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Hurricane housing, a way to help!

Posted By: Observer on 2005-09-02
In Reply to:

Just got this email from my brother:

We are forwarding this information about hurricanehousing.org - it was assembled by the progessive people of moveon.org and has been publicized by local mainstream media. While we are unspeakably upset by the lack of timely federal emergency aid, we are gratified by grassroots caring and hope that this disaster will serve as a moral reawakening beyond its terrible pain and loss. Please consider the following....

We're sure you've seen the horrifying images on TV of destruction left by Hurricane Katrina, and the many, many people left with nowhere to go.

You can help. MoveOn.org just launched a website, www.hurricanehousing.org, to connect your empty beds with hurricane victims who desperately need a place to wait out the storm.

You can post your offer of housing (a spare room, extra bed, even a decent couch) on http://www.hurricanehousing.org or search there for housing if you need it.

MoveOn will pass requests from hurricane victims or relief agencies on to volunteer hosts, who can decide whether or not to respond to a particular request. The host remains anonymous until they reply to someone looking for housing.

The ______(this was my brother's name) just posted an offer. We hope you will too, or pass this on to people you know in the Southeast:

http://www.hurricanehousing.org

Housing is most urgently needed within reasonable driving distance (about 300 miles) of the affected areas, especially New Orleans.

Thanks!

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Housing people

People all over this nation are opening up their hearts and homes to try to help these people.

I wonder how many people could be housed in a certain ranch in Crawford.

But what has that to do with affordable housing?
/

The truth about the housing crisis...
I will warn you this is long, but if your interested in the truth this is a good place to start.

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
By Orson Scott Card

Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist,
and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current
state of journalism.

An open letter to the local daily paper - almost every local daily paper
in America :

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's
journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before
the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague
emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late
1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more
accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized
to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to
be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor - which especially
would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these
people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a
house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house -
along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it.
One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried
repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such
attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political
contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to
make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were
allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to
contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support
increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who
produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a
position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700
billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which
politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage
lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party
or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a
vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank,
both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused
Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these
agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost
up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts
Matter?" ( ]" target=_blank>http://snipurl.com/457townhall_com<http://snipurl.com/457to>]
): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of
the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's
Secretary of the Treasury."

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The
party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic
Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican
deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to
account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took
offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who
is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million
while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one
presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on
housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have
called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper
every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried
this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an
"adviser" to the Obama campaign - because that campaign had sought his
advice - you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain
of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to
the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles,
you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all
Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically
selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including
Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you
would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow
Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration
never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not
stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension - so you pounded
us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you
created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that
there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American
people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they
tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama
because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as
hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim
you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your
paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie
- that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and
the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame
everything bad - even bad weather - on Bush, and they are responding as
you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and Editor would be
insisting on telling the truth - even if it hurts the election chances
of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth
even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what
honesty means . That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He
has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time - and you have
swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin,
reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried
daughter - while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery
for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know
what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will
throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women
threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his
well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who
listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no
principles.

That's where you are right now.

It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and
the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven
and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list
of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been
getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with
its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its
lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories
will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which
put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about
helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a
Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the
truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once
to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton
administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and
blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe -
and vote as if - President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis,
then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats - including Barack
Obama - and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants
were Republicans - then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and
it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we
can actually have a news paper in our city.

This article first appeared in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro ,
North Carolina , and is used here by permission.

Hey there! I like it, but what about clothing, housing, medicines......sm
baby products (I nursed all three completely so THAT was cheap, but not an option for everyone), I don't think the MREs were meant to nourish little children, so I would worry about that. You still need utilities of some kind, because we all can't go out and cut down trees, so there is a lot to think about. I think if they INVESTED in hiring more social workers who were monitored to really do their jobs and fish out all the bogus welfare claims, get those people jobs or job training and paying back into the system, that would be wiser, because let's face it, there are some families that spend their welfare money on wasteful or indulgent stuff, but with this economic depression the Welfare is going to go more and more to unemployed families who were "let go," and I do worry about the nutrition and health of the little ones.

And did you know there are waiting lists for subsidized housing? Why do you think there are....sm
so many newly-poor families on the streets? Getting on the rolls these days, cutting through the red tape, can be a daunting and long task, but what about the families in the meantime? The shelters are overflowing. In my state, the food banks actually have to close now from time to time because times are hard, less people are able to donate, more people need the help, and there is just not enough to go around.

I just want DESERVING FOLK to get their needs met while they get back on their feet, and the kids do not have to live a nightmare. Yes, I, too, have seen some welfare folk buying inappropriate things, but perhaps if we had a voucher system that monitored purchases, if they only got reimbursed on the back end after submitting their receipts to make sure they were buying needed, healthy, appropriate goods....I don't have the answer, or I would be applying at the White House, but we need social safety nets so badly right now.

