"“We have lent a huge amount of money to the U.S. Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I am definitely a little worried.” "


Chinese premier Wen Jiabao 12th March 2009


""We have a financial system that is run by private shareholders, managed by private institutions, and we'd like to do our best to preserve that system."


Timothy Geithner US Secretary of the Treasury, previously President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.1/3/2009

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Fed $'s dry up...NOLA floods...Iraq gets it's FREEDOM

From Attytood

"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."


-- Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 8, 2004.

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars. (Much of the research here is from Nexis, which is why some articles aren't linked.)

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to this Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness:

The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project is another major Corps project, which remains about 20% incomplete due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi, project manager. That project consists of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson parishes.

The Lake Pontchartrain project is slated to receive $3.9 million in the president's 2005 budget. Naomi said about $20 million is needed.

"The longer we wait without funding, the more we sink," he said. "I've got at least six levee construction contracts that need to be done to raise the levee protection back to where it should be (because of settling). Right now I owe my contractors about $5 million. And we're going to have to pay them interest."

That June, with the 2004 hurricane seasion starting, the Corps' Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don’t get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can’t stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn’t that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can’t raise them."

The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.

Go to the original for the lengthy, detailed and damning report....then pass it on...

2 comments:

Vinod said...

Dear friends and fellow community members [apologies for cross-posting]:


While you read this, as many as 100,000 poor people are still trapped amidst
the polluted, poisonous, rising waters of a flooded and hurricane-ravaged New
Orleans. Most are without food, drinkable water, shelter, or government
support. Hundreds are feared dead, and many thousands are at desperate risk of
death and disease in the days and weeks ahead. Hospitals are being forced to
turn people away, and Coast Guard helicopters, so crucial to the roof-top
heroics we see broadcast on the nightly News, are for most part absent--there
were only seven of them operating in all of New Orleans according to news
reports as of Tuesday night!


While many independent volunteers and organizations are racing to help save
people from what is now being called the most devastating natural disaster in
recent US history--and these folks deserve commendation and support, (see
www.redcross.org for more info on how to donate to disaster relief)--, those
who are SUPPOSED to be heading up such efforts, are now lacking the personnel
and equipment that they need to do their jobs. Indeed, many of them are
watching the horrible events from afar.


Why? Because 40% of Louisiana National Guard is now in Iraq! In all, 4,000
National Guard-members from Mississippi, and 3,000 from Louisiana are currently
stationed in and around Baghdad!


The Washington Post is writing that "National Guard officials in the states
acknowledged that the scale of the destruction is stretching the limits of
available manpower while placing another extraordinary demand on their troops --
most of whom have already served tours in Iraq or Afghanistan or in homeland
defense missions since 2001."


According to Mississippi National Guard, Lt. Andy Thaggard: "Missing the
personnel is the big thing in this particular event. We need our people."


As you can see, the devastation reaped by Katrina upon the Gulf coast is now
dramatizing horrifically not only the force of "Mother Nature" but the domestic
impact of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. The truth is that this
costly, bloody war is not making us safer, it is making Americans more
vulnerable.


It is making us more vulnerable for at least three reasons:


1) because of the hatred and violent responses that it breeds from abroad,
where it is viewed as a brutal, illegal, and unjust war--which it is.
2) because it is sucking vital resources--billions of dollars, tons of
equipment, and thousands of people-- out of our communities, harming especially
those communities like the poor coastal neighborhoods of Louisiana and
Mississippi, who need them most.
3) because it puts American soldiers--mostly poor and working-class recruits--
in harms way, making them kill and die for a war based on lies, as Cindy
Sheehan and Camp Casey have so clearly dramatized.


Enough is enough...Let's take action today to aid the people of both the
Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Mexico, by demanding that the US Bring the Troops
Home Now, starting--IMMEDIATELY--with the redeployment of the US National Guard
units currently in Iraq to Louisiana and Mississippi.


Redeploying these tens of thousands of trained National Guards to Louisiana and
Mississippi immediately can still--even at this late date-- have a dramatic
impact on the people of the Gulf Coast region. Rescue and rebuilding efforts
in the region are reported to be likely to take months, if not longer. And
many lives hang in the balance even now.


So act now, while the national attention is on this crisis! Take some time
today to raise this issue with your community organizations, family, friends
and fellow workers, as well as with your local politicians--perhaps while
passing the hat for disaster relief as well). As I see it, millions of people
making the concrete-link between the war in Iraq and the real human insecurity
it creates--at home and abroad-- is the key to ending this war. Let's devote
the next $300 billion slated to the war in Iraq to human needs at home, not
wars abroad.


What you can do:


Forward this message widley, to everyone you know: Enough is enough!
Bring the National Guard Home Immediately! End the War on Iraq!


Also: Call your US Representatives:
and tell them to bring the National Guard home now!
Call Sen. Kennedy at (202)224-4543.
Call Sen. Kerry at (202)224-2742.
Contact your local Reps through the Congress switchboard at (202)224-3121.


Even better, write a letter to the editor of your local paper.


Organize a vigil or rally this week in your community to help bring the link
between the war, the national guard deployments, and the Katrina crisis to the
center of the public debate where you live.


