One season - It could be us

[ktmeadows]

And, I'm not finished. THAT is who should pay for the rebuilding of New Orleans. The State of Louisiana, NOT the federal government.

The point I was making was that T2M was incorrectly blaming the Corps of Engineers for all of NOLA's levee problems. I ignored it the first time, but couldn't keep quiet after I read the second quote with the same rantings. The bottom line is that the levees were designed to withstand a Category 3 hurricane. To have designed and built it beyond this would have required substantially more funding. Further, any plans to rebuild the levees above a Category 3 hurricane threat level must be approved by Congress.

 

[Bob]

No, the direct cause of the billions of dollars of damage cauased this year was the levees, and all evidence is showing they were defectively designed.

Just as people who live in glass houses ahouldn't throw stones, people who have or sell million dollar gulf front homes and spend lord knows how much of their time talking about their property values (will they go up? will they go down?) should not mock and belittle those who live in other coastal areas.

You are just irritated because W's approval rating is lower than Nixon's now.

Sick of this nonsense. Bu bye.

The "nonsense" is that GW is somehow the source of the problem. Cherrypicking a lousy expenditure[Iraq] is easy. NO wasn't the only city leveled, but it is clearly going to be a contentious issue regarding the cost to restore the levees. Of course Washington D.C. was originally a drained wetlands, so why not???

 

[yippie]

The point I was making was that T2M was incorrectly blaming the Corps of Engineers for all of NOLA's levee problems. I ignored it the first time, but couldn't keep quiet after I read the second quote with the same rantings. The bottom line is that the levees were designed to withstand a Category 3 hurricane. To have designed and built it beyond this would have required substantially more funding. Further, any plans to rebuild the levees above a Category 3 hurricane threat level must be approved by Congress.

Sorry - my mistake. I misunderstood the meaning.

 

[yippie]

The "nonsense" is that GW is somehow the source of the problem. Cherrypicking a lousy expenditure[Iraq] is easy. NO wasn't the only city leveled, but it is clearly going to be a contentious issue regarding the cost to restore the levees. Of course Washington D.C. was originally a drained wetlands, so why not???

Oh, but don't you know GW steered the hurricane toward NO because he "Doesn't like black people".

By the way, I saw a sign in front of Shakes Frozen Desserts advertising for help at $9.00 per hour. That's a 1.00 more than the construction jobs earlier mentioned.http://www.sowal.com/bb/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=50859#

 

[ktmeadows]

Oh, but don't you know GW steered the hurricane toward NO because he "Doesn't like black people".

When I was in New Orleans last month I heard on a local morning newscast that of all the dead victims, 49% were african-american, 43% were caucasian and the remainder were "other" (i.e., hispanic, etc.)

 

[Landlocked]

When I was in New Orleans last month I heard on a local morning newscast that of all the dead victims, 49% were african-american, 43% were caucasian and the remainder were "other" (i.e., hispanic, etc.)

Not that it makes a difference but it is funny how I haven't heard that on the national news. Interesting.....

 

[Bob]

Unfortunately, New Orleans imay be paying the price for its colorful and quirky past. I've found that everyone has an opinion about it - you either love it or hate it and your feelings about the hurricane and what should be done will probably reflect how you felt about the city in the past.

911 effected a lot of people and several square blocks of New York City, but the sympathy and support that the world felt for the city after it happened simply isn't there for New Orleans. After 911, we were all New Yorkers. After Huricane Katrina, it doesn't appear that many feel like New Orleanians. The hurricane has dislocated hundreds of thousands and been responsible for almost as many deaths as 911.

It may be that our flag wasn't attacked by the storm or that the legacy of the Longs, Mardi Gras and public corruption have hardened peoples hearts. It may also be that the country's political environment is so emotionally divided that those who love the President need to blame the Democrats in New Orleans for their own hard luck.

People don't deserve to be abandoned just because they took a job in New Orleans or were born there or simply liked it there - no more than those who took jobs in the nation's tallest building should have been abandoned. It may have been safer to work in a lowrise in Gary, Indiana, but it still isn't their fault.

You also can't compare it to those who live on the Gulf. Many gulf front residents have primary homes in other locations and the income or holdings to spend millions on a second home with fantastic views. Most of the people of New Orleans displaced from the storm weren't living in million dollar homes, I assure you.

If it goes to need and not waste, I do think that it's a national shame that the Gulf states don't get matched minute for minute in attention and penny for penny in dollars with that spent on other countries, including Iraq.

