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Treme.

It's coming.

And Maitri's fixin' to blog it.

Red Stick, Night Stick

Cross-posted @ Adrastos: 

Yesterday, the Baton Rouge Advocate ran a fascinating as well as appalling story about police misconduct and racism in BR post-K. 

Baton Rouge police officers routinely harassed black people, resorted to unnecessary violence and conducted illegal searches in the days after Hurricane Katrina, out-of-state troopers claimed in reports recently released by the Police Department.

One trooper said Baton Rouge officers referred to black people as “animals” that needed to be beaten down. Troopers also reported that officers said they were under orders to make life rough for New Orleans evacuees so they would leave town.

State Police in New Mexico and Michigan cited a pattern of violence and discrimination when they pulled their troopers out of Baton Rouge after just two days of helping local police deal with an influx of hurricane evacuees in September 2005.

None of this comes as a surprise to those of us who spent any time in Baton Rouge in 2005. Dr. A and I were in exile for 6 or 7 weeks. We spent part of that time in Shreveport and Dallas where people were very sympathetic and friendly if you mentioned you were from New Orleans. We spent the last part of our exile in Baton Rouge where we were met with hostility and suspicion. Even in areas where there were very few poor New Orleanians, people kept asking: "When are y'all going home?" My stock response was to explain that it was the authorities who were keeping us out and that we planned to leave ASAP. Eventually, I stopped telling people I was from New Orleans, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired of dealing with the hostility.

Baton Rouge was a seething pit of paranoia, fear and downright Xenophobia in September and October, 2005. They were convinced that they were being invaded by hordes of welfare cheats, gangbangers, liberals and whatnot from the big evil city of New Orleans. Red Stick has always had an inferiority complex vis a vis New Orleans, which was covered with a patina of contempt in the wake of Katrina. The BRPD hasn't kept up very well with the changes in its own community, which has grown from a sleepy mid-sized guvmint/college/oil biz town into a sprawling urban area with all the usual problems that were exacerbated by the influx of New Orleanians. They've spent the last few years fighting the Advocate over the information contained in their files on post-K police misconduct and now we know why.

It's obvious that people in Baton Rouge still have a chip on their collective shoulder in their attitude about what happened in 2005. They did indeed have to bear a disproportionate share of the burden of housing indigent evacuees from New Orleans but they could have done so with a neighborly spirit instead of viewing outsiders with fear and loathing. I, for one, am grateful to the Advocate for pursuing the truth and hope that it may dislodge the chip from a few shoulders in the Baton Rouge area but I'm not holding my breath. Old habits, and biases, are hard to break.

UPDATE: I just re-read the article and the folks in power in Red Stick say: Same as it ever was, same as it ever was. A feeble excuse to post a certain Talking Heads tune.

The Frayed Blue Line

This is a piece I wrote for my blog and posted this morning. It's geared to my NOLA readership so let me provide some context. In the late 1980's and early 1990's violent crime and police misconduct were endemic. Marc Morial was elected Mayor of New Orleans in 1994 and promised to clean house at the NOPD and hire a reform minded police chief. He did: Richard Pennington was hired and got rid of 1/3 of the force he inherited. Modern crime fighting techniques such as COMSTAT were brought in and the murder rate was halved. Pennington left office in 2002 after an unsuccessful run for Mayor. He went to be police chief in Atlanta where things didn't go as well. End of introduction and on to the main post:

Other than a brief post at First Draft, I haven't weighed in on the Danziger Bridge case. It's not because I lack strong opinions but because I wanted to think my way through that particular maze. It's a murky mess, folks, but one thing is clear: the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth must come out. And not only about the Danziger Bridge case but about all the excesses that happened post-K and subsequently.

I hate this situation. I know quite a few cops and they're good guys and, even better, good poleese. The rest of the force runs the gamut of humanity from cretins to shit heels to thieves to careerists to those who are mixed bags. In my estimation, any large organization will usually have up to 20% assholes: the key is for management and the other 80% to rein them in. The NOPD's AQ (asshole quotient) seems to have exploded post-K to more like 40%, which may be higher than the 1/3 of the force fired or forced out when Pennington and company cleaned house.

Why have things gotten so bad after the reforms of the 1990's? Reform is an ongoing process and things changed dramatically when Nagin was elected Mayor. Both of Nagin's chiefs, Eddie Compass and Warren Riley placed a premium on loyalty, which is a prescription for disaster when the shit hits the fan. I have mixed feelings about Compass, he was an oustanding street cop who was fatally miscast as Chief. Like so many others, he cracked under the pressure of the 2005 disaster and lost control of the force. Riley superficially regained control but NOPD has never recovered moralewise from its stint in hell.

From the outside, Riley seems to have made a deal with his troops about what happened post-K: punish the "deserters" but sweep everything else under the rug because they were under such extreme pressure. In short, Riley is sort of a one man truth and reconciliation commission. But instead of airing problems and working towards understanding the horrendous conditions that made cops crack, he turned a blind eye in exchange for their loyalty. A police force run on loyalty instead of professionalism will inevitably cover up for one another and won't inspire whistle blowers to break ranks and tell the truth. Why stick your neck out when it will be career suicide? That's the mess we find ourselves in.

I've heard conflicting things about Lt. Lohman, the investigating officer who pled guilty to obstruction of justice. Some say that he was good poleese who felt intense guilt and decided to spill his guts for that reason. Others say that he copped a plea to get the best deal he could when it became obvious that the cover up was unraveling. At this point, I'm not sure what to think. The one thing I'm sure of is that the culture of loyalty over professionalism cultivated by Warren Riley is the reason that a story that didn't pass the smell test turned into the official story. Riley is now shocked, shocked by Lohman's confession and claims to have never read the dishonest report. Repeat after me: deniability. Riley is getting his defense ready in case he's in the dock himself some day.

Where do we go from here? As I said earlier, the truth of all the post-K NOPD horrors needs to come out and the worst offenders should be fired and prosecuted. But as a practical matter, we cannot fire the entire police force and start from scratch. People need to stop thinking that police corruption is like a virus that contaminates everyone: it's more individualized than that, the majority of cops ignore it and pretend that it's not happening. Deniability leads to denial.

The most important thing is to return a culture of professionalism to NOPD whereby cops are more likely to be penalized for NOT reporting misconduct rather than thinking "why should I stick my neck out." The good news is that Warren Riley will be gone soon. His replacement has an enormous and unenviable task. They may well have to fire and/or discipline as many cops as Pennington did when he took over. The most important thing is to reduce the AQ (asshole quotient) and get it under 15-20%, there's nothing worse than an asshole with a gun and the power of arrest. It can be done because it has been done before. The real shame is that it has to be done all over again. Let's hope NOPD sustains the reforms this time around or we could find ourselves back in the same mess the next time the keys to City Hall change hands.

The Danziger Bridge Case Explodes

Remember the Danziger 7? They were the New Orleans cops accused of murdering people on the Danziger Bridge in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the Federal Flood. A state court dismissed charges against them in 2008 but the Feds launched their own investigation into the episode and subsequent cover-up.

The case exploded yesterday when the police Captain who investigated the incident pled guilty to obstruction of justice and admitted that it looked like a "bad shoot" from the git go. This is the *perfect* witness for the Feds: he knows all the details and wasn't one of the shooters. Here's a link to the front page story in this morning's Picayune.

Confessions Of A Carnival Parade Recreator

I almost called myself a reanimator but since I lack Dr. Frankenstein's powers I decided not to. Recreator sounds quite weird enough, y'all. It makes me sound like the Jahweh of re-runs. Or is the proper term recreationist? Probably not, sounds more like Darwin denial to me...

Now that I've mucked about with word play, off we go. The Treme filming was something of a clusterfuck, which I know is quite typical. That's why they call it show business with the emphasis on the latter. If anyone else decides to do some extra-ing, I have one piece of advice for you: do not work your day job if you have a night shoot. I essentially worked a 16-17 hour day, which was kind of like being a junior associate at a New York law firm. I was bone tired when I left. I'd rather be bone idle...

We arrived at Washington Square Park in the Marigny and saw a long line snaking out of the tent. I was a bit confused because we'd been told we would be treated as first class extras whatever the hell that means. Just as I despaired of ever getting out of that line, a chick with a clipboard showed up and said: "Are there any Krewe members? If you are follow me." So, we got cuts, which I approved of. This episode set the tone for the evening: sometimes we were special and other times we were rabble. I'm not fond of being rabble even if it's sporadically rousing.

We got in the tent and ran into our peeps: the sub-krewe of PAN. We all had paperwork to do so we could get paid for being told to hurry up and wait. They fed us but tried to reserve one line for musicians only. One of the Krewe du Vieux members glared at the kid with the clipboard and said: "Fuck that. I'm staying on this side of the line." Said clipboard kid meekly retreated in the face of his righteous indignation as well as his elaborately decorated hard hat. I had Joe Sixpack on my side and it felt frakking good. 

The oddest part for me was seeing our new mime, Chris. My dear friend and blogging colleague the late Ashley Morris was the mime in the 2006 parade. Ashley's spirit hung over the whole enterprise for his sub-krewe mates. Krewe du Vieux and Ashley are synonymous for me. I joined PAN through Ashley after jokingly asking him "who do you have to kill or fuck to get in." He laughed and said: "I know a guy." Despite his reputation for bluster, Ashley was a master finagler and that's how I ended up in the cold in Faubourg Marigny as an extra last week.

Krewe du Vieux is a home made parade with rough satirical edges. The 2006  parade was an emotionally charged event since it was the first public post-K Carnival event. The overall theme was C'est Levee and PAN's take on that theme was Buy Us Back, Chirac. It's a good thing that Black Jacques was still Prez: let's get cozy with Sarkozy doesn't pack the same wallop. Anyway, we all dressed up as various Frenchy types: aristos, priests, maids, Breton fishermen and our Captain as Napoleon the First and his wife as Jeanne D'Arc. Now that's leadership, y'all. <humming the Marseilles>

The float builders did a good job depicting our rickety old float. In fact, too good, as I said before KdV has a handmade, homemade feel to it and this float was slick. A few pictures including our mime and Jeanne D'Arc:

Dr. A took the photos on her iPhone which along with the stage lit streets gives this an eerie feel but 2006 was an eerie time so it fits. Call it Adrastos noir...

The Treme assistant directors' attempts to manage the KdV people were amusing and, occasionally, infuriating. They didn't seem fully briefed that we were there because we were the real deal and as such were quasi technical advisers. We didn't do it for the money: we did it for love of our Krewe and, some of us, out of love for Ashley. That meant that we were quite prepared to bolt when they asked us to do something *extra* ridiculous and it nearly happened when we were finally called to the faux parade route. The AD told us to march in front of our floats, which led to a heated exchange that I gleefully joined in. We *always* march behind our float and when we told the AD that he balked so I said: "We won't do it but if we did you'd be mocked in New Orleans. So much for verisimilitude." He relented after a flurry of similar comments from my krewe mates. Score one for the locals.

They preferred that we not drink during the shoot but we are enterprising people and, in the interest of realism, hit the bars on Frenchmen Street. It was pretty weird entering a bar clad in my clerical robe complete with staff and beret. Dr. A was a pre-revolutionary French fop. We look ready for the guillotine, don't we? Let them eat not only cake but wigs...

 

The rest of the shoot combined repetition and boredom. It was also cold and windy on the street that night. We had a few more minor run-ins with the AD assigned to us but he eventually realized that we were not normal extras doing it for, uh, extra money. The problem was that by the time he figured that out, the shoot was nearly over. C'est la vie or is that C'est levee?

The biggest problem with the shoot involved the people who were cast as crowd extras. They looked like hipsters at a rave, which is not the Krewe du Vieux crowd at any time but particularly not in 2006. That crowd consisted of hardcore New Orleanians who were back in the city, struggling to rebuild: the hipsters floated in later. Dr. A looked at the crowd and said: "Where are the black families and gay men." An odd juxtaposition to be sure but both groups are heavily represented in a typical KdV crowd. And the Marigny has a big gay population, which made the gutterpunks and hipster doofi in the crowd even more ridiculous. No drag queens or costumes along the KdV route? Poppycock.

Parading over and over again was dull but necessary. I do, however, think that some of our footage will end up in the show since rumor has it that there *may* be a KdV sub-plot. Additionally, there was a set-up involving Steve Zahn's character in the crowd. The good news is that Zahn looked more like a normal KdV viewer than the hipster doofi around him. Treme star Wendell Pierce also marched with PAN's teevee band, the Stooges Brass Band:

 

Poor Wendell, they made him a trombonist who are the butt of jokes in the horn playing community. It is, however, an easier instrument to fake than some other horns. I didn't meet Pierce, the look on his face made it clear that he was there to work and not to fraternize with various odd faux French people. I respect that. Me, I was there to mill around and freeze my ass off.

In the end, I'm glad I was an extra on Treme. It was more work than play but I'll be dining out on some of these stories for years; especially the ones I cannot write about. Juicy, juicy, juicy. But my lips are sealed or is my keyboard is locked? Whatever.

I'm not sure, however, that Treme will be as note perfect about post-K NOLA as The Wire was about Baltimore. Yes, I know it's David Simon's show BUT Balmer is *his* town and now he's at the mercy of research and local advisers. The parade we shot is likely to look like every other Mardi Gras parade ever filmed as opposed to the dignified frenzy (an oxymoron but true) of Krewe du Vieux 2006. It's a detail and maybe a small one but you know what they say about the details and the devil. Among his local writers, I hope that Simon leans on former Picayune columnist Lolis Eric Elie who knows a great deal about many of the sub-cultures that make New Orleans so interesting as well as infuriating. 

Finally, PAN was not the only KdV sub-krewe represented: Spermes, TOKIN and Comatose were there as well. We made a lot of Spermes jokes over the course of the evening; especially over their trademark spermatozoa staffs. I approached my friend, and fellow NOLA blogger, Hammhawk and asked him if they were all now donors since it was so bloody cold. Then we tried cross-breeding a Fleur de Lis with his Spermes, uh, pole:

If you want to see more of Dr. A's cinema verite pictures follow this link.

Cross-posted at Adrastos.

Treme: John Goodman Meets Ashley Morris

 

David Simon's new HBO series Treme will be on the air quite soon. It's, of course, set in post-K New Orleans and the combination of Simon's involvement and the topic has created quite a buzz in Debrisville. John Goodman was recently added to the cast. Goodman's character is loosely based on my late friend Ashley Morris whose picture is above. He's a college professor who boosts his beloved city and dumps on those who shit on us. Sound familiar, Athenae and Scout?

I, along with some other NOLA bloggers, learned about this some time ago but kept it under our hats until the Goodman announcement was made. I'm feeling lazy today so to learn more about Treme, Goodman and Ashley, head over to our mutual friend Mark Folse's joint, Toulouse Street.

Michael Homan's Katrina Diary

My friend Michael Homan is a NOLA blogger and Xavier University professor who rode out the storm at his house in Mid-City. Unfortunately for Michael, his neighborhood flooded, which led to a series of harrowing adventures as well as long periods of boredom until he left his flooded house. It's a damn good thing that he's such a strong swimmer.

He recently posted the diary in its raw form at his blog.

Dedicated To The People Of Port au Prince

I grew up in earthquake country (the Bay Area) and live in the hurricane zone so the disaster in Haiti punches my empathy buttons. Unlike those folks, I've been lucky. The worst thing that ever happened to me earthquake wise was a stack of books landing on my bed in my parents house when I was a surly teenager. (Getting hit in the head with a copy of Catch-22 did nothing to improve my disposition.) I was among the lucky in New Orleans too but was exiled from my home and city for weeks. I've made a modest donation and I hope that our readers will click on some of the links posted by Athenae yesterday or use the Google to find other ways to help.

Seeing the film of the collapsed buildings in Port au Prince, of course, reminded me of the post-Katrina devastation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. As First Draft readers know, most of the damage in New Orleans was from the Federal Flood but places in Mississippi such as Waveland and Bay St. Louis were leveled by the storm. And whenever I think of that disaster and the flooded streets of Gentilly, the Lower Ninth Ward, Lakeview and Mid-City in New Orleans, I get Bruce Springsteen's My City Of Ruins in my head. It was written for his post 9/11 masterpiece The Rising but as with the best of Bruce's work, it's universal. It's Sam Cooke meets The Band meets the E Street Band.

I'd like to dedicate My City Of Ruins to the people of the epicenter of the earthquake, Port au Prince. Come on, rise up:

Listomania: The Decayed Decade

Note: This post was initially written for my blog and it has a few inside NOLA references but I'm too busy (lazy?) to hyperlink and explain them so just go with the flow. Happy New Year, Adrastos

Lisztomania is a best forgotten "bio-pic" about Franz Liszt directed by the master of excess, Ken Russell. Its theorum was that Liszt, the leading concert pianist of his day, was the first rock star so he was played by Roger Daltrey. I love Roger to death but this is the sort of disastrous casting that no movie can survive.

My feelings about the Aughties are akin to my feelings for Lisztomania, I'm glad it's over but there were some good bits as well. So I'm succumbing to the Listomania that's racing through the blogosphere like a virus at a dormitory. I have two lists: the things I *liked* about the first decade of the 21st Century and those I disliked.

The Top Five Things I Liked About The Aughties, in no particular order:

1. Good Teevee Shows: The Aughties was when movies for grown-ups fled the big screen and found refuge on teevee. There were some of the best shows ever on the boob tube, most of which could be found on cable. Here are a few of my favorites: The Wire, Deadwood, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, 30 Rock, Top Chef, Project Runway, Survivor, Mad Men, Dexter, Foyle's War, Battlestar Galactica and Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares to name a few. Unfortunately, good sitcoms were harder to find than dramas so there's only one on my short list. 

2.  The Blogosphere: I started blogging 4 years ago and love it. I've also made some very good friends, both real and virtual, and come up with some pretty darn good nicknames. My favorites are all New Orleanians: Renee Gill-Pratfall, Cynthia Windy-Lewis and last but never least, Mr. Gloomy Pants. 2009 was a rough year for me but one of the few highlights was being invited to join First Draft. Thanks, Athenae

3. The Spread Of Good Food: I grew up in a food oriented family. My mother was a great cook and we lived in a proto-foodie place, the San Francisco Bay Area. I now, of course, live in foodie heaven, New Orleans. But the gospel of good food has spread hither and yon and it's now possible to get a good meal in previously unheard of places like the United Kingdom and not just the ethnic joints either. I kid you not.

4. The Entertainment Value Of New Orleans Politics: There are times when I pinch myself over how truly ridiculous NOLA politics and politicians are. As a citizen, I'm semi-horrified but as an online satirist, I'm thrilled. Special thanks to C Ray, Dollar Bill, Oliver the Actor, Veronica White and Kaiser Ed Blakely. I couldn't have done it without you guys.

5. The Rise In Citizen Activism: The 2008 election was thrilling because of how passionate and involved people were after we blew it in 2004. The internet fueled the wave and it started rolling after Bush launched his war in Iraq and crested in November, 2008. It even came to post-Katrina/Federal Flood New Orleans, which was a pleasant surprise in a city best known for its laissez faire attitude about its corrupt and inept guvmint. Of course, in 2009 the energy seems to be on the Right but wingnuttery is good for the satire biz.

The Top Five Things I Disliked About The Aughties, in no particular order: 

1. The 2000 US Presidential Election: Or as I like to call it, prelude to a bummer. The sturm and drang on the GOP side gave us a hint of what was to come. I came to feel very badly about my apathy in that election season, not that being more engaged would have made a damn bit of difference in the Gret Stet of Louisiana. I voted for Gore and thought he'd be a much better candidate than President but I had a bad case of Clinton fatigue. Besides, I thought at the time: the other guy is Poppy Bush's doofus son, how bad can he be? We all found out.

2. Hurricane Katrina and the Federal Flood: It ripped our lives apart in New Orleans. Dr. A and I were among the lucky ones BUT the impact of that period remains strong. I've heard folks from other places talk about Katrina fatigue. We've got it too:one can't watch a Saints game on teevee without a gratuitous, and usually incorrect, Katrina reference. I'm also tired of talking to tourists who think the French Quarter was underwater because of piss poor press coverage, which brings me to:

3. The Decline and Fall Of The MSM: I came of age in the 1970's when the American media did some remarkable work but those days are long gone. The MSM is now characterized by sloppy and lazy reporting and by a general cluelessness as to why it's in decline. Bob Woodward is the poster boy for the decline: he's gone from an outsider who helped slay Nixon administration to an insider who fluffed the Bush administration.  

