Am I nuts? Have I gone bonkers? Or does it seem that the efforts to kill the people of New Orleans have gone much more smoothly, than any efforts to save them? =H&HH= | LINK
Excerpt: "How do we know when we're done? How long do you keep looking? What do you do when you've done all the DNA testing you can, when you've called everyone and you still can't find the person?"
Comment: We believe, like the Constitution believes, that people have a right to bear arms, and that the phrase "well-regulated" doesn't mean confiscating guns from law-abiding citizens when guns are most likely to be needed.
Helen & HarryLINK
Excerpt: The Federal Emergency Management Agency is closing its long-term recovery office in New Orleans, claiming local officials failed to meet their planning obligations after Hurricane Katrina.
Comment: FEMA's arrogance is a good match for its incompetence. It takes my breath away -- but not literally, as FEMA took the breath away from so many in New Orleans last September. Helen & HarryLINK
Comment: If you believe in the Bill of Rights, as we do, that dang well includes the right to bear arms. Take that right away, and all the other rights are based solely on hope and faith.
Because really, what the hell have you got, without the right to defend yourself? Helen & HarryLINK
Excerpt: Ever wonder what happened to all the foreign donations given to the United States in the aftermath of Katrina? It's not good news. It turns out that, like so much of the federal response to the crisis, the largest influx of foreign assistance to the US in memory was met with foot-dragging and clumsy bureaucracy. None of the donated funds has actually made its way to evacuees.
Excerpt: Over $10 million was raised by school kids through bake sales, lemonade stands, car washes and other fundraisers, according to RandomKid. That's more than almost every major U.S. corporation gave. More than wealthy oil and petrochemical companies, such as Chevron and ConocoPhillips. It's more than what AT&T and Verizon gave combined. And it's more than major brand name corporations like GE and Coca-Cola gave.
Excerpt: State Farm Insurance supervisors systematically demanded that Hurricane Katrina damage reports be buried or replaced or changed so that the company would not have to pay policyholders' claims in Mississippi, two State Farm insiders tell ABC News.
Kerri and Cori Rigsby, independent adjusters who had worked for State Farm exclusively for eight years, say they have turned over thousands of internal company documents and their own detailed statement to the FBI and Mississippi state investigators.
Excerpt: John Giljam's floating bus, 40 feet long by 8.5 feet wide, could not only do 75 mph on a highway, it did 7 knots on the water.
As a tour bus, it accommodated 49 passengers and two crewmembers; as a rescue vehicle, it could haul as much as five tons of emergency supplies.
Comment: In a sane society, the people responsible for FEMA's jaw-droppingly incompetent response would be charged with malfeasance, perhaps murder. But it's a year later, and FEMA's former director Michael Brown, FEMA's former director has never been held accountable. The agency has a different man in charge now, but his boss is still Michael Chertoff, the same dithering twit who held that job when New Orleans drowned. Helen & HarryPERMANENT LINK
April 16, 2007: The Katrinians by Cassandra, Unknown News
Excerpt: The people from Louisiana and Mississippi are refugees of both a natural and a political disaster, and like most refugees before them, they're not welcome by the communities where they've washed up.
Excerpt: FEMA exposed taxpayers to significant waste -- and possibly violated federal law -- by awarding $3.6 billion worth of Hurricane Katrina contracts to companies with poor credit histories and bad paperwork, investigators say.
Excerpt: Allies offered $854 million in cash and in oil that was to be sold for cash. But only $40 million has been used so far for disaster victims or reconstruction, according to U.S. officials and contractors. Most of the aid went uncollected, including $400 million worth of oil. Some offers were withdrawn or redirected to private groups such as the Red Cross. The rest has been delayed by red tape and bureaucratic limits on how it can be spent.
Excerpt: Seven police officers been indicted for opening fire on two African American families on the Danziger Bridge days after the storm, killing two people and wounding four others. At the time, the official story was that they gunned down snipers. Now the question is why they shot at two families fleeing the flood.
I'm not an expert on search and rescue or military operations, but it just seems to me, people who haven't had food and water for five or six days could be quelled with food and water, instead of "combat operations."
The police commander came across the street to address our group.
He told us we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge where the police had buses lined up to take us out of the City.
The crowed cheered and began to move.
We called everyone back and explained to the commander that there had been lots of misinformation and wrong information and was he sure that there were buses waiting for us.
The commander turned to the crowd and stated emphatically, "I swear to you that the buses are there."
* * *
As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge.
Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions.
As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation.
We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances.
The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting.
The commander had lied to us to get us to move.
We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway.
They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City.
These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.
I'm familiar with how government works, how bureaucracy works, and in a crisis like this I would almost expect moments of grotesque incompetence and idiocy.
I'm not quite prepared, however, for that callous, cold-blooded murder that seems to have been wrought not by the hurricane, not by the flood, but by the bureaucracy that's supposed to help.
Yeah, murder. When the incompetence gets this thick, it smells like murder to me.
A trio of Duke University sophomores say they drove to New Orleans late last week, posed as journalists to slip inside the hurricane-soaked city twice, and evacuated seven people who weren't receiving help from authorities.
The group, led by South Carolina native Sonny Byrd, say they also managed to drive all the way to the New Orleans Convention Center, where they encountered scenes early Saturday evening that they say were disgraceful.
"We found it absolutely incredible that the authorities had no way to get there for four or five days, that they didn't go in and help these people, and we made it in a two-wheel-drive Hyundai," said Hans Buder, who made the trip with his roommate Byrd and another student, David Hankla.
We believe in liberty and justice for all, so of course, we oppose many US government policies. This doesn't mean we're anti-American, redneck scum, pinko commies, militia members, or terrorist-sympathizers. It means we believe in freedom, as more than merely a cliché.
We believe you have the right to live your own life as you choose, and others have the equal right to live their lives as they choose. It's not complicated.
We believe freedom leads to peace, progress, and prosperity, while its opposite -- oppression -- leads to war, terrorism, poverty, and misery.
We believe it's preposterously stupid to hate people because of their appearance, their race or nationality, their religion or lack of religion, how they have sex with other consenting adults, etc. There are far more apropos reasons to hate most people.
We believe in questioning ourselves, our assumptions, each other -- and we especially believe in questioning authority (the more authority, the more questions). We believe obedience is a fine quality in dogs and young children, but not in adults.
Like America's right-wingers, we believe in
individual responsibility,
hard work to get ahead,
and stern punishment for serious crimes.
We believe big government should not be blindly trusted.
But unlike most right-wing leaders, we mean it.
Like America's left-wingers, we believe in
equal treatment under law,
war as a last (not first) resort,
and sensible stewardship of natural resources.
We believe big business should not be blindly trusted.
But unlike most left-wing leaders, we mean it.
Like libertarians, we believe it's wrong and reprehensible to arrest people for what they think, believe, look like, wear, eat, smoke, drink, inhale, inject, or otherwise do to themselves.
But unlike many libertarians, we're not obsessed with the gold standard, we don't believe incorporation is humanity's highest achievement, and we don't believe everything in life comes down to dollars and cents. We've read and enjoyed Ayn Rand's novels, but we understand that they're works of fiction.
We're skeptical, and we're sick of so-called 'journalists' who aren't skeptical at all.
These pages are published by Harry and Helen Highwater, happily married low-income nom de plumes and rabble-rousers from Madison, Wisconsin (with a few friends scattered around the world helping out).
We try to spotlight news that hasn't gotten enough (or appropriate) attention in American media, along with our opinions and yours.
We bang our keyboards against the wall, because it doesn't hurt as much as banging our heads.
