Should be an interesting day

FEMA is moving in to set up a disaster recovery center inside the library. They have brought with them a squad of employees of the famous Blackwater security firm. Let's hope we don't get any rowdy patrons this afternoon... for their sake.

Answering Rudolph

This is what makes me sad.

You may have noticed

A slight reduction in activity on this site in the past two weeks. Don't fret. This is only a temporary situation. I'm a bit frustrated because I'm back in NOLA and the library is open and this means I have a great deal of stuff to dump here in my little yellow forum. Unfortunately now that the power is back on at my place, I've moved out of Daisy's appartment and away from her super-fast internet connection. Things will get back up to speed as soon as I can get Cox out to my place.

In which I tacitly endorse looting and vandalism

If these store owners are to be believed, then typically apathetic New Orleanians are more class conscious than they are assumed to be. This can be a good sign.

Because they all asked

Audubon Zoo to reopen after Thanksgiving.

Ha ha

I can't decide what's funnier, the thing itself or Pope Horatio Tyrannosaurus Nixon Rex's commentary thereupon.

If you open they will come

Your library is open, folks. We're nothing near to normal but what is? We are running two branches and the main library with the most unbelievably meager staff. If a great city deserves a great library, then that library needs its librarians back. Part of restoring vitality to a community is restoring the kind of services that a vital community depends on. By that same token, it can be said that a community's vital signs are manifested in its demand for those services. Once that demand is established, the services can be expanded. The community benefits, the demand grows and the virtuous cycle begins. And so this morning as we prepared to open for the first time since the Second Grand Derangement, we hoped for the sake of our library, for the sake of our scores of laid-off staff, for the sake of our whole city, that we would hear something close to a heartbeat.

It appears that the patient does indeed have a pulse. A line at least 10 persons deep greeted us at the door of the main library this morning. At our current staff level, we are able to offer only computer access, in-house use of a limited part of the collection, and the most basic reference service. The first surprise this morning was a woman with her two-year-old in tow asking to use the children's room. At Main we're only allowing the public access to the first floor and the children's room is on the second floor. But, Christ, in a supposedly "childless city", one of our first patrons is a woman and her kid. It's a sign! Everything is going to be OK! I ran upstairs and picked out a stack of picture books (titles Daisy and I used regularly when we used to do storytime together.. you know back when we actually worked in a library) and found them a place to sit downstairs. It was the highlight of my month.

As we anticipated, most of our patrons wanted to use the computers but many also had books to return which we accepted. Most also asked to check books out; something we aren't staffed to handle yet. We are excited that the demand is there. Most of all we were encouraged by the warm greetings, the hugs, and in one case the cookies we received from our patrons throughout the day. It means they want us back which means, hopefully, that soon many of us can actually come back.

At closing time, I found myself unable to extricate myself from a conversation with an actual bona-fide crazy person. You see she's a musician from Georgia and she and her husband-type person have produced their own country music record. Only it's not country music per se because they're an interracial couple so they call it "funktry". And wouldn't I like to have a copy of their CD? Aw who cares! The point is the library is open, even the nutballs are back, and I couldn't be more pleased.

Yeah, what he said

Oyster links and reproduces the text of an op-ed piece by Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities director, Michael Sartisky. Um.. it's real good, y'all.. hits on just about every reason New Orleans is worth saving and why I came back. As a side note, Daisy and I attended an LEH function at Dr. Sartisky's house last year. I am certain he has no idea who we are.

Yup

They're hypocrites. A double standard in the code of conduct required of owners vs employees is demeaning and reprehensible... also probably racist. The players should strike over this.

Tonight's Tom Benson Follies

First, don't miss James Gill's column today for this nugget.

Far be it from me to knock anyone who buys a full-page ad in The Times-Picayune, especially a native son protesting his fondness for the city, but how come Tom Benson can't spell the name of his old high school, St. Aloysius?

The name was spelled out in the school cheer, but maybe Benson wasn't into football in those days and didn't get to hear it. The school is long gone, but one of its most successful alumni should never have written "Aloyisous" in the first paragraph of his lengthy apologia, right under the headline, "Tom Benson Wants to Return to New Orleans."

And then there's this. If the NFL doesn't fine Benson (as they would any player who behaves this way) they are little more than hypocritical scum. Oh wait a minute that's exactly what they are.

Question of the Day

Posed here by Richard.

New Orleans' citywide curfew starts at 2am, right? But this is the weekend that Daylight Savings Time comes to an end, meaning that at on Sunday at 2am, we wind our clocks back an hour. I wonder how many curfew-breakers are gonna try to use that one as an excuse.

Pictures From Happier Times

When babies acted like babies
And so did the grown-ups.

Today's Halloween rerun is last year's Halloween party! (may have to scroll down a bit..permalinks are funny) In an eerie Halloween coincidence, this post was also introduced by GBV lyrics.

More Book-Type Stuff

The 2005 New Orleans Book Fair will indeed happen. Back in happier times, I thought we would do well to open a neighborhood branch on Oretha Castle Haley Blvd. That part of town was just starting to come back from the dead.

