Hurricane Katrina

Lessons from Katrina

OurFuture.org Staff — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 22:44:27 -0400

McCain's Faulty Pork Radar

Bill Scher — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 10:17:20 -0400

The Huffington Post reported last night on Sen. John McCain's inaccurate claim that he supported "every" investigation into the response to Hurricane Katrina:

Appearing at a press conference in Louisiana on Wednesday, McCain claimed that he had supported "every investigation" into the flawed response to Hurricane Katrina, when, in fact, he had twice voted against creating a commission to inspect the tragedy.

The remark immediately bounced around political circles and websites. After all it was just a few months ago when McCain defended those very votes on the back of his campaign bus, casting them as part of a broader campaign against wasteful spending.

"I'm proud of my support of American citizens regarding the taxpayers," the Senator said in April. "I will not vote for projects and programs and bills that are laden with pork-barrel projects that waste taxpayers' dollars."

McCain's excuse for opposing that investigation is just as notable as the opposition.

McCain has portrayed himself as the ultimate pork-buster, bravely rooting out wasteful spending on bloated government. In fact, it is his main plank in his economic strategy. From his Tuesday night speech:

I take America's economic security as seriously as I do her physical security. For eight years the federal government has been on a spending spree that added trillions to the national debt. It spends more and more of your money on programs that have failed again and again to keep up with the changes confronting American families.

Extravagant spending on things that are not the business of government indebts us to other nations; fuels inflation; raises interest rates; and encourages irresponsibility. I have opposed wasteful spending by both parties and the Bush administration.

It's a compelling tautology. Wasteful spending should be stopped because it is wasteful.

But as I noted when shredding the annual "Pig Book" from inaccurately named Citizens Against Government Waste, a lot of folks throw around the "pork" label without bothering to assess if the targeted spending is actually wasteful.

And by characterizing an independent Katrina investigation (as well as $28 billion in relief for victims) as "pork-barrel projects that waste taxpayers' dollars," only shows poor judgment in distinguishing between wasteful spending and worthy investment.

That is the true test for politicians. Anyone can rail against pork. Anyone can claim to oppose wasteful spending.

But can the politician accurately identify where the wasteful spending is?

John McCain's Miserable Record on Hurricane Katrina

Isaiah J. Poole — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:00:00 -0400

Maybe You Don't Want McCain Taking Any Action

Bill Scher — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 14:50:25 -0400

My colleague Isaiah says McCain is offering nothing but "inaction" in his visit to New Orleans' lower Ninth Ward, as McCain continues to offer another eight years of do-nothing conservatism from our government.

But apparently he's fine with certain kinds of government action, such as, tearing down the entire Ninth Ward.

The CBS "From The Road" blog reports:

He also told reporters he was not sure if he would rebuild the lower 9th ward as president.

"That is why we need to go back is to have a conversation about what to do - rebuild it, tear it down, you know, whatever it is,” he said.

"Whatever!" Allowing hundreds of thousands of storm victims to return home after being displaced for more than two years. Eh, take it or leave it.

ThinkProgress notes that high-profile McCain endorser Rev. John Hagee contends that Katrina was the "result of God’s permissible will” because New Orleans was planning "a massive homosexual rally." Perhaps McCain should be asked if it's doing the Lord's work to finish the job and tear the whole ward down.

UPDATE: Just in case the context of McCain's remarks isn't fully evident above, here's Newsweek's account:

Asked earlier this week if he thought the Lower Ninth Ward should be rebuilt, McCain shrugged, considering the question for several seconds. "I really don't know," he finally said. "That's why I am going … We need to go back to have a conversation about what to do: rebuild it, tear it down, you know, whatever it is."

UPDATE 2: More thoughts from First Draft

Agency Is Under Pressure to Develop Disaster Housing

Alex Carter — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:30:45 -0400

After the federal government announced in February that it would no longer use travel trailers to house the victims of future disasters, there was an initial sense of relief along the hurricane-scarred Gulf Coast.

FEMA Limits Formaldehyde in Trailers

Alex Carter — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:12:12 -0400

After resisting for years, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is setting strict new limits on formaldehyde levels in the mobile homes it buys for disaster victims.