4. The Coarsening/Dumbing Down Of The Culture:  In this instance,  I'm referring to a general lack of consideration for the other guy and not just what passes for the arts. It impacts every aspect of daily life: people seem to be getting ruder, coarser, stupider and more selfish every day.

I hope I don't have a creeping case of old fartism but it seems to me that people have an increasingly hard time distinguishing between how you act in public and in private. And that makes life both harder and dumber.  In lamenting dumbassery in the Deep South of his day, H.L. Mencken once referred to it as the "sahara of the bozart." I think that's an accurate description of life in the US and A in the Aughties.

5. Greed: The selfishness I referred to above reached its apogee in the 2008 economic meltdown. We've gone from a country that used to make things to one obsessed with the stock market and every type of financial gimmickery imaginable. My late mother was a realtor and the main thing I learned from her is that no one should EVER agree to an adjustable rate mortgage. She thought they were a scam that would come back to bite you-as she put it in her Midwestern way-in the hinder. She was right: we have a country full of foreclosed houses and miserable former homeowners. The only ones who made our like bandits were, uh, the bandits. At the risk of further coarsening the culture: greed can go fuck itself.

Finally, I'm feeling listless so my listomania is listing. In the immortal words of Jeff Probst, I got nothing [more] for you.

Malaka Of The Week: The St. Bernard Parish Christmas Gift Thief

As always, there's a lot of malakatude around but this is a rare example of malakatude with a happy ending but not, of course, for the malaka in question. Last week, some creep broke into Our Lady Of Lourdes Church in St. Bernard Parish and stole all the Christmas presents they planned to give to the needy. Compounding the malakatude, the church had re-opened a mere one month ago after being flooded by Hurricane Katrina and ye olde Federal flood. The Debrisville media have been riding this story so hard that donations have flooded in (pun intended) to replace the stolen prezzies. (Eek, I sound like an Aussie.)

Yesterday, police arrested the ironically named Herman Peter Smiles, a local crackhead who had broken into the church to rob the poor box to steal money to feed his habit. He found the holiday swag and took it with him thereby wiping the smiles off many a face. Fortunately, the Grinchlike crackhead is a *really* stupid criminal: he lives down the street from OLOL, someone he told about the crime turned him in and he's already confessed. The goods were also all recovered: the malaka was too high to try and sell them. What a buzz kill, man. 

Here's how WWL-TV news in NOLA covered the denouement of the story:

In short, the church ended up with more goodies to give away and the arrest of the malaka burglar wiped the, uh, smile right off Mr. Smile's face. Hmm, I wonder if he signs his name with a smiley face? Probably not: I suspect that the convicts frown on smiley faces at Angola...

This noirish holiday story with a happy ending reminds me not of George Frakking Bailey or Frank Frakking Capra but of the frakking Grinch who tried to steal frakking Christmas from the frakking twits in Whoville. Here are Aimee Mann and Grant Lee Phillips with You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch: 

A Must Read Article

New Orleans Times-Picayune city editor Gordon Russell was a crack investigative reporter before his promotion last fall. Gordon is one of the MSM types in New Orleans who admits to reading the NOLA bloggers. In fact, he was on the politics panel at Rising Tide Tres (Trois?)

Gordon was also one of the reporters on the ground when New Orleans became hell on earth on 8/29/2005 and his reporting was one of the reasons that the Picayune won a Pulitizer Prize. Now that he's an editor, Gordon doesn doesn't write as often for the paper but when he does it's a doozy. His piece on Sunday's front page, Shot or not, dead or alive? Two men's fates lost in chaos after Katrina, is one of the best things Gordon has ever done and that's saying a lot. It's a personal account of what he saw in the chaotic days after Katrina and the federal flood.

And In Today's News of the NO KIDDING Variety

No shit:

NEW ORLEANS - A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Army Corps of Engineers' failure to properly maintain a navigation channel led to massive flooding in Hurricane Katrina, a decision that could make the federal government vulnerable to billions of dollars in claims.

U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval sided with six residents and one business who argued the Army Corps' shoddy oversight of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet led to the flooding of New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward and neighboring St. Bernard Parish. He said, however, the corps couldn't be held liable for the flooding of eastern New Orleans, where two of the plaintiffs lived.

Duval awarded the plaintiffs $720,000, but the government could eventually be forced to pay much more in damages. The ruling should give more than 100,000 other individuals, businesses and government entities a better shot at claiming billions of dollars in damages.

The ruling is also emotionally resonant for south Louisiana. Many in New Orleans have argued that Katrina, which struck the region Aug. 29, 2005, was a manmade disaster caused by the Army Corps' failure to maintain the levee system protecting the city.

Many have argued. Yeah.

Not that this will stop any of the right-wing smuggery brigade who want to talk about how everybody should have just started walking and walked right out of that hurricane and then there would have been no problem at all! Also, there was looting. And when the checks cleared jewelry sales at Wal-Mart went up 1400 percent. And some people had big-screen TVs. Also some bling. So government isn't to blame. 

A.

"From Cy Young to Sayonara"

That was how Yankee Third Baseman Craig Nettles described the plight of reliever Sparky Lyle after the Bronx Bombers signed Goose Gossage to be their closer in 1978. It also fits what's going on in the New Orleans print media world. The Times-Picayune had its finest hour in the wake of Katrina and Federal flood. Columnist Chris Rose became a star for his highly personal and idiosyncratic coverage of life in the evacuated city. Rose was previously known for light and frothy writing but was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for the stories that were collected as 1 Dead In Attic.

Times have changed and like other urban dailies, the Picayune is in trouble. There have been a wave of buy outs but most of the takers have been near retirement anyway: yesterday Rose became the latest critter to jump off the sinking ship.

As far as I know that notorious newspaper killer, Athenae is not implicated in the Picayune's problems but she's pretty darn crafty so ya never know.

It's a day for strained metaphors for me. I compared the Picayune buy outs to, uh, a Who elpee at my blog. And like Sparky Lyle, Chris Rose has gone from Cy Young to sayonara; unfortunately, the Goose is nowhere in sight...

Veteran's Day

Scout:

I didn't realize that hundreds of retired veterans became Katrina evacuees who were sent to Washington DC. And over 4 years later they are still there awaiting the completion of the rebuilding of their retirement home in Gulfport, Mississippi. From the Sun Herald:

WASHINGTON — The hundreds of Hurricane Katrina evacuees from Gulfport’s destroyed Armed Forces Retirement Home today are looking at their last Veterans Day in Washington. And for almost all of them, it couldn’t come too soon.

For four years, they have adapted, or not, to life at the beautiful Washington campus, but with 10 months to go before the newly rebuilt facility reopens on the Mississippi Coast, the veterans talk of little else but getting back to Gulfport.

SNIP

Of the 414 residents in Gulfport when Katrina hit in 2005, about 350 were evacuated to Washington — many on 10 buses provided by AFRH. Now there are 202 Gulfport residents still in Washington, said AFRH spokeswoman Sheila Abarr, and at least 170 are on the return list

Here is the Gulfport construction cam to keep tabs

And conservatives said Mississippi was all rebuilt years ago....

A.

Letter From New Orleans: Comfortably Numb

It's time for more recycling from the new guy. I posted this on July 13, 2006 and I wish I could say that we're no longer comfortably numb in New Orleans but we've had a bit of a relapse. That's what happens when one's leaders are numbskulls:

Syd Barrett's death got me thinking in Pink Floyd song titles. A scary concept, I know. Careful With That Axe, Eugene didn't fit the situation here in NOLA but one title nailed it: Comfortably Numb from The Wall. Comfortably numb describes the state of our political, judicial and socio-economic systems here pre-K.  We were muddling through at all levels but as long as we were comfortable, we were numb.

Then came Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent federal flood, which, by analogy, was to New Orleans what the last part of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens was to Pip the hero of the novel.  Pip had always thought that the bitter recluse Miss Havisham had been his financial benefactor. He was wrong. His real patron was Magwich, an escaped convict turned magnate whom Pip had helped while a child. There are two scenes that complete the analogy:

First,  Pip confronts Miss Havisham who had led him to believe that she had helped him. She had also cruelly used her beautiful ward Estella to torment Pip. Miss Havisham lived in a large and spooky house but spent most of her time in a dining room wherein a wedding feast had been laid but never served. Miss Havisham’s fiancee had jilted her. The table remained untouched including an aged wedding cake that had been gnawed upon by vermin. Miss Havisham always wore her wedding dress as a badge of shame and delusional martyrdom. 

Pip let Miss Havisham have it: telling her what an evil and horrid crone she was; especially the way she'd used Estella as an instrument of vengeance against the male gender. Miss Havisham, being a Dickens character, realized the error of her ways but then a coal rolled out of the fire and set Miss Havisham's dress ablaze. Pip tries to put the fire out by using the venerable tablecloth but it crumbles and Miss Havisham dies; a victim of, in her case, being uncomfortably numb.

How does this apply to NOLA? Miss Havisham is a perfect symbol of the city. For years, we allowed our city to rot and decay and instead of trying to do something about it, we turned to drama, drugs, booze, food and apathy. If I had a hundred dollar bill for every time I’ve heard “you can’t change fill in the blank it’s New Orleans,” I’d be as rich as Pip's portly solicitor, Mr. Jaggers. I’ve heard that line applied to government, litter, crime, you name it; it’s the catchall excuse. The city and its people were all comfortably numb.

Second, at the end of the book, Pip returns to Miss Havisham's house in an attempt to prevent his first love, Estella from turning into her step-mum, Miss Havisham. Pip finds Estella sitting in Miss Havisham's dark and filthy dining room, where else? The curtains had not been opened since the day Miss Havisham was jilted. Pip rips the curtains open and flings the windows open. The curtains crumble from years of dust and disuse. But Pip has let the sun and fresh air in. Having faced their demons honestly, Pip and Estella go on to a better life.

