Some Information For Liddia

Just a couple of things to consider before reading the information below: The South Eastern Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA) was created in 1995 during the Clinton administration. It has been cut drastically through the five years of the Bush administration. Whether the continued funding and shoring up of the levees would have prevented the flooding is something we'll just never know. However, we do know that the amount of money it would have taken is nothing compared to the hundreds of billions it's going to cost now.

Also, Clinton had been working to restore wetlands and reduce development in wetland areas. One of the natural buffers against flooding are wetlands. When Bush became President he redefined what a "wetland" is which basically gave developers the go-ahead to build wherever they damn well pleased, while giving the "impression" that there had been no wetland reduction.

Lot's of people are also going to want to deflect criticism from the feds to the local government for not getting the people out in time. Remember, this was the first mandatory, total evacuation of a major American city in the country's history, and the city and state still managed to evacuate about 80% of the population. Even FEMA predicted that the most that could be expected to be evacuated would be 60%. And, remember that this is at a time when local and state governments are stretched to the breaking point because of extra burdens put on them due to Bush tax cuts for the rich (what I like to call "the birth tax").

Now, as we keep hearing "there's plenty of blame to go around". That's what people always say when they don't want to be singled out for screwing up. And that's precisely why we need a bi-partisan independent investigation into what went wrong. Most everybody in the country realizes this whether they're Democrats, Republicans, independents, or whatever. The only people against it are the Republicans in congress. They would like an investigation that they (Bush/Republicans) are in charge of. Do you honestly think that if they had nothing to be afraid of or if there was "plenty of blame to go around" they wouldn't be fine with an independent investiagion?

Remember that these are the same people who created a constitutional crisis during the Clinton years by appointing a highly partisan Republican special prosecutor to investigate the Presidents penis.

On a side note - if you want an idea of where Bush's priorities are consider this:

In 2004 -- at a time when George W. Bush was running for re-election and presumably courting votes in Louisiana, a potential swing state -- the White House proposed spending a whopping 12 1/3 times as much taxpayer money restoring wetlands in southern Iraq as he planned to spend on the same task in the Mississippi Delta.

Before Congress intervened, the Bush administration asked for $100 million to restore the Iraqi marshlands, drained and destroyed by Saddam Hussein, to its status as -- according to legend -- the Biblical "Garden of Eden."

The proposed funding that year for the Louisiana wetlands, heavily damaged by overdevelopment, was just $8 million. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the city once buffered by those disappearing wetlands is now Hell on Earth.

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The project most closely associated with preventing flooding in New Orleans was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Hurricane Protection Project, which was “designed to protect residents between Lake Pontchartrain and the Missisippi River levee from surges in Lake Pontchartrain,” according to a fact sheet from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. (The fact sheet is dated May 23, long before Katrina). The multi-decade project involved building new levees, enlarging existing levees, and updating other protections like floodwalls. It was scheduled to be completed in 2015.

Over at least the past several budget cycles, the Corps has received substantially less money than it requested for the Lake Pontchartrain project, even though Congress restored much of the money the President cut from the amount the Corps requested.

In fiscal year 2004, the Corps requested $11 million for the project. The President’s budget allocated $3 million, and Congress furnished $5.5 million. Similarly, in fiscal 2005 the Corps requested $22.5 million, which the President cut to $3.9 million in his budget. Congress increased that to $5.5 million. “This was insufficient to fund new construction contracts,” according to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ project fact sheet. The Corps reported that “seven new contracts are being delayed due to lack funds” [sic].

The President proposed $3 million for the project in the budget for fiscal 2006, which begins Oct. 1. “This will be insufficient to fund new construction projects,” the fact sheet stated. It says the Corps “could spend $20 million if funds were provided.” The Corps of Engineers goes on to say:

Army Corps of Engineers, May 23: In Orleans Parish, two major pump stations are threatened by hurricane storm surges. Major contracts need to be awarded to provide fronting protection for them. Also, several levees have settled and need to be raised to provide the design protection. The current funding shortfalls in fiscal year 2005 and fiscal year 2006 will prevent the Corps from addressing these pressing needs.