NOLA Recovery @ Your Library

Since we got a blurb in today's T-P Metro section, I suppose it's not confidential info anymore. We're planing to open the Main library, the Algiers Point branch, and the Nix branch next week for internet access only. We're not quite ready to do circulation yet but people are welcome to return books. (No you won't have to pay overdue fines for books you had out during the hurricane... and yes I expect to get that question from now until the end of time) Getting back to public service in some form is a big step for us and we're very excited about it.

Strange Times

This also happened to me.

Tooker admitted that the lack of her own favorite comfort food has driven her to distraction: "There's no BUTTER," she said. "It's freaking me out. I'm all about butter. After five days of going to every (open) store and looking for butter and only finding squeeze margarine . . . . I finally stood in one store and started to cry last week because I couldn't buy butter."

Since then, of course, my power has been turned off so I can't really cook anything anyway. But New Orleans without butter... sheesh you might as well fill in the Mississippi River.

White House Reeling

Yesterday, Bush was forced to reinstate Davis-Bacon and now today there's this.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush on Thursday accepted the withdrawal of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, according to a statement from the White House.

Apart from what it says about the political stregnth of the White House, the Miers withdrawl may not be the greatest development. Bush has a few serious fire-eaters waiting in the bullpen.

Frogmarch coming

I can't wait. It's like Christmas Eve. Now what will Old St Fitz leave under our tree? A Scooter? A Rove? How about a Big Dick?

The news of the eleventh-hour moves came as Cheney himself was implicated in the chain of events that led to Plame's being exposed. In a report in the New York Times yesterday that the White House pointedly did not dispute, Fitzgerald was said to have notes taken by Libby showing that he learned about Plame from the vice president a month before she was identified by columnist Robert D. Novak.

FEMA

Yeah, pretty much a dirty word in these parts.

Kos

The Post K World

I am crawling through muck and mold looking for salvageable dvds and inflatable tigers. Meanwhile it appears that Rudolph is doing something close to what was once my job.

Yeah screw 'em

They sure aren't rushing to help us. BFOP points out a possible perfect storm scenario for the Americans who don't give a shit when us third-world dwellwers suffer and die.

Update: Hey sorry, America. I was a little loaded last night. I really don't hope you die. Not all of you anyway.

Turn it up

Drunk... using Daisy's appartment until they turn the power back on at my place... means I get to use her stereo...

don't be told what you want
don't be told what you need
there's no future no future
no future for you

Usufruct

Here's a creative proposal for dealing with the housing issue in New Orleans.

Authorities would locate scattered homeowners to determine if they have the means or the inclination to rebuild. There are believed to be at least 100,000 homes in New Orleans that are damaged to the point that they are not habitable. If the owner is not planning to return anytime soon, local officials would strike a deal.

The owner would sign over controlling rights of the property — but not the title — to the government. In most cases, that would likely be the city of New Orleans, but the program would apply statewide and could involve numerous municipal or parish governments.

Through contracts targeting hundreds of properties at once, the government would then pay to make the home habitable again, while assuming, in most cases, mortgage payments for the owner.

The home would then be rented out, first to displaced "essential workers" such as teachers, police officers and firefighters and their families, then to the public. Rents would likely be subsidized, and checks would be written to the government agency that signed the deal or to a company hired to manage the money.

The owners would be allowed to return after an agreed-upon period of time — perhaps three to five years — provided they could repay the government for repairs made. If, at that point, the owner did not want to return or could not pay for the fixes, the government would have the right to sell it. If the house were sold, the government and the owner could share in profits and losses.

Certainly seems like a program that can be abused in ugly ways. Also could be turned into a mechanism for wholesale bulldozing of neighborhoods. However, it does have potential.

Catching On

Unsurprisingly, I'm not the only one to think of this. It really ought to happen.

Stolen T-P Image of the Day

Also: http://tombensonisabum.blogspot.com/

In the dark

Yup, I'm one of these people. Particularly annoying when you're the only building on the block without power.

Salvage image of the day

The parking lot at East New Orleans is full of these.
Oh and yes, Virginia, Skookses do float. I managed to rescue the little guy myself.

Update: Skooks recovers from his ordeal by relaxing next to a T-shirt featuring this year's eerily prescient summer reading club theme.

No Doze

This Times piece paints a rather bleak picture. I don't think it has to come to that. There will not (or at least should not) be as much bulldozing as is currently expected. Many houses can still be saved.

Stealing a dead man's wallet

Quote is from Jim Henderson's commentary yesterday. Big Shot says all there is to say.

Salvage

Spent yesterday afternoon crawling through the muck and mold that has become the Keller branch looking for anything we could hope to save. Two points:

One: These photos like all photos of the damage simply do not convey anything near the experience of actually being in the midst of this continuing unreality. The heat, the smell, the palpable rot can only be truly understood in person. Nor does one truly feel the full weight of the devastation until one begins tourning the the flooded regions of the city marked by brown grass, piles of rubble, and the ever present tell-tale water line.

Two: No matter what you soak them in, no matter how meticulously you work to wipe away the mold, library cds by Celine Dion and John Tesh still suck.

