On Wed, 07 Sep 2005 17:59:26 -0400, Ann wrote:

Yea, but who made the decisions?

Thanks for the balanced view sarcasm intended please quote the
original articles NOT the GOP!!!!!




Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets. To plant a pine, one need only own a shovel.
-- Aldo Leopold

On Wed, 07 Sep 2005 15:41:32 -0400, Cheryl Isaak
wrote:

Hey Warren, these levees were a known problem as far back as the 70's; the
Army Corp of Engineers were warning of a potential disaster and have been
ignored by Democratic presidents as well as the Republicans ones. Where
does that fit in your scheme of things? Cause those funds have been lacking
for more than 8 years.



Data please?

That being said, yes there are idjets on both sides of the aisle!



Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets. To plant a pine, one need only own a shovel.
-- Aldo Leopold

On 9/7/05 7:26 PM, in article ,
"Tom Jaszewski" wrote:

On Wed, 07 Sep 2005 15:41:32 -0400, Cheryl Isaak
wrote:

Hey Warren, these levees were a known problem as far back as the 70's; the
Army Corp of Engineers were warning of a potential disaster and have been
ignored by Democratic presidents as well as the Republicans ones. Where
does that fit in your scheme of things? Cause those funds have been lacking
for more than 8 years.



Data please?

That being said, yes there are idjets on both sides of the aisle!



I won't do an extensive search now as I am time limited, but I pulled Lake
Pontratrain as a report in high school science class. One source was
Scientific American (before 1976) which referenced a recent report from the
Army Corp of Engineers on the poor engineering design of the levees. What
stuck was how either a 100 year flooding of the Mississippi or a hurricane
could overflow the levees or so weaken them as to potentially destroy the
city.

I remember clearly having to write the Army Corp for a copy of the paper and
receiving it.

BTW - dang neat class - every one had to research something connected to the
Mississippi River and the subject was pulled from the teacher's hat.

Cheryl

"Warren" wrote in message
...
I'll try to make this as simple as possible so you don't get confused this
time:
The hurricane was a natural disaster. The levee break was not. The levee
break was a result of deferring necessary maintenance because Federal
funds to maintain the levee were reduced to the point that the levee could
not be properly maintained.

But that is not a true statement......Are you lying or simply ignorant?

The Federal funds were cut because the Federal
government didn't have the money to pay the bills. They didn't have the
money not just because they are spending it elsewhere, but because they
cut taxes despite needing more money.
The folks who benefited most from the
ill-timed tax cuts were the very rich. (Judging from your grasp of the
situation, I'm going to guess that you either inherited your money, or
you're so far from the top that you have no perception of just how much
they benefited compared to how you didn't.)


Speaking of timing...with a rather severe recession the Gov. had basically 3
choices...do nothing, increase spending or cut taxes. I suppose any of the
three have their adherents however with tax cuts your putting money in hands
of the actual consummers and allowing the market place to decide what is
needed or important.....Since we are having a rather robust recovery and did
not sink into extended stagflation or a lengthly recession one might surmise
the tax cuts worked as intended.

Cutting the top tax rate from approx. 37% to 35% is pretty easy to
grasp......With the rather large deficit accusing the Gov. of not spending
enough is rather silly. Incidentally with a budget that is well over 2
trillion dollars the tax rate cut on those whom already pay over 80% of all
income taxes amounted to less than 100 billion. A rather small piece if you
think about it.

In 2001 FEMA identified the top three possible major disasters. They were
a terrorist attack on New York, an earthquake in San Francisco, and a
levee break after a hurricane in New Orleans. Despite that, funding for
levee maintenance was still cut below minimum levels.