The Corps has seen cutbacks beyond those affecting just the Lake Pontchartrain project. The Corps oversees SELA, or the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control project, which Congress authorized after six people died from flooding in May 1995. The Times-Picayune newspaper of New Orleans reported that, overall, the Corps had spent $430 million on flood control and hurricane prevention, with local governments offering more than $50 million toward the project. Nonetheless, "at least $250 million in crucial projects remained," the newspaper said.

In the past five years, the amount of money spent on all Corps construction projects in the New Orleans district has declined by 44 percent, according to the New Orleans CityBusiness newspaper, from $147 million in 2001 to $82 million in the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

A long history of complaints

Local officials had long complained that funding for hurricane protection projects was inadequate:

• October 13, 2001: The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that “federal officials are postponing new projects of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Control Program, or SELA, fearing that federal budget constraints and the cost of the war on terrorism may create a financial pinch for the program.” The paper went on to report that “President Bush’s budget proposed $52 million” for SELA in the 2002 fiscal year. The House approved $57 million and the Senate approved $62 million. Still, “the $62 million would be well below the $80 million that corps officials estimate is needed to pay for the next 12 months of construction, as well as design expenses for future projects.”
• April 24, 2004: The Times-Picayune reported that “less money is available to the Army Corps of Engineers to build levees and water projects in the Missisippi River valley this year and next year.” Meanwhile, an engineer who had direct the Louisiana Coastal Area Ecosystem Restoration Study – a study of how to restore coastal wetlands areas in order to provide a buffer from hurricane storm surges – was sent to Iraq "to oversee the restoration of the ‘Garden of Eden’ wetlands at the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers,” for which President Bush’s 2005 gave $100 million.
• June 8, 2004: Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, told the Times-Picayune:

Walter Maestri: 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.

• September 22, 2004: The Times-Picayune reported that a pilot study on raising the height of the levees surrounding New Orleans had been completed and generated enough information for a second study necessary to estimate the cost of doing so. The Bush administration “ordered the New Orleans district office” of the Army Corps of Engineers “not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money.”
• June 6, 2005: The New Orleans CityBusiness newspaper reported that the New Orleans district of the Corps was preparing for a $71.2 million reduction in overall funding for the fiscal year beginning in October. That would have been the largest single-year funding loss ever. They noted that money “was so tight" that "the New Orleans district, which employs 1,300 people, instituted a hiring freeze last month on all positions,” which was “the first of its kind in about 10 years.”

The crux of the whole situation is that what happened in this situation was a natural disaster that was made worse by the basic overarching Republican governing philosophy commonly referred to as "starve the beast". Republican politicians don't talk about "starve the beast" when they run for office because most Americans would be horrified by it, so they try to divide us by talking about divisive social issues that have little or no real effect on our day-to-day lives whatsoever.

This is a great article by one of my favorite columnists (form Texas) Molly Ivins - these pargraphs are particularly relelvant:

...This is not "just politics" or blaming for political advantage. This is about the real consequences of what governments do and do not do about their responsibilities. And about who winds up paying the price for those policies.

This is a column for everyone in the path of Hurricane Katrina who ever said, "I'm sorry, I'm just not interested in politics," or, "There's nothing I can do about it," or, "Eh, they're all crooks anyway."

Nothing to do with me, nothing to do with my life, nothing I can do about any of it. Look around you this morning. I suppose the NRA would argue, "Government policies don't kill people, hurricanes kill people." Actually, hurricanes plus government policies kill people.

[snip]

This, friends, is why we need to pay attention to government policies, not political personalities, and to know whereon we vote. It is about our lives.

I might write more about "starve the beast" later - it really is the core ideology of today's Repuclican party and it's being implemented beautifully by this administration. It was summed up perfectly by key Republican strategist (and enormous asshole) Grover Norquist when he said about the federal government that he wanted to "reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub".