Work Your Brain — 11/1/06

Tales of the Detainee Kind

• The Case Of Bilal Hussein — Justin Gardner @ Donklephant reports on Bilal Hussein, an AP war photographer, accused by the U.S. military of helping some insurgents kidnap a couple journalists. Only those journalists have been rescued and they say Hussein is a hero. The AP wants to know why he’s been detained since April with no charges having been filed against him while right-wing bloggers call for his head.
  

  Six months is more than enough time to get some facts together and make a case against Hussein. The military hasn’t done that, and they should…or else they should release Hussein without charge.

  As Gardner points out, Hussein isn’t the first journalist to be treated as such.

  More

  Tags: detainees, Bilal Hussein, Abdul Rahim Al Ginco, Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo, al-Qaeda, Insurrection Act, FEMA, Lynne Cheney, Bill O'Reilly, liberals, rightwingers, patriotism, pragmatism, American soldiers, Republicans, Democrats, GOP, Georgia, Genital Cutting, abortion, pro-choice, pro-life, TSA, airport security, bomb-making materials, Christopher Soghoian, Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research, Indiana University, fake boarding passes, Ed Markey, FBI, Police State

  comments See also in Politics & Causes, In the News, Geekery, Blogging & Other Blogs, The World, 9-11 & Terrorism, Iraq & Afghanistan, Hurricane Katrina, Natural Disasters, Women's Rights, The Middle East

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 — Hurricane Katrina Edition

• Photographer for ‘Times-Pic’ Arrested As He Begs Cops to Kill Him — @ Editor&Publisher
  

  NEW YORK A photographer for the Times-Picayune of New Orleans who has undergone severe personal trauma since Hurricana Katrina hit was arrested Tuesday after trying to get police to shoot him to death. Police said he claimed he was depressed after he found out he didn’t have enough insurance money to rebuild his Katrina-damaged home.
  
  They said he was seeking “suicide-by-cop,” but police who found him tasered him instead.

• Formaldehyde in FEMA travel trailers making people sick — Michael Hampton @ Homeland Stupidity
  

  Some travel trailers issued to victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year by the Federal Emergency Management Agency are emitting potentially dangerous levels of formaldehyde, an industrial chemical used in their manufacture which some residents say is making them sick.

  In Mississippi alone, FEMA has received 46 complaints from people who say they have been affected by symptoms of formaldehyde exposure, including eye, nose, and throat irritation, nausea and breathing difficulties. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, formaldehyde has been found to cause cancer in rats and may cause cancer in humans.

• What was that about Republican successes? — Pam Spalding @ Pandagon
  

  R. Neal at Facing South points to matters that we cannot let Republicans try to walk away from as they attempt to talk about this administration and this Congress’s “accomplishments.”

  How feeble and tragic is this — nearly a year after Katrina, the situation with temporary housing is still a flipping mess.

  It has been 11 months since Hurricane Katrina hit and Janice Tambrella still does not have a home. She doesn’t even have a trailer of her own.

  Tambrella is currently jammed in with 10 other relatives in a single trailer delivered to a luckier relative. Sleeping on the floor, living out of cars surrounded by overgrown grass and storm-felled trees, she sighs, “I need a place to stay.”

  Nearly 1,200 St. Bernard Parish families are still waiting to get into trailers that sit locked on their home sites but need utilities or other services; another 400 families waiting for trailers have none at all, FEMA said.

  BTW, 10,000 FEMA trailers are rotting away in the Arkansas mud (your wallet is $1 billion lighter for that travesty), and even worse, Dear Leader’s government has unused, undeployed trailers sitting right there in Louisiana.

Tags: Hurricane Katrina, politics, Times-Picayune, FEMA, Republicans

Recommended Reading

• Censorship is “Just a Policy” — All Spin Zone blogged about how FEMA won’t let trailer residents give media intervies without a FEMA chaparone.
• Third time’s not the charm: Sunday-morning talk shows still imbalanced — Media Matter’s study proving that Sunday talk shows are far from so-called liberal media. In fact, it’s been over a decade since they’ve been anywhere near balanced near that direction. The statistics clearly show that if it’s Sunday, it must be a Conservative guest.
• There was another report of Homeland Security’s TALON database being misused to store student anti-war and anti-military recruitment protestors in the news. (Hat tip AmericaBlog)
• Right-Wing Attacks American Evacuees: ‘Ingrates,’ ‘Whining,’ ‘Spoiled-Rotten Little Children’ — ThinkProgress.org reported on Fox News childish, incompassionate, extremely unprofessional journalism. No wonder, the average right-winger thinks this is appropriate behavior. The comment section is worth a read, but be sure you have some time set aside to sit and read it all.
• Israelis and Lebanese talking…on the net — ThinkProgress.org also reports abouts about Israelis and Lebanese who would rather not be bombing each other but would instead prefer something more peaceful reaching out to each other via the Internet. Too bad those aren’t the ones in charge…
• 128 — the number out of 400,000 frozen embryos that have been adopted, according to ThinkProgress.org. I suppose that leaves 399,872 that could be used to help find cures for cancer, AIDS, and who knows what else that’s killing Americans and other people across the globe.
• Italy is considering serving the US with extradition papers for 26 CIA agents for the abduction of an Islamist cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, known as Abu Omar, who was seized from Milan 3 years ago, taken to Egypt, and tortured. [Guardian Unlimited]