Oh for crying the fuck out loud

Tropical storm warning; U.S. Gulf Coast likely threatened

It's a crime wave

The city is not safe. Tourists on Bourbon street are subject to random acts of violence. Citizens are harassed and bullied as they go about their daily routine. You can't call 911. The criminals have even become so bold as to steal our street signs in plain view of witnesses.
And who is responsible for the terror? We cannot look to the usual suspects. God and Richard Baker have "cleaned up" public housing. The "bad apples" erroneously reported to have run amuck in the Superdome are unable to return so long as the current housing market remains as it is. So how now do we rid ourselves of this scourge of crime and violence? Who will protect us from these out of control police hoodlums?

Quick Question

If it is okay to lift the midnight curfew, what exactly is the point of a 2-6AM curfew? Who is going to benefit from four hours of people forced off the streets? Why not just lift the whole thing?

Jeffrey's first post-Katrina big idea

New citywide art project in the spirit of the fish thing. Festival of abandoned fridges. I've noticed folks have been scrawling messages on the refrigerators they leave out on the curb. For chrissakes, people, get some paint some beads and a hot glue gun or something. I'm sure we can all do better than this.

Other news: Last night I supped on a hamburger at Igor's. While I was there I met an out of town contractor/carpetbagger type person who treated me to his theory about how New Orleans deserved what it got because it "got away from the lord." I very nearly punched him.

Quick post

I don't have a whole lot of time to detail my experience since returning to NO. There's a lot to say which I will get to... but not today. In the meantime, add me to the list of people severely pissed about this completely unnecessary curfew.

Vacation Ending

Baltimore is alright. Certain things here are very much like home. The nice parts of town exist in close quarter with the trashy parts. Bars and churches every other corner although I am still at a loss over the Northern obsession with prohibiting folks clearly in transit between bars from drinking on the street. The people here like to hang out on their porches. They say "hon" where we might expect to hear "dawlin". They also eat a lot of seafood, although I'm still not convinced they quite know how to do it properly. I grew up with boiled crabs. While I'll admit that steaming them is another great way to do them, I won't go so far as to say that it's better. I'm told that the Chesapeake oyster is the same species as what we get from the gulf. They run a bit smaller here.. but oysters on the half shell are oysters on the half shell anywhere which is to say a delight I'm not sure we mere mortals truly deserve access to. On the other hand, from what I can tell, these people are truly at a loss as to how to fry an oyster. Yesterday I had an opportunity to sample what passes for an oyster po boy up here. It made me sad. The day before, I had stupidly ordered barbecue shrimp. This made me feel bewildered and incredulous as well as very very sad.

Spent Sunday at the Fell's Point Festival Something very like FQF except minus the Wild Magnolias and plus a metal karaoke band. I had part of a pit beef sandwhich, a fried plantain, the aforementioned oyster po boy debacle, and some kind of grilled mozarella and cornbread sandwhich. Not quite like what you get here, but I guess it keeps the alcohol happy. Managed to find the Saints game on in a bar. Live from San Antonio. This also made me sad.

Hoping to be in New Orleans this weekend. Half-expecting to find an eviction notice on the door.

Ex-library chronicles?

Might be longer back to work process than we bargained for.

Up to 3,000 city workers may lose jobs
Going home anyway.. probably this week sometime. Maybe I can tend bar for a while or something.

No longer among the hillbillies

So I'm in Baltimore. Actually decided to drive the Tercel nearly 700 miles in one day figuring I'd make the most of final days of exile. It's a long drive; I think I pretty much exploded any illusions about someday becoming a trucker. On the plus side, the city has gone all out to make me feel welcome. My first night out on the town I went to a party where I was greeted by the Mayor of Baltimore, Kweisi Mfume, Joe Trippi, and several distinguished Marylandish elected type people. Okay so I got dragged to a Mfume for Senate fund raiser but still. Otherwise things are not so bad here. Baltimore seems to have a sufficient amount of character (read places to get drunk)and the weather is nice. Still, I need to get home. I hear tell that Goldschmidt and Shehateme were able to get into NO and inspect my place. My and Consuela's things are undisturbed and the power is on. Still, it hardly seems inviting enough to move back in just yet.


Spent last evening in D.C. playing tourist on the Mall and gawking at the city's uber-trendy denizens. Here is the Washington Monument dramatically backlit by a vivid orange and blue sunset very poorly captured by my crappy camera phone.

Down comes the "Hammer"

Delay indicted

Loving the smell of sludge in the morning

St. Bernard EPA testing is "off the charts"

Welcome Home!

Rumors

This is very enlightening.

Among the Hillbillies Part 5

It's finally happened. No Saints on TV in Nashville today.

Hurricane Survival Rule No. 1

Stay away from domes.

Among the Hillbillies Part 4

In Nashville, unspeakable specimens of wildlife are allowed much liberty by whatever ineffectual government agency is responsible for their oversight to run free in areas that civilized metropoli would clearly wish to reserve for people (and maybe cats, dogs, pigeons and the like). Last week I was horrified to peer out through the kitchen window and discover a deer.. an actual friggin deer.. merrily loping through the neighborhood as casually as though he were out for a morning stroll. What the hell! I had naively presumed that it was safe to leave my Tercel out there in the driveway. I had no idea that the area was overrun with large four-legged animals who appear to be quite capable of kicking through an innocent windshield should the mood strike them. If I find one hoofprint before I leave someone is getting an angry letter.

