburban Guerrilla

More

Tags: Thursday Thirteen, Internet, Hurricane Katrina, FEMA, aid money, Gil H. Jamieson, Daniel A. Craig, Gulf Coast recovery, New Orleans, Islamofascism, George W. Bush, Muslims, women in the media, Support the Troops, defense appropriation bill, Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, Iraq, Afghanistan, Congress, Pentagon, Lower 9th Ward, National Hurricane Canter, 9/11, Max Mayfield, Osama bin Laden, Hezbollah, terrorism, Ann Jones, Taliban, NATO, Christians, American Dream, Martin Niemoller, Germany, Nazis, Rocky Anderson, Utah, Salt Lake Tribune, patriotism, lie, Walter Jones, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Caddam Hussein, Donald Rumsfeld

Recommended Reading - 08/08/06

• Preparing for Martial Law - Jill @ Brilliant at Breakfast reports that President Bush is trying to secretly federalize the National Guard, a move that the National Governors Association is trying to put a stop to.  This is the kind of thing a dictator would do, by the way.
• Might as well face it, they’re addicted to porn… - SpinDentist @ The All Spin Zone reports on a poll revelling what I’ve suspected all along — that there are quite a large number of self-identified Christians involving themselves with porn.  This may be why so many rightwingers are so interested in what everyone else is doing in their bedrooms.
• ABC’s Good Morning America covers story of gay Arabic speaker kicked out of military - John in DC @ AmericaBlog has a link to ABC’s Good Morning America video coverage of the story.  I’ve seen the story reported on several liberal blogs, including Pandagon, but this is the first main stream media coverage I’ve seen.  I have to agree with John that it does appear that the military does seem more interested in it’s witch hunt for homosexuals than in helping itself and in stopping the terrorists.
• Senate ratifies Europe cybercrime convention - Michael Hampton @ Homeland Stupidity reports that as of last Thursday night, “the U.S. can now spy on your Internet activity at the request of a foreign government — even if you are only doing things completely legal.”  It’s called the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime.  What does that mean?  It’s a treaty which requires its signatories to pass laws against breaking into computer systems, child pornography, Internet fraud, computer viruses, denial of service attacks and related crimes.
  

  The treaty requires the U.S. to turn over data stored by Internet Service Providers, and provide real-time interception of your Internet traffic, at the request of a foreign government, whether the offense the foreign government is investigating is a crime in the U.S. or not.

  “That means that countries that have laws limiting free speech on the Net could oblige the F.B.I. to uncover the identities of anonymous U.S. critics, or monitor their communications on behalf of foreign governments,” wrote Electronic Frontier Foundation activist coordinator Danny O’Brien. “American ISPs would be obliged to obey other jurisdictions’ requests to log their users’ behavior without due process, or compensation.”

  “And it applies not just to ‘cyber’ crimes but to digital evidence of any crime, so foreign governments now may begin using U.S. law enforcement to help them gather evidence in all kinds of cases,” wrote Cato Institute Director of Information Policy Studies Jim Harper.

• Gunning for PBS - Steve Aqui @  Donklephant writes about the GOP’s targeting of funding for NPR and PBS and how the GOP would prefer both would just disappear.  Steve points out how hypocritical the GOP is with it’s big tax cuts and it’s attempts to eliminate the estate tax and yet it claims there’s no money to help handicap children or pay for public radio and television or reduce the deficit.

Tags: PBS, NPR, GOP, Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime, ABC, Good Morning America, Christians, George W. Bush, National Guard, National Governors Association, EFF