Tags: FEMA, liberal media, TALON, Homeland Security, Fox News, Israel, Lebanon, Veto, World Peace, stem cell research, Middle East, Italy, Abu Omar

New FEMA Guidelines For The 9th Ward

Tags: FEMA, cartoons, New Orleans

FEMA’s Double Standard

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Secretary of State Al Ater wants to know why the federal government agreed to pay for New York City’s municipal elections after Sept. 11, 2001, but refuses to pay for New Orleans’ elections after Hurricane Katrina.

FEMA recently turned down Louisiana’s request for the extra $3-4 million it will take to hold the April 22 New Orleans municipal elections, rescheduled in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

But the agency shelled out $7.9 million after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks delayed New York City’s elections.

Ater said it’s a double standard.

“After the election, I’m going to dedicate my life to this,” Ater said. “I’m going to become very obsessive-compulsive about it.”

Orleans Parish doesn’t have the money to pay even the normal elections cost of $400,000 for the city. FEMA said the additional elections costs are outside the agency’s authority and U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has not responded to a request to meet with the secretaries of state of Louisiana, Mississippi or Alabama.

FEMA spokesman Manuel Broussard of Baton Rouge said he would look into the issue, but the agency did not respond. [“FEMA won’t pay for New Orleans Election” (Nola.com)]

Let’s not forget that more than 50% of  Katrina victims are still displaced as well and while displaced Iraqis outside of Iraq were provided poling stations, displaced Katrina victims in places like Houston, Memphis and Atlanta with large concentrations of New Orleans minorities will not have the same courtesy.

Tags: vote, FEMA, Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans

FEMA Deems Condemned Homes “Habitable”, Denies Assistance

The incompentance is just never ending. Thank God, for Houston’s Mayor Bill White!

A New Orleans house flattened but for a concrete staircase on a crumbling facade was among many storm-ravaged structures that federal officials deemed fit for occupancy by Katrina victims now living in Houston, Mayor Bill White said Friday.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has notified about 8,900 heads of households in Houston, representing more than 20,000 Katrina evacuees, that they will be ineligible for the cash assistance intended to replace a massive city voucher program that has paid their rent.

A common reason was that the evacuees’ former homes were now habitable.

A team from Houston’s Hurricane Housing Task Force, however, conducted a spot check of 43 New Orleans homes deemed “habitable” by FEMA and found 70 percent unfit for occupancy, White said Friday after a briefing by the team.

“Some of our worst fears were realized,” White said. “Many of these notices were simply in error. The vast majority of the structures we inspected were not habitable by any standard.”

The Houston team found 13 homes habitable and 30 uninhabitable, White said.

The city released photographs showing apartments and houses, including the one with little standing but the stairway, in severe disrepair. One apartment building, surrounded by a chain link fence, had been condemned, White said.

Read the rest…

Tags: FEMA, Hurricane Katrina, Houston, New Orleans, Bill White

Save New Orleans

“This is enormously frustrating to me,” said Sen. David Vitter, R-La. “I’ve been telling them since last November that they’ve sought way too little money for essential levee work.”[“L.A. Wants More Levee Money — And Quick (NOLA.com)]

Last week the Army Corps of Engineers announced new estimates of an additional $6 billion would be needed to raise and repair the levees to protect the New Orleans area from a major hurricane. According to this article in the Times-Picayune, while the east bank of Orleans Parish has financing for levees that would meet the necessary certification by 2010, $3 billion in improvements are still needed to bring Algiers, eastern New Orleans, the Lower 9th Ward, West Jefferson, and most of Jefferson Parish’s east bank, St. Charles Parish, Belle Chasse and Lower Coast Algiers to the appropriate protection levels; plus $3 billion more would be needed for Plaquemines Parish alone.

