Bush unveils storm plans to US President George W Bush announces rebuilding plans for the hurricane-hit region, in a televised address from New Orleans.

There's a clue in this piece by Paul Krugman, Not the New Deal, to how the ALP can make good policies that rely on increased public spending.

It's possible to spend large sums honestly, as Franklin D. Roosevelt demonstrated in the 1930's. F.D.R. presided over a huge expansion of federal spending, including a lot of discretionary spending by the Works Progress Administration. Yet the image of public relief, widely regarded as corrupt before the New Deal, actually improved markedly. How did that happen? The answer is that the New Deal made almost a fetish out of policing its own programs against potential corruption. In particular, F.D.R. created a powerful "division of progress investigation" to look into complaints of malfeasance in the W.P.A. That division proved so effective that a later Congressional investigation couldn't find a single serious irregularity it had missed. This commitment to honest government wasn't a sign of Roosevelt's personal virtue; it reflected a political imperative. F.D.R.'s mission in office was to show that government activism works. To maintain that mission's credibility, he needed to keep his administration's record clean.

If Kim Beazley wants to set Labor apart from the Tories (yeah, a big IF) he needs to lean on the State governments, and make them set the tone for transparency of process and honest disclosure.

by Larry Bradshaw, Lorrie Beth Slonsky

 

 

Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreen's store at the corner of Royal & Iberville streets remained locked. 

 

The dairy display case was clearly visible through the widows. It was now 48 hours without electricity, running water, plumbing. The milk, yogurt & cheeses were beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners & managers had locked up the food, water, pampers & prescriptions & fled the City. Outside Walgreen's windows, residents & tourists grew increasingly thirsty & hungry.

 

The much-promised federal, state & local aid never materialized & the windows at Walgreen's gave way to the looters. There was an alternative. The cops could have broken one small window & distributed the nuts, fruit juices & bottled water in an organized & systematic manner. But they did not. Instead they spent hours playing cat & mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters.

 

We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days ago & arrived home yesterday (Saturday). We have yet to see any of the TV coverage or look at a newspaper. We are willing to guess that there were no video images or front-page pictures of European or affluent white tourists looting the Walgreen's in the French Quarter.

 

We also suspect the media will have been inundated with "hero" images of the National Guard, the troops & the police struggling to help the "victims" of the Hurricane. What you will not see, but what we witnessed, were the real heroes & sheroes of the hurricane relief effort: the working class of New Orleans. The maintenance workers who used a fork lift to carry the sick & disabled. The engineers, who rigged, nurtured & kept the generators running. The electricians who improvised thick extension cords stretching over blocks to share the little electricity we had in order to free cars stuck on rooftop parking lots. Nurses who took over from the mechanical ventilators & spent many hours on end manually forcing air into the lungs of unconscious patients, to keep them alive. Doormen who rescued folks stuck in elevators.

Refinery workers who broke into boat yards, "stealing" boats to rescue their neighbours clinging to their roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hot-wire any car that could be found to ferry people out of the City. And the food service workers who scoured the commercial kitchens, improvising communal meals for hundreds of those stranded. Most of these workers had lost their homes & had not heard from members of their families, yet they stayed & provided the only infrastructure for the 20% of New Orleans that was not under water.

 

On Day 2, there were approximately 500 of us left in the hotels in the French Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference attendees, like ourselves, & locals who had checked into hotels for safety & shelter from Katrina. Some of us had cell phone contact with family & friends outside of New Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts of resources including the National Guard and scores of buses were pouring in to the City. The buses & the other resources must have been invisible because none of us had seen them.

 

 

We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money & came up with $25,000 to have ten buses come & take us out of the City. Those who did not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were subsidized by those who had extra money. We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing the limited water, food & clothes we had. We created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly & new born babies. We waited late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the buses. The buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute the arrived at the City limits, they were commandeered by the military. 