They did not cause the housing crisis. They did, however, fail acknowledge the problem
and they most certainly failed to tackle the problem in a timely and effective way.

One of the major factors in the housing crisis was the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the implementation of Graham-Bliley Act. The lack of oversight, the deregulation that allowed lenders to lend without being subject to oversight rules because the type of financial institution they were doomed us.

The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents. "Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories," California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job.

I am not a fan of Frank, Dodd, or Pelosi. I am not a fan of TARP, especially because there was/is no built-in oversight or accountability. Shoot, the some of the same predatory lenders that were put out of business by their own practices are up and running again, passing out toxic loans to desperate people, because they managed to get their hands on bailout money.

Obama Administration Launches Housing Plan

Hope this helps those of you that need help.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123617623602129441.html

Housing market on upswing - good news!

Part of an interesting article on housing market upswing - inflation slowing down. Good news if it stays the course!

www.truthout.org/031709C

Tuesday 17 March 2009

by: Lucia Mutikani | Visit article original @ Reuters

US housing starts rose sharply in February, providing some good news for the struggling housing industry. (Photo: AP)

Washington - New U.S. housing starts and permits unexpectedly rebounded in February, according to data on Tuesday that provided a rare dose of good news for the recession-hit economy and fractured housing market.

The Commerce Department said housing starts jumped 22.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 583,000 units from 477,000 units in January. That was the biggest percentage rise since January 1990 and also marked the first increase since last April.

"That is an encouraging sign for the U.S. economy. It is good signal of what is to come. With the rally in equities we hopefully have seen a bottom for the economy here," said Matt Esteve, foreign exchange trader at Tempus Consulting in Washington.

U.S. stocks have been on the rise over the last several days and the major indexes opened flat on Tuesday. U.S. government bond prices trimmed gains after the data and the U.S. dollar fell against the euro as risk aversion eased.

Hate to dampen the spirits but housing upswings
always take place in the beginning of spring. They usually don't do house construction in the winter unless it's a year round warm climate. You have to look at charts and/or info for housing starts in those states to see if it's true or just wishful thinking...and as you said, they will still sit empty.

And that hurricane is GWB
Kind of funny the economy took a huge nose dive while on Bush's watch but the reichwing want to blame Obama who isn't even in office yet.......it isn't even logical......predictions based on what? The Republicans trashed our constitution, wiped their arses with the bill of rights, put us in another Vietnam based on lies so Halliburton and Blackwater could get rich and then rewarded all their buddies with high profile jobs and record profits and said screw the middle class. WAKE UP! What a joke.

Hurricane Betsy
This morning I saw some 40-year-old video, some network news, some home movies, of Lyndon Johnson on September 10, 1965. Hurricane Betsy went through New Orleans on September 9, at 155 mph. 18 hours later Johnson was standing on a box with a flashlight yelling out, this is your president speaking, I am here to help you. He and the mayor and other people were riding around in amphibious vehicles. The Secret Service was really PO'd because they felt the couldn't protect the president like they were supposed to but he went about his business anyway. Granted, the levees did not break and things on the ground were different than Katrina but the point is, 40 years ago, the president of the united states knew there was a hurricane on the way and he responded to that hurricane18 hours after it had passed - IN PERSON!!!

Geez. Now you are using the hurricane...
the evening shift has arrived. Good evening! did you even look at the video of your dem buddy yucking it up? You don't have any moral high ground here.

First because of a hurricane. Now because of Wall St.
an earthquake in California. Or maybe because his favorite show is on TV that night.

I want somebody with some actual ballz in the white house, not an aged wimp.

Hurricane Katrina: A sign from God.
God is telling us that Bush is an idiot who destroys everything in (and out of) his path, and it's time for Americans to wake up.

Being from hurricane country, our leaders do not
nm

Hurricane watch is unnerving. Sorry about
For more substantial posts to keep the real issues alive. You will not have to deal with me much longer. I'll be distracting myself from the Cat4/5 storm that looms off the coase by doing some research and puttin' it out there. Enjoy the calm before the next round of storms!

What Bush Needs to Understand After Hurricane Rita

I just saw a video of Bush, the former GOVERNOR OF TEXAS, who said the following with regard to Hurricane Rita:

What I am going to do is observe the relationship between the state and local government, and I want to watch that relationship. It's an important relationship, and I need to understand how it works better.

Wonder what he was watching before/when he was governor of that very same state! Better yet, I seriously wonder what he's been watching for the past 5 years!

As a citizen/poster from hurricane country
nm

So will you still feel that way the next time a hurricane wipes
that might not be such a BAD thing....

Millions could get to DC for the inauguration, but couldn't get out of NO before the hurricane...
nm

Bedtime story from Hurricane country entitled

"Ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves � protect us from harm�" ". We are more compassionate than a government that�sits on its hands while a major American city drowns before our eyes." Barack Obama, nomination acceptance speech, 08/28/2008.