Hurricane Katrina swept our old systems away; exposing them as rotten, corrupt and structurally unsound. Post-K, everything has collapsed; especially the criminal justice system. The criminal courts no longer function. There is no place to house juvenile offenders so they must be put back on the streets even those who pose a danger to the rest of us. Debrisville is like Miss Havisham's decrepit mansion but there's no Pip to level with us and help us to pick up the pieces and start anew. Why? Because for nearly two centuries, New Orleans was comfortably numb and content with, and downright proud of, its apathy and backwardness. The storm *should* have provided a jolt to the system but the future remains unclear. One thing *is* clear: being comfortably numb is no longer an option. Instead, we need great expectations.

UPDATE: The original post was written *before* my lethal YouTube addiction:

Malaka Of The Week: Congressman Steve King

The malaka of the week sweepstakes didn't need to run the whole consarn week thanks to a bit of idiocy out of the corn fed mouth of Iowa wingnut Steve King. The King of nothing was responding to a question posed by the Hill, "what vote would you like to redo?"

“I don’t really go back and re-live that sort of thing. Some of the big votes that I’ve thought about, some of the jury’s still out. And at this point, maybe I’d answer that question another way, probably the singular vote that stands out that went against the grain, and it turns out to be the best vote that I cast, was my “no” vote to the $51.5 billion to [Hurricane] Katrina. That probably was my best vote.”

Mr. King is well known as one of House GOP Leader Boner's more gaffe prone acolytes but this is rich even for him. I particularly like the bit where he admits to being completely unreflective. How Bushian is that? 

Additionally, King is from a state that has been flood prone so he really should keep these thoughts to himself. Of course, when you put your foot in your mouth as much as Congressman Malaka does, you get used to talking around it. Sure, it's garbled but it's not like the dude ever makes any sense. Here's one of his classic riffs after the 2006 death of the terrorist honcho Abu Musab al-Zarqawi:

"There probably are not 72 virgins in the hell he's at. And if there are, they probably all look like Helen Thomas."

Yes, that's right: he insulted the legendary journalist Helen Thomas who was 85 at that time. It takes a real malaka to mock an old lady; especially one of Ms. Thomas' accomplishments.

Another of King's claims to fame is his extreme homophobia. His response to the advent of gay marriage in Iowa was to warn of it becoming a "gay marriage Mecca" for "those people." King is wont to use the term  "those people" when referring to gay men, for whom he has a special distaste. Hey, at least he doesn't call "those people" cornholers. Hmm, maybe that's not an insulting term in Iowa...

Steve King is overqualified for the title of malaka of the week. His malakatude covers the waterfront; of course, he wouldn't pay to rebuild a waterfront in New Orleans. Anyway, King may be overqualified but in the immortal words of Adrian Monk: "he's the guy."

Hat Tip: Kevin Allman of the Gambit Tabloid Blog.

Letter From New Orleans: Michel

Okay,  it's time to introduce another recurring feature from the new guy. It's sort of an hommage to my favorite magazine, The New Yorker. They've been running "letters from" various places for eons. If it's good enough for them, why not First Draft?

I'd also like to show that I can do something other than snark and satire even though that's what I do best. This is also the first post that I'll be recycling from the Adrastos Virtual Cafe. Don't worry, I won't do it very often and only with pieces that I think are more or less timeless. Besides, Athenae told me I could do a spot of recycling and she's the bull goose loony around here. This was first posted on September 19, 2006 and it's about someone who was very dear to Dr. A and myself:

Michel was our handyman for 5 years. Actually, he was Dr. A's factotum and I was her sidekick as far as Michel was concerned. That was fine by me. Dr. A met Michel the week we moved into our house on Constance Street. A shite tree at the house next door had fallen down and nearly hit our house. The drunk who then owned the building had dragged the dead tree to the curb but failed to have the limbs cut down so they sat on the sidewalk for days. My trashophobic wife swung into action. A man on a bicycle stopped and said: "I'm a handyman, lady. I can help you with that mess." It was Michel.

Michel was the handyman's handyman. He could garden, fix nearly anything and do it for a fair price. Michel was also likable, likable, likable. There was just something about him that drew people to him. He'd often show up with a crew of helpers: Sweet, Andre and his girlfriend Georgeanne. Andre, his cousin, liked to introduce himself by saying, "My name is Andre, like the champagne." Sweet was his primary sub-contractor and still cuts our grass. His nickname is not an ironic one; like Michel, he's as sweet as pie. He prefers to be called Edwin but we can’t help calling him by the affectionate nickname Michel gave him.

Michel wasn't always as reliable as we would have liked but he'd show up smiling and apologetic and tell us about his latest misadventure. We always forgave him because his explanations were so entertaining. Besides, when he worked for us, he gave it everything he had. I got exhausted watching him.

Dr. A thought that Michel should have gone on Survivor. Every time, they'd have a citified African-American guy who couldn't swim or was afraid of birds, she'd say: "They should get Michel. He can operate a boat, fish, build things and take care of himself." I don't think he would have been good at the backstabbing part of the game though: it wasn't in his nature.

Alas, Michel was a heavy smoker. Dr. A gave him her standard spiel about smoking and he'd nod and keep puffing away. In May 2005, Michel was diagnosed with lung cancer after about 6 months of vague symptoms. It was a bad case too. He turned to Dr. A to advise him. He went through the standard therapy torture of chemo, radiation but his decline continued unabated. Dr. A even tried to help get him into a clinical trial. Michel still came over to do our yard but his boys did most of the work. Michel was always skinny but he started to look like a toothpick with legs. It was a bad sign.

Then, Hurricane Katrina struck. Dr. A was worried about Michel and he was one of the people we kept calling and calling and calling. It was futile: the area code 504 cell phone servers were down when we needed them the most. This lack of contact added to everyone's sense of frustration and isolation: if you didn't have a landline contact number or an email address you were SOL.

After a week in Shreveport, we moved to my cousin's house near Dallas. Dr. A kept trying to get Michel; one day she got an answer. It was the first time she’d gotten through to anyone from home on their cell phone. It turned out to be a bittersweet moment. The phone was answered by Michel's girlfriend, Georgeanne. She, too, was in Dallas at a relative’s house. Michel's mother Miss Evelyn, who is in her mid-Seventies but looks twenty years younger, was with her. We learned that Michel was still alive but fading fast. He'd landed in an hospice in North Dallas.

We fought the crosstown Dallas traffic and found the hospice. Dr. A was relieved to see that it was a clean and well-maintained facility. We had to do some fast talking to find Michel's room. It was made trickier by the fact that his real first name was Michael. We told them that he had been evacuated from New Orleans and had lung cancer. One of the staff said: "Oh, you must mean that incredibly nice black fellow who came in a few days ago." When we got to his room, we found Michel dead. He was still warm. We had just missed him. 

When Georgeanne and Miss Evelyn arrived, they told us their Katrina story. On Sunday, 8/28, Miss Evelyn was able to get Michel from her house on Perrier Street to Touro Infirmary. The docs and nurses let Georgeanne, Miss Evelyn and two of her grandchildren stay in the room with Michel and ride out the storm there.

They remained at Touro for several days until "help" arrived. It was a mixed blessing for Michel's family: he was evacuated but they were on their own. They wouldn't let his mama or girlfriend come with him. Michel was at Armstrong Airport for 2 days before being moved to Dallas.

Georgeanne and Miss Evelyn walked downtown in the general direction of the Superdome; trying to get to the Hyatt Hotel where they’d heard that there were busses to take them to safety. They waded through waist deep water and saw dead bodies floating on Tulane Avenue. Miss Evelyn did her damnedest to prevent her grandkids from seeing the corpses.  Dr. A and I cringed when we heard the story but Miss Evelyn told it matter of factly without any histrionics.

When Georgeanne and Miss Evelyn finally got to the Hyatt, they were told that there was no place for them on the busses but a policeman saw Miss Evelyn looking bedraggled but dignified. The cop broke through the line and got Miss Evelyn and Georgeanne on the next bus. Miss Evelyn was again matter of fact: "I always did like the po-leese and now I like them a mite better."

They wound up in Reunion Arena in Dallas before moving in with family in North Dallas. Miss Evelyn informed us that the food had been good at the arena but she didn’t have a pair of shoes that fit: she’d lost hers in the walk downtown.  She told us how lucky she felt to be alive and safe. Their luck had just run out with Michel’s death.

We had a tearful reunion but mostly talked about Michel’s sweet and calm nature. He took after his mama in that way: Miss Evelyn was almost ethereal in her calm but was passionate about returning home. It was still unclear at that point how bad things would be in New Orleans so we pondered the fate of our flooded city. Georgeanne was sure of one thing: “New Orleans isn’t buildings. New Orleans is the people.”

Yeah, you right, dawlin'

Introducing The Malaka Of The Week

For the last few years, I've had a semi-regular feature at my blog, Malaka Of The Day. I've never done it daily but it has a nice ring to it. You're probably asking yourself: what the hell does malaka mean? It's Greek for wanker or jerk-off BUT it conveys so much more. It's the primary cuss word in the Hellenic vocabulary: the equivalent of dropping a nuclear strength f-bomb. 

So, I've decided to import this feature to First Draft but I'm going to try very hard to do it regularly on either Friday or Saturday. I hope nobody intends to hold me to that promise but if you do there's lots of malakatude out there.

For the first Malaka Of The Week, I considered mocking someone who's important like Bad Max Baucus (D-Insurance Industry) but changed my mind after watching the season premiere of  Survivor. There's an odious Texan by the name of Russell H whose strategy involves sabotage and extreme mendacity even by Survivor standards. He makes Richard Hatch look like Mary Pickford, the Virgin Mary or Mary Richards in contrast. That's a whole lotta Marys. Hail, yes...

Of course, lying is as common on Survivor as it is in the halls of Congress or on Fox News but Russell H has plumbed new depths of malakatude. In order to gain sympathy from his young and gullible new tribe mates, he claimed to be from St. Bernard Parish and to be a Katrina/Federal Flood, um, survivor. He claimed to have ridden out the storm in his house with his faithful dog. His story was a real tearjerker: the dog drowned and he was forced to retreat into his attic with an ax. The problem is that none of it was true. Malaka Russell is from Houston and has never been to Da Parish. I knew right away he was a lying sack of shit because of his twangy, Texany accent. People from Da Parish have the classic yat accent, which for the uninitiated among you, sounds like Brooklynese or like Pauly Walnuts from The Sopranos.