And then there are the vultures. Back home I was known to complain from time to time of the harassment I received quite often from certain elements of New Orleans's healthy population of big fat nasty black crows. The birds tended to become a bit defensive if I happened to allow my jogging route to pass too closely to their nesting trees. Many were the days when I would find myself forced to pick up the pace in order to avoid a nasty round of swooping and squawking on the part of the indignant birds. So I was always a bit annoyed with (if not quite terrified of)the crows. They were well sized and probably disease ridden enough to make me wary. Little did I know that one day I would be faced with a winged adversary easily twice the size of the crows and from the looks of them quite capable of clawing through skull material. I hope they aren't nesting yet.

Did I mention the skunks? Okay well, there are skunks.

All of this is quite enough to cause one a bit of discomfort with one's living arrangement. On the other hand, my current quarters, under siege by all manner of malevolent fauna though they may be, have several distinct advantages over home at the moment, chief among these being electricity and clean running water. So I suppose it would behoove me for the moment to... wait a minute what the fuck is that?
Man I gotta get out of here!

Recovery Bush style

Following up on its opportunistic move to suspend the Davis-Bacon prevailing wage act in the wake of Katrina, the Bush administration is now requesting authority to wave EPA industrial emissions standards during emergencies. With recovery efforts like this, who needs disasters?

Eep

Some computer models have Rita back in the Gulf next week.

Trailer Parks

As service industry owners struggle to resurrect their plantation economy, help is on the way from HUD in the form of mobile slave quarters.

Rich and Poor

Needs to be said. Too bad the only one saying it is St. Bernard Parish President Junior Rodriguez.

Rodriguez said the repair job on the Industrial Canal levee was shoddy and accused the corps of exerting more of an effort to repair a breach on the 17th Street Canal at the Orleans-Jefferson parish line because it protects more wealthy neighborhoods than those in the 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish.

"It's rich and poor,'' Rodriguez told a WWL-TV reporter, adding that St. Bernard Parish and 9th Ward residents are treated like "second-class citizens.''

As we have seen, no one listens to anyone from St. Bernard. TV reporters who continue to parrot the Corps' lie about "overtopped" levess as opposed to breached levees are doing us all a disservice.

Ghost Town

Chris Rose is lonely.

Stuff you can buy

Get it here.

Via Murph

Alright I'll say it

They fixed the rich people's levee. They didn't much care about the this one.

Yesterday I watched two of the most disturbing press conferences yet. The first one featured Bush bristling at reporters whining about how hard it would be to figure out how much hurricane relief would cost the feds. Meanwhile two Senators already had a pretty good idea as to that. Bush, in fact, seemed to be saying that the feds were working (it's hard work) to figure out exactly what was the bare minimum they were legally required to spend. And then there was this. Gets weirder every day.

Later in the day, we were treated to a similarly bizzare performance by Mayor Nagin. (So much later in the day, in fact, that reporters on the scene were wondering out loud if they were being kept waiting out of malice.) When the Q & A finally began, the mayor bristled angrily at reporters at one point wondering out loud, "Will you believe me?" before answering the first question. Then came this exhange:
Q: Mr. Mayor, what can you tell us about the leak in the levees at the industrial canal?
A: I haven't heard anything about that.
Q: Mr. Mayor, we've got some picures we can show you. We talked to FEMA crews earlier who said they're pulling people out of the Ninth Ward...
A: Well I haven't heard about that yet. The Corps hasn't told me anything.

This morning, the levee patch has completely failed and flood waters are rushing back into the Ninth Ward. The Corps is calling it an "overtopping" I don't believe that.
Looks more like indifference.

New Toy No. 2

Never Pay Retail.
Self-explanatory.

Assholes

Some soldiers and a California news crew play "haunted history" tourist while on duty in New Orleans. I hope they got a real big laugh out of this. They should all be punished/fired.

New Toy

Library Thing Create and (if you like) share an online catalog of your personal library. Now... where did I leave my books? Oh yeah.

via biblioblog

Dammit

I had one of these in the evacuation vehicle with me. I threw it out the next daw.

See?

I'm not crazy. The bastards really are doing this. If this happens to you, you can tell Foti here.

Books of the moment

Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America John M Barry

I and many others have mentioned this one before. Most of us remember it as this year's One Book One New Orleans selection. The Katrina aftermath has brought one eerie reminder of the the book's themes after another. The problems of race and poverty, the political damage control operation, the power of the New Orleans Carnival aristocracy, the misuse of St. Bernard Parish residents, the ineptitude of the Army Corps of Engineers. It's all there in Barry's book.

Isaac's Storm : A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History Erik Larson

1900 Galveston, TX is wiped out by a killer storm. The city never really recovers. What will happen this time?

Just as soon as we finish with the worst storm ever

Along comes the worst storm ever. Scary times. She makes a pretty picture though.

O, I have pass'd a miserable night, So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams

Dreamt last night that I was at a Mardi Gras parade. (Krewe of Carrollton for no particular reason) It was muddy outside and threatening rain. The riders didn't seem very into it. The parade was cutting its route short. At some point it devolved into a procession of walkers half-heartedly handing out throws. I began to feel a sense of guilt for even waving to them. As they walked on solemnly, the crowd began to shift from shouting "Hey mister" and "Throw me something" to quietly nodding and saying only "God bless you." Mostly we looked away from it and began to wonder when it would be appropriate to leave.