Your rather confused over maintenance and capital projects......There was no
maintenance cuts but rather a future slowdown in capital improvements.... of
which "future" expenditures have no bearing on preventing past events. These
kind of construction projects also require local participation, NO has been
notably cheap or reluctant to pay a large local share.....in fact they have
paid a much smaller share of the hundreds of millions already spent than
other cities so desiring these projects.....in other words the locals
weren't all that interested in protecting their city. Nonetheless there is
no possibility that any flood control/ levee project began or finished
(these projects require decades to design and complete)) during Bushes
tenure would have made a appreciable difference to the failure of this
rather new section of the canal that failed. It appears that the actual
levees on the lake held quite well and that the pumping canal wall
collapsed.

So over four years ago, the President had information warning him that
there was an impending problem. Instead of taking the prudent course, and
increasing funding for the levees to fortify them, funding was cut to a
level that wouldn't even properly maintain what was already in place.

Actually any likely multi-billion dollar effort began then would have made
no difference here.......These flood control projects are measured by the
decade in both conception and construction......In fact the canal section
that collapsed was rather new. Building for a Cat 5 might be nice but it is
possibly not affordable...moving the city might be cheaper.....300 miles of
levees is no trivial undertaking.....one might even surmise the near billion
spent there in the last 2 decades might have afforded some protection.

So the cause of the flood was not a hurricane last week. It was a series
of decisions over the last four years to cut funding for the levees that
caused the inevitable flood. When the flood happened may not have been
predictable until 4 or 5 days before it happened, but it's inevitability
was not just predictable -- it was planned.

If one builds logic on a falsehood the general result is more falsehoods

Was it planned out of malice or ignorance? Your call. Evil or stupid. Given
the evidence that was available for *at least* four years, the fiscal
actions taken by the administration were either evil or stupid. They had
the reports and data. They can't claim ignorance. The best they can do is
claim they were too stupid to read or understand the information they had.

Since any action they took or could have taken has no bearing on this flood
outcome your conclusion is suspect.

Incidentally NO has been there for over 300 years, Hurricanes have happened
since time began........Concluding that anything in the last 4 years has
much to do with either is simply silly.

So what was the motivation to not fund the levees? Saving money. It was
one of the many spending cuts that resulted from a tax cut. A tax cut that
gave me a whopping $600, but included provisions that gave so much more
(not just in raw dollars, but proportionally) to those making seven-digit
incomes.


Nonetheless bigger, smaller or no tax cuts would have made no difference

So when you look at what the private sector is contributing in
post-disaster relief, are those people contributing as much as the common
guy? There are poor people out there emptying their savings accounts,
increasing their debt, and forgoing groceries so they can contribute. Are
any of the 20% of the richest folks in the nation making that kind of
sacrifice? Are their any that are donating all of their disposable income
to post-disaster relief? Are their any who are even giving the difference
between what they would have paid in taxes pre-cuts and what they're
paying now? Or are they just writing checks that look big to people who
have no money, but are pocket change to them?

Quite the rant.....nonsensical to the subject at hand with no way to qualify
and pointless to boot.

The break of the levees was inevitable. The President knew that. He still
put a tax cut for the rich as a higher priority than addressing the levee
problem. So was he evil or stupid in doing so?
Warren H.

There are potential safety public work projects across the land be it storm,
flood or volcano. Deciding how public funds are to be spent is fraught with
choices and tradeoffs......not every conceivable danger can be addressed. In
fact even if they are disasters will always be with us. I suppose a 100% tax
rate might pay for more and grander public works but many people might
prefer to eat.....Rod

Tom Jaszewski expounded:


Thanks for the balanced view sarcasm intended please quote the
original articles NOT the GOP!!!!!

Oh, go find it yourself, you've got all the info you need. Doesn't
matter where it comes from, the info is the same. It just doesn't
support your moonbat blame game and that really ****es you off, huh?
Sarcasm intended.
--
Ann, gardening in Zone 6a
South of Boston, Massachusetts
e-mail address is not checked
******************************

"Cheryl Isaak" wrote in message
...
.. One source was
Scientific American (before 1976) which referenced a recent report from
the
Army Corp of Engineers on the poor engineering design of the levees. What
stuck was how either a 100 year flooding of the Mississippi or a
hurricane
could overflow the levees or so weaken them as to potentially destroy the
city.