If rebuilding an American city - a city older than America itself actually - isn't a national priority, helping those whose city we refuse to rebuild, find new lives and places of business should be.

It's not. And I think it's shameful.

WU, you derive a good part of your pleasure mocking the SoWal scene. It's easy and it's a convenient target. I find your point of view hilarious many times. But in the end you are just thumbing your nose at those who disagree with you politically, and it shows badly. Would you be hammering this message about NO if you did not have a vested interest there? What is this thing about Bush, and Iraq and rich people who don't care? Of course they don't care enough. They have other things on their minds, namely, their own agenda. This year there were so many storms, damaging so many places, it was mind-numbing. I, too have family in NO. We were to gather there for an outdoor wedding 23 Sept. The wedding, their homes,and their jobs were wiped out! We are losing NO.....we are losing the city we used to know. My point earlier is that many of the poor, impoverished city dwellers there will find a better life in new surroundings. No one is in a hurry to rebuild what NO was before. There needs to be a plan. There needs to be consensus. The next hurricane season will be here in 6 months, the solutions will take years, if and when people put down their carefully aimed index fingers. Failing to do that will only result in the alienation this thread generated.

 

[ktmeadows]

Not that it makes a difference but it is funny how I haven't heard that on the national news. Interesting.....

LL - I found one of the news stories on the death stats. Check out http://www.wafb.com/Global/story.asp?s=4240295 The story contains preliminary figures compiled by the morgue in St. Gabriel, Louisiana, which is the primary facility handling the bodies of Katrina deceased. It show that a majority of the dead in New Orleans and surrounding parishes were actually not black.

Of the 883 bodies processed so far by medical examiners at St. Gabriel, 562 have been identified by race. Slightly less than half that number - 48 percent - are African-American.

Forty-one percent are white, 8 percent unknown and 2 percent Hispanic.

The remarkable numbers, which undermine claims that Katrina rescue efforts were somehow infused by racism, have been completely ignored by the national media, with only the Lousiana-based news web site, The Bayou Buzz, devoting any coverage at all to the story.

The surprisingly low death rate for black Katrina victims comes despite the fact that New Orleans itself was more than two-thirds black [67 percent] when the storm hit. White residents made up less than a third [28 percent] of the city's population, according to U.S. Census bureau numbers.

 

[yippie]

LL - I found one of the news stories on the death stats. Check out http://www.wafb.com/Global/story.asp?s=4240295 The story contains preliminary figures compiled by the morgue in St. Gabriel, Louisiana, which is the primary facility handling the bodies of Katrina deceased. It show that a majority of the dead in New Orleans and surrounding parishes were actually not black.

Of the 883 bodies processed so far by medical examiners at St. Gabriel, 562 have been identified by race. Slightly less than half that number - 48 percent - are African-American.

Forty-one percent are white, 8 percent unknown and 2 percent Hispanic.

The remarkable numbers, which undermine claims that Katrina rescue efforts were somehow infused by racism, have been completely ignored by the national media, with only the Lousiana-based news web site, The Bayou Buzz, devoting any coverage at all to the story.

The surprisingly low death rate for black Katrina victims comes despite the fact that New Orleans itself was more than two-thirds black [67 percent] when the storm hit. White residents made up less than a third [28 percent] of the city's population, according to U.S. Census bureau numbers.

Isn't it amazing what does NOT get coverage!!

BUT, nevertheless, GW sent that storm to NO, and also arranged to have the levees dynamited to flood the black neighborhoods. Then he instructed FEMA to take the full 96 hours to respond, (the same 96 hours that we have had to wait after some storms in Florida), because he "Doesn't like Black People". Not to take into consideration that the Louisiana Government is as the former director of FEMA stated, totally disfunctional.

Hey, it's all the government's fault, specifically the Republicans and GW!

The REALLY sad part about it is, these people who keep trashing the government over Katrina are so blind sided that they don't see how totally ridiculous these claims are!

But, hey.... stick that hand out further and take more money from the government.

 

[Rita]

......Now that the obvious has happened, many are pointing fingers and trying to lay blame. Obviously the folks that made the decision not to fork up the money needed to build the proper levees are probably now realizing that it's costing a heck of a lot more $$$ to clean up and rebuild than it would have had they just provided the funding needed years ago. But the Corps of Engineers could only do so much with the $$$ Congress forked over.....

If the levees were designed by the Corps of Engineers but not built by the Corps, then who had oversite of the construction and would ultimately have had the burden of noticing any "short cuts" in the construction process?