I wonder how soon any of us will be in the mood to celebrate.

Blech

Remember, the mayor decided this was good enough for folks to come back to.

The east bank of New Orleans may not have safe tap water for up to two more months, Sewerage & Water Board officials revealed Tuesday, further jeopardizing plans to begin a staggered repopulation of unflooded Uptown neighborhoods and the French Quarter.

.....

But the water board is facing other handicaps. Only 430 of the agency's 1,200 employees have reported back to work, requiring that the many of the same employees who stayed on site for Katrina remain in place for Rita. The agency also lost its entire $35 million fleet of vehicles when Katrina flooded the maintenance facility on Peoples Street. FEMA has authorized the S&WB to rent vehicles, but not all have arrived, St. Martin said.

Fortunately, much of the slack has been taken up by private contractors who have been hired on an emergency basis. Most, among them Boh Bros. and Drennan Construction, have held contracts with the S&WB in the past and are familiar with the city's systems, she said.

..... Rent equipment? How neighborly! Who is making that buck? BTW this also means that your water services have been effectively privatized.....

While the east bank water purification plant is operational, Katrina caused untold damage to the 1,600-mile maze of underground pipes that carry water to homes and businesses. Lines were snapped, cracked and busted all over town when trees were uprooted, houses wiped off their slabs and fire hydrants toppled.

Floodwaters 20 feet deep also destroyed the only wastewater treatment plant that services the east bank, located on Florida Avenue near the St. Bernard Parish line. Repairs to that facility could cost $156 million and take nine months, during which time the city has no other alternative than to send untreated sewage generated west of the Industrial Canal into the Mississippi River, St. Martin said. East of the canal, sewage may have to be sent to Lake Pontchartrain through a newly engineered bypass system or possibly through open drainage canals, officials said.

.....

As for water, it is flowing through the taps on the east bank, but is not suitable for washing hands, bathing, cooking or drinking unless boiled for three to five minutes. Officials warn that harmful bacteria could be present from floodwaters or muck that has infiltrated broken pipes, and that residents run the risk of catching a range of intestinal illnesses if they consume the water in any way.

Again, I cannot stress this enough. As of last week, the mayor had determined that these conditions were good enough for you to come home and generate postitve PR for him.

Help

My landlord lived in lakeview and I am now unable to contact him and apprise him of my location/intent to return as soon as legally allowed, etc. Consuela has been in contact with her boss who also rents apartments and has been hearing rumors of landlords in the city evicting evacuated tenants in absentia, dumping their belongings onto the street, and putting the apartments back on the market at significantly higher rents. Is there anyone out there who reads this and can verify this info? I'm really worried about my stuff.

Oral Histories

Found this site on kos today. Good stuff. Just passing it on.

Quote of the Day

NOPD chief Eddie Compass at today's press conference.
"We are doing everything we can to disseminate our personnel."

America's Team

Back in action tonight. Corny as it may be, this really does make me feel better.

Update: Almost forgot. If you're out of WWL broadcast range and absolutely need to hear Jim and Hokie while the Saints are playing, WJBO should be streaming the Saints radio network. Last week, I noticed a significant time lapse between the game on TV and the streaming commentary but it's worth it for the little taste of home.

Unbelievable

Nagin just now: "Our reentry program has gone very smoothly. Now we are cancelling it."

He just stated his criteria for allowing residents back in was based on:
1) The EPA report on air quality (which was inconclusive to bad)
2) The quality of the water (which is undrinkable... he described it as "challenging")
3) The status of the hospitals (which are ruined)

The Mayor looked at all of this and then decided to give residents the green light to return!

Other things he said just now:
1) He implied that his return plan was meant as a "take a look and go" deal instead of a permanent return. This is a lie.
2) After stating that the presence of military personnel gave the administration confidence that they could "handle any problems that might arise" he began to set his plan for Rita evacuation in motion by asking people who know folks who returned to please call them and ask them to leave.

God help us!

Evidence that God Hates Me

1) Rita

2) Bruning's is destroyed but somehow Blue Dog lives on.

The world turned upside down

Tulane's next home football game will take place IN TIGER STADIUM.

Flood Insurance

Forty percent of New Orleans homeowners had flood insurance. In a flood prone region where the home buyer's ability to obtain a mortgage is tied to the purchase of federal flood insurance, how can this number be so low? Answer: a large number of the houses in the city are not mortgaged to young homeowners but owned outright by absentee landlords and occupied by renters. Property owners in New Orleans are at liberty to decline flood insurance if their property is no longer under mortgage. Of course, the landlord always runs the risk of losing a building to a disaster like Katrina but the risk of losing one's cash cow slum is not the same as the risk of losing one's home. Besides, that risk always came with the possibility of a federal bailout or, at the very least, a chance to lay blame at the feet of "heartless insurance companies." Failing that, the enterprising landlord can always burn his way out and blame it on the looters.

