Posted 4/30/2007 05:59:00 PM by Douglas

Corruption in New Orleans' FEMA contracts? No! Rule numero uno. If you're writing the bid with the company's data because you've already 'selected' them for the contract, at least correct the typos from their technical specs.

When the Army Corps of Engineers solicited bids for drainage pumps for New Orleans, it copied the specifications — typos and all — from the catalog of the manufacturer that ultimately won the $32 million contract, a review of documents by The Associated Press found.

The pumps, supplied by Moving Water Industries Corp. of Deerfield Beach, Fla., and installed at canals before the start of the 2006 hurricane season, proved to be defective, as the AP reported in March. The matter is under investigation by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

In a letter dated April 13, Sen. David Vitter, R-La., called on the Corps to look into how the politically connected company got the post-Hurricane Katrina contract. MWI employed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, President Bush's brother, to market its pumps during the 1980s, and top MWI officials have been major contributors to the Republican Party.

That sounds bad. I'm sure they are top quality pumps, though.

Labels: New Orleans

Posted 2/08/2007 05:44:00 PM by Douglas

No one is going to celebrate the destruction of any American City, and I'm not alone in thinking what happened to New Orleans was horrible. But you can't make water flow uphill forever, and apparently most residents are waking up to discover just how far below sea level they really are.

New Orleans is a city on a knife's edge. A year and a half after Hurricane Katrina, an alarming number of residents are leaving or seriously thinking of getting out for good.

They have become fed up with the violence, the bureaucracy, the political finger-pointing, the sluggish rebuilding and the doubts about the safety of the levees.

"The mayor says, `Come back home. Every area should come back.' For what?" said Genevieve Bellow, who rebuilt her home in heavily damaged eastern New Orleans but has been unable to get anything done about the trash and abandoned apartment buildings in her neighborhood and may leave town. "I have no confidence in anything or anybody."

Nor should you. Levees protect a lot of people from a lot of water all over the world, but NOLA is different. It's below sea level and surrounded on all sides by water. If a pile of Army Corps of Engineer dirt is the only thing keeping water out of your house, well, Katrina showed what happens when it doesn't. Why stick around and build your new life on hope? Hope on a government that has already failed a losing battle? I know, what if they threw a huge amount of money at the problem? That would help, right?

Blanco's Road Home program, born 10 months after the storm, has been vilified by politicians and civic leaders as too slow to distribute $7.5 billion in federal aid to buy out homeowners or help them rebuild. As of Feb. 5, Road Home had taken 105,739 applications and resolved only 532 cases, granting $33.8 million. At the current rate, Road Home would take more than 13 years to complete.

They can't even give money that's already allocated to residents to rebuild, and they expect those same people to calm down and trust the levees?

Katrina was a symptom, not the cause, of NOLA's problems. All the government money in the world is not going to sway rational people to put themselves, their families or business back into a sinking ship. Literally.

Sadly, sometimes nature destroys entire cities, like Pompeii, Kalapana, Indianola. Sometimes it makes sense to rebuild and sometimes it doesn't. Take the hint, New Orleans.

Labels: New Orleans

Posted 4/02/2006 09:18:00 PM by Douglas

I kinda thought it was odd to see this on the south side of Houston:

Oh right, Houston has more New Orleanians than New Orleans does.

Labels: New Orleans

Posted 2/22/2006 05:28:00 PM by Douglas

Wow, what an amazingly realistic, if totally un-PC article regarding the hurricane refugees still stuck in Houston.

New Orleans doesn't want its poorest residents back — unless they agree to work.

That was the message from three New Orleans City Council members who said government programs have "pampered" the city's residents for too long.

The news that some New Orleans City Council members weren't keen on the city's poorest returning home added another layer of discomfort in Houston, where local residents and elected officials alike have stretched to meet the needs of thousands of Louisiana residents in the months after Hurricane Katrina.

Chief among the complaints: Houston didn't discriminate when New Orleanians — from the poorest to the richest — filled this city's homes, hotels, motels and shelters. And Houston didn't flinch when nearly 100,000 evacuees needed subsidized housing for up to a year. So why, asked one Houston city councilman, are only the educated, healthy and employable welcome back in New Orleans?

Man, what balls. Like the man says, Houston didn't get to pick what people showed up at the dome last September. So Katrina flushes the pot in New Orleans and we're stuck with all the turds?

"We don't need soap opera watchers right now," said New Orleans City Council President Oliver Thomas, during a housing committee meeting. "We're going to target the people who are going to work. It's not that I'm fed up, but that at some point there has to be a whole new level of motivation, and people have got to stop blaming the government for something they ought to do."

Something tells me this is not an effective way to motivate people to get off their ass and get to work.

Labels: New Orleans