Witness how F*cked Up America Really Is - Hurricane Katrina Doc.

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Originally Posted by Great Spirit

Shit, Nazi Germany probably would have had supplies ready for the Germans if a disaster like this happened there, because Nazi germany was in fact a welfare state. thats how they kept control.

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Why of course, that's what the Gestapo was! They handed out candy and milk on fuckin' unicorns; that's exactly how the Nazis conducted welfare.

HAHA.

GS, you are nothing but BS.

Baaaaa-Zing. ~

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Originally Posted by Its a Plant

HAHA.

GS, you are nothing but BS.

Baaaaa-Zing. ~

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HAHA. Plant, you are nothing but unenlightened. :thumbsup:

I guess you know me all too well then. . .

At least I can get my facts straight, which makes for a better debate.

Rather than you just calling anyone who doesn't share your almost laughable mindframe "unenlightened".

Give me a break.
Get off your faulty pedastal of knowledge.
Hold the order of bullshit.
Add a side of maturity to go.

Eat a steak or something you pud. ~

GS dont eat steak!!!!! way to American.....

I went to the Trail Dust for diner the other night....yummm had the 20 oz porter house......

GS go get some Falaffel......... lol

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Originally Posted by Great Spirit

I agree that if you live under sea level, you're a dumbass, but the government really didn't do much. The government TOLD them to evacuate, but not everyone has access to vehicles and houses in other states. The rich people were fine, but the majority of the poor who were mostly black did not get out of the city because they really had to way out. Yea...just let them run out of the city...they'll be ok. Besides, the government should have had supplies ready BEFORE Katrina even hit. You can't deny that. And why weren't the levees raised before it hit after they were warned many many times?

Do you remember a few years ago I think on TLC or something along that line, they had a TV program about what would happen if New Orleans was hit by a hurricane? I hope the Illuminati aren't experimenting with controlling the weather. Pretty damn good odds when it actually happens! :(

Just goes to show how much of a fascist government this is. Lol the handeling of Katrina doesn't make for good propaganda either! You want to make your government look like it is doing the best it possibly can. Shit, Nazi Germany probably would have had supplies ready for the Germans if a disaster like this happened there, because Nazi germany was in fact a welfare state. thats how they kept control.

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Next thing you'll know, the Bird Flu will catasphorically hit America and GS will complain "the government should've been prepared." Who knows, Asteroids could destroy Chicago. GS will complain "the government should"ve been prepared, what facist shits." How many things should the government be prepared for? GS seems to believe the government has infinite resources that can be pumped into every molecular possibility of human tragedy.

It's easy to complain after the fact. It's easy to place blame on the government after the fact. It's easy to say there have been tall-tale signs that this was going to happen.....after the fact. Hell I digged up an article in 1987 warning about the potential New Orleans had for disaster in a hurricane situation since it's not only surrounded by the sea, but Lake Pontacharin, Lake Borgne, and a collection of smaller lakes. New Orleans situated right in the middle of all this. Obviously the answer is "No shit."

If you can make one correct prediction before the fact, well then, I'm sure people will be lining up behind your ideas. Until that day, you'll always be known for being the crazy guy who makes perpetual arguments after the fact. That's the element your crazy propaganda is based upon.

http://www.total411.info/

When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps 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. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it coming. ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to this Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness:


The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project is another major Corps project, which remains about 20% incomplete due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi, project manager. That project consists of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson parishes.


The Lake Pontchartrain project is slated to receive $3.9 million in the president's 2005 budget. Naomi said about $20 million is needed.


"The longer we wait without funding, the more we sink," he said. "I've got at least six levee construction contracts that need to be done to raise the levee protection back to where it should be (because of settling). Right now I owe my contractors about $5 million. And we're going to have to pay them interest."

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

That June, with the 2004 hurricane seasion starting, the Corps' Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:


"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them."

The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.

The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in hurricane- and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs. According to New Orleans CityBusiness this June 5:


The district has identified $35 million in projects to build and improve levees, floodwalls and pumping stations in St. Bernard, Orleans, Jefferson and St. Charles parishes. Those projects are included in a Corps line item called Lake Pontchartrain, where funding is scheduled to be cut from $5.7 million this year to $2.9 million in 2006. Naomi said it's enough to pay salaries but little else.


"We'll do some design work. We'll design the contracts and get them ready to go if we get the money. But we don't have the money to put the work in the field, and that's the problem," Naomi said.

There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research was needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. As the Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:


That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount.


But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said.

The Senate was seeking to restore some of the SELA funding cuts for 2006. But now it's too late. One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer was a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday. The levee failure appears to be causing a human tragedy of epic proportions: "We probably have 80 percent of our city under water; with some sections of our city the water is as deep as 20 feet. Both airports are underwater," Mayor Ray Nagin told a radio interviewer.

The fact that those levee repairs weren't completely funded is one part of the story, and certainly there's plenty of blame to be laid for the Katrina-related levee-failure disaster that occurred last year.

But it's important to recognize some other facts about south Louisiana that have also been covered by the Times-Picayune and other news outlets, and that's how rampant corruption and mishandling has been at every level, from local levee boards and authorities up to city, parish and state-level administratio,n of monies they've already received. There've been some really egregious examples of corruption and misspending with the money that has been made available to these levee-repair authorites, and this sort of wasteful corruption has been going on for decades down there. It's the way politics in Louisiana work, sadly, and last year when those levees failed, one of the first things everyone did was point the finger at inadequate federal funding. But an equally focused finger has always needed to be pointed at how those various authorities have misspent and mishandled the money they've already received and yet not used for the benefit/repair of levees. Had corruption not been a pre-existing and historically enduring problem down there, many of those weakest levees would have already been in much better shape than they were, even with not enough money in recent years.

Anyway, beware of too much blame on lack of federal funding in this particular case. Had every penny in the world been made available to those authorities and boards responsible for the levees, you can bet that critical repairs would not necessarily have been completed--and that impressive portions of that money would have mysteriously disappeared or been misused. That's the way things work in south Louisiana, sadly.

Great context and insight, Birdgirl, as usual. It's good to temper the "urge to blame" with the reality of regional politics. At the risk of sounding politically incorrect, I've heard some of the Tavis Smiley guests at the one year commemerative, and they sound so rehearsed I want to go to sleep or puke.

I will always remember when Katrina hit the Gulf coast: 29 AUGUST....my birthday.....Damn!