Cheryl


Might be why they have spent nearly a billion dollars on those levees (flood
control) in the past 25 years...... Rod

On Wed, 07 Sep 2005 20:08:04 -0400, Ann wrote:

It just doesn't
support your moonbat blame game and that really ****es you off, huh?


Actually what ****es me off are your assumptions about a blame
game...so unknot your panties and recognize that had I posted the
Demicans slant you would have at least felt as if you had a snuggie!

BTW what does readers digest say....sheesh....



Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets. To plant a pine, one need only own a shovel.
-- Aldo Leopold

On 9/7/05 8:14 PM, in article , "Rod &
Betty Jo" wrote:


"Cheryl Isaak" wrote in message
...
. One source was
Scientific American (before 1976) which referenced a recent report from
the
Army Corp of Engineers on the poor engineering design of the levees. What
stuck was how either a 100 year flooding of the Mississippi or a
hurricane
could overflow the levees or so weaken them as to potentially destroy the
city.

Cheryl


Might be why they have spent nearly a billion dollars on those levees (flood
control) in the past 25 years...... Rod




I wonder (aloud) if $1 billion would be enough or merely stop gap.


Cheryl

Interesting that the following article says NOTHING about the Orleans Levee
board:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ea..._id=1001051313

I'm trying to research just what the Orleans Levee Board is, and what its
responsibilities are, but the best I can ascertain is that the Corps of Army
Engineers was supposed to be in charge of the actually construction of the
Levees - possibly the Levee Board oversaw improvements in the vicinity of
the Levee.
Without further information, I will have to regard the GOP article as a
smokescreen to avoid owning up to its responsibility for at least part of
the disaster.

On Thu, 8 Sep 2005 01:06:22 -0700, "presley"
wrote:

Without further information, I will have to regard the GOP article as a
smokescreen to avoid owning up to its responsibility for at least part of
the disaster.


imagine that....

President Bush and Republican leaders are trying to shift blame for
the poor rescue and relief effort to the victims of Hurricane Katrina
including state and local officials. Don't let them get away with
that.

Sign a petition today demanding the president stop the blame-shifting
and get to work helping Hurricane victims. Petition delivery will
start tomorrow in Washington, D.C.



Dear MoveOn member,
It has been a week since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast,
leveled New Orleans and left hundreds of thousands of Americans
homeless. We saw the best of America during that time—millions of
people stepped forward to offer help. Meanwhile, the Bush
administration failed at their most important job: keeping America
safe. The federal effort was too little, too late and it is now
becoming obvious that hundreds or even thousands of people died as a
result.

Then, starting Friday, in a Karl Rove-led campaign, the White House
started to blame state and local officials and even the victims who
were stranded without transportation when the Hurricane arrived. Sign
our petition demanding that the Bush administration stop blaming
victims, including state and local officials, and focus on helping
them.

http://political.moveon.org/helpvict...ZG_QahSOhQ&t=3

We'll begin to deliver the earliest signatures to the White House
tomorrow, Thursday, when a delegation of MoveOn members from New
Orleans, who are now homeless and will come to Washington and join
other MoveOn members outside the White House at a petition delivery
and protest. The petition is one important way to demonstrate that the
public wants more action to help hurricane victims and is getting
angry about this blame-shifting game the Bush administration is
playing.

It is important that the Bush administration not get away with
shifting their responsibility to local officials. Here is what
actually happened.

Timeline

Friday, Aug. 26: Gov. Kathleen Blanco declares a state of emergency in
Louisiana and requests troop assistance.


Saturday, Aug. 27: Gov. Blanco asks for federal state of emergency. A
federal emergency is declared giving federal officials the authority
to get involved.