Note: Far be it for me to rush to the aid of the beleaguered insurance industry. This Mississippi lawsuit, I think, does hold water (pun perhaps intended) since the property owners were told not to buy flood insurance due to the fact that they were not in a "flood zone." That seems a bit of an untenable premise at this point.

Ethnic Cleansing

These are the people who have the Mayor's ear. Upstanding citizens like Ashton O'Dwyer.

In rich white enclaves like Uptown, residents are wary of sounding racist. But with their deep business and family connections, they say they are determined to ensure the new city will be very different than the old one, which for so long has been associated with crime, poor schools and corruption.

"Whatever you do, don't put people back in the city who are criminals and who are incapable of, or unwilling to, help themselves," said Mr. O'Dwyer, a volatile, white 57-year-old lawyer.

"What was once unacceptable in polite, respectable society has not only become commonplace over the past 30 years of Negro rule in this city, but it has become acceptable and I am not going to stand for it any more," said the fifth-generation New Orleans resident. "If we return to the same old, same old . . . I'm outta here."

Not safe

Opening the city at this point is an obvious safety hazzard. If the Mayor honestly cared about the city's poor and scores of renters afraid of losing their abandoned homes and posessions as much as he cares about the buisiness owners and landlords, he would not be jeopardizing the public's health for the purposes of this PR stunt.

Don't eat the soil

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A new health risk emerged Friday from the sediment of New Orleans -- test results showing that diesel and fuel oils, which can take years to break down, make up as much as a 10th of the weight of some sediment samples.

.....

The Environmental Protection Agency said Friday it also found E. coli bacteria in the sediment -- the residue left from water, soil from backyards and road and construction debris -- as well as slightly elevated levels of arsenic and lead. It didn't report the levels of E. coli bacteria, and there's no health standard for how much E. coli can be in soil or sediment.

.....

Fuel oils such as kerosene, jet fuel, range oil and home heating oil irritate the skin and, if breathed, cause nausea, headaches, increased blood pressure, light-headedness, appetite loss, poor coordination and difficulty concentrating. Breathing diesel-fuel vapors for long periods can cause kidney damage and lower the blood's ability to clot.

.....

Scientists worry that as the sediment dries, the pollutants in it can evaporate and, as gases in the air, they could be inhaled by people. Some chemicals found in fuel oils can easily evaporate, while others more easily dissolve in water. The agencies plan to collect air samples.

Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at EPA who has been a longtime whistleblower within the agency, called it "reckless and irresponsible" for EPA to imply that people moving back into New Orleans will be safe.

Help us rebuild the liberry

It's important. I work there.

Finally

Every major disaster comes with its obligatory pop-culture pronouncement. Katrina is no exception.

Snark is dead.

Bush Last Night

What Bob Harris says.

Carpetbaggers

Swooping in to ruin my city.

In some ways, Hurricane Katrina seems to have taken a vibrant real estate market and made it hotter. Large sections of the city are underwater, but that's only increasing the demand for dry houses. And in flooded areas, speculators are trying to buy properties on the cheap, hoping that the redevelopment of New Orleans will start a boom.

This land rush has long-term implications in a city where many of the poorest residents were flooded out. It raises the question of what sort of housing — if any — will be available to those without a six-figure salary. If New Orleans ends up a high-priced enclave, without a mix of cultures, races and incomes, something vital may be lost.

I'm afraid there's nothing that can be done to stop this. Welcome to the new New Orleans. Toxic Disneyland for and by the yuppies.

What are we going back to?

I'm beginning to think the mayor's plan to start allowing residents back into Orleans Parish next week is a poorly thought out PR move. I'm just as anxious as anyone to go home, but I'd prefer not to feel obligated to return until at least some of this gets sorted out.

Hurricane Katrina is rapidly becoming the worst environmental calamity in U.S. history, with oil spills rivaling the Exxon Valdez, hundreds of toxic sites still uncontrolled, and waterborne poisons soaking 160,000 homes.

New Orleans' flooded neighborhoods are awash with dangerous levels of bacteria and lead, and with lower but still potentially harmful amounts of mercury, pesticides and other chemicals. Much will wind up in the soil as the water drains, or in Lake Pontchartrain, hammering its already battered ecosystem.

......

At the EPA's request, the Army Corps of Engineers put out floating barriers to try to stop some oil and gasoline before it enters the lake. But they won't stop the two most immediate threats in the water, high levels of bacteria and lead.

One site sampled Sept. 3, an Interstate 10 interchange north of the French Quarter, had lead 56 times higher than the amount that would be allowed in drinking water. Other samples taken days later across a much wider area were also high, but not near that mark.

......

Tests also show that toxic substances in the floodwater will enter the coastal food chain.

Several water samples had mercury, a powerful nerve poison, above the amount allowed in saltwater environments in order to protect the long-term health of people eating fish or shellfish.

......

The air, too, is a source of danger in New Orleans. An EPA airplane equipped with electronic sensors to spot air pollution detected a plume of chloroacetic acid, an industrial agent and defoliant that poses extreme toxic risks when inhaled.

......

Another concern, he said, is that long-lasting pollutants will remain in higher concentrations and higher toxicity when the water dries up. "The question will be how much will get into people by the three routes, respiratory, gastrointestinal and dermal or skin."

