Army Corp of Engineers found liable for Katrina damage.
November 18, 2009 by Dusty · 3 Comments
A lower federal court has ruled for the residents of the ninth ward and roughly 100,000 other residents of New Orleans.
The government will most likely appeal this ruling. From the NPR link:
A federal judge in New Orleans has ruled the U.S. government owes damages to residents whose homes were swamped by Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters in 2005.
In a sometimes scathing critique of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval found “monumental negligence” in the operation and maintenance of a shipping channel called the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet.
He rejected the government’s argument that the Corps was immune from liability and had properly maintained the navigation channel, known locally as MRGO.
Flood victims had sued, arguing the widening of the channel and subsequent loss of protective wetlands turned MRGO into a speedway for Katrina’s storm surge. Judge Duval blamed government engineers for letting the shipping channel “run amok.”
Duval awarded damages of about $720,000 to four people and a business. The case has been closely watched by other Katrina victims seeking compensation from the government.
Three cheers for this judge. The ruling might not stand but he did the right thing anyway regardless of how the higher federal courts rule.
Sphere: Related ContentKatrina-lest we forget..
August 29, 2009 by Dusty · Leave a Comment
The fourth anniversary of Katrina making landfall was today. The horror stories are still fresh in my mind, and most likely will visit me during the night when I sleep tonight.
The gulf coast still has not recovered. The people of the gulf coast still have not recovered.
The Big O says he will go to NOLA sometime this year. He marked the anniversary by talking briefly about the horror of Katrina on his weekly address. He mentioned how his administration is trying to retool the programs that were designed to help the survivors of Katrina. Eleven members of his administration have gone to the region.
He then changed the subject and talked about the H1N1 flu virus.
Lest we forget, the toll on human life following Katrina’s landfall was:
1,836 confirmed deaths, Between 135 and 705 never found and presumed dead depending on which report you read/believe.
The vast majority of the missing and presumed dead are African-American. Hundreds of Thousands were affected and will never be the same.
We should never forget the ravages of the gulf coast after Katrina or let it ever happen again…on our watch.
Sphere: Related ContentPondering history…
August 29, 2008 by Angry Black Bitch · 3 Comments
Last night I watched as history was made when Senator Obama accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination and became the first black man nominated by a major political party to seek the presidency of the United States of America.
And I so wish my beloved father was alive to have seen it.
Today, this bitch is pausing to remember a historical event that is still unfolding and impacting so many people’s lives.
Three years ago today Hurricane Katrina came ashore…
…and she changed everything.
Hurricane Katrina didn’t just expose engineering problems, weak levees and the lack of emergency preparedness.
Katrina exposed our flaws and our callous disregard of our fellow citizens. She exposed the true price of crony politics and the sad definition of traditional values.
At least 1,836 people lost their lives.
I can’t help but wonder how many of those lives lost are charged to human failure.
So today let us remember those lost and those still trying to dig out three years later.
“You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?’”. George Bernard Shaw, “Back to Methuselah”
Crossposted from the Angry Black Bitch.
Sphere: Related ContentNew Orleans Recovery and Star Power
December 24, 2007 by sagefever · 4 Comments
My local community became national news this week as CNN picked up the local beaver must die story~ and if you do not already know the beaver family has
been given a reprieve. Just in time for Christmas. They can continue their beaver doings, though as I write this we do not know if it is to be relocation or tree protection that will make both man and beast happy.
There was another story in “entertainment ” this week, mostly on the back pages of papers or a small link, but a sharp eyed Pitt fan ,I spotted it right off. People love to pooh-pooh “Hollywood” celebrities, but Brad and Angelina Jolie are making that hard do, as are Sean Penn, Dennis Leary, Kirstie Alley, Ellen DeGeneres and New Orleans natives and musicians Harry Connick Jr. and Winston Marsalis. But the Pitt-Jolie duo stand out in their commitment to rebuilding New Orleans, especially the hard hit lower 9 th ward. They have bought a home in the French Quarter; plan to spend the Holidays there with their children. Pitt was born in Oklahoma, raised in Missouri and knows New Orleans from two movies he has made there. In 1990 “Interview with a Vampire” and recently the unreleased “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” hitting theaters in 2008, he became familiar with the city and its people. He says of his commitment:” It’s the right thing to do”.
That commitment? He has pledged to more than 5 million dollars for rebuilding efforts, and launched one project to help the city.