President Bush’s Gulf Coast recovery coordinator, Donald Powell, told reporters that the administration will decide in the next two weeks whether to request the additional money — nearly three times what the administration said was needed just a month ago.

But at a closed-door meeting in the Capitol late Thursday, Louisiana lawmakers said they told Powell that they want a commitment by Tuesday, the day the Senate Appropriations Committee is to take up an emergency hurricane spending bill.

A new request from the president is critical to the release of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s long-awaited flood-elevation maps, which will give residents and businesses an indication about whether to rebuild in the region. Property behind the upgraded levees could see relatively minor changes in elevation requirements, subject primarily to more typical flooding. Those areas without improved levees would have to build substantially higher to account for flooding and storm surge. [“L.A. Wants More Levee Money — And Quick (NOLA.com)]

However, Bush and gang is making no promises. In fact, a supplemental spending bill for hurricane recovery has already passed the House and it doesn’t include the costs of the new estimates.

Now, the administration is saying that to protect against a “100-year flood,” up to $6 billion more could be needed.

According to an analysis by the corps, that figure could be cut dramatically if the state is willing to make an excruciating choice: Leave some portions of southeast Louisiana without full protection against a hurricane with a 1 percent chance of hitting the area during any hurricane season.

About 98 percent of the New Orleans area population could be protected at a cost of $3 billion, but that would leave out increased protection for the 14,725 residents of Plaquemines Parish, according to the analysis.

[…]

“If you say you aren’t going to protect lower Plaquemines, what’s next? Lower Terrebonne? Lower Lafourche? And then what, the middle parts?” asked a visibly angry Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., as she walked out of the meeting with Powell and Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, commander of the corps. “Seven months after Katrina, they still don’t realize they have a bill to pay. They don’t want to pay it.”

Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, who represents Plaquemines Parish, said that basing decisions on population overlooks the economic significance of the parishes that dip into the Gulf of Mexico.

“This is about people, the nation’s energy production and fisheries,” Melancon said. “People don’t seem to realize the importance of south Louisiana.”[“L.A. Wants More Levee Money — And Quick (NOLA.com)]

So, it’s all about the numbers today. Nevermind the photo-ops and the promises and the mistakes. Nevermind the hundreds of nameless dead or the thousands of displaced and homeless. Imagine if this was your home; imagine if this was where your family had lived for a hundred years; imagine if everything you knew and everything everyone you ever knew wasn’t worth protecting or rebuilding or even considering by the government you pay your taxes to.

Don’t think it can’t be you. You need to stand up for New Orleans and Plaquemines and Louisiana now before you’re sitting on the doorstep of a closed FEMA shelter wondering where your tax dollars went when that tornado/earthquake/forest fire/ice storm/flood/etc. destroyed your neighborhood too.

Contact your Senator.

Contact your House Representative.
Hat tip to First Draft.

Further reading: “Levee Repair Costs Triple” - Washington Post

Tags: Hurricane Katrina, David Vitter, New Orleans, Plaquenines, Louisiana, FEMA, Army Corps of Engineers, Times-Picayune, George W. Bush

Holy Deja Crap! American Detention Centers?

Holy crap.

Halliburton Subsidiary Gets Contract to Add Temporary Immigration Detention Centers
By Rachel L. Swarns
New York Times
February 4, 2006

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — The Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a contract worth up to $385 million for building temporary immigration detention centers to Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary that has been criticized for overcharging the Pentagon for its work in Iraq.

KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space, company executives said. KBR, which announced the contract last month, had a similar contract with immigration agencies from 2000 to last year. [“Halliburton detention camp contract: cause for alarm?”]

This just sends a chill down my spine. When I read it, all I could think was “Where have I read this before?

Oh, yes.

In 1984, FEMA tested it’s wartime crisis strategy in conjuction with Pentagon maneuvers. Their “readiness exercise” was code named Rex-84. FEMA’s part of the simulation had to do with an international crisis set off by a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua which resulted in a swarm of refugees coming in over the Mexican border into the U.s. According to an article in Penthouse (August 1985), during the exercise FEMA would simulate rounding up some 400,000 fictional “aliens” in a six-hour period and detaining them in military camps thoughout the U.S. FEMA justified the detention camps by suggesting that terrorist moles could be among the refugees. However, according to one of the co-authors of that Penthouse article, the terrain of the Mexican border made such a huge influx of hundreds of thousands of people highly unlikely.

If that’s the case, who exactly was FEMA interested in rounding up?

Some critics believe that Rex-84 was actually a simulation to practice rounding up Americans in large numbers — probably those “flaming hippies, militant minorities, and draft-dodging radicals of the 60’s and early 70’s, not to mention possible protestors of a controversial government invasion of Central America. Not a far leap in logic when you consider the fact that in 1970, Giuffrida had written a paper devising a hypothetical plan to detain black radicals in detention camps. [“FEMA’s Dark History”]

The “plan” last time was to set FEMA up to declare martial law during any kind of crisis and have it take over the government — comforting considering how well it’s been doing with hurricane disaster and recovery.

Forget Gitmo, Bush & company are blatantly planning and building concentration camps for dissidents now — and remember, dissidents are anyone who doesn’t agree 100% with every single thing that Bush’s administration claims is the right thing, even if it totally disagrees with what they said last week.

1984, anyone?

Folks, this administration is very semi-quietly putting everything in place so that one day we are going to wake up and discover that we are living in a police state and our civil liberties are gone! And if you think that living like that is worth the empty promises of a President and his political party that terrorists won’t attack again on our soil, you might as well be a slave now. What kind of life is that? Let me tell you something. The terrorists are winning. They’re winning because what they wanted was to affect us, to change us, to enslave us, to force us to give up our freedoms. They might not be sitting on a throne dishing out the rules from our own capital, but they might as well be if we are willing to sacrifice the very freedoms that we prided ourselves on, taunted the Iron Curtain with, and claim we want to bring to the rest of the world.
Say goodbye to the Land of the Free. There’ll be a law against freedom soon.

Tags: politics, Halliburton, Conspiracy Theories, Homeland Security, immigration, FEMA

Supply & Demand - The Curse of Hurricane Katrina

One of the most frustrating things I’ve heard and read a lot recently is the complaint that Katrina Evacuees are mooching off the system when they should just get on with their lives and get jobs.

People like to point out that there are a lot of jobs in New Orleans right now. Why just about every business has a sign out that they are hiring. Anyone who claims they can’t find work must be moochers.
Meanwhile, people who are working in the city are getting kicked out of their hotels because FEMA won’t pay anymore. FEMA is handing out rent vouchers so folks can move into more “permanent” temporary housing. These are people who had places to live before Katrina. Some of them have houses they are trying to repair or rebuild. Part of the problem is that there is very little rental housing actually available in the city because of the devestation of that same hurricane. Those apartments and such that managed to survive in tact or have been repaired are already rented or are rental rates higher than what FEMA is handing out.

If these people are working why can’t they afford to pay their own rent? I imagine because they are also trying to recover from the financial and material devestation heaped on them as a result of this tragedy. I imagine that it’s difficult to work, buy food, pay bills, pay rent, pay a mortgage for a house too damaged to live in, pay for repairs your insurance company is refusing to reimburse you for, and repurchase your wardrobe, your necessities, and your life.

And what about those trailers FEMA promised? I have a friend who finally was told last month she could have one if she could find a place for it. Since she was living on rental property before the hurricane, she doesn’t have a place for it unfortunately, and FEMA has said she can’t put it on her parent’s property because there’s not enough space on the lot. Hundreds of empty trailers are sitting on large parcels of land all across the country and FEMA is paying rent to the owners of that land, while Katrina victims go homeless.

But what about those that are being kicked out of those hotels again? Those that have jobs in the city but no where to live? Some of them are planning on staying in their cars while others are going to the nearest shelter — in Shreveport 5 hours away. Some are having to return to their original evacuation locations like Houston, Memphis and Atlanta. So that’s more people who are being exiled from the city, more empty jobs…

And what about those countless vacant jobs? Most of the jobs that are advertising are minimum wage or manual labor. What about those New Orleans residents with degrees and experience in other things? Would you expect a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant to find work at McDonald’s or Target just so they could stay in the city or would you expect them to find work elsewhere?

And from there, we have a circle. Those who would work those available jobs can not afford the cost of what little housing there is and those that would be able to afford the cost if they had the jobs they are educated and experienced at are unable to find work in the current market.

The government keeps talking about how they need to bring the city back to life, but with no housing and no support, how do they expect people to return and stay?

Tags: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, politics, FEMA

Seems Like Only A Year Ago FEMA Knew What It Was Doing…But That Was In An Election Year, Wasn’t It?

This just pisses me off. Apparently, natural disasters are only important in Presidential election years. God, this makes the whole fuck-up look less like incompetance and more like a general lack of caring and compassion. It just gets worse and worse, doesn’t it?