This is as low as anyone can sink. Playing on people's best instincts for personal gain is the essence of malakatude. Russell H should not only lose Survivor he should be locked in a room with a group of angry and bitter survivors of the real storm and flood. They'd make short work of this pudgy, ugly Texan malaka.

Chertoff

Still a total dickhead, in case you were wondering.

A.

Must-see TV

I may have, on occasion, professed that I rather like Rachel Maddow, and I've more than once posted here about her.  This one, though, isn't just fangirl squee, trust me.

Maddow knocked it out of the park last night with this Tom Ridge interview. If you haven't seen it yet, it's worth your attention. The clip below is one of three, the other two are on her show site. She devoted over half the program to the conversation with Ridge, starting with the topic of whether politics influenced DHS terror alerts, whether Ridge has  backtracked on statements to that effect made in his new book, then moving on to Iraq intelligence and the failured FEMA response to Katrina.

It's a remarkable bit of broadcasting, not just for what Ridge says or doesn't say, and not just for Maddow's tenacious questioning. What really struck me as I watched it was that something real was happening here, something we don't see very often. By "real" I obviously don't mean Ridge is telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but. Rather that, as the interview unfolds, there's a palpable sense that we, along with Ridge, really don't know where it's going to end.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

There Is Something Sick About Us

That we tolerate this kind of filth on our televisions.

For all the wankery about TV ratings, about strong language and sex and violence and nudity (or as it's known in the A household, Tuesday nights with Denis Leary) I would submit Neal Boortz's kind of thing does far more damage to impressionable minds than all of the above.

Time for the next advertiser boycott.

A.

Scout's Farewell

Back in August of 2005 I was blogging at my little blog and had decided I was going to quit blogging. Then Katrina hit. I was compelled to continue blogging. After more than 3 years of blogging primarily about  the recovery in New Orleans, I have come around full circle to that decision to quit political blogging. I find I don't have much to say anymore...at least I wouldn't say it any better than many others do.

I am not a writer, or  pundit, or journalist (citizen or otherwise). I am just an American who felt strongly about the necessity of this country to right the wrong that had been done to the Gulf Coast and in particular New Orleans. I believed and still do believe that it is a moral imperative and that in not doing so we, as a country, as a community, risk losing our soul. I would submit that as a society we lost our moral compass when bodies were allowed to remain in the streets of N.O. for days and weeks, or in homes for months and even a year in some cases, as the powers that be argued over who would foot the bill to recover the remains of the victims of the flooding of New Orleans. There is something very wrong when such a thing can occur in a great nation. It is that issue that kept me blogging about New Orleans when many had moved on and moved  me to question and look deeper, for if we were failing at such a basic level, what other failures were occurring I wondered. Of course time would reveal many failures and limited successes on our part as a nation and that is what I attempted to chronicle.

After a year I realized that chronicling was the word that best explained what I was doing. Early on  I admit I had hoped my blogging could perhaps bring change but after a year I knew that was folly, hubris and naivety on my part. I had wanted to do more, always more. But as is so often the case when we seek to give, we find we receive so much more than it  would even have occurred to us to be possible. That was the case for me and I am forever grateful to so many for that.

I made many trips to New Orleans over the past years.  I was given the opportunity to witness the people of New Orleans lift their city from ruin...out of love.  Because it has been their doing...when often they waited and waited for help, fought against the misunderstanding and falsehoods, became the pawn in political fights, faced the sting of abandonment and worse. They taught me so much about what community is and that it is worth fighting for.  I unabashedly admire them and I came to love their city.

I was in New Orleans a few weeks ago and this trip was purely for pleasure. As I rode the St Charles Avenue street car line for the first time I thought ...this was what it was for...to have this moment, this experience, one so rich in history and so unique in the  American experience. I was relaxing and enjoying  New Orleans for perhaps the first time post Katrina. I thought though my work hadn't come close to achieving what I naively had once hoped for, I hoped now that in some small way  my work could be seen as an attempt at support of what they have done.  I hadn't changed anything but I hoped that perhaps my blogging efforts had helped them feel not so alone.  If I achieved that I guess that is pretty good.

Witnessing their love for their city made me look anew at my own. I realized how much I had taken for granted here. I find myself now falling in love with my own local and am better for it. I had wanted to move to New Orleans yet this journey instead brought me home.

Finally I have been graced with wonderful friendships which will last a lifetime. It was lb0313 who invited me, a stranger, into her home. I can never thank her adequately for the many experiences and all she has shown me, but thank her once again I will. Thank you dear friend.

As another anniversary approaches, focus will once again turn to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. It is my fervent hope that such focus will last more than a day. If one were to ask me what to blog on that day, I  would say post the simple yet poignant graphic the NOLA bloggers post, seen here. Then write about New Orleans on the day after and the week after and in the months after the  anniversary. Because it is not over, they are not OK yet. I hope we can make them and us OK once again.

I want to thank all of the great readers and commenters here at First Draft. You're the best.  I have so much gratitude to extend to Athenae for bringing me here, for her editorial guidance over the years and especially for her friendship. You have been so supportive, words can not do it justice but Thank You A!

As for my future, I plan to do some bike blogging at this site--Bike Scout. Stop by anytime

Thank You ALL and if you will indulge me one last time....I always found writing to be painful but I did so enjoy making my little videos. So here are a few of which I am particularly proud:

Scout...Peace

Formaldehyde: Good for You!

Bathe in some today!

A.

Zombie falsehoods

With each disaster there inevitably comes an email or blog comment like this (scroll down) comparing the new terrible event to Katrina and the flood of New Orleans and I doubt it will ever end.

What we dont see with the flooding
Just a personal observation...as I watched the news coverage of the massive flooding in the Midwest with the levee's about to break in Fargo, ND, what amazed me is not what we saw, but what we didn't see...
1. We don't see looting.
2. We don't see street violence.
3. We don't see people sitting on their rooftops waiting for the
government to come and save them.
4. We don't see peop! le waiting on the government to do anything.
5. We don't see Hollywood organizing benefits to raise money for
people to rebuild.
6. We don't see people blaming President Obama. (Except for Don Marchant, post #30)
7. We don't see people ignoring evacuation orders.
8. We don't see people blaming a government conspiracy to blow up
the levees as the reason some have not held.
9. We don't see the US Senators or the Governor of North Dakota crying on TV.
10. We don't see the Mayors of any of these cities complaining about the lack of state or federal response.
11. We don't see or hear reports of the police going around
confiscating personal firearms so only the criminal will be armed.
12. We don't see gangs of people going around and randomly shooting at the rescue workers.
13. You don't see some leaders in this country blaming the bad
behavior of the North Dakota flood victims on "society" (of course there is no wide spread reports! of lawlessness to require excuses).

This was emailed to me for comment by Athenae and a blogger at North Decoder who was disturbed by it. At the end of this post I have posted my email response outlining the falsehoods contained above and if nothing else please read the last paragraph of it.

(St. Rita's/USA Today)

But for now I'm going to focus on another comment (scroll down further at above link) which is completely false:

Points well taken
But if there is a flood, and the levees don't hold, and the city gets flooded, I will bet that the staff of the nursing homes all leave the residents to die on their own either. Do you remember that? Everyone that works at the nursing home took off and left all the people there to die! You can make up excuses all day long for that type of behavior, but I am not buying it.

This is a falsehood. The staff stayed and helped. People don't realize when those levees broke the flood waters came in fast and furious. That nursing home was in St. Bernard Parish. A couple I interviewed were from St. B and they said their home was flooded in minutes. They barely escaped  with their lives...I mean literally. At one point the guy was almost swept away. He only lived because he grabbed the protruding  antenna of an already submerged truck. So imagine those waters sweeping into a nursing home and overwhelming elderly folks and the staff. If you can't imagine it, well here is an account of the horror:

"We were like in a sinking ship," says Gene Alonzo, a retired fisherman who stayed at St. Rita's to be with his disabled brother, Carlos, a resident. "I never did see water come up like that."

Within 20 minutes, the water inside rose almost to the ceiling and nearly three dozen residents were drowning, some in their beds, in one of the signature scenes of horror wrought by Katrina.

Alonzo's account of the ordeal, together with new details from government officials, survivors and the Manganos' attorney, James Cobb, paint the most complete picture so far of what happened at St. Rita's before and after Katrina struck — and shed light on why the Manganos did not evacuate.

Their descriptions also debunk some of the myths that grew out of the chaotic aftermath of the hurricane, including reports that the Manganos abandoned their nursing home during rescue efforts there.

SNIP

Alonzo, 55, says he put his 52-year-old brother onto a mattress, then grabbed Carlos' roommate, Harold Kurz. Alonzo recounts the frantic effort by nurses and others to save as many as possible:

"You can't get out a door, so they're kicking out windows to float the residents out on mattresses to put them on the roof. In every room, people were hollering. They were screaming like somebody was murdering them (and) ... for God to help them. It was a horror scene."

SNIP

Alonzo returned to St. Rita's a month after Katrina to get belongings from his ruined car. He calls the place haunted, and says he will never go back.

"Can you imagine being in your wheelchair ... and that water came up over your head? I guess that's why people are so mad."

He tears up, and then says quietly he wasn't strong enough to hold onto both his brother and Kurz. "You can't swim with two people. I had to let Harold go. I still think about that when I fall asleep."

That story is from USA Today in November of 2005. The truth was set forth over 3 years ago yet the falsehood remains.

I wish the people who wrote the above comments seen at North Decoder would have to spend one night falling asleep to the horrific screams filling their head and the sight of their hand letting a human life slip away, for I think just one night of that would put an end to their writing comments which perpetuate the  falsehoods....at least I hope

Allowed To Live

This is a horrifying story, start to finish, as horrifying as it is recognizable, but there are parts of it that stood out to me:

Things quickly got ugly. Pervel remembers aiming a shotgun at a random African-American man walking by his home--even though he knew the man had no connection to the theft of his vehicle. "I don't want you passing by my house!" Pervel says he shouted out.

[snip]

Apparently thinking they'd caught some looters, the gunmen interrogated and verbally threatened Collins and Alexander for ten to fifteen minutes, Alexander says, before one of the armed men issued an ultimatum: if Alexander and Collins left Algiers Point and told their friends not to set foot in the area, they'd be allowed to live.

[snip]

Janak, who was carrying a pistol, says he grabbed one of the suspected looters and considered killing him, but decided to be merciful. "I rolled him over in the grass and saw that he'd been hit in the back with the riot gun," he tells me. "I thought that was good enough. I said, 'Go back to your neighborhood so people will know Algiers Point is not a place you go for a vacation. We're not doing tours right now.'"

He's equally blunt in Welcome to New Orleans, an hourlong documentary produced by the Danish video team, who captured Janak, beer in hand, gloating about hunting humans. Surrounded by a crowd of sunburned white Algiers Point locals at a barbeque held not long after the hurricane, he smiles and tells the camera, "It was great! It was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it." A native of Chicago, Janak also boasts of becoming a true Southerner, saying, "I am no longer a Yankee. I earned my wings." A white woman standing next to him adds, "He understands the N-word now." In this neighborhood, she continues, "we take care of our own."

Jackass could have stayed in Chicago and learned the real "meaning" of the N-word just fine. The sentiments expressed in this story could have been expressed by any one of a hundred people I've talked to in my years living here. This isn't about the South. This is about America, as it always has been, as we keep saying here: Our fate is your fate, and it was, and it is. Our own.

I mean it, how often do you hear this? Every day? My house, my block, my neighborhood, I live here and you don't. Moreover, I BELONG here and you don't. Our lives are a crazy quilt of safe areas and danger zones, in which we make snap decisions about who "looks" like they belong here and who doesn't. But for the outright violence, but for the semi-official nature of the "militia," is there anyplace in this country this couldn't have happened? Neighborhood Watches and community meetings and everybody on the lookout, all the time, for what's coming after them. It's no wonder, no wonder at all.

And I don't know if it's our inherent paranoia or a constant drumbeat over 25 years that government is useless and offers you no protection so you'd better go arm yourselves to the teeth and put grates over your windows, I don't know if it's a sign of shallow hatred or a sign of feeling abandoned by everybody around you, that we have no responsibility for each other, that makes people feel like they have to create borders and defend them. I don't know if it's simple human nature or bullshit wish-fulfillment, make yourself a king in the new world after the old one, in which you were a boring loser, burns down. I don't know if it's some of that or all of that or a little of each of the 31 flavors of crazy going on here.

I do know it's almost Christmas, and the story we're going to tell on Thursday is about people on the road, seeking hospitality. Seeking that which is most valued, anywhere: a safe place to rest, to make a family, to feel at home. The story is about the Christ Child, yes, but also about the knock at the door, and the innkeepers who turned those travelers away. It's about the stranger who arrives in the night and needs you. Will you give him a bed, even if it's in your garage, next to the cat box, surrounded by bikes and basketballs and junk? Or will you aim a shotgun out the window, string a barricade across the street, and scream go away, and you'll be allowed to live?

A.

Extreme makeover, FEMA edition

During his campaign, President-Elect Obama repeatedly promised to overhaul FEMA and now those promises have apparently become a plan, as reported by  Washington Post's Al Kamen. 

Back in February, Obama spoke to the residents of New Orleans:

If catastrophe comes, the American people must be able to call on a competent government. When I am President, the days of dysfunction and cronyism in Washington will be over. The director of FEMA will report to me. He or she will have the highest qualifications in emergency management. And I won't just tell you that I'll insulate that office from politics - I'll guarantee it, by giving my FEMA director a fixed term like the director of the Federal Reserve. I don't want FEMA to be thinking for one minute about the politics of a crisis. I want FEMA to do its job, which is protecting the American people - not protecting a President's politics

Per the Wapo article, the most likely plan is " to break off the agency from the Department of Homeland Security, a move that would in itself help restore the pride FEMA folks felt when it was an independent agency."

As for FEMA director, the likely pick is former FEMA head James Lee Witt, though he may only be brought in for a short time to help "whip it into shape," much like he did post-Andrew back in 1993.

After Witt runs the first lap, it's hypothesized he will hand off the post to his deputy administrator, Mark Merrit, who worked with Witt in his private, and highly lucrative, disaster recovery consultancy.  This is where things might get a bit dicey.

Witt is likely to be grilled about his work on Katrina relief. Witt and Merritt began their work in the days after the hurricane, when Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco hired their disaster recovery firm in an open-ended, no-bid contract.

An NBC News investigation of Louisiana state records found that James Lee Witt Associates was paid more than $40 million for its recovery work. Merritt, who had been the firm's top manager in Louisiana, tallied $506,000 in billable hours over the 10-month span from September 2005 through June 2006, NBC News found in its July 2007 report.

Witt Associates allegedly billed the state double what it actually paid its subcontractors, the report said. For instance, the firm subcontracted an Indiana company to manage recovery grants. That company's workers were paid $19 to $20 an hour, but they billed Witt Associates $37.50 an hour, and Witt Associates billed the state $75 an hour, according to the NBC News report.

On the other hand, Louisiana Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal is reported to have been most pleased the with firm's work there and has said he intended to keep them on.

As for other matters, such as the levee situation and what bodes for the Bush-created Office of Gulf Coast Rebuilding, no detailed plans have been announced. I'm sure our NOLA correspondents can bring us those details as they take shape.

Feds to Investigate Katrina Bridge shootings

This probably should have been done long ago. From The Guardian:

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Federal officials will investigate the fatal shootings that took place on a New Orleans bridge following Hurricane Katrina.

The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney's office in New Orleans announced Tuesday they will investigate.

The announcement comes after the dismissal of charges against seven New Orleans police officers accused of gunning down two men on a bridge in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Religious and civil rights groups in New Orleans had called for the district attorney to refile charges against the officers.

The family of one of the men shot had also asked for the Justice Department investigation.

Wind...Gone with the Bailout

It was going to be a hard sell anyway but now there is no time or money for this.

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Gene Taylor's relentless two-year campaign to secure wind coverage as part of the federal flood insurance program is on the verge of failure, a victim of vicious opposition in the Senate, of suspicions about a new government program and ultimately, of bad timing.

"It looks like there will be an extension of the present program," said Taylor, D-Bay St. Louis, in an interview. The National Flood Insurance Program expires Sept. 30 unless Congress acts and lawmakers, anxious to help victims of hurricanes Ike and Gustav, are looking for a simple extension - with no policy changes - while they focus on the $700 billion Wall Street bailout.

Ike Aftermath

Help slow in coming:

A massive effort was under way across Texas to get food, water and ice to people who had no power. It could be weeks until the more than 2 million without power have their lights turned on again. Lines snaked for blocks down side streets at gas stations that had little fuel to pump, and thousands packed shelters looking for dry places to sleep.

"Quite frankly we are reaching a health crisis for the people who remain on the island," said Steve LeBlanc, the city manager in Galveston, where at least a third of the community's 60,000 residents remained in their homes.

A line of at least 30 cars formed early Monday at a strip mall in Orange, a Texas town on the Louisiana state line east of Beaumont, a day after food and water were distributed there by the National Guard. But the line dispersed after state troopers told the gathering that supplies would be passed out elsewhere.

Wanda Hamor, 49, of Orange, was fifth in line with her 21-year-old son William. They were trapped in their house by floodwaters until Monday morning before they could venture out. They had run out of food Sunday night. They left for Hurricane Gustav on Labor Day and say they couldn't afford to leave for Ike or buy any more than $60 in food.

"He's diabetic and he has to eat four times a day," she said of her son.

Mary Shelton, 71, and her neighbor Letha Wilson, 78, sat in their sport utility vehicle waiting to get supplies at a distribution center in Houston. "We need some ice. What are going to drink? Hot water?" Shelton said.

Racymind, Internet-less, is Twittering the sitch from Houston.

A.

Ike

Readers in the path, readers with loved ones there, please take care, and check in when you can. I know we've got some peeps who've evacuated but I don't know where everybody lives, so if you need something, you give a shout.

A.

Please

Americans not living along the Gulf Coast,

Americans who aren't seeing your homes on satellite radar covered in white squall and red and orange rain,

Americans who, like me, have the luxury of watching Hurricane Gustav from a place of clear blue skies and warm, calm air,

Americans for whom the Hurricane will be a story on the news and not a story you tell your children,

Please.

Please think before you say something you'll regret.

Please think, not of others, but of yourselves.

Think of your lives. Look around you, at your daughter, at your son. Think of the school they attend. Think of their friends there, their teachers, their parents' friends, their coaches and janitors.

Think of your home. Think of the birthdays and holidays, first steps, memorable dinners, laughter and love those walls contain. Think of every inch of it, containing every single thing you've ever known that ever mattered to you.

Think of elderly woman down the street, who wheels her little metal cart to the grocery store each Monday afternoon, who calls a cab to take her to the doctor and pays the driver from a little clutch purse, and doesn't own a car. Think of how you never see her children or any younger relatives at all; think of how you've often wondered if she has any. Think of how she would get in a car and drive 10 hours to safety, all by herself.

Think of the man who sweeps the sidewalk outside the coffee shop. Think about how he's earning the minimum wage, think about the kids whose pictures he keeps in his wallet. Think about the house he might rent, for less than market rate because he fixed it up, and how every month he might have a dollar or two left over from buying food and paying the electric bill, a dollar or two. Think about how he might pay for a week in a hotel somewhere on the road, how he might fill his car with enough gas to keep going. Think about if you can lay your hands on $500, $600, $1,000 right now without any trouble at all. Then think about whether he can.

And yes, think about the drunks and the drug addicts and the lazy and the so-called undeserving. Think about them, too. Think about the people who do wait for someone to come and save them. Think about what you're saying when you say it's eh, too bad, whatever, you don't have to feel it when they die. Then think about watching them do it, not on your TV screens but in person, right there in front of you, and if you're uncomfortable, even the slightest bit, think about it a little more.

Please think before you say, "We should never have rebuilt that city if it's just going to get hit again and again."

Please think before you say, "I'll bet the same people will refuse to leave, so screw 'em."

Please think before you complain about how "your" tax dollars have been "wasted" in the past three years. Please think before you say, "Anyone who stays there deserves what he gets." Please think before you talk about how you took a vacation there once, and Bourbon Street was gross, think about the difference between visiting a place as an outsider and inhabiting it so that it shapes you, as running water tempers rocks, until you are indistinguishable from the stream that rushes over you.

Please think about the good and bad in your own lives, and try to sort out for yourself what you'd like judged by someone else, what you'd like to lose, what you'd like to see die, what you'd like to overhear someone casually dismissing as unnecessary.

Please think before you talk about what parts of America you think America can live without.

Please, please, please think.

A.

Hurricane Gustav....

It is different waiting and watching Gustav, than it was to do such three years ago with Katrina. Then I sort of knew one person in New Orleans. Now that one person is a dear, dear friend. In three years I have made many more friends. I know what they have been through the past 3 years. I know how hard they have fought to rebuild their homes and save their beloved city. It has been a long struggle in which they have been patient and brave and angry and determined and always still of good humor. The are New Orleanians. Three years ago I didn't know what that means. This time I do. And so I have a sick feeling in my stomach and a sadness in my heart knowing  they must once again drive away from home, not knowing when they will return or what they will return to. To unbelievably have to face that terrible unknown, once again, all too soon.

Keep New Orleans and the people of New Orleans in your heart and thoughts and prayers and let's hope.....

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here are some links:

Kevin Allman of Best of New Orleans blog writes and has pics of his evacuation to and arrival in Jackson.

Loki of Humid City is audioblogging (First one here and second one here) Follow at Humid City blog for more updates.

Ray in New Orleans is twittering updates. Can be read at his blog.

Maitri has a photo of an empty Bourbon Street on Decadence Saturday Night.

Grandmère Mimi has evacuated and appears there will be updates at her blog.   

You can go to our NOLA blogroll in the right hand sidebar to read more and leave some love in the comments.

Nauseating

No words.

How to help.

Realize that someone, whether they are your friends or not, is going to get hit. Realize that Jamaica and the surrounding islands are being torn up by Gustav as you read this, realize especially that Cuba is almost sure to suffer a devastating storm surge, no matter what. Realize that after that, Gustav will sit and recover, then keep on coming and wreak more damage, closer to home.

Realize that right now is the time to make your online donations, buy groceries for the food bank shipment, look up who in your community is putting together the truckloads of clothing and food and water, and if no one is, then maybe you could start.

A.

Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, 3 Years

"Karmic Payback"...just saying it may not be the bitch they think

As our friends in New Orleans face the excruciating wait to see where Gustav will go, there is much talk of the possible political effects of Gustav hitting the Gulf Coast during the GOP Convention. Politico writes that it could "swamp" the GOP and the NYT's editorial board writes of possible "karmic payback" for the Republicans. Just as, much caution is advised in forecasting what Gustav will do, I would advise the same caution in predicting the possible political outcome. Because there is another political scenario far different from payback. It could be payoff.

One of the important lessons of Katrina was... don't count on the feds. And the feds have been pointed and clear--you're on your own for the first 72 hours.  As a result the state of Louisiana and So. La. parishes know they are responsible for taking the lead for evacuations and have worked on their evacuation plans the past  years. FEMA has a support role but the onus is on locals:

These plans focus on two things. First, it is the responsibility of each citizen to develop their own individual and family plans to evacuate away from potential hurricane damage and sustain themselves for 3 days. Second, disaster response starts at the local level. The cities and parishes along the coast are the driving force behind determining what assets they have and what assets they need from the state to protect their citizens.

Of course they must implement those plans and problems will occur but I think given numerous changes we could see a rate of evacuation even better than the remarkable 90% for metro N.O. prior to Hurricane Katrina. If those plans go well (and I hope that is the case if it comes to that) it's less likely that we would see the repeat of the terrible scenes (people awating rescue, food, water on rooftops,Interstate overpasses or shelters of last resort) as during Katrina.

If  that occurs I predict we will see the mighty Wurlitzer spin faster than a Cat 5 hurricane. Bush, McCain and the GOP will work to spin this as their Redemptive Moment. They will  claim credit  for improvements as hard as they spun the blame last time on Democratic officials at the state and local levels. The credit would more rightly belong to the State, Parishes and citizens but that won't be the story except in the case of the inevitable touting of a Republican Governor--Bobby Jindal. It will be said they delivered on the promise of Never Again. "Karmic Payback" could turn to GOP Payoff.

My point is...forget the politics. There is not an upside or downside, to Payback or Payoff, worth the pain and misery that could be wrought upon our fellow Americans.

We need to remember what happened and hope and pray and act so it never happens again....(h/t for video to Toulouse St)

(Caveat: If the levees fail then it's a different story. Hopefully that wouldn't be ignored as it has these past 3 years.)

Pushing you away from me

I'm not the NOLA expert around here, so I won't say anything...

was my first thought after reading Scout's excellent post but goddamn if I wasn't committing one of the Stupid Liberal Tricks* that chaps my ass more than almost any other:

"I'm not a woman so my opinion on abortion or birth control doesn't matter."

(alternate version: "I'm not straight so my opinion on  abortion or birth control doesn't matter" or "I'm 87 so my opinion on abortion or birth control doesn't matter.")

"I'm not gay, lesbian, bi, trans, queer so my opinion on GLBTQ issues doesn't really matter."

"I'm lucky to have a comfortable job and benefits so my opinion on poverty issues doesn't really matter."

"I'm only 17 so my opinion on political stuff doesn't really matter."

(fill in the blank, rinse, repeat)

All of those are just another way of saying "I don't want to get involved."

The thing about not wanting to get involved is not really that it's almost always a morally bankrupt cop-out, not really that it's a luxury progressives can't afford in this day and age,  it's that it's a complete and utter refutation of reality.

We can say it, and we can even think for a bit that we're getting away with it, the way we can look at pictures in a magazine of a hole in the ozone, pick up our coffee cups, take a sip, and turn the page. 

We are involved.  We were born involved, remain involved even if we are unconscious of it, and we'll die involved even if we never wake the fuck up.  We are involved with other Americans and with every other person on the planet.  We are involved with the rest of that big family in the same way that our each individual hand is involved with our each individual kneecap and they both are in turn involved with all the fingers and toes.

If my hair catches on fire, my hand doesn't have a choice but to reach up, my feet no other choice but to run for water, a blanket, help. To say I would do otherwise in that situation is ludicrous. To believe I would do otherwise in that situation is insanity.  To do otherwise when the situation actually happens is symptomatic of something even graver:  catatonia, quadriplegia, a persistent vegetative state.

What's our side, our party, our country's diagnosis folks?  When it's so easy to think that way, when it's the norm, when the words come out of our mouths without even thinking. When a Will Bunch looks at the track of Gustav and just sees the bright colors, lines and arrows, just sees a hypothetical, a  scenario, a good opening paragraph for a story about the Republicans he could have written a month ago, that doesn't fucking need another disaster to make it real?

And about that paragraph?  When you say "I hope, for the sake of those, you know, airquote people airquote it will overwhelm, injure, maybe even kill, that this humanitarian crisis doesn't happen, BUT..."  see, already, there's a problem. You're not just saying you don't want to get involved, you're saying there can be a context wherein involvement is irrelevant.  And that, Will, is some fuckmookery.

And the diary over at Kos?  Already a DNR.

 *Stupid Liberal Tricks-No, I'm not saying liberals are stupid, or even that liberals are the only ones that do this, but I sure do keep seeing this stuff lately in all the old familiar places.

Wrong reminder

More than just a few NOLA bloggers have ripped Will Bunch and a Kos diary for writing how Hurricane Gustav hitting the Gulf Coast at the time of the Republican Convention could be a "nightmare" for the Republicans. The NOLA bloggers find it insensitive and callous to be speaking of "a realpolitik point of view" as they possibly face another disaster.

I hadn't thought of Gustav in terms of the Republican Convention. Rather I have been thinking of how my friends in New Orleans may be packing up their important papers, family photos, children's favorite toys, placing beloved pets in their carriers, gassing up their cars, making hotel reservations and readying their homes for what only knows may be headed their way. I was thinking what a nightmare this must be for them to have their lives completely disrupted and to wonder will those levees hold this time.

But having read the many above linked posts, I find I have very hard time with Kos diarist DigitalApoptosis describing Gustav as

"this perfect reminder of the 3rd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina."

Is Katrina not perfect enough as a reminder for us?

Are not 1720 dead enough of a reminder?

Are not Hundreds of Thousands of destroyed homes enough of a reminder?

Are not the destroyed schools and hospitals, many forever gone, reminder enough?

Look at this Katrina Pain Index and I ask is this not enough of a reminder?

Do we really need another disaster to remind us of the terrible last one which occurred only 3 years ago? I can guarantee you the people on the Gulf Coast don't need a reminder as they are still living it each day.  And if the rest of us need a new disaster as a  reminder of Katrina then what the hell is wrong with us? 

We don't need a reminder, we just need to fucking Remember.

Katrina Anniversary--3 Years Later on Tennessee St in the Lower 9th Ward

After filming the video below, it struck us that John McCain owns more homes than have been rebuilt on Tennessee Street in the Lower 9th Ward. The street lies 2 blocks from where the Industrial Canal levee broke 3 years ago. News networks once frequently broadcasted from this street, Brad Pitt's pink houses once lined it and First Draft has chronicled its progress in previous videos (6 months and 2 years after the flood).

This time, 3 years post Katrina and flood, we found 4 homes have been rebuilt and 6 are under construction. Of the nearly 100 homes which once stood here, one remains, gutted and empty. The rest were demolished. Much of the rebuilding  by the Brad Pitt Make it Right Foundation is being done on Tennessee Street. However the vast majority of the street is a desolate landscape of empty lots, some overgrown, others neatly mowed.

Here is Tennesse Street 3 years later......

New Political Crush

Scott Myers-Lipton.

He spoke this morning in the Tent about Katrina recovery and his project, which actually takes up something we talked about over at the Crack Den in the immediate hurricane aftermath, the New Deal analogy.

A Gulf Coast Authority, similar to the Tennessee Valley Authority will oversee the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project to ensure transparency. This inter-state agency will give final approval to local project proposals in a timely fashion. The Gulf Coast Authority will also be charged with working with the local communities, the city, and the state to expedite matters and to create a smooth process between agencies to ensure that what the local communities want comes to fruition quickly.

Myers-Lipton said the bill currently has 16 cosponsors, and the official word from Pelosi's office was that it would need 75 to 100 before she gave a shit.

"When Speaker Pelosi wants something done, she gets it done," he said. "Leadership has to start with Speaker Pelosi."

He organized an effort with three college students where they called Pelosi's office, all day, until the staff started hanging up on them, to even get that far.

"There's gonna have to be a movement," he said. "And it has to be nationwide. We have weak levees in Sacramento. If those levees fail, Sacramento is under water. It has to be all of us."

He said he'd talked to people in Mississippi, and they were angry at government every step of the way up the ladder. His students have a chant, that they have to keep updating. First it was "Two Years, Too Late." And now it's three.

"The WPA and the PWA put people who needed work to work building their own communities," he said. "We need that all over the country."

A.

In New Orleans at Rising Tide III Now!

Scout here in New Orleans at the Rising Tide. I don't have a laptop so won't be live blogging But the wonderful Maitri is letting me borrow hers for a moment so I could give you a link to her live blogging..LINK.

Go check it out and I'll try to put up more links including YouTube videos of the conference.

Caption this...Asshat backwards Edition

The lovely and wonderful watertiger has this pic up of Bush in NOLA ....

...and one of her astute commenters, wanger71, notes that W appears to have his hard hat on backwards.

Caption away.....

The Last Flyover

Schroeder at People Get Ready has an excellent post mortem on Bush's speech and visit to New Orleans yesterday. It starts with:

I was outside washing my car this evening when Air Force One flew overhead out of New Orleans at just that moment when the sun falls off the horizon, and the sky begins to glow.

It’s fitting that George W. Bush should leave New Orleans the same way he first came to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina — in a flyover without touring the city to really assess the situation.

Schroeder then proceeds to do the analysis of "Dubya’s last stand in New Orleans" and it is well worth reading.

Bush in NOLA: "No promises"

No shit

Bush has arrived in New Orleans. He helicoptered from Louis Armstrong Airport to Chalmette where he will give his speech. And he had this to say prior to that...

"I make no promises," the president said. "This isn't a chance for me to be a typical politician and make you a promise that I don't intend to keep."

Bush's New Orleans speech released

Bush will be in New Orleans tomorrow and also in Orlando to speak to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The LA Times Countdown to Crawford blog reports:

Clearly, White House officials want the focus of the day to be the formal remarks Bush is delivering to the veterans and the message he will be sending to Russia about Georgia.

At the same time, they don't want to suggest that Bush is giving the brush-off to New Orleans and other Gulf Coast regions.

SNIP

So, in a step that avoids putting out dueling messages, the White House, which rarely lifts the curtain on Bush speeches, let alone does so 24 hours in advance, took the unusual step of distributing this evening a text of the remarks he is planning to give in New Orleans after the Orlando speech to the VFW.

Bush's New Orleans speech on Gulf Coast Recovery  is after the cut

Yawn

Anniversary photo op time:

Wednesday, after leaving Orlando, Fla., the president will arrive in New Orleans in the afternoon and make an address before heading on to a undisclosed location in Mississippi for a dinner, said a statement from the Office of the Press Secretary.

Dinner at undisclosed location smells like a fundraiser

Charges against NOPD officers in Bridge Shootings Tossed Out

From the Times Picayune:

Murder and attempted murder charges against seven New Orleans police officers, accused of shooting unarmed civilians on the Danziger Bridge after Hurricane Katrina, were tossed out by Criminal District Court Judge Raymond Bigelow, who concluded that an Orleans Parish prosecutor tainted the secrecy of the grand jury process by showing a piece of testimony to another officer.

"The violation is clear, and indeed, uncontroverted. The state improperly disclosed grand jury testimony to another police officer," Bigelow said, reading his ruling from the bench.

The judge also dealt a blow to the prosecution on two other pending defense challenges to the indictment, providing further reason to quash certain charges against specific defendants.

He concluded former Assistant District Attorney Dustin Davis improperly gave immunity to three officers for their testimony before the grand jury, which subsequently indicted those officers, as well as four others. Bigelow also found that the instructions that Davis gave to the grand jury considering the attempted murder charges were flawed.

SNIP

The shootings on Sept. 4, 2005 left two men dead: Madison, a 40-year-old man whose relatives describe him as having the mental capacity of a child, and 19-year-old James Brissette. Four other people were severely wounded.

In civil federal lawsuits, survivors of the shooting have said they were unarmed and ambushed by the officers, who jumped out of the back of a rental truck and started shooting.

Police officials have acknowledged the officers shot people on two separate sides of the bridge, but said they did so only after first being shot at.

Lord David of Humid City blog describes recent activities of the NOPD in his post "I May Actually Vomit."

Concerns of a volunteer

(First Draft Krewe in front of ACORN office in NOLA--March 2007)

I went to bed troubled last night by something I had read. Amongst the news that contractors were paid for the work  volunteers had done in New Orleans was the information that ACORN would not release the addresses of the homes to which they sent volunteers to work. The press would like that list to cross reference it with the NOAH list. NOAH is the New Orleans Affordable Homeownership, a city run agency which used federal funds to remediate homes for low income and elderly residents. NOLA blogger Karen Gadbois first discovered irregularities in the listed homes and has been central to the story bring told. WWL reporter Lee Zurik then investigated and documented the discrepancies including:

• homes on the list which NOAH had not remediated
• homes on the list which did not exist
• homes on the list owned by individuals or businesses not qualified for the program
• duplicate listings, with the same contractor doing  the same work and charging the city the same price twice
• questionable ties between the executive director of NOAH and some of the contractors hired by NOAH to remediate homes

And now, as the Times Picayune reported, contractors were paid for work done by volunteers. As you know the First Draft Krewe gutted a home in NOLA through ACORN. The house we gutted was not on the NOAH list but I still found myself tossing and turning last night by what I read about ACORN. I was going to write about those concerns today but I see E at We Could be Famous blog, who along with Gadbois was instrumental in exposing this scandal, has it covered. He highlights what troubled me in the TP article...

Indeed, as the community nonprofit groups prepared in the spring and summer last year to receive thousands of unskilled volunteers, they were at a loss for properties. Several, including ACORN, a Catholic church group and the Episcopal Diocese program, solicited NOAH officials for some of their addresses, city officials have said.

E later says this.....

Now that's fascinating. According to Krupa, city officials are alleging that volunteer organizations specifically solicited NOAH officials for lists of properties. This after the NOAH home remediation program raised eyebrows throughout the volunteer community for being "silly."

Now Davis' organization seemed to make the same foolish mistake that ACORN and some Catholic charities made and will also have to go back into the books to provide more details. Who did they pick up their lists from? Why didn't they say anything even when they knew something weird was going on?

But what this really must do is force ACORN and the Archdiocese to open up and help us figure out how this occurred. I'm sorry but citing "privacy concerns" of homeowners that may have been fleeced for their tax dollars or of individual volunteers who may have been unwitting slaves for the city's money laundering scheme seems a little bit inappropriate. These organizations have every interest in completely examining their role in the NOAH scandal.

What E says....all of it

NOAH contractors were paid for work done by Volunteers

This is infuriating. From the Times Picayune:

"There was David. You got Christopher. Then there was Jason. Oh, and Simon," Grandpre, 76, said this week, recalling the student volunteers who came from Boston and Seattle to tear out her plaster walls and save the few precious items the flood did not destroy.

"I call them my little angels," she said.

It appears, however, that another crew has taken credit for demolition work at Grandpre's house. City records show that Hall & Hall Enterprises, the highest-paid contractor in Mayor Ray Nagin's home remediation program, billed the city $7,830 for gutting and boarding up the house and cutting the grass at the St. Anthony Street property.

The house is one of at least seven addresses that appear on two lists detailing post-storm remediation. One list belongs to the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana's Office of Disaster Response, which organized volunteers from across the country to come to New Orleans and provide free home remediation services, such as gutting and boarding up homes, to residents in need of help.

Those same addresses appear on a list produced by the nonprofit New Orleans Affordable Homeownership Corp., which oversaw a remediation program that contractors billed a total of $1.8 million.

The homeownership corporation, also known as NOAH, billed taxpayers more than $25,000 for work at those addresses.

There is much more at the link. And photos and details of houses on both lists here (pdf)
 

Keep in mind this scandal involved federal dollars and volunteers from outside of New Orleans so this has repercussions beyond the city of New Orleans. Anyone in NOAH or any other city agencies as well as contractors who took part in this need to be held to account. It's just despicable to take credit and payment for work done by volunteers.

This story will eventually go national and think of the many volunteers who will wonder if a contractor was paid for their hard dirty labor done freely out of care, concern and  love for the city and people of New Orleans. As you know our First Draft Krewe gutted a home in NOLA in March 2007. For those of you in the Krewe and the other First Drafters who contributed financially please know I checked and the home we gutted is NOT on the NOAH list. If it were I'd be damn angry. Though it is not us, damn angry is how some volunteers out there will feel. As it is I'm just angry that when this story does break out, it likely will hurt the recovery and it is not the fault of the NOLA bloggers who discovered this scandal or the press who reported on it or the people of New Orleans who will be hurt by it. No place the blame with city employees/officials and contractors, who whether through incompetence and/or corruption, made this happen and the more that is learned it is becoming harder to believe it is the former.

NOAH paid to gut houses set for demolition

NOLA bloggers and WWL led the way on this story but now the Times Picayune is finally reporting on it.  Their latest article reports on what blogger Matt McBride found when he cross referenced NOAH (remediation program) records with those of a demolition program.

Contractors working for New Orleans Affordable Homeownership billed taxpayers at least $123,000 to gut 30 homes that records show were torn down shortly thereafter -- also at public expense -- raising further questions about a troubled city agency charged with a leading role in flood recovery.

Interviews with neighbors suggest that some of that gutting work was in fact never performed.

Whether or not taxpayers were defrauded -- a question that has drawn the attention of federal investigators -- the fact that city-financed gutting crews were followed in short order by city-financed backhoe operators suggests, at best, a City Hall management debacle.

SNIP

Matt McBride, a blogger and activist who has maintained a database of all properties granted demolition permits since Hurricane Katrina, cross-referenced that list with a remediation list provided by NOAH. He found substantial crossover.

Read the rest for details

Great Rude

NOLA bloggers have been serving it up this week at The Rude Pundit.

Check it out