By opening the city, the Mayor is basically obligating renters to return to an unsafe environment or risk having their slumlords clear out and dispose of their belongings left behind during evacuation. Don't think they won't do it? You don't know New Orleans slumlords.

Garrison Keillor

What a douche.
Via Kos

Natural Disaster

Uh oh.

Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort, which reaches across many agencies of government and includes the direct involvement of Alphonso R. Jackson, secretary of housing and urban development.

Reopening

The Mayor is on TV saying that folks can come back to Algiers on Monday, zip code 70118 on Wednessday, and the French Quarter next Monday. Algiers, I understand. It is dry and the water is safe there. The East Bank neighborhoods are suspicious. 70118 includes Audobon Place and the French Quarter is... well... the French Quarter. Areas between these two points are just as dry. Plus the water is still not safe to drink or bathe in. Why are we letting people in? Something's fishy.

Grave Robber Barrons

Disgusting.

In other words, FEMA and then Blanco outsourced the body count from Hurricane Katrina -- which many believe the worst natural disaster in U.S. history -- to a firm whose parent company is known for its "experience" at hiding and dumping bodies.

Republicans holding up Katrina relief

Because it does too much for poor people.

Included in this second phase are proposals to provide Medicaid health benefits to those made homeless by Katrina, lift work rules for welfare recipients, and implement tax changes to help hurricane victims and charitable donors. More comprehensive bills are to follow.

Republicans are starting to voice complaints that Democrats are seeking to seize upon the tragedy to pass more ambitious legislation than they otherwise could expect to achieve in the GOP-dominated Congress.

God forbid we let anyone displaced by the hurricane get away wtih a month's worth of unemployment benefits before we make sure Manpower Inc. knows who they are. Meanwhile, nothing is done to stop the widespread looting being perpetrated by Bush cronies and rent-a-stormtrooper outfits at the other end.

Contractors are already lining up for Katrina money. Yesterday, the Army Corps of Engineers said that, on FEMA's behalf, it would award $1.5 billion in contracts for debris removal this week. Also yesterday, Blackwater USA, known for its work supporting military operations in Iraq, said it would provide 164 armed guards to help provide security at FEMA sites in Louisiana.

Last week FEMA gave out hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts to engineering and construction firms to build an estimated 300,000 temporary housing units. Those contracts were awarded without competition under rules that allow agencies to bypass normal procedures during an emergency. Several went to companies that have been major financial supporters of the Bush administration. One firm, Shaw Group Inc., of Baton Rouge, is on the client list of lobbyist and former FEMA director Joe M. Allbaugh, though he has said he does not get involved with contracts.

Always the same song.

Duct Tape Man

Nice.

If you're going home..

..be sure you have enough gas. It may take you some time to figure out how to get back in especially if you're coming from the east. Oh and I wouldn't drink the water just yet either.

Wait... I'm not finished my vacation yet!

Nagin may allow Uptown, French Quarter and Algiers residents back Monday
Tell you what, call me when the stormtroopers are gone.

Uh Oh

Have a heart, SI. Now is not the time to jinx Louisiana.

More metaposting

Today's must read: The Black Commentator

via Scaramouche

Ultra confusing meta meta post with quotes of other posts included and such for the purposes of posting a comment

Good to see that Yat Pundit is safe and posting again. But it looks like his comments are not functioning. I found this out while trying to respond to this post this morning. Here is the text of his post.

Please, press, both local and national, do your job following the saga of the reconstruction of New Orleans. There are going to be land grabs and corruption and bribery and efforts by the NO elite to keep the poor from returning.


Please, follow the story. You'll be the only watchdog for this.

[via Eschaton]


Atrios needs to focus on national and/or Philly politics, because that way he's not talking out of his ass. The Mayor and a majority of the City Council are black, and we're a tourism/service economy. The minimum wage jobs will always be with us, so long as we have as many hotels, restaurants, etc. That means not only will we always have poor folks in New Orleans, but the "NO elite" will encourage their return.

So, YP, if you're reading, here is what I wanted to say.

That's not what this story would appear to suggest. Or... it suggests that if the "city fathers" have their way, a minimum wage labor pool will return but not necessarily made up of the same folks who left and they will likely return to suburban ghettos instead of their traditional neighborhoods.

I had a bit more on this on Friday.

Opiate for the Jeffreys

This is going to be a sight for sore eyes.
Geaux Tigers!

And big thanks to the evil Disney corporation as well as WWL. Now that it is demonstrably possible, why can't the NFL pick up on this idea?

Update: Got a little excited.. game is not being webcast. But it is on TV so, you know, yay.

Ain't Dere No More

Yo Mamma's house in da parrish
Right down the road from the daiquiri store.

Dat's the one...


Don't get it? Just ask Benny Grunch.

Welcome to Africa

This is insulting. And please don't tell me the NYT doesn't choose its front page image without considerable deliberation.

More Ways to Help

Socially Responsible Hurricane Katrina Relief from Radical Reference.

How Many Dead or Alive?

Good news this morning. Not as many bodies as feared.

* (sorry, oyster.. sorry everybody)

New Orleans: The Greatest City in Sports

Nice of ESPN to do this. Now.. if we could only get someone to assure us we're keeping our football team.

Ribbons

Got'em.. and of course, the beer to go with.