Imagine if, in advance of Hurricane Katrina, thousands of trucks had been waiting with water and ice and medicine and other supplies. Imagine if 4,000 National Guardsmen and an equal number of emergency aid workers from around the country had been moved into place, and five million meals had been ready to serve. Imagine if scores of mobile satellite-communications stations had been prepared to move in instantly, ensuring that rescuers could talk to one another. Imagine if all this had been managed by a federal-and-state task force that not only directed the government response but also helped coordinate the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and other outside groups.

Actually, this requires no imagination: it is exactly what the Bush administration did a year ago when Florida braced for Hurricane Frances. Of course the circumstances then were very special: it was two months before the presidential election, and Florida’s twenty-seven electoral votes were hanging in the balance. It is hardly surprising that Washington ensured the success of “the largest response to a natural disaster we’ve ever had in this country.” The president himself passed out water bottles to Floridians driven from their homes. [“Things Left Undone”]

I hope the displacement of thousands of voting populace completely skews elections for the next four years.

Hat tip to The Nitpicker.

Tags: politics, FEMA, Hurricane Katrina, incompetence

Republicans Gone Wild

Remember that scene in Galaxy Quest where the crew of Protector, while looking for something to power the damaged ship, come across an apparently abandoned mine; only it’s not abandoned as they soon discover. There are these cute innocent-looking little blue-green aliens that look just E.T. precious. Then a poor little injured cute alien arrives and it looks like the others are going to help him get a drink of water.

Suddenly they visciously turn on him in a most cannibalistic manner…

That’s what the reports of Michael Brown’s testimony regarding FEMA’s failures with FEMA reminded me of.

“I’m happy you left,” said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn. “Because that kind of, you know, look in the lights like a deer tells me that you weren’t capable to do the job.”

Unfortunately, most Democrats chose to boycott the hearing because they wanted an independent investigation and not one led by Republicans, which admittedly does seem like a conflict of interest. However, by not being present and not participating in large numbers, they leave the impression of a lack of spine, something the non-Republican populace has been reluctantly and begrudgedly realizing of late. Worse, the Republicans turning on their own come off as the heroes in the story, though after the fact. By standing up for the Katrina-affected and pointing out the failures of the former FEMA Director, those Republicans, breaking with the party brainwashing, they’re doing what the liberals believe the Democrats should be doing.

Maybe the Republicans will pull out of this, even if the Administration doesn’t…

By the way, here’s one thing that Michael Brown said that made me laugh.

“My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional,” Brown told a special panel set up by House Republican leaders to investigate the catastrophe. which killed more than 1,000 people across Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

It should have been a given that Louisiana is dysfunctional. The natives have known it for decades. It’s part of the charm.

Tags: FEMA, Republicans, Michael Brown, Hurricane Katrina

Bush’s Hurricane Catch-22

A co-worker pointed out this morning that President Bush is damned-if-he-does-and-damned-if-he-doesn’t in this whole Hurricane Rita thing. Already he’s been making more of a show of interest regarding Rita than he did regarding Katrina.

If his administration and their underlings like FEMA are more on the ball with the Rita recovery, some will say that he learned from his mistakes less than a month ago, but some will say that he’s showing his home state, a state with a Republican Governor, preferential treatment while leaving the state with a Democratic Governor to drown in quicksand…or swampland.

However, if FEMA and Bush’s administration bungles about as they have been with Katrina, then he’ll be blamed for their and his own incompetence and that could be the nail in his popularity coffin.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens.

Tags: George W. Bush, Hurricane Rita, Hurricane Katrina, FEMA

FEMA: The New Four-Letter F-Word

I spoke with El last night. If you think Louisiana and the Gulf Coast looks chaotic from the comfort of your living room, you’re under-estimating the chaos. She has become extremely frustrated with both Red Cross and FEMA — though interestingly, she recognizes that Red Cross is made up of volunteers and FEMA is not and therefore holds more bitterness for FEMA.

With Red Cross, it just seems like not everyone knows what’s going on. For one thing, she’s supposed to contact her local Red Cross center (not shelter) for help, but the center for her area is in New Orleans. When she called Baton Rouge’s center to ask where she could get a eye glass voucher (she was wearing disposable contacts when she evac’d for what she thought would be a few days) and they told her that they had a long-time understanding with Lenscrafters and she should call them. When she called Lenscrafters, they knew nothing about it but had heard that the Red Cross was giving out vouchers.

Anyway, she also can’t get through to that 800 number Red Cross launched last week to offer some financial aid. She and her family have all taken turns calling throughout the night even. So, next week, she and her mother are driving back to Memphis where they had received a lot of help from Red Cross immediately after the hurricane.

