Katrina's POLITICAL aftermath (keep the political discussions HERE)

Disaster prep is your responsibility
And mitigation is important to our agency.

People helping people is what we do
And FEMA is there to help see you through
When disaster strikes, we are at our best
But we're ready all the time, 'cause disasters don't rest.

word -- there be some REAL right-wing crazies in pennsyltuckey (esp. out towards allentown and york/hanover/gettysburg). on the other hand, if my relatives are right man-on-dog has worn out his welcome in the philly metro area and he should capture precisely ZERO counties down there (including places like bucks, delaware, and montgomery counties).

Halliburton Gets Contract To Pry Gold Fillings From New Orleans Corpses' Teeth
September 14, 2005 | Issue 41•37

HOUSTON—On Tuesday, Halliburton received a $110 million no-bid government contract to pry the gold fillings from the mouths of deceased disaster victims in the New Orleans-Gulf Coast area. "We are proud to serve the government in this time of crisis by recovering valuable resources from the wreckage of this deadly storm," said David J. Lesar, Halliburton's president. "The gold we recover from the human rubble of Katrina can be used to make fighter-jet electronics, supercomputer chips, inflation-proof A-grade investments, and luxury yachting watches."

that would result in New Answers from the last 7 days, of which this is one:

It's September 2005 in Iraq

yeah, this'll help.

Be sure to check near the end, too, for the Republican complaints bit...

Looks like we'll need an organized group of survivors again...

joe loserman will bring the exact same zeal to this panel that he did wr2 the enron panel. which means, the fix is on.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/krwashbureau/20050914/ts_krwashbureau/_wea_katrina_response_exclusive

Meanwhile, New Orleans is apparently just another stage set for the ongoing action-packed adventures of George Bush, Bold LeaderMan.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050502/klein

...CNN’s parent company, Time Warner, announced the hiring of DeLay’s chief of staff as a top Washington lobbyist. This news, and its timing, prompted Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy to tell the L.A. Weekly: “Time Warner aligning itself with the right-wing DeLay machine should send shudders [down] CNN and HBO. Clearly, TW wants DeLay insurance so it won’t have to face cable-ownership safeguards, à la carte rules and broadband non-discrimination policies.”

-new orleans is being re-evacuated due to the oncoming tropical storm/hurricane thing.

-george lakoff's Huffington Post on the political aftermath, with a little bit of John Roberts coverage for fun.

Use the common wealth for the common good to better all our lives.

also, you all know about Turd Blossom going off to North Dakota instead of actually doing the whole "cooridate the hurricane relief effort" thing for which he got appointed, right?

sidebar | posted September 23, 2005 (web only)
GOP Opportunity Zone
Naomi Klein


This is a list of "Pro-Free-Market Ideas for Responding to Hurricane Katrina and High Gas Prices," circulated by the House Republican Study Committee. Attributions included where available.

Automatically suspend Davis-Bacon prevailing wage laws in disaster areas. (Reps. Marilyn Musgrave, Colorado, Tom Feeney, Florida, Jeff Flake, Arizona)
Make the entire affected area a flat-tax free-enterprise zone. (Rep. Paul Ryan, Wisconsin)
Make the entire region an economic competitiveness zone (comprehensive tax incentives and waiving of regulations). (Rep. Todd Tiahrt, Kansas)
Immediate, first-year business expensing in lieu of depreciation for all assets, both personal property and structures (buildings) in the affected areas.
Allow net operating loss carry-backs for affected residents and businesses going back as many years as is needed to actualize the NOL.
For residents and businesses located or investing in the affected area, their 2005 and 2006 capital gains and dividends rate should be zero.
Individuals in the affected area should have a Section 911 (overseas earned income) exclusion that is uncapped.
Waive the death tax for any deaths in the affected area between August 20, 2005-December 31, 2005.
Provide limited liability protection for construction contractors who voluntarily provide services or equipment before a government contract is finalized. (Rep. Gary Miller, California, Rep. Tom Cole, Oklahoma)
Repeal or waive restrictive environmental regulations, such as NEPA, that hamper rebuilding. (Heritage Foundation)
Waive penalties for early withdrawals from tax-advantaged savings (like IRAs and 401k accounts). (Heritage Foundation)
Eliminate any regulatory barriers and other disincentives that block faith-based and other charitable organizations from engaging in the recovery and reconstruction process. (Orthodox Union, Heritage Foundation)
Increase the amount of rehabilitation tax credits by 30 percent in census tracts where the greatest poverty exists, and for smaller projects where raising capital for reconstruction is the most difficult, and where there is the most critical need for housing and neighborhood reinvestment. (Rep. Phil English, Pennsylvania)
Allow non-itemizers to deduct chartable contributions to disaster relief. (Rep. Ron Paul, Texas)
Give school-choice vouchers for displaced children. (Rep. Ted Poe, Texas)
Provide tax (and other such) incentives to lenders if they provide funding for school and other construction.
Reduce, suspend, or eliminate tariffs on Canadian lumber, Mexican cement, and other materials used for new construction.
Permit an additional advance refunding for all governmental bonds issued by or on the behalf of entities contained in the disaster area as declared by the president.
Eliminate the volume cap for private-activity bonds in the disaster area and permit the use of private-activity bonds for all transportation-related infrastructure in the disaster area.
Eliminate the income and home price limitation for mortgages funded by tax-exempt mortgage revenue bonds for a five-year period.
Allow a non-profit corporation to issue tax-credit bonds--which provide a return in the form of a federal tax credit--and allocate the proceeds for school rehabilitation and reconstruction.
Streamline the environmental hurdles to building new oil refineries. (Rep. John Shadegg, Arizona)
Make it easier for small refineries to increase capacity. (Kansas's Tiahrt)
Allow more offshore oil drilling. (Texas's Poe)
Pay the royalties for new offshore oil drilling to the local governments nearest to shore. (Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, California)
Allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Temporarily suspend the gas tax. (Arizona's John Shadegg)
Permanently reduce the gas tax.
Waive or repeal gas formulation (e.g. oxygenation) requirements under the Clean Air Act and related regulations. (Heritage Foundation)
Encourage the production of renewable fuels (biodiesel, ethanol.)
Encourage private-market projects to recover usable energy from oil shale.
Strengthen the existing investment tax credit for Enhanced Oil Recovery (using modern technology improvements to extract oil from previously unavailable sources) in section 43 of the IRS Code.

Source: House Republican Study Committee

and some of them won't really help at all, aside from just attacking environmental laws

The blogger advocates violence towards the shop owner but creates a sympathetic killer to justify it. We must not assume a gang comes in and does the killing, in turn keeping both the potential starving baby or the man from getting water (or frankly anyone). We must write the killing scene with a shameless appeal to emotion. I am personally just SHOCKED that someone from the left resorts to outright violence and murder and uses the voice of the downtrodden to justify it. This guy was just a n00b though because if he really wanted to make the murder seem justified he would've made her a black mother who had just watched her other child die at the hands of a bigoted redneck (Dubya?) earlier in the day. Poor Stossel obviously didn't think of the left's penchant for revolutionary violence when forming his argument. PWNED Stossel, PWNED.

Stossel is also strawmanning. Everyone recognizes that prices have to go up in connection with supply and demand, we just don't want gas companies taking advantage of the public's fear and misinformation.

LOL

Did you even read the article? Having third parties create artificial prices only leads to the costs being shown in other areas. In this case it is the government putting roofs on prices, which hurts supply. The late-1970's oil crisis had the government controlling gas prices and that meant long lines at gas stations (which ironically meant wasting gas in idling cars) and many gas stations running out of gas. President Carter said it would be inevitable that gas would reach $2 a gallon soon and that the American people would need to make proper adjustments and submit to more government power in order to maybe get out of the bad situation (where does that sound familiar?). (At this point gas was around $1.50). When Reagan was elected he notoriously made an executive order stopping any and all government price control and gas was down to $0.86 in months. By 1986 we had cut the price of a barrel in half and by 1993 gasoline was at an all-time low in American history.

Why don't you take a look at President Carter's energy policy yourself?

http://www.mnforsustain.org/energy_speech_president_carter.htm

"Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem unprecedented in our history. With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes. The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly.

It is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century."

LOL

"Listen, sir, somebody wants to nitpick a man's tragic loss of a mother because she was abandoned in a nursing home? Are you kidding? What kind of sick mind, what kind of black-hearted people want to nitpick a man's mother's death? They just buried Eva last week. I was there at the wake. Are you kidding me? That wasn't a box of Cheerios they buried last week."

Sept. 26, 2005
6:44 p.m.
(CBS) — CBS News correspondent Gloria Borger reports that Michael Brown, who recently resigned as the head of the FEMA, has been rehired by the agency as a consultant to evaluate it's response following Hurricane Katrina.

He suggested that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had gotten a bum rap because many people incorrectly believe it serves as something of a federal rapid-response force.

"FEMA is a coordinating agency, we are not a law enforcement agency," he said.

"It is inherently impractical, totally impractical, for the federal government to respond to every disaster of whatever size in every community across the country," Brown said.

"It breaks my heart to think about the disasters we respond to as FEMA and to think about the disasters that we also don't respond to," he added.

[....]

Democrats, who want an independent investigation not under the control of majority Republicans, largely boycotted the hearing.

One, he said, was not having more media briefings.

Inarticulate screams and grunts could not express my contempt, much less words.

On August 29, the day of the storm, Brown exchanged e-mails about his attire with Taylor, Melancon said. She told him, "You look fabulous," and Brown replied, "I got it at Nordstroms. ... Are you proud of me?"

An hour later, Brown added: "If you'll look at my lovely FEMA attire, you'll really vomit. I am a fashion god," according to the congressman.