This is written in response to the post below that express the "bootstrap mentality" approach to Katrina and Bush/federal government response. Bush never seems to be held accountable for any of his actions or lack thereof. What I do know is that we deserve better from our so-called leaders. I want someone in charge of the country who knows that what I am about to describe is unacceptable. I am writing this because, at the very least, we should not allow our memories to fade away too quickly about the most shameful episode of leadership/federal agency failure and breakdown I have ever witnessed in my lifetime.

As for the poster who said that "if you don't live here, you don't know what you are talking about": Thing is that I do live in hurricane country on the Gulf Coast where to this day, 3 years later, we still welcome, house, employ, include, encourage and support Hurricane Katrina survivors/refugees. Hurricane Gustav is poised to make a visit here on the opening night of the RNC and will be slamming ashore and doing its thing during the opening speech by you-know-who. My memory of the last time we went through this is very clear. Where it seemed fuzzy, research filled in the blanks. I'm going to jump right in here.

When Hurricane Katrina made landfall, President Bush was on one of his marathon vacations. The August 2005 vacation, in fact, was the longest vacation of any US President (5 weeks). By the time Katrina showed up, he already had been at the ranch for 3 weeks, so he was pretty well rested up. On August 26^th, Katrina strengthened to a Category 3 Hurricane and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco declared state of emergency. Blanco asked President Bush to declare federal state of emergency for Louisiana. Next day, Bush interrupted his bike ride with Astronaut Lance Armstrong and declared a state of emergency in selected regions of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi on Saturday, the 27^th. The declaration did not include any of Louisiana's coastal parishes, an oversight that would later be addressed in Congressional hearings. Same day, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin orders a voluntary evacuation of all residents from the city of New Orleans.

Go here to see a map of parishes not included in the declaration. http://www.bobharris.com/content/view/637/1/. This map is an eye-opener. Mr. Harris calls it upsidedownland. Hello. Inland parishes included, coastal parishes excluded. Bushes parents live in the hurricane-prone city of Houston. He probably should have know better.

August 28^th, within 9 short hours, Katrina doubled in size and strengthened from a category 3 to a 5. Nagin's evacuation became mandatory. During video conferences involving the president on August 28^th and 29^th, the NHC director informed Bush that Katrina might push its storm surge over the city's levees and flood walls, using such language "potential for nightmare scenarios," and that this has been known for at least the three decades he has worked at the NHC. Previous warnings, such as the one made by the Houston Chronicle in 2001, told of a disaster that "would strand 250,000 people or more, and probably kill one of 10 left behind as the city drowned under 20 feet of water" following a severe hurricane making landfall on NO. Other publications, such as Popular Mechanics, Scientific American, and The Times-Picayunehad given similar doomsday scenarios in which a sinking city would drown and its residents would be left homeless.

On  August 28^th, the National Weather Sevice out of Baton Rogue and NO issued the following bulletin. This text is included in its entirety because the warning Bush decided to ignore just don't get any more clear than this.  Before reading this, keep in mind that in response, Bush alerted FEMA Director Michael Brown, aka "Brownie," and stayed put, on vacation, since he had "done his part." No shouts in tended.  This is the way cut and paste works.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Weather_Service_bulletin_for_New_Orleans_region

...DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED...

HURRICANE KATRINA...A MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED

STRENGTH...RIVALING THE INTENSITY OF HURRICANE CAMILLE OF 1969.

MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER. AT

LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL

FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY

DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.

THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL.

PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD

FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE

BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING SOME

WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.

HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...A

FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT.

AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD...AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH

AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY

VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE

ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS...PETS...AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE

WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.

POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN

AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.

THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY

THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING...BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED. FEW

CROPS WILL REMAIN. LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL BE

KILLED.

On August 29^th, John McCain's 69^th birthday, Katrina hits New Orleans as a category 4, levies break, Bush continues his itinerary. He jets on off to Luke Air Force Base near Phoenix to join McCain and wish him happy birthday (kinda makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside). Picture available on the website cited below. Afterward, Bush spoke about Medicare to 400 guests at the Pueblo El Mirage RV Resort and Country Club in nearby El Mirage. Not to worry. Brownie's doin' a heck of a job. August 29^th: FEMA press release: 'First Responders Urged Not To Respond To Hurricane Impact Areas Unless Dispatched By State, Local Authorities.'

Five hours after the hurricane hit, FEMA chief Michael Brown asks Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff for approval to send 1,000 Homeland Security workers within 48 hours to the Gulf Coast to provide assistance. Bush fires up the jet and heads out to Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. for talk on prescription drugs for seniors. Back in NO, the 17th Street Canal levee breaks. The Red Cross, while providing relief and support across the Gulf Coast, did not enter New Orleans to provide relief at the Superdome, or any other victim shelter in the city.

