Each year since those words were spoken the President, who promised us that he was a reformer with results has followed economic policies that have increased the concentration of American’s wealth in fewer and fewer of its population while the number of her citizens living in poverty has swelled. Each year pockets of deep, persistent poverty have grown without pricking the President’s conscience....click here for entire article

September 19, 2005 - While we are giving our attention to the stories, possibly apocryphal, of rapes and murders in the Superdome; to images of corpses floating unattended in the septic waters of New Orleans streets; and the massive failure of government at every levels to serve and protect the citizens of the impacted Gulf Coast the counts of the dead and maimed in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to mount. The last published figures from Iraq are dated September 11th. That count showed that the American dead in Iraq numbered just three short of two thousand. The last published list from Afghanistan reached two-hundred thirty-three on September 9th.

While we were wondering how the President proposed to fund the more than $200 Billion cost of reconstructing the Gulf Coast our attention is diverted from the unfunded $4 Million a day he is already spending to patrol and reconstruct Iraq. While we watch the pundits pontificate on the deserved reputation of the damaged states for corruption and waste in public works projects we skip over the articles that detail the deficiencies, missing funds and padded payrolls of the American led reconstruction program in Najaf. The President has not addressed the question of how to pay for the devastation. He simply says that “it will cost what it costs”, a real profundity that does not come close to answering the question while he promises the greatest reconstruction effort in history – a program of social engineering that far exceeds any government program instituted by any previous administration....click here for entire article

September 16, 2005 - Home owners – or more accurately former home owners – along the Gulf Coast are learning the hard realities of insurance coverage as adjusters from the nation’s insurance companies invade the hurricane ravaged area. While the spate of insurance company television ads promises that the adjuster teams are there to help rebuild the reality is that their job is really not to pay out money if they can figure out how to avoid it. The question that lets the company avoid paying is whether the damage was caused by a storm or by a flood. If the damage is the result of a flood then the company is off the hook. You can guess the answer that which the adjuster wilal be trying to justify.

The answer is significant. If the storm caused the damage then the homeowner’s regular policy will apply and he can be reimbursed for the cost of alternative living arrangements for up to two years under the policies loss of use provisions. If the damage was caused by a flood then the loss is not covered by the home owner’s policy but rather the federal flood insurance program. The federal program doesn’t cover those relocation expenses. Homeowners policies have an inflation protection provision covering the cost of rebuilding The Federal Flood Insurance covers 85% of the original cost of the building without regard to inflation....click here for entire article

September 14, 2005 - “Who could have imagined that terrorists would hijack airliners and crash them into buildings? “asked Condi Rice when she was National Security Director. Well, it seems that someone did - several someones in fact. Now that the 2004 re-election campaign is safely over the White House has finally permitted a previously classified section of the 911 Commission report to become public. It turns out that our intelligence services had been warning the FAA of just that thing that Ms. Rice could not imagine and specifically warned that Al Qaeda was planning to do exactly that. Those warnings were coupled with the repeated reports that security at the airports Atta and his team targeted was subpar and ineffective. The warnings began in 1998 and continued right up to the time that President Bush opened the cover of “My Pet Goat”. Of course that section of the report was written along with the rest of the Commission’s report that was made public in August 2004 but was concealed until now.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/14/politics/14terror.html?hp&ex=1126756800&en=8736e8e43e5437a2&ei=5094&partner=homepage

“Who could have imagined,’ the President asked, “that the levees would break.” Someone did.-several someones in fact. On July 23, 2004 FEMA issued its press release trumpeting the completion of a week long simulation exercise called Hurricane Pam. The press release concluded with this statement: “On March 1, 2003, FEMA became part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. FEMA's continuing mission within the new department is to lead the effort to prepare the nation for all hazards and effectively manage federal response and recovery efforts following any national incident. FEMA also initiates proactive mitigation activities, trains first responders, and manages the National Flood Insurance Program and the U.S. Fire Administration.” http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease_print.fema?id=13051....click here for entire article

September 10, 2005 - The Battle of New Orleans is just starting. It is not about saving people, or rebuilding the city and the shattered lives of the people who used to live there. It is not about getting Canal Street ready for next years Mardi Gras or opening Bourbon Street to tourist dollars. It isn’t about which restaurant serves the best crawfish etouffee or whether the best Muffelettas come from Central Grocery. It is about rewriting history to make sure that the effluent of blame is splashed somewhere else – anywhere else. The White House is in full battle mode and sending wave after wave official Washington to tour the Gulf Coast for the cameras. These are lightning strikes, quick hits to assure that the principals are back in Washington for the Sunday Morning talk show circuit.

As in any battle some of the troops are expendable. Just a short week ago FEMA head Michael D. Brown was basking in the glow of Presidential praise. “You’re doin’ a hellova job, Brownie.” Yesterday Brownie got sent to the showers. It wasn’t that he had turned Nathan Bedford Forrest’s advice on how to win a battle on its head. Nobody in the White House cared that Brown’s FEMA had gotten there “lastest with the leastest”. What got Brown sent to the showers was that he got himself caught in the process....click here for entire article

His knees drawn up in rigor’s grip
That pulled his arms stretched to the sky
There in the street hard by the curb
He came here to live and stayed to die.