 

By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel & water. Sanitation was dangerously abysmal. As the desperation & despair increased, street crime, as well as water levels, began to rise. The hotels turned us out & locked their doors, telling us that the "officials" told us to report to the convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered the center of the City, we finally encountered the National Guard. The Guards told us we would not be allowed into the Superdome as the City's primary shelter had descended into a humanitarian & health hellhole. The guards further told us that the City's only other shelter, the Convention Center, was also descending into chaos & squalor & that the police were not allowing anyone else in. Quite naturally, we asked: "If we can't go to the only 2 shelters in the City, what was our alternative?" The guards told us that that was our problem & no they did not have extra water to give to us. This would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous & hostile "law enforcement".

 

We walked to the police command center at Harrah's on Canal Street & were told the same thing, that we were on our own & no they did not have water to give us. We now numbered several hundred. We held a mass meeting to decide a course of action. We agreed to camp outside the police command post. We would be plainly visible to the media & would constitute a highly visible embarrassment to the City officials. The police told us that we could not stay. Regardless, we began to settle in & set up camp. In short order, the police commander came across the street to address our group. He told us he had a solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway & cross the greater New Orleans Bridge where the police had buses lined up to take us out of the City. The crowd cheered & began to move. We called everyone back & explained to the commander that there had been lots of misinformation & wrong information & was he sure that there were buses waiting for us.

The commander turned to the crowd & stated emphatically: "I swear to you that the buses are there."

 

We organized ourselves & the 200 of us set off for the bridge with great excitement & hope. As we marched past the convention center, many locals saw our determined & optimistic group & asked where we were headed. We told them about the great news. Families immediately grabbed their few belongings & quickly our numbers doubled & then doubled again. Babies in strollers now joined us, people using crutches, elderly clasping walkers & others people in wheelchairs. We marched the 2-3 miles to the freeway & up the steep incline to the Bridge. It now began to pour down rain, but it did not dampen our enthusiasm.

 

As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered & dissipated, a few of us inched forward & managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander & of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.

 

We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans & there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor & black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River & you were not getting out of New Orleans.

 

Our small group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter from the rain under an overpass. We debated our options & in the end decided to build an encampment in the middle of the Ponchartrain Expressway on the center divide, between the O'Keefe & Tchoupitoulas exits. We reasoned we would be visible to everyone, we would have some security being on an elevated freeway & we could wait & watch for the arrival of the yet to be seen buses.

 

All day long, we saw other families, individuals & groups make the same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned away. Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others to be verbally berated & humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented & prohibited from self-evacuating the City on foot.

 

Meanwhile, the only two City shelters sank further into squalor & disrepair. The only way across the bridge was by vehicle. We saw workers stealing trucks, buses, moving vans, semi-trucks & any car that could be hotwired. All were packed with people trying to escape the misery New Orleans had become.

 

Our little encampment began to blossom. Someone stole a water delivery truck & brought it up to us. Let's hear it for looting! A mile or so down the freeway, an army truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations on a tight turn. We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping carts. Now secure with the two necessities, food & water; cooperation, community & creativity flowered. We organized a clean up & hung garbage bags from the rebar poles. We made beds from wood pallets & cardboard. We designated a storm drain as the bathroom & the kids built an elaborate enclosure for privacy out of plastic, broken umbrellas & other scraps. We even organized a food recycling system where individuals could swap out parts of C-rations (applesauce for babies & candies for kids!).

 

This was a process we saw repeatedly in the aftermath of Katrina. When individuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant looking out for yourself only. You had to do whatever it took to find water for your kids or food for your parents. When these basic needs were met, people began to look out for each other, working together & constructing a community.

 

If the relief organizations had saturated the City with food & water in the first 2 or 3 days, the desperation, the frustration & the ugliness would not have set in. Flush with the necessities, we offered food & water to passing families and individuals. Many decided to stay & join us. Our encampment grew to 80 or 90 people.

 

From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the media was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief & news organizations saw us on their way into the City. Officials were being asked what they were going to do about all those families living up on the freeway? The officials responded they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. "Taking care of us" had an ominous tone to it.

 

Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was correct. Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming: "Get off the fucking freeway". A helicopter arrived & used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food & water. Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or congealed into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims" they saw "mob" or "riot". We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay together" was impossible because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.