August 30^th. The Coast Guard reports that it has rescued some 1,200 people from rooftops around the area. Of course, it's all over the TV. The number of evacuees in the Superdome swells to 20,000, as people rescued or left homeless throughout the city are brought to the stadium. Gov. Blanco says the Superdome will have to be evacuated. Bush appears in Coronado, Calif. for a V-J Day commemoration. Go to the website cited below for photo corresponding to the following caption: President Bush plays a guitar presented to him by Country Singer Mark Wills, right, backstage following his visit�" The photo is very telling. For those of you who don't go ballistic when they read democratic commentary, you will find some fascinating information next to the photo.

August 31^st. Evacuation of the Superdome begins. Bush cuts vacation short by 2 days and returns to Washington after a brief fly-by over New Orleans where he observed the scene from above.

September 1^st: Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff claims "we have a tremendous array of forces that are currently deployed in New Orleans," as cable TV networks show live images of looting, Superdome residents awaiting evacuation and people stranded without food and water throughout the city. Bush tells "Good Morning America" that "I don�t think anyone anticipated a breach of the levees." That day, Newsweek reported, "The reality, say several aides who did not wish to be quoted because it might displease the president, did not really sink in until Thursday night. Some White House staffers were watching the evening news and thought the president needed to see the horrific reports coming out of New Orleans. Counselor Bartlett made up a DVD of the newscasts so Bush could see them in their entirety as he flew down to the Gulf Coast the next morning on Air Force One. "

September 2^nd: President Bush takes aerial tour of New Orleans. Relief copters grounded in New Orleans during Bush visit.

September 3^rd: Construction equipment removed from broken levee after Bush visit. Louisiana Senator Landrieu Implores President to "relieve unmitigated suffering" and end FEMA's "abject failures"

September 4^th: More than 4,600 active duty military personnel join almost 27,000 National Guard troops in Louisiana for disaster relief. Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard lambastes FEMA's response on NBC's "Meet the Press"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina

In a September 26, 2005 hearing, former FEMA chief Michael Brown testified before a U.S. House subcommittee about FEMA's response. He was questioned about why Bush's declaration of state of emergency of August 27 had not included the coastal parishes of Orleans, Jefferson, and Plaquemines (in fact, the declaration did not include any of Louisiana's coastal parishes, whereas the coastal counties were included in the declarations for Mississippi and Alabama). Brown testified that this was because Louisiana Governor Blanco had not included those parishes in her initial request for aid (can you say pass-the-buck/fib?), a decision that he found "shocking." After the hearing, though, Blanco released a copy of her letter, which requested assistance for "all the southeastern parishes including the New Orleans Metropolitan area and the mid state Interstate I-49 corridor and northern parishes along the I-20 corridor.

A couple of cliches thrown in for good measure: A picture's worth 1000 words. Actions speak louder than words.

Go here for a Katrina Timeline. August 25 to September 5. The links embedded in this timeline make for a good read as well.

http://www.ojr.org/ojr/wiki/Katrina_Timeline/

Go here for a corresponding timeline of Bush's vacation and a few photos. http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/010936.php

I understand that, if the people on the ground in hurricane country werwe not immediately alarmed...
why on earth would someone expect George Bush to be? He was relying on the local and state authorities to do their jobs. Kathleen Blanco knows that she messed up...which is why she is no longer in LA politics. All I am saying that everyone should share the blame...not one man.

FEMA needs a major overhaul...Doctor says FEMA ordered him to stop treating hurricane victims.
Doctor says FEMA ordered him to stop treating hurricane victims

By LAURIE SMITH ANDERSON

landerson@theadvocate.com

Advocate staff writer

In the midst of administering chest compressions to a dying woman several days after Hurricane Katrina struck, Dr. Mark N. Perlmutter was ordered to stop by a federal official because he wasn't registered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

I begged him to let me continue, said Perlmutter, who left his home and practice as an orthopedic surgeon in Pennsylvania to come to Louisiana and volunteer to care for hurricane victims. People were dying, and I was the only doctor on the tarmac (at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport) where scores of nonresponsive patients lay on stretchers. Two patients died in front of me.

I showed him (the U.S. Coast Guard official in charge) my medical credentials. I had tried to get through to FEMA for 12 hours the day before and finally gave up. I asked him to let me stay until I was replaced by another doctor, but he refused. He said he was afraid of being sued. I informed him about the Good Samaritan laws and asked him if he was willing to let people die so the government wouldn't be sued, but he would not back down. I had to leave.

FEMA issued a formal response to Perlmutter's story, acknowledging that the agency does not use voluntary physicians.

We have a cadre of physicians of our own, FEMA spokesman Kim Pease said Thursday. They are the National Disaster Medical Team. ... The voluntary doctor was not a credentialed FEMA physician and, thus, was subject to law enforcement rules in a disaster area.