Sunday, Aug. 28: Mayor Ray Nagin orders mandatory evacuation of New
Orleans. President Bush warned of Levee failure by National Hurricane
Center. National Weather Service predicts area will be "uninhabitable"
after Hurricane arrives. First reports of water toppling over the
levee appear in local paper.

Monday, Aug. 29: Levee breaches and New Orleans begins to fill with
water, Bush travels to Arizona and California to discuss Medicare.
FEMA chief finally responds to federal emergency, dispatching
employees but giving them two days to arrive on site.


Tuesday, Aug. 30: Mass looting reported, security shortage cited in
New Orleans. Pentagon says that local authorities have adequate
National Guard units to handle hurricane needs despite governor's
earlier request. Bush returns to Crawford for final day of vacation.
TV coverage is around-the-clock Hurricane news.

Wednesday, Aug. 31: Tens of thousands trapped in New Orleans including
at Convention Center and Superdome in "medieval" conditions. President
Bush finally returns to Washington to establish a task force to
coordinate federal response. Local authorities run out of food and
water supplies.

Thursday, Sept. 1: New Orleans descends into anarchy. New Orleans
Mayor issues a "Desperate SOS" to federal government. Bush claims
nobody predicted the breach of the levees despite multiple warnings
and his earlier briefing.

Friday, Sept. 2: Karl Rove begins Bush administration campaign to
blame state and local officials—despite their repeated requests for
help. Bush stages a photo-op—diverting Coast Guard helicopters and
crew to act as backdrop for cameras. Levee repair work orchestrated
for president's visit and White House press corps.

Saturday, Sept. 3: Bush blames state and local officials. Senior
administration official (possibly Rove) caught in a lie claiming Gov.
Blanco had not declared a state of emergency or asked for help.

Monday, Sept. 5: New Orleans officials begin to collect their dead.

(Adapted from: Katrina Timeline,
http://thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline/ )

Those are the facts. State and local officials BEGGED for help as
people in their city suffered. The Bush administration didn't get the
job done and when their failure became an embarrassment they attacked
those asking for help.

The New York Times reported on Friday that Karl Rove and White House
communications director Dan Bartlett "rolled out a plan...to contain
the political damage from the administration's response to Hurricane
Katrina." The core of the strategy is "to shift the blame away from
the White House and toward officials of New Orleans and Louisiana."

This is the same pattern of smearing that the Bush political machine
has used for a decade. John McCain and John Kerry had their war
records smeared. The CIA cover of Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife was
blown after he criticized the Bush Iraq policy. Now, Hurricane victims
are attacked when the Bush administration failed to do their duty to
help them.

It isn't just the Bush administration. Republican Senator Rick
Santorum blamed victims in a TV interview and House Speaker Dennis
Hastert suggested New Orleans should not be rebuilt.

We can't let them get away with this. Please sign our petition today
and do your part.

http://political.moveon.org/helpvict...ZG_QahSOhQ&t=4

This is just the first step. We need to continue to help those in need
directly and make sure our government does their job. There will be a
time to figure out who specifically to blame and what to change. In
the meantime, the Bush administration needs to get to work helping
those in need.

Thanks for all you do,

–Tom, Tanya, Joan, Jennifer and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
Wednesday, September 7th, 2005

P.S. Check out these links for more on the Hurricane relief efforts.

Katrina Timeline, ThinkProgress.org
http://thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline/

Editorial: No time for turf wars. The Times-Picayune, September 7,
2005.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=869

Editorial blasts federal response. CNN, September 4, 2005.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=870


The big disconnect on New Orleans. CNN, September 2, 2005.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=871

PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.




Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets. To plant a pine, one need only own a shovel.
-- Aldo Leopold

AHA - I found it. Below are the listed responsibilities of the Orleans Levee
Board:

"Directs the activities of the Orleans Levee Board responsible for the flood
protection systems, marinas, yacht harbors, the New Orleans Lakefront
Airport, a community center, land and lake front developments and management
of real estate and oil, gas and mineral rights in the Orleans Parish
metropolitan area. "

When a GOP article throws up a smokescreen, they don't expect people to do
research. The implication of the GOP article was that the Levee Board took
money that was supposed to be for building or maintaining levees and wasted
it on stuff like -WHOOPS - marinas, yacht harbors, land and lake front
developments, Airports, etc etc etc etc etc etc etc. And guess what the
mandate of the Orleans Levee Board is? To take care of marinas, yacht
harbors, land and lake front developments, etc. To be fair, I suspect that
the Orleans Levee Board has some responsibility as to the repair of damaged
sections of Levee, but for sure the pumps, (since they are used in the
routine flooding that happens in New Orleans during every heavy rainstorm)
and various mechanical aspects of the Levee system. I'm not letting them off
the hook completely. But to pretend that it was all their responsibility is
a crock.
As I suspected, the BUILDER of the levees and where the primary financing
had to come through, was the Army Corps of Engineers - and that financing
was cut in the past 4 years. In 2002 the head of the Army Corps of Engineers
resigned specifically over under-funding of his agency's priorities -
including the New Orleans Levee system.

Tom Jaszewski wrote
imagine that....

President Bush and Republican leaders are trying to shift blame for
the poor rescue and relief effort to the victims of Hurricane Katrina
including state and local officials. Don't let them get away with
that.

==============

Heaven forbid that a Democrat mayor, Democrat parish president,
and a Democrat governor should be held responsible for failing
to do their jobs. Please cite the text from the FEMA charter with
the guarantee that FEMA will respond in less than 72 hours. Local
government has the responsibility of being the first responder.
The feds should be coming in to handle that which the locals
can't handle - not what the locals have totally ****ed up.

If the local Democrat morons had done their jobs correctly, then
the horrific tasks facing the feds would have been tremendously
mitigated. Of course, that is heresy to the liberal entitlement
mentality. Blame Washington when your plight is your fault for
being too stupid to evacuate, and your fault for voting for stupid
local officials. Local officials who live in Hurricane Alley but are
too stupid to develop and implement contingency plans which
could have been done by many 9th graders.

The ultimate blame rests upon the shoulders of those who were,
sadly, too dumb to exit before the storm hit. I'd guess that at
most about 5,000 people had a very legitimate reason for staying.

Smart people were taking steps to exit on Friday, August 26.
The very smart were already in action on Thursday. I grew up
pretty poor, but I know that if necessary, my parents would have
gone out that Friday and pawned their wedding rings, TV set,
household appliances, and anything else of value to get us
and our grandparents on a bus and out of town. Then we would
probably have stayed in the bus terminal one or two parishes
away, waiting for terminal officials to help us link up with a
refugee site.

Screw the rich. It's really about time that we just gather
everybody's accumulated wealth plus their income and
divide it equally. We deserve a better system of wealth
distribution. That's why so many Americans are eager
to immigrate to Cuba.

================

B & J wrote in message ...
wrote in message
oups.com...
With all the help the United Nations is kicking in any meager amount I
could give is too small to make a difference, guess I'm tapped out
after donating to the tsunami relief fund. Not being cynical just tired
of being the redheaded stepchild.

Donations to Katrina leave me with a nothing feeling. I regularly donate to
many good causes, but this is a disaster that the government should cover
totally. Why should ordinary people with very ordinary incomes donate to
Katrina victims when the government can afford to spend a billion dollars a
day in Iraq.

If you have been keeping up with the news, you should be aware that Senate
Majority leader Bill Frist of Tennessee (Yes, he's the same doctor who
declared the Florida woman not brain dead without actually examining her.)
introduced a bill today that abolishes all inheritance taxes (a.k.a.death
taxes in Republican speak). What people do not realize is that it affect
less than 5% of the population and really affect .5% of the mega wealthy. It
sounds as if Frist is sneaking this bill in while no one is paying
attention. Ordinary people should never jump on this double speak wagon that
only makes the rich richer.

If the government can afford these kind of expenditures along with the tax
cuts for the rich, it sure as hell can afford taking care of its own
citizens in this time of desperate need. It's also time the Republicans had
their feet put in the fire.

Yes, I'm a cynic also.

JPS

In article , "Gideon"
wrote:

Tom Jaszewski wrote
imagine that....

President Bush and Republican leaders are trying to shift blame for
the poor rescue and relief effort to the victims of Hurricane Katrina
including state and local officials. Don't let them get away with
that.

==============

Heaven forbid that a Democrat mayor, Democrat parish president,
and a Democrat governor should be held responsible for failing
to do their jobs. Please cite the text from the FEMA charter with
the guarantee that FEMA will respond in less than 72 hours. Local
government has the responsibility of being the first responder.
The feds should be coming in to handle that which the locals
can't handle - not what the locals have totally ****ed up.

If the local Democrat morons had done their jobs correctly, then
the horrific tasks facing the feds would have been tremendously
mitigated. Of course, that is heresy to the liberal entitlement
mentality. Blame Washington when your plight is your fault for
being too stupid to evacuate, and your fault for voting for stupid
local officials. Local officials who live in Hurricane Alley but are
too stupid to develop and implement contingency plans which
could have been done by many 9th graders.

The ultimate blame rests upon the shoulders of those who were,
sadly, too dumb to exit before the storm hit. I'd guess that at
most about 5,000 people had a very legitimate reason for staying.

Smart people were taking steps to exit on Friday, August 26.
The very smart were already in action on Thursday. I grew up
pretty poor, but I know that if necessary, my parents would have
gone out that Friday and pawned their wedding rings, TV set,
household appliances, and anything else of value to get us
and our grandparents on a bus and out of town. Then we would
probably have stayed in the bus terminal one or two parishes
away, waiting for terminal officials to help us link up with a
refugee site.

And having done everything you were supposed to & showing up at the right
spot with thousands of other people discovering there were no buses out of
town, you'd be sitting for five days with no clean water, no food, & you
would've had to smell the stench of your grandparents' dead bodies rotting
in 100 degree weather, hearing every day that FEMA will be there later
that day, or the next day, or a week later -- failing specifically because
of Republican campaign to coopt FEMA to the home front authority & a
Republican president appointing an Arabian Horse club president to pretend
to be running what little remained of FEMA. You can try to blame that on a
Democratic mayor, but he stayed with the city beginning to end, & tried
every day in every way to get the help that was promised from the
president's own mouth even while he was still on vacation. If he's ever
not on vacation.

-paghat the ratgirl
--
Get your Paghat the Ratgirl T-Shirt he
http://www.paghat.com/giftshop.html
"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to
liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot." -Thomas Jefferson

"Gideon" expounded:

Heaven forbid that a Democrat mayor, Democrat parish president,
and a Democrat governor should be held responsible for failing
to do their jobs. Please cite the text from the FEMA charter with
the guarantee that FEMA will respond in less than 72 hours. Local
government has the responsibility of being the first responder.
The feds should be coming in to handle that which the locals
can't handle - not what the locals have totally ****ed up.

It's hopeless, Gideon, you're talking to a bunch of moonbats who
refuse to see any evil in the world that isn't named George Bush.
Personal responsibility? Pshaw. The front line (mayor, governor,
state emergency response team) not their fault, they were standing
around waving their hands in the air wailing to the Feds to kiss it
and make it better. Let's not even get into the welfare state so many
of the residents of New Orleans grew up in, had no reason to leave -
the state was supposed to take care of them, they know nothing else.

No one can accuse ABC News of being a GOP smokescreen:

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/HurricaneK...C-RSSFeeds0312

But hysterics and misguided opinion will lead in this group.
--
Ann, gardening in Zone 6a
South of Boston, Massachusetts
e-mail address is not checked
******************************