He is not alone, this lonely corpse
He is but one, there are thousands more
Discovered when the waters ebb
Their souls transported from this shore.

No, not Bombay nor is it Calicutt,
Where street rats nibble at his feet,
And scavengers, once someone’s pets,
Starving now find rotting meat.

The beads are lost, the masque is gone,
From this place that care forgot.
The laughter stilled, the music mute,
Where once he lived and now does not

September 7, 2005 - The polluted flood waters are commencing to drain from the streets of New Orleans. Lake Pontchartrain is receiving the septic effluent left behind by Katrina. One by one they are recovering bodies. Some from the debris some revealed as the waters leave what were their homes. We don’t know how many. We may never know how many. One by one the dead are identified, some promptly. Others so badly decomposed as to conceal their identities will take longer. Some will remain New Orleans unknown soldiers through eternity. “No pictures of the dead”, is the FEMA order. The dead are to be treated with dignity and respect just as those coming home from the war. No photographers or reporters will accompany the recovery teams. It will not do to have such graphic reminders of the cost of ineptitude published in the nation’s news media – neither from Iraq nor from New Orleans.

The waters recede and with the passage of time so too will the Gulf Coast victims of incompetence recede from our consciousness. Football season is here and running backs will replace the dead and dying on our TV screens and newspaper pages. Soon the Superbowl will again be remembered for the great games played there rather than the dispossessed who hunkered down and died there. Just as Katrina pushed the insurgent offensive in Iraq off the front pages and the evening news so too will Katrina retreat in the face of other news. Few will remember that the Gulf Coast dead outnumbered the American toll from 911 and four years of war combined....click here for entire article

September 6, 2005 - "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this --this is working very well for them."

It was only a matter of time until someone on the Bush team said it. It was the President’s mother who let the real deal slip and she did it on National Public Radio. It was the ultimate rationalization of the massive failure of her son’s administration in the face of a long predicted national disaster. The folks crammed into cots on the floor of the Astrodome should thank their lucky stars for Bush & Company’s incompetence. If the funds had not been cut; if that levee had been improved as it was supposed to have been, then the people in the Astrodome would still be underprivileged and living in New Orleans.

Katrina and Michael D. Brown’s failure worked out very well for the underprivileged New Orleans masses. Now they can count their blessings. No longer do they have to go to work in a go-nowhere minimum wage job. No longer do they have to go home after a hard day to a shotgun house hovel on New Orleans west side. No longer do they have to worry about making ends meet. Thanks to President Bush they have a ready supply of Dasini Water and a MRE just when they need it. Thanks to President Bush and his administration they have a cot and 24 square feet of living space all paid for by the taxpayers. They never had it so good....click here for entire article

September 3, 2005 - The President did not see them. He did not visit them dying at the trauma center set up at Armstrong International Airport. He did not visit them while they boarded buses at the Superdome or waited for food and water at the Convention Center. Who were they? The are the people we never see; the people who gather the dirty dishes after we pay the check; the people who fold towels into swans and place the chocolates on the pillows of the turned down bed; who pick up the used bedpans and replace the dirty hospital sheets. They pick up the trash from the streets and dig up the sewers. They are the people who carry the load for the rest of us who are too proud; too rich; too connected to carry it for ourselves. They are the people too poor; too sick; and too tired to get out of town. You don’t really see them as they go about their days. They are hidden in plain sight; these people who make a modern city work and attract visitors to 300 years of history,

On an ordinary day they walk to work or ride the bus. They don’t earn enough to afford a car or to fill its gas tank if they had one. What they earn today buys tomorrow’s groceries and there isn’t enough left to buy a ticket out of town. They hunker down and hope for the best and then they pray. Oh, yes, they pray and they trust in the Lord and in the Man’s promises. On an ordinary day they are too insignificant; too poor; too Black to matter. On an ordinary day they are the invisible Americans who make the country run.....click here for entire article

September 2, 2005 - "We all know this is an agonizing time for the people of the Gulf coast, I ask their continued patience as recovery operations unfold", said the President. Well. Mr. President, hunger is not patient. Thirst is not patient. Illness is not patient. The heat of a New Orleans August is not patient. It is difficult to be patient, Mr. President, when you are hungry, thirsty, naked, and need shelter. The dead lying in the street are more patient, Mr. President. They have plenty of time to wait.

Every hour without a reliable supply of wholesome food the hunger grows. Every day without a safe supply of drinking water the thirst grows more urgent. Every hour of isolation from medical care brings the patience of death a step nearer.

Mr. President, consider this:.....click here for entire article

September 1, 2005 - We are paying the price of George Bush’s War this morning. It is the tax nobody voted for. Tuesday noon I filled up the tank on my light truck. Like everybody else I groused about the high price I had to pay and blamed the Administration as the dials spun on the pump. At $2.55 it was 90 cents higher than I paid a year ago. On Wednesday morning the pump price was $3.29.

Oh, I know that the excuse for this price spike is the disruption of the supply wrought by the hurricane and for all his confidence George W. Bush does not control the weather. But he and the Republican Congress did control the purse strings for the five years last past. In 1995 the Corps of Engineers began a 10 year construction program to prepare the Louisiana Delta to receive a category 5 hurricane. In each year since George Bush was inaugurated his Administration has cut funding for the project to the bone.....click here for entire article