Nice catch, Murph.

Class Warfare

Gator Boots, with the pimped out Gucci suit
Ain't got no job, but I stay sharp
Can't pay my rent, cause all my money's spent
but thats ok, cause im still fly
got a quarter tank gas in my new E-class
But that's alright cause i'm gon' ride
got everything in my moma's name
but im hood rich da dada dada da
Big Tymers

I wonder if the national guard plans to knock down James Reiss's door and force him to evacuate any time soon.

A few blocks from Mr. O'Dwyer, in an exclusive gated community known as Audubon Place, is the home of James Reiss, descendent of an old-line Uptown family. He fled Hurricane Katrina just before the storm and returned soon afterward by private helicopter. Mr. Reiss became wealthy as a supplier of electronic systems to shipbuilders, and he serves in Mayor Nagin's administration as chairman of the city's Regional Transit Authority. When New Orleans descended into a spiral of looting and anarchy, Mr. Reiss helicoptered in an Israeli security company to guard his Audubon Place house and those of his neighbors.

He says he has been in contact with about 40 other New Orleans business leaders since the storm. Tomorrow, he says, he and some of those leaders plan to be in Dallas, meeting with Mr. Nagin to begin mapping out a future for the city.

The power elite of New Orleans -- whether they are still in the city or have moved temporarily to enclaves such as Destin, Fla., and Vail, Colo. -- insist the remade city won't simply restore the old order. New Orleans before the flood was burdened by a teeming underclass, substandard schools and a high crime rate. The city has few corporate headquarters.

The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically," he says. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out."

"Burdened by a teeming underclass." Anyone else get the feeling that Mr. Reiss's ideas about building a city with "fewer poor people" has less to do with lifting people out of poverty than simply not allowing the "teeming underclass" to return to their homes?

I'm always amazed at how quickly a self-described laissez-faire capitalist will shamelessly turn to the most horrific kind of ideology-driven social engineering when given the opportunity. Here's the intolerable David Brooks (who we already know has no hope of understanding us) making a total ass of himself yesterday.

It (Katrina)has created as close to a blank slate as we get in human affairs, and given us a chance to rebuild a city that wasn't working. We need to be realistic about how much we can actually change human behavior, but it would be a double tragedy if we didn't take advantage of these unique circumstances to do something that could serve as a spur to antipoverty programs nationwide.

The first rule of the rebuilding effort should be: Nothing Like Before. Most of the ambitious and organized people abandoned the inner-city areas of New Orleans long ago, leaving neighborhoods where roughly three-quarters of the people were poor.

In those cultural zones, many people dropped out of high school, so it seemed normal to drop out of high school. Many teenage girls had babies, so it seemed normal to become a teenage mother. It was hard for men to get stable jobs, so it was not abnormal for them to commit crimes and hop from one relationship to another. Many people lacked marketable social skills, so it was hard for young people to learn these skills from parents, neighbors and peers.

If we just put up new buildings and allow the same people to move back into their old neighborhoods, then urban New Orleans will become just as rundown and dysfunctional as before.

That's why the second rule of rebuilding should be: Culturally Integrate. Culturally Integrate. Culturally Integrate. The only chance we have to break the cycle of poverty is to integrate people who lack middle-class skills into neighborhoods with people who possess these skills and who insist on certain standards of behavior.

Now I could spend a little time correcting Brooks's assumptions about New Orleans's lack of "cultural integration". I'm not saying that we've ever been a utopia of socio-economic or racial harmony, but anyone who lives in New Orleans knows that we share our neighborhoods and city services (such as they are) a great deal better than most (ahem Northern) US cities. It's part of what makes life there... well, better.

But that aside, what's really under attack here is the most important aspect of life in New Orleans. The one that the plutocrats like Reiss and the yuppies like Brooks despise the most. We know how to be happy despite being poor. Reiss and Brooks don't think poor people should be happy. They want them ashamed.. joyless..subservient. New Orleans is a problem to them not because it knows so much poverty but because it knows so little shame so little deference to authority so much joy. We can't let them take this away from us.

It is for this reason that those of us who know how to be New Orleans be allowed a right of return. That is, we need to be allowed back into our home before the Reisses and the Brookses ruin it forever.

Update: Billmon handles it better than I do.

Forced Evacuation

MSNBC is reporting that Brown is out.

Great job, Brownie.

Team Assmunch

Here's your roster.

New Flood Map

This was posted over on the Metblog. Tools like this will continue to draw interest until they start letting people back into the city.

Where, of course, we will rebuild.

Saints

From ESPN's David Fleming.

I just hope before owner Tom Benson or the suits at the NFL office in New York make a decision about the future of the Saints, they come to an evacuee shelter like KellyUSA and see for themselves just how much this team now means to the people of the Gulf Coast. Because it's truly one of those things you have to witness to believe. And maybe with this one team, and for this one season, the NFL could pause for a moment on its way to world sports/marketing domination and gazillion-dollar profits to serve the kinds of fans who were, long, long ago, priced out of the league's economic picture.

Among the Hillbillies Part 3

Nashville Public Library's internet filter restricts access to the New Orleans Metblog.

Onion: Katrina Issue

So funny, so sad.