Even better, plan to take the message to Congress and the White House directly
in Washington D.C., on Sept. 24th, by attending the mass anti-war rally and
march there. Contact www.unitedforpeace.org for more info and to get yourself
a seat on a bus to D.C. (For those of you who can't make it D.C. a large
Boston rally and march to Bring the Troops Home Now is being planned for
October 29th on the Boston Common. See www.bringthetroopshomenow.com for more
info.)


Sincerely,
Joe Ramsey
Davis Square End the War Coalition
member, Tufts Coalition Opposing the War in Iraq
member, Military Families Speak Out

Vinod said...

Received by email:

Dear friends and fellow community members [apologies for cross-posting]:


While you read this, as many as 100,000 poor people are still trapped amidst
the polluted, poisonous, rising waters of a flooded and hurricane-ravaged New
Orleans. Most are without food, drinkable water, shelter, or government
support. Hundreds are feared dead, and many thousands are at desperate risk of
death and disease in the days and weeks ahead. Hospitals are being forced to
turn people away, and Coast Guard helicopters, so crucial to the roof-top
heroics we see broadcast on the nightly News, are for most part absent--there
were only seven of them operating in all of New Orleans according to news
reports as of Tuesday night!


While many independent volunteers and organizations are racing to help save
people from what is now being called the most devastating natural disaster in
recent US history--and these folks deserve commendation and support, (see
www.redcross.org for more info on how to donate to disaster relief)--, those
who are SUPPOSED to be heading up such efforts, are now lacking the personnel
and equipment that they need to do their jobs. Indeed, many of them are
watching the horrible events from afar.


Why? Because 40% of Louisiana National Guard is now in Iraq! In all, 4,000
National Guard-members from Mississippi, and 3,000 from Louisiana are currently
stationed in and around Baghdad!


The Washington Post is writing that "National Guard officials in the states
acknowledged that the scale of the destruction is stretching the limits of
available manpower while placing another extraordinary demand on their troops --
most of whom have already served tours in Iraq or Afghanistan or in homeland
defense missions since 2001."


According to Mississippi National Guard, Lt. Andy Thaggard: "Missing the
personnel is the big thing in this particular event. We need our people."


As you can see, the devastation reaped by Katrina upon the Gulf coast is now
dramatizing horrifically not only the force of "Mother Nature" but the domestic
impact of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. The truth is that this
costly, bloody war is not making us safer, it is making Americans more
vulnerable.


It is making us more vulnerable for at least three reasons:


1) because of the hatred and violent responses that it breeds from abroad,
where it is viewed as a brutal, illegal, and unjust war--which it is.
2) because it is sucking vital resources--billions of dollars, tons of
equipment, and thousands of people-- out of our communities, harming especially
those communities like the poor coastal neighborhoods of Louisiana and
Mississippi, who need them most.
3) because it puts American soldiers--mostly poor and working-class recruits--
in harms way, making them kill and die for a war based on lies, as Cindy
Sheehan and Camp Casey have so clearly dramatized.


Enough is enough...Let's take action today to aid the people of both the
Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Mexico, by demanding that the US Bring the Troops
Home Now, starting--IMMEDIATELY--with the redeployment of the US National Guard
units currently in Iraq to Louisiana and Mississippi.


Redeploying these tens of thousands of trained National Guards to Louisiana and
Mississippi immediately can still--even at this late date-- have a dramatic
impact on the people of the Gulf Coast region. Rescue and rebuilding efforts
in the region are reported to be likely to take months, if not longer. And
many lives hang in the balance even now.


So act now, while the national attention is on this crisis! Take some time
today to raise this issue with your community organizations, family, friends
and fellow workers, as well as with your local politicians--perhaps while
passing the hat for disaster relief as well). As I see it, millions of people
making the concrete-link between the war in Iraq and the real human insecurity
it creates--at home and abroad-- is the key to ending this war. Let's devote
the next $300 billion slated to the war in Iraq to human needs at home, not
wars abroad.


What you can do:


Forward this message widley, to everyone you know: Enough is enough!
Bring the National Guard Home Immediately! End the War on Iraq!


Also: Call your US Representatives:
and tell them to bring the National Guard home now!
Call Sen. Kennedy at (202)224-4543.
Call Sen. Kerry at (202)224-2742.
Contact your local Reps through the Congress switchboard at (202)224-3121.


Even better, write a letter to the editor of your local paper.


Organize a vigil or rally this week in your community to help bring the link
between the war, the national guard deployments, and the Katrina crisis to the
center of the public debate where you live.


Even better, plan to take the message to Congress and the White House directly
in Washington D.C., on Sept. 24th, by attending the mass anti-war rally and
march there. Contact www.unitedforpeace.org for more info and to get yourself
a seat on a bus to D.C. (For those of you who can't make it D.C. a large
Boston rally and march to Bring the Troops Home Now is being planned for
October 29th on the Boston Common. See www.bringthetroopshomenow.com for more
info.)


Sincerely,
Joe Ramsey
Davis Square End the War Coalition
member, Tufts Coalition Opposing the War in Iraq
member, Military Families Speak Out

(C) Very Seriously Disorganised Criminals 2002/3/4/5/6/7/8/9 - copy anything you wish