As for FEMA, well, she called them to ask about rent voucher since it’s unlikely she’ll be able to get back to her apartment any time soon as it had been underwater in New Orleans. She was told that she can’t have the rent vouchers until after her building is inspected. Her response to me was “That could take years at the rate things are going!” Quite frankly I think that FEMA needs to rethink their rules there. After all, they have more than a whole city to inspect and people have to live somewhere. $2000 per household (not per person) is not going to go far and people are being discouraged from staying in shelters.

She also told me an interesting bit of news from down South. Apparently, the sheriff’s department in Plaquemines Parish has been running since the hurricane without pay 24/7 and they’ve been begging FEMA for financial aid for the last week. They can’t even afford payroll. Sheriff Hingle threatened to pull his entire department off the job and send them home tonight if they didn’t receive funding to continue. (I love those southern Louisiana sheriffs!)

Apparently, Governor Blanco stepped up to the bat and handed Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parishes a combined $16.5 million from the state’s general fund — though she is still hoping to get reimbursement. [“State sends money to keep St. Bernard, Plaquemines Sheriffs Going (KATC3)”]
Now, St. Bernard and Plaquemines are located along the lower reaches of the Mississippi River and were at the point of landfall for Hurricane Katrina. They were among the areas with the heaviest damage. Why then are they having to beg for help still? Why are they being ignored by FEMA?

My father says if you listen to the “local” radio station(s), you hear more and more hatred for FEMA and it’s incompetence and it’s lack of co-ordination. He said, “FEMA is a four-letter word down there.”

It does make you wonder what exactly they’re doing…

Tags: FEMA, Gulf Coast, Red Cross, New Orleans, Kathleen Blanco

IceGate Continues…

An article in Michigan’s The Gloucester Daily Times today tells more about FEMA’s confusing ice issues. The article breaks down the costs indicating that in the end, the government will pay more than $4 for each of the thousands of five-pound bags of ice that would have cost us $1.50 each at the gas station or convenience store; plus, it will cost close to $1 billion in trucking for the $2 million worth of ice.

The initial problem was that too much ice was ordered by FEMA for areas that had been evacuated. As a result, some truckers have driven over 3,000 miles in journeys that, if mapped out, might look like one of Billy’s wanderings in Family Circus.

The money being spent to move the ice around the country is much larger than the cost of simply making more, said Scott Memhard, president of Cape Pond Ice on Commercial Street.

“The worst part is that there are people on the Gulf Coast that still need this ice, but FEMA is apparently not set up to distribute it to them,” he said in an e-mail yesterday. [“Ice Bill Getting Higher (The Gloucester Daily Times)”]

Here’s what the truckloads of ice shipped to Gloucester are costing taxpayers. The Army Corps of Engineers ordered 169.4 million pounds of ice for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts:

$900 — Some truckers’ pay per day

$2 — Some truckers’ pay per mile traveled

26 cents — Cost per pound of ice

$12,480 — Highest estimate of a truckload of ice

$44,044,000 — Total cost just for ice for relief efforts [“Ice Bill Getting Higher (The Gloucester Daily Times)”]

And some of the hired truckers are confused and angry with the situation. They feel as though they’ve been given the run-around, not to mention that many of them wanted to help the areas that were affected.

Tags: FEMA, incompetence

The Ice Stays

Last night on the Fox network’s local news affiliate, there was quite a bit of reporting on the fact that $4 million of ice meant for Hurricane Katrina-affected areas is now in Portland, ME, after days and even weeks of being hauled about the country from Indianapolis to the South to New England. After paying drivers $800 a day for this bizarre trek, FEMA has rented refrigerated warehouses in Portland, Chicago and other cities to store the ice until November 30th, the last day of hurricane season. Local reporters were unable to learn what the cost of storing the ice might be, but they also indicated that no plans for the ice after Novemember 30th have been made.

The drivers of the ice trucks as well as many locals here in New England are wondering why FEMA appears to be wasting money that could be used in helping families in need.

Tags: Hurricane Katrina, FEMA

Ice For Katrina Victims Comes To Portland, ME

Remember back in the 80’s when it came out that the military/government was spending some ungodly amount of money on items the rest of us could pick up at the local hardware store for less than $20? Hammers and toilet seats for hundreds of dollars each? Remember feeling like the government was wasting our tax money?

Now imagine that the government is paying a man $800 per day to take a truckload of ice from Indianapolis to Meridian, MS, where instead of delivering the ice to Katrina victims, he was told to take it to Selma, Ms. However, he didn’t get to deliver the ice to Katrina victims there either. Instead he was then sent to Portland, ME, where the ice is being unloaded into a cold warehouse along with the ice from over 200 other trucks, some of which were ordered to sit in Atlanta for a week.