 

In the pandemonium of having our camp raided & destroyed, we scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements but equally & definitely, we were hiding from the police & sheriffs with their martial law, curfew & shoot-to-kill policies.

 

The next days, our group of 8 walked most of the day, made contact with New Orleans Fire Department & were eventually airlifted out by an urban search & rescue team. We were dropped off near the airport & managed to catch a ride with the National Guard. The two young guardsmen apologized for the limited response of the Louisiana guards.

 

They explained that a large section of their unit was in Iraq & that meant they were shorthanded & were unable to complete all the tasks they were assigned.

 

We arrived at the airport on the day a massive airlift had begun. The airport had become another Superdome. We 8 were caught in a press of humanity as flights were delayed for several hours while George Bush landed briefly at the airport for a photo op. After being evacuated on a coast guard cargo plane, we arrived in San Antonio, Texas.

 

There the humiliation & dehumanization of the official relief effort continued. We were placed on buses & driven to a large field where we were forced to sit for hours & hours. Some of the buses did not have air-conditioners. In the dark, hundreds of us were forced to share two filthy overflowing porta-potties. Those who managed to make it out with any possessions (often a few belongings in tattered plastic bags) were subjected to two different dog-sniffing searches.

 

Most of us had not eaten all day because our C-rations had been confiscated at the airport because the rations set off the metal detectors. Yet, no food had been provided to the men, women, children, elderly & disabled as they sat for hours waiting to be "medically screened" to make sure we were not carrying any communicable diseases.

 

This official treatment was in sharp contrast to the warm, heart-felt reception given to us by the ordinary Texans. We saw one airline worker give her shoes to someone who was barefoot. Strangers on the street offered us money & toiletries with words of welcome.

Throughout, the official relief effort was callous, inept & racist. There was more suffering than need be. Lives were lost that did not need to be lost.

 

Lyn H. Lofland

Research Professor

Department of Sociology

University of California, Davis

One Shields Avenue

Davis. California 95616 USA

Telephone: 530-756-8699/752-1585

FAX: 530-752-0783

e-mail: [email protected]

Responsi-Bull

 

 

 

By Steve Bradenton

‘If George Bush had encountered the same fate as Jim Carrey’s character in the movie Liar Liar, & had been rendered incapable of lying, America would not have been subjected to thirty minutes of manipulative propaganda on 9/15.  

 

Compelled to tell the truth, Bush’s oration would have captured the reality of the situation in New Orleans & of life for the poor & working class in an America dominated by a wealthy aristocracy.’

 

Liar, Liar

Stayin' Offensive

 

 

 

Steve Bradenton

See the Problem?

 

Andrew Wahl

"The FDA has recalled aid from Britain because it has been condemned as unfit for human consumption, despite the fact that these are Nato approved rations of exactly the same type fed to British soldiers in Iraq. 

 

"Under Nato, American soldiers are also entitled to eat such rations, yet the starving of the American South will see them go up in smoke because of FDA red tape madness."

 

Up In Flames

Kan Do Karl

 

Mark Fiore

Hurricane Anything 

 

Mark Fiore

‘The United States is now the third most unequal industrialized society after Russia & Mexico. This is not a club we want to be part of. Russia is a recovering kleptocracy, with a post-Soviet oligarchy enriched by looting. And Mexico, despite joining the rich-nations club of the Organization for Economic & Community Development, has some of the most glaring poverty in the hemisphere. 

 

In 2004, after three years of economic recovery, the U.S. Census reports that poverty continues to grow, while the real median income for full-time workers has declined.  

 

Since 2001, when the economy hit bottom, the ranks of our nation's poor have grown by 4 million & the number of people without health insurance has swelled by 4.6 million to over 45 million. 

 

Income inequality is now near all-time highs, with over 50 percent of 2004 income going to the top fifth of households & the biggest gains going to the top 5 percent & 1 percent of households. The average CEO now takes home a paycheque 431 times that of their average worker.’ 