LA State Supreme Court Takes Insurance Companies over Katrina Victims: Flood Damage is Excluded

Alex Carter — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 10:34:34 -0400

The Louisiana Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously ruled that homeowners insurance policies do not have to cover damages caused by levee breaches in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

CDC: FEMA Trailers Toxic

OurFuture.org Staff — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 11:20:50 -0500

Two years after Katrina victims living in FEMA trailers started complaining of health problems, the Centers for Disease control says that formaldehyde gas levels in the trailers are —on average—five times higher than normal, and forty times higher in some homes. The agency urged FEMA to relocate residents before summer. Approximately 144,000 people remain in FEMA-provided trailers.

Striving for Equality: An Honest Assessment

Alan Jenkins — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:25:14 -0500

Last spring, the Bush administration quietly submitted a report to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination articulating the Administration's version of the state of equal opportunity in America. Last week, a group of 250 independent U.S. experts submitted their own report to the U.N. committee, providing a much-needed reality check to the administration's story.

Coordinated by the U.S. Human Rights Network, the independent experts' "shadow" report examined government data and investigated evidence on equal opportunity in employment, education, criminal justice, housing, health care, environmental protection and other gateways to opportunity. My organization, The Opportunity Agenda, was among the groups providing data and analysis, particularly on access to quality health care.

The Bush administration submitted its report under the international Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which the United States helped to craft, and which the U.S. Senate ratified into our federal law in 1994. Each of the nearly 170 nations who've adopted the treaty—including the U.S.—must periodically report on their progress to the U.N. Committee on Racial Discrimination. This year, it's the U.S. government's turn.

A recent national poll commissioned by The Opportunity Agenda found that overwhelming majorities of Americans believe that equal opportunity regardless of race and freedom from discrimination are fundamental human rights that all people should enjoy. For example, 84 percent believe (and 70 percent believe strongly) that "when the police stop and search people solely based on their race or ethnicity they are violating their human rights." More generally, 81 percent believe (58 percent strongly) that "we should strive to uphold human rights in the U.S. because there are people being denied their human rights in our country."

Human rights, Americans believe, are crucial to upholding our national values.

Though unfamiliar to many Americans, our international system of human rights embodies those same shared values of fairness, dignity, and opportunity. As the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination declares, "the Charter of the United Nations is based on the principles of the dignity and equality inherent in all human beings." The United States and other countries that have ratified the treaty have pledged to work with the U.N. "to promote and encourage universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion."

The shadow report filed last week is part of an important accountability system, revealing problems that governments themselves may shy away from, and proposing positive solutions.

The shadow report documents the significant ways in which our government has fallen short in its responsibility to protect equal opportunity—and which the Bush Administration's report failed to address adequately or at all. While the U.S. government report barely mentions Hurricane Katrina, 60 percent of Americans believe that "the way residents of New Orleans were treated after Hurricane Katrina was a violation of their human rights."

The shadow report validates that belief, and documents that, even today, governmental authorities have failed to reopen essential public health care facilities in New Orleans, contributing to an increase in the number of deaths due to lack of medical services.

The shadow report documents the persistence of unequal opportunity in many other sectors, including in the juvenile justice system. The report explains that African-American and Latino young people regularly receive more severe sentences than white youth in juvenile courts. Young people of color, the report also found, are "held in custody and prosecuted 'as adults' in criminal courts more often than white youth and given adult sentences more frequently. Because this disparate treatment cannot be explained away based on differences in conduct, and because fairer alternative policies exist, the American promise of equal opportunity embodied in the treaty is violated.

Unlike the administration's report, the shadow report proposes a range of workable solutions for expanding equal opportunity for all Americans. Regarding juvenile justice, for example, it recommends training for judges, probation officers, and prosecutors on the developmental needs of children, alternatives to detention and incarceration, and monitoring of racial bias in the juvenile justice system. Also recommended are ensuring vigorous enforcement of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Act-which requires states to demonstrate reductions in racial disparities—as well as using objective screening methods to ensure fair treatment of young people of different races, and investing in community-based support for young people and their families at the community level.

The next step in the international human rights process is for the U.N. Committee responsible for the Discrimination Convention to hear directly from the U.S. government, as well as from a delegation of the shadow report's authors. The Committee will issue findings and recommendations later this year. The timing will be ideal for Americans to probe the U.S. presidential candidates' positions on protecting the human right to equal opportunity here at home. And it can provide impetus and direction for needed human rights enforcement reforms in a new administration and Congress early next year.