And Portland isn’t the only Northeastern city welcoming large numbers of trucks of ice redirected by FEMA. [“No Crisis, But Maine Getting Plenty Of Ice”]

All of that wasted money certainly could have gone to families who’ve lost everything in the disaster.

Now, Winter’s coming…what is Portland going to do with all of that ice?

Tags: Hurricane Katrina, FEMA

Rumors Running Rampant

Am I the only one who’s noticed that since the start of the 24/7 news broadcasts of Hurrican Katrina and it’s aftermath, almost all of the news media outlets have resorted to reactionary reporting? It seems like all they’re reporting is rumors, most of which have come to light as being untrue. I’m so disappointed in all news media that where I was wary before, I now know I can’t trust any of them, which is even more frustrating.

The latest I heard was that FEMA was going to stop handing out the $2k debit cards and mail the checks to the non-existant addresses. This is a half-truth. FEMA is going to stop handing out the $2K debit cards and direct deposit the money into people’s checking or savings accounts. The stupidity of the rumor is just obnoxious. I know that FEMA really screwed up, but really to think that they are that inept?

Anyway, what’s worse is that I’m seeing these rumors showing up as reactionary blogging in blogs I once respected.

This complete breakdown is a symptom of something larger, I think.

I’m tired of it. I’ve even started asking friends passing rumors for their sources.

Tags: Hurricane Katrina, rumors, FEMA, blogs

The 911 From My Red Cross Contact In Houston

I spoke with my mother tonight. She is apparently dealing with infection control there in Houston. She somehow fell into a management position that only she can do though she says she’s not truly qualified — I don’t believe her on that. Anyway, I thought I’d share some of her tidbits.

• People claiming to be medical folk are coming out of the woodwork there. Nurses are showing up at the Astrodome without any prior warning. Red Cross cannot use these instant volunteers as Red Cross medical-type volunteers must go through prior clinical background checks among other things. Unfortunately, not every organization dealing with the relief is that strict and apparently a suspected mentally ill man presented himself as a doctor and then barracaded himself in a room in the Astrodome for two days after he was trusted to perform medical tasks.If you are a medical-type person wanting to volunteer, it’s best to do so through your local hospital in the 2nd or 3rd wave of medical-types going down there. In fact, there will be a large number of medical “clinics” set up for Katrina victims and manned by hospitals (including the one I work for).
• My mother heard a rumor that some of the prisoners who were being evac’d escaped into the general population but she stressed that it was just a rumor. She has not heard that from any official-type sources.
• My mother heard the rumor that there was an outbreak of cholera in the Astrodome. That is absolutely not true. While some people have experienced diarrhea, that is expected in cases where people have been dehydrated, starved, and in filfth for days.
• There was a rumor today that FEMA was going to be handing out checks at the Astrodome. Thousands of people tried to storm the Astrodome and there had to be a lockdown where even Red Cross people could not enter or leave.
• I mentioned to my mother about collecting used books and such to send to the victims and she suggested this was a bad idea. This apparently causes more work than is necessary as everything sent has to be sorted and there are hundreds of volunteers who are just sorting all day through clothes and other donations in the Astrodome. She said that money is better as Red Cross or whomever the money is sent to can be spent on items that do not require as much processing and often they hand out gift cards with that money so the purchases can be tracked and the victims can buy things they need, not what they’re told they need.

By the way, in case I haven’t mentioned it, my mother really is my hero. I told her so tonight too. I found an article online from her local paper that was all about her and her good works. I’m sure she’s pleased they published her age.

Also, my mother stressed that it’s time to stop finger-pointing and stop worrying about investigations about what went wrong and start doing something about it. This is a tremendous tragedy that is going to affect the entire country for years to come. Not only is New Orleans a major port, not only will gas and oil prices be high, but a lot of these people will never go back to New Orleans. Most of these displaced New Orleaneans will find jobs and start new lives wherever they are. They may trickle back eventually but for now, there has been an influx in Texas of at least 60,000 people and that will effect the economy of that state in many ways. But my mother is definitely upset about the fact that Red Cross has been warning of this impending disaster for years and no one wanted to listen — heck, she was one of the voices there telling them to have a plan. She is probably most upset that they didn’t appear to have ever planned on what to do in the aftermath.

Despite everything she’s seen and heard, she seemed to be in good spirits.