Sphere: Related ContentTop 10 Ethics Scandals for 2007
December 18, 2007 by Dusty · Leave a Comment
Courtesy of CREW, Citizens for Responsibilty and Ethics in Washington has released their year end report. They note at the top of the page that despite
the Democrat’s election vow to institute more checks and balances on Congressional ethics, not a damn thing has changed in that regard. No new enforcement regulations were put into law in the 110th Congress, and a group of fuckwits tasked with providing a report as to what needed to be done has yet to issue said report. Now, on to the scandals!
Ted “Bridge to Nowhere” Stevens
Teddy Stevens had his house in Alaska raided by the FBI and IRS this year. “Stevens is under federal investigation for his dealings with Bill Allen, founder of VECO Corp., an Alaska-based oil field services and engineering company that has been awarded tens of millions of dollars in federal contracts. Allen has admitted to paying for an addition to Sen. Stevens’ home.”
Senator Larry Craig
Larry has a penchant for airport restrooms and blowjobs , which caught the attention of most of the U.S. when he plead guilty to soliciting an undercover cop in a MN airport restroom. The Senate Ethics committee is *cough* investigating whether Craig violated the Senate rule prohibiting members from engaging in “improper conduct which reflects upon the Senate.”
Senator David “Diaper” Vitter
Vitter had a penchant for hookers and diapers evidently but the Senate isn’t investigating him for violating the Senate rule prohibiting members from engaging in “improper conduct which reflects upon the Senate”. But they are investigating Larry Craig..Go figure.
Sphere: Related ContentGhosts of New Orleans ~ 2 Years On
August 29, 2007 by demon princess · 9 Comments
Your Demon had the great fortune to live in New Orleans for several years pre-hurricane, so the way that a great & wholly unique American city was allowed to disintegrate right before our very eyes is a continuing outrage, & a personal one, to me. It was, to me, a magic place, a polyglot of music & architecture & wonderful, truly diverse people, truly of historic significance in terms of what it gave to the rest of the country. In America, there is only one city that so captures, & deserves the distinction of capturing, America’s heart, soul & imagination.
And we let it drown.
August 29 marked the 2-year anniversary since a storm surge generated by Katrina (which could have been avoided if the two levees that breached were funded properly, which everyone seems to have known for quite a while before the disaster), but the worst of it was that Bush himself apparently lied about what he knew & when he knew it.
Remember Bush speech, “Hey, nobody had any idea the levee was gonna breach,” twaddle on TV in the aftermath? Some time later it turns out that he did know. And didn’t particularly care.
As the New York Times reported on the hearings that followed:
“In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush administration officials said they had been caught by surprise when they were told on Tuesday, Aug. 30, that a levee had broken, allowing floodwaters to engulf New Orleans.
Sphere: Related ContentKatrina Blanket
August 29, 2007 by Sumo · 6 Comments
A flag is many things to many people. In the aftermath of Katrina this blanket of the American flag is her comfort. Little did she know that help wasn’t on the way. An old woman now…probably worked hard all of her life as someone’s maid or housekeeper. She had old age to look forward to and a country that offered its citizens a pension for their old years. Of course it isn’t enough for a mouse to subsist on…but no matter. This is America…where she has freedom and democracy. This is America… where her people are disenfranchised from what the Constitution equally bestowed upon its nation’s people.
One Billon bucks later, the levees are still F***ked up
August 17, 2007 by Dusty · 5 Comments
I sort of paraphrased the title of this article in the NYT this morning. I have family of a sort that lives there, my son’s best friend Fernie and his wife and young baby. Their house survived the floods and for over a year was used as a Urgent Care Facility of sorts by the local hospital. He is a fine young man who started his own business which is thriving. I love him for what he did for the residents of NOLA. But, there comes a time when the people should be able to depend on the city, state and federal governments my dear reader. This is such a time. It’s been two years now since Katrina hit and the levees broke.
“Six Inches”, the first line in the NYT article screams. That number represents the water level reduction another flood of the city would produce since the Army Corp of Engineers spent a billion dollars on the levee rebuild. Let me be more specific..thats the number MOST of the city would see in flood protection. The rich part of town would see 5 and a half FEET of difference.
Funny how that worked out isn’t it? Not ha-ha funny..sick ironic funny to me. The following is a part of the beginning of the 2-page writeup:
Sphere: Related ContentNew Orleans was swamped by Hurricane Katrina; now it is awash in data, studied obsessively in homes all over town. And the simple message conveyed by that data is that while parts of the city are substantially safer, others have changed little. New Orleans remains a very risky place to live.
The entire flood system still provides much less protection than New Orleans needs, and the pre-Katrina patchwork of levees, floodwalls and gates that a Corps of Engineers investigation called “a system in name only” is still just that.