Quote of the Day: Alphonso Jackson edition

Rick Perlstein — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 15:04:32 -0500

Film buffs like me can't think of the acronym that signifies the Department of Housing and Urban Development without flashing on the classic 1963 Paul Newman flick of the same name—Hud.

Don't miss it if you've never seen it. The plot is simple and stately, almost Biblical. Paul Newman's Hud is a charismatic wanderer who returns home to the ranch of his achingly decent, hard-working father (Melvyn Douglas) just as dad's precious heard of cattle—his pride, his passion, and his entire livelihood—has to be put down because it's infected with hoof and mouth disease. Newman, our prodigal son, simply ignores his dad's misery, getting what's his and moving on. "I always say the law was meant to be interpreted in a lenient manner," the charismatic son of a bitch says at one point, and you want to hurl a rotten egg at the screen.

HUD and Hud. For as long as Alphonso Jackson has been its cabinet secretary, the coincidence is not merely in the spelling. It's in the grifting.

We've written about Alphonso Jackson on this site before. After Hurricane Katrina, at a Texas small business forum he volunteered a story about denying a HUD contract after the company owner expressed doubts about President Bush. “Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president?” Jackson asked. “So they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? That's the way I believe." (Like I keep on saying, I never cherish conservatives more than when they're accidentally over-candid.)

Meanwhile, tax breaks meant to build housing for Katrina victims under the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act of 2005 ended up subsidizing developers in Tuscaloosa, Alabama—a city hundreds of miles inland—to build luxury condos next to to the University of Alabama’s football stadium. The condos featured granite countertops, king-size bathtubs, and legendary Crimson Tide coach Bear Bryant-styled wall art.

Now this, from Monday's Washington Post

Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson demanded that the Philadelphia Housing Authority transfer a $2 million public property to a developer at a substantial discount, then retaliated against the housing authority when it refused to do so, a recent court filing alleges.

The authority's director, Carl Greene, contends in a court affidavit that Jackson called Philadelphia's mayor in 2006 to demand the transfer to the developer, Kenny Gamble, a former soul-music songwriter who is a business friend of Jackson's. Jackson's aides followed up with "menacing" threats about the property and other housing programs in at least a dozen letters and phone calls over an 11-month period, Greene said in an interview.

Greene and his colleagues have alleged in the court filing that Philadelphia is now paying a severe price for disobeying a Bush Cabinet official. The Department of Housing and Urban Development recently vowed to strip the city's housing authority of its ability to spend some federal funds, a move that the authority said could raise rents for most of its 84,000 low-income tenants and force the layoffs of 250 people.

The housing authority responded by filing a civil suit in December against HUD and Jackson, in which Greene claimed that the actions by Jackson's department are "retaliatory" and that the Bush administration has exaggerated the troubles it cited as grounds for stripping the funds. Greene said the developer failed to deliver on contracts, leading the housing agency to conclude that the transfer would be improper.

We'll leave aside the abiding sin of doing wrong by the legendary songwriter who gave us the imperishables "Love Train" and "Me and Mrs. Jones." Let's focus on the horror of the cronyism—of a degree and kind that would have made the first Mayor Daley ashamed:

Jackson, a longtime friend of President Bush, is under investigation by HUD's inspector general and the Justice Department for other alleged acts of favoritism and interference. Jackson's office last week said in a written statement that he could not comment on Greene's allegations because they are a subject of litigation.

According to people familiar with the existing probes of Jackson, investigators are scrutinizing whether he interfered in the operations of housing authorities in New Orleans and the Virgin Islands by helping steer no-bid and inflated contracts to friends, and whether he lied when he told authorities he had not.

Investigators are also examining Jackson's alleged role in arranging a New Orleans Housing Authority contract for a contractor and occasional golfing buddy who allegedly did repairs and remodeling on the secretary's South Carolina vacation home, according to two sources familiar with the probe. Details of these probes were previously reported by the National Journal.

Clearly Alphonso Jackson should resign. He's more likely to be cited for a Presidential Medal of Freedom, W's reward for all his favorite screwups.

Like we say in our introductory materials for our Big Con project, "Cronyism is not merely incidental to conservative ideology, it’s instrumental to it." Elect another conservative administration, and don't be shocked if Alphonso Jackson isn't part of it still—if he hasn't decided the action's better on the other side of the fence, selling his access in the private sector.

"I always say the law was meant to be interpreted in a lenient manner." That's our Big Con quote of the day.