New Orleans is underwater - Bush is to blame

[electrozion]

Jürgen Trittin, the Environmental Minister in Chancellor Schroeder’s cabinet seems to think so:
“By neglecting environmental protection, America’s president shuts his eyes to the
economic and human damage that natural catastrophes like Katrina inflict on his
country and the world’s economy. …many Americans have long been unwilling to follow
the president’s errant environmental policy. Indications are multiplying that Bush has
more than Katrina’s headwind blowing in his face…”
http://www.frankfurter-rundschau.de/ressorts/nachrichten_und_politik/thema_des_tages/?cnt=718533
(article in german)

What a prick!

Americans have been writing to the paper that published Trittins piece of shit - some of the letters can be read here.

I feel really bad to be German right now - the amount of America-bashing is becoming
almost unbearable here. At least the notorious “Spiegel” seems to be on the right track
for once: “It’s not the American people’s fault that the storm hit and they couldn’t have
stopped it. The Germans, on the other hand, could have done a lot to prevent World
War II. And yet, care packages still rained down from US troops.”

[duffer]

I’ve given up on Germany years ago. I don’t even acknowledge my heritage. It’s too embarassing. Hell, I don’t even drink German beer anymore. I switched to Pilsner Urquell. At least if the Czechs hate us they keep it pretty low-key.

[Larry_Mudd]

Crap. I think that Bush’s environmental policy is wrong-headed.

Connecting it with this devastating natural disaster is beyond stupid, and accomplishes nothing but providing people who wish to portray global warming as bad science with an incredibly stupid argument to point to. Oh yeah, and showing the world what an asshole you are.

[Hung_Mung]

Bush? I blame the homosexuals.

[electrozion]

@duffer

Hell, I don’t even drink German beer anymore. I switched to Pilsner Urquell.

Me too. And I am German. The Czechs hate us almost as the Germans hate America - so that eventually evens out…

Hopefully Trittin and his ilk will be out of office in a few weeks.
Not that I’m that fond of Angela Merkel (who wants to become the new chancellor) - but hopefully they will cut back on the America-bashing.

[Stephe96]

John Kerry would’ve wind-surfed Katrina safely out to sea, damn it!

[Squink]

Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? ‘Times-Picayune’ Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues

The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project – $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million – was not enough to start any new jobs.

[electrozion]

Squink
Surely that doesn’t mean one should write an article blaming bush for the catastrophy
without even mentoning the vicitms even once - escpecially as a member of the
government of a country claiming to be a friend of th US.
It’s not that I’m a fan of the environmental politics of the current US administration but
does this guy have to be such an ass about it?

I made a quick n’ dirty animation of Trittin doing the happy dance in the flooded streets of New Orleans

[World_Eater]

I can’t stand Bush. That said, I think people need to stfu with blaiming him, it makes them beyond morons.

[Squink]

Beyond all the wailing and the gnashing of teeth over global warming, or Bush’s supposed lack of compassion, there are real questions of whether the city, state and country did as good a job as they could reasonably be expected to prevent this disaster, or respond to it once it happened. It’s beginning to look to me as if there were some serious fuckups both before and after the hurricane hit. Those issues should not be allowed to drown in a sea of unproductive recriminations.

[Exploding_Kitchen]

I’m not exactly sure what’s unproductive about laying the blame of the flooding aftermath squarely at the feet of the Bush adminstration and GOP controlled approriations commitee.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4200/is_20050606/ai_n14657367

One of the hardest-hit areas of the New Orleans district’s budget is the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, which was created after the May 1995 flood to improve drainage in Jefferson, Orleans and St. Tammany parishes. SELA’s budget is being drained from $36.5 million awarded in 2005 to $10.4 million suggested for 2006 by the House of Representatives and the president.

The project manager said there would be no contracts awarded with this $10.4 million, Demma said.

The construction portion of the Corps’ budget would suffer if Congress doesn’t add money. In 2005, the district received $94.3 million in federal dollars dedicated to construction. In 2006, the proposal is for $56 million.

It would be critical to this city if we had a $50 million construction budget compared with the past years, Demma said. It would be horrible for the city, it would be horrible for contractors and for flood protection if this were the final number compared to recent years and what the city needs.

Construction generally has been on the decline for several years and focus has been on other projects in the Corps.

The district has identified $35 million in projects to build and improve levees, floodwalls and pumping stations in St. Bernard, Orleans, Jefferson and St. Charles parishes. Those projects are included in a Corps line item called Lake Pontchartrain, where funding is scheduled to be cut from $5.7 million this year to $2.9 million in 2006. Naomi said it’s enough to pay salaries but little else.

We’ll do some design work. We’ll design the contracts and get them ready to go if we get the money. But we don’t have the money to put the work in the field, and that’s the problem, Naomi said.

Goddess forbid that this would have hit later, when the budget was even more sapped.

Of course, the budgets were already decreasing:

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4200/is_20050207/ai_n10176537

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has identified millions of dollars in flood and hurricane protection projects in the New Orleans district.

In general, funding for construction has been on a downward trend for the past several years, said Marcia Demma, chief of the New Orleans Corps’ programs management branch.

In 2001, the New Orleans district spent $147 million on construction projects. When fiscal year 2005 wraps up Sept. 30, the Corps expects to have spent $82 million, a 44.2 percent reduction from 2001 expenditures.

Even more… http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/attytood/archives/002331.html

It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Senate was seeking to restore some of the SELA funding cuts for 2006. But now it’s too late. One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer was a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach. The levee failure appears to be causing a human tragedy of epic proportions.

Yup, you read that right. The project was stalled at the site of the main breach on Lake P.

Doesn’t stop there…

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313

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

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

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security – coming at the same time as federal tax cuts – was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

Oh, look. The money that should have been spent to save the lives of thousands in NO was off in Iraq.

And guess what: They knew what the scope of the damage would be if the levee and pump system wasn’t shorn up back in 2K1.

http://www.hurricane.lsu.edu/_in_the_news/houston.htm

And its main buffer from a hurricane, the protective Mississippi River delta, is quickly eroding away, leaving the historic city perilously close to disaster.
So vulnerable, in fact, that earlier this year the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked the potential damage to New Orleans as among the three likeliest, most castastrophic disasters facing this country.
The other two? A massive earthquake in San Francisco, and, almost prophetically, a terrorist attack on New York City.

–

Never mind the eco-rebuilding the shore and barrier islands plan to stop the storm itself. NO weathered the storm itself fine…except for the levees giving way, which is what’s causing the major damage fine.

The Bush Admin (and no admin) can stop a natural disaster. It can, however, shore up infrastructure to reduce collateral damage from disasters.

By the way… no levee that the SELA project touched gave way.

[Lord_Ashtar]

@World Eater

I can’t stand Bush. That said, I think people need to stfu with blaiming him, it makes them beyond morons.

This has got to be the tenth thread I’ve come across today where someone (either the OP or someone the OP linked to) says that Katrina, the damage caused by Katrina, the fact that everyone who lived in New Orleans isn’t already somewhere else having tea and crumpets, or all of the above is somehow Bush’s fault.

I gotta tell ya, it’s gettin’ pretty tired.

[ElvisL1ves]

Got any rebuttal at all of the post right above your last, Ashtar? Sure, it *must * make you “tired” to be confronted with all the ways your guy has screwed up. Too damn bad - that’s what the Fight Against Ignorance is all about. Maybe it’s time to adjust your attitude to align with the world of reality?

[Zebra]

Exploding Kitchen

I exault you.
Three Cheers for Exploding Kitchen!

[Scylla]

@ElvisL1ves

Got any rebuttal at all of the post right above your last, Ashtar? Sure, it *must * make you “tired” to be confronted with all the ways your guy has screwed up. Too damn bad - that’s what the Fight Against Ignorance is all about. Maybe it’s time to adjust your attitude to align with the world of reality?

I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at.

Would you be willing to answer a simple question to clear it up?

Katrina is Bush’s fault. True or false?

[ElvisL1ves]

Surely you know better than to think anyone here would fall for the excluded-middle fallacy, don’t you? :rolleyes:

[scr4]

@Scylla

Katrina is Bush’s fault. True or false?

Direct damage from Katrina is not Bush’s fault. But it looks to me Bush is partly responsible for the flooding of New Orleans, and the lack of rescue resources available (i.e. National Guard troops and equipment). I’m listening to the Aug. 31 Al Franken Show (guest hosted by Rachel Maddow) right now and it’s making a pretty convincing case to that effect.

[Scylla]

Yes, Elvis you are correct. I did exclude the middle. I’m sorry, but it didn’t occur to me that the middle ground might be a place where you wish to plant your flag.

I just thought that my statement was one that really didn’t leave much room for a middle. It was either true or it wasn’t.

So, I apologize for inadvertently cutting off an alternative.

So let me re-ask the question in more acceptable and open terms:

Do you believe President Bush is to blame for hurricane Katrina and if so, to what extent?

[Exploding_Kitchen]

You’re still asking the wrong question.

The Bush administration is responsible for the collateral damage caused by the breaking of the levees in and around New Orleans because their administration pulled funds from both the SELA program and the Army Corps of Engineers.

All levees that were shored up under the program held through the storm fine.

[ElvisL1ves]

@Scylla

Yes, Elvis you are correct. I did exclude the middle. I’m sorry, but it didn’t occur to me that the middle ground might be a place where you wish to plant your flag.

Time for another :rolleyes: to that. Very, very few questions are in reality simple enough to plant a flag on an either/or proposition. Most adults understand that.

Do you believe President Bush is to blame for hurricane Katrina and if so, to what extent?

In part, yes, to the extent very ably pointed out just above by Exploding Kitchen, in a post which I highly recommend you read and learn from. He’s off the hook to the extent that there were other, reasonably foreseeable more urgent priorities for spending limited resources available to the government. That of course leads to the folly of his war and his economy-crippling tax cuts, both of which I know you still adamantly and reflexively defend out of your completely-binary worldview.