 

Billionaires R Us

 

From the Washington Post

Levee Repair Costs Triple
New Orleans May Lack Full Protection
By Peter Whoriskey and Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writers

Friday, March 31, 2006; Page A01

The Bush administration said yesterday that the cost of rebuilding New Orleans's levees to federal standards has nearly tripled to $10 billion and that there may not be enough money to fully protect the entire region.

Donald E. Powell, the administration's rebuilding coordinator, said some areas may be left without the protection of levees strong enough to meet requirements of the national flood insurance program. Those areas probably would face enormous obstacles in attracting home buyers and investors willing to build there.

The news represents a shift for the administration; President Bush had pledged in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina to rebuild New Orleans "higher and better." Now, some areas may lose out as they compete for levee protection. Powell's announcement, in a conference call with reporters, prompted denunciations from state and local officials who said the federal government is reneging on promises to rebuild the entire region.

"This monumental miscalculation is an outrage," said Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D)

read more at the washington post....

From the New York Times

The Long-Distance Journey of a Fast-Food Order
By MATT RICHTEL
Published: April 11, 2006
SANTA MARIA, Calif. — Like many American teenagers, Julissa Vargas, 17, has a minimum-wage job in the fast-food industry — but hers has an unusual geographic reach.

"Would you like your Coke and orange juice medium or large?" Ms. Vargas said into her headset to an unseen woman who was ordering breakfast from a drive-through line. She did not neglect the small details —"You Must Ask for Condiments," a sign next to her computer terminal instructs — and wished the woman a wonderful day.

What made the $12.08 transaction remarkable was that the customer was not just outside Ms. Vargas's workplace here on California's central coast. She was at a McDonald's in Honolulu. And within a two-minute span Ms. Vargas had also taken orders from drive-through windows in Gulfport, Miss., and Gillette, Wyo.

Ms. Vargas works not in a restaurant but in a busy call center in this town, 150 miles from Los Angeles. She and as many as 35 others take orders remotely from 40 McDonald's outlets around the country. The orders are then sent back to the restaurants by Internet, to be filled a few yards from where they were placed.

read more at the New York Times
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Gus is impressed by the ethereal technology: But this is peanuts!... take this! I send myself emails with attachment from one computer to the other (less than 2 metres away) via the internet (hub in the US) because I'm too dumb to know how to link them via the Bizo-router... It works too... One day, I'll sort it out...

But most importantly the internet helps the creation of jobs in places where they have high unemployment for hamburger receptionists on minimum wages. There is a lesson in here especially for our little grocer of the Industrial relation cauliflower... Hey, may be, he's cottoned on, ages ago, and he is managing the grocery store from a deck chair in the Bahamas via a dummy or a window reflection in canberra?

And take note: French Fries are now known as Liberated Potato Chips (LPCs)... See cartoon that leads this line of blogs...

Ruined Towns Look to Beirut, Mostly in Vain

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
Published: October 1, 2006
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Sept. 30 — A ride through the south of Lebanon, across rutted and bombed-out roads, past a landscape of twisted metal and crumbled concrete, reveals little progress toward rebuilding tens of thousands of homes devastated by the 34 days of Israeli bombing that ended more than six weeks ago.

Money has begun flowing in, from foreign governments and nongovernmental organizations. But nearly $900 million in international pledges remains untapped by the Lebanese government, whose presence is barely visible in the south. In contrast, Hezbollah, with money from Iran, continues to give cash payments to individual Lebanese for damaged homes. And the central government has allowed, and indeed encouraged, some foreign countries to begin giving similar grants.

Former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin has been charged with corruption by a federal grand jury in the United States.

Mr Nagin is accused of taking cash bribes and gifts of more than $160,000 while New Orleans struggled to recover from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The alleged offences include bribery, conspiracy, money laundering, wire fraud and filing false tax returns from 2005 to 2008.

The 56-year-old came into office as a reformer and an anti-corruption campaigner, and achieved fame for his passionate calls for assistance as the hurricane struck the city.

But he left the job desperately unpopular as post-Katrina crimes soared and reconstruction foundered

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-19/former-new-orleans-mayor-accused-of-corruption/4472164