Tags: Hurricane Katrina, Red Cross, relief, FEMA

FEMA’s Dark History

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter created Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to merge the natural disaster responsibilities previously handled by more than 100 federal agencies. Among the agencies FEMA absorbed are the Federal Insurance Administration, the National Fire Prevention and Control Administration, the National Weather Service Community Preparedness Program, the Federal Preparedness Agency of the General Services Administration and the Federal Disaster Assistance Administration activities from HUD. Civil defense responsibilities were also transferred to the new agency from the Defense Department’s Defense Civil Preparedness Agency. [“FEMA History”]

However, President Reagan and his administration had other plans for FEMA than worrying about natural disasters. The idea was that FEMA could handle and focus on “national security” issues — things like “flaming hippies, militant minorities, and draft-dodging radicals of the sixties and early seventies.” [”The Disaster Agency” (The 70 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time, 1998)] Reagan appointed as head of FEMA General Louis Giuffrida, who had served as Reagan’s terrorist advisor while he was governor of California.

During Guiffrida’s reign of FEMA, signs were posted everywhere warning FEMA employees that “Security is everything.” Every phone number dialed in the building was recorded and personal phone calls were denied — in fact, employees were told that even calling home to say you’d be late for dinner would result in a fine or even termination. FEMA-sponsored conferences focused on the possibility of radical environmentalists teaming up with terrorists and targetting nuclear power plants.

Government scientists advised FEMA on mob control techniques such as “injecting terrorists with stimulants and tranquilizers to manipulate their actions in times of crisis, or zapping them with microwaves to alter their perceptions.” [”The Disaster Agency” (The 70 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time, 1998)]

And here’s a blast from the past: Colonel Oliver North served as the White House Security Council liason to FEMA. Reportedly he collaborated with Giuffrida in drawing up secret wartime contingency plans, which may have included a scheme to steamroll right over the Bill of Rights.

In 1984, FEMA tested it’s wartime crisis strategy in conjuction with Pentagon maneuvers. Their “readiness exercise” was code named Rex-84. FEMA’s part of the simulation had to do with an international crisis set off by a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua which resulted in a swarm of refugees coming in over the Mexican border into the U.s. According to an article in Penthouse (August 1985), during the exercise FEMA would simulate rounding up some 400,000 fictional “aliens” in a six-hour period and detaining them in military camps thoughout the U.S. FEMA justified the detention camps by suggesting that terrorist moles could be among the refugees. However, according to one of the co-authors of that Penthouse article, the terrain of the Mexican border made such a huge influx of hundreds of thousands of people highly unlikely.

If that’s the case, who exactly was FEMA interested in rounding up?

Some critics believe that Rex-84 was actually a simulation to practice rounding up Americans in large numbers — probably those “flaming hippies, militant minorities, and draft-dodging radicals of the 60’s and early 70’s, not to mention possible protestors of a controversial government invasion of Central America. Not a far leap in logic when you consider the fact that in 1970, Giuffrida had written a paper devising a hypothetical plan to detain black radicals in detention camps.

But wait! There’s more!

A heavily censored FEMA memo obtained by the Miami Herald described the Alpha Two phase of the exercise, as a test of “emergency legislation, assumption of emergency powers…etc.” In other words: martial law. [”The Disaster Agency” (The 70 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time, 1998)]

In fact, prior to the Rex-84 simulations, the Pentagon Joint Chiefs of Staff put together a document, called the Defense Resources Act, which gave the military the authority to proclaim martial law in times of crisis and take over local policing and even run the courts despite The Posse Comitatus Act which forbids the military from operating in the United States. The document gave the President near-dictorial powers, including the authority to censor communications, ban antigovernment strikes, nationalize industry, seize privat property for “the national defense,” and authorize loyalty oaths to the state. The plan was to shelve the Defense Resources Act document until a time of crisis and present it to a distracted Congress for speedy approval. This would lead to a presidential executive order putting FEMA in charge of all government agencies.

FEMA’s powergrab was cut short shortly after the REx-84 drills when Attorney General William French Smith became alarmed enough to contact Robert McFarlane. Smith warned that FEMA was attempting to annoint itself “emergency czar” with a broad definition of crisis, which included routine domestic law emergencies.

Thus ended FEMA’s plans for the presidential executive order to allow FEMA to control the United States.

And I know what some of you are thinking…it’s got a familiar ring to it, even if you didn’t know about FEMA’s dark past…the Patriot Act was pushed through a distracted Congress for speedy approval, wasn’t it? Protestors, peaceful or not, are being targeted for investigation. The government appears to be focused more on military disasters than natural ones…it just seems a little surreal deja vu, in my humble conspiratorial opinion.

Tags: FEMA, Conspiracy Theories, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan