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

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Cindy Sheehan

George Bush has been an incompetent failure his entire life. Fortunately, for humanity, he was just partying his way through school, running companies into the ground and being an alcoholic and cocaine abuser for most of that time and his incompetence was limited to hurting the people who worked for him and his own family. The people in his life who were hurt by his incompetence probably have been able to "get on" with their lives. Now, though, his incompetence affects the world and is responsible for so many deaths and so much destruction. How many of us did not foresee the mess he would make of the world when he was selected the first time? We saw what he had done to Texas. How many of us marvelled and were so discouraged and amazed when he was "re-elected" the second time? We saw what he had done to the world. Dangerous incomptence should never be rewarded, let alone be rewarded so handsomely as in George's case.

The Camp Casey movement has been struggling with how best we can help the government ravaged people of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. We sent a bus load of supplies into Covington, La., which is a poor, African-American town across Lake Ponchartrain from New Orleans. I had the privilege of visiting Covington with my friends, Buddy and Annie Spell last July. It was a community filled with love and laughter.

The Bring Them Home Now Tour bus that went into Covington is the VFP Impeachment Tour bus that I rode in and out of Crawford on. They took about 10,000 pounds of leftover Camp Casey supplies and we had 2 trucks filled to the brim with leftover water that we got into Covington. The tour bus also has satellite so it is the only communications that Covington has with the outside world now.

This is an email that our tour received from Gordon who is one of the bus drivers who bravely drove to Covington . I left it intact without editing:

I can't recommend coming here but, if you must, we do need help! During the
> day we are going out into the community with water and baby supplies lunch
> foods. But, there has been an attack on the Armory and the cops are scared.
> We have move into Covington middle school and we are giving the red cross
> our assistance with medical supplies and food services. Until we arrived,
> they only had MRE's. They just brought in 5 new borns babies from the
> hospital as they are expecting more casualties, We brought in a generator
> and solar powered lights, no power, no phone service here, our satellite
> link is the only connection to the outside. The Marshal Law enforcement
> that will be coming to New Orleans with the Army, could create mass panic.
> that will lead to more refugees, we have twenty right now and room for 100.
> Don't come here unless your are prepared to work!.
>
> I should say, stay out on the road and raise money for the relief effort.
> But make up your own minds.
>
> We need to keep the public aware of what is going on here and all over
> SOLA,
>
> I you want to help go an established refugee camp and provide your
> internet access to document who it there and what they plan to do to the
> website. Use your satellites access to maximize the story of the relief
> effort!
>
> Gordon
>

There it is.

I think we should finish the tour so we can talk about what an abject failure this administration is. The unnecessary tragedy in New Orleans is directly related to the unnecessary tragedy in Iraq: Unnecessary being the operative word.

Innocent people are dying daily in this world. In the crush of the hurricane story, the fact that 950 people (mostly women and children) were trampled to death in Iraq was buried in the back sections. Those are 950 people who would still be alive if George Bush were not president. 950 people in Iraq and how many thousands in the Gulf States died while the emperor strummed a guitar and knocked a golf ball around? Additonally, eight of our brave and wonderful soldiers have been needlessly killed in Iraq since Monday.

SEPTEMBER 1, 2005

SPECIAL REPORT

Let Katrina Be a Warning
Here's what the hurricane can teach about handling natural disasters and energy policy better
It is a natural disaster of unprecedented proportions for America. But the irony and the tragedy of the killer storm called Katrina is that the hurricane's devastating effects were entirely predictable -- and largely preventable.

Engineers have known for years that New Orleans levees couldn't withstand anything above a Category 3 hurricane. Ecologists had long warned that the loss of protective barrier islands and coastal wetlands made everything along the Gulf Coast, from refineries to vacation homes, far more vulnerable to major storms.

Scientists have been learning that, for whatever reasons, hurricanes have become more destructive over the past 30 years. And with the world's oil-producing and gasoline-refining capabilities strained, it has been clear that storm-related damage to the highly concentrated Gulf Coast energy industry could be hugely disruptive to the nation's oil, gasoline, and natural gas supplies.

HELPFUL PROGRAMS ERODED. Yet not only have these warnings gone largely unheeded but for years government policies have been putting the country at a greater risk of both natural disasters and energy shocks. Along the Gulf, "we've had a tremendously irresponsible policy, destroying protective natural features while encouraging risky and precarious development," says Frederick Krimgold, director of Virginia Tech's disaster risk reduction program. And although Congress passed an energy bill in August, it does almost nothing to solve the problems exposed by Katrina.

The major lesson policymakers should draw from the catastrophe is just how vulnerable the U.S. is becoming to natural disasters and energy disruptions. In fact, some experts say, Americans have been mistakenly lulled into thinking terrorism is the most pressing threat -- and they argue that the relentless focus on staving off suicide bombers has left crucial gaps elsewhere.

Case in point: After the huge 1993 Mississippi River flood, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) began buying up floodplain property, preventing people from rebuilding and being swept away again. But that effort, and a larger FEMA mitigation program, no longer exists.

And just this summer, the proposed funding for the New Orleans Army Corps of Engineers district was cut by $71 million for fiscal 2006. Shelved, among other items, was a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane.

POLICY LESSONS. Americans are already paying the price for these policy lapses in the form of higher energy costs. And inevitably, natural disasters will hit other parts of the nation, in part just because of more development. New York and Washington certainly aren't immune, warns John N. McHenry, chief scientist at Baron Advanced Meteorological Systems, a forecasting outfit in Raleigh, N.C. Says McHenry: "It would not take much to flood all of Manhattan."

Everyone with an agenda is pushing his pet ideas as a solution. House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-Tex.) thinks that our energy woes can be solved with more production. "We could be drilling in Alaska right now," he says.

On the other side of the political spectrum, activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blames the Bush Administration for failing to push tough fuel economy standards and curbs on global warming. Says Kennedy: "Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children."

Partisan fulminations aside, there are policy lessons from Katrina on both the energy and the natural resource management fronts. Here's what could be done:

Restore natural buffer zones
The combination of the Mississippi River levees and oil and gas development has had a devastating effect on the whole Gulf Coast. The levees prevent sediment from reaching the delta. Meanwhile, oil and gas companies have dug channels through the wetlands and sucked oil from underneath, causing the land to sink, saltwater to intrude -- and thousands of acres to submerge.

Although reclamation measures were already under way to restore Gulf marshlands, they were too little too late. "I'm hoping that one lesson to come out of this is that talk about rolling back protections for wetlands [all across the country] will end," says Yale University ecologist David K. Skelly.

Limit development in the most vulnerable areas
Experts say it's crazy to keep building casinos and vacation homes on coastal dunes, barrier islands, and other vulnerable spots. One solution is to stop offering federal insurance for such projects. Another is to put the land off limits to development. During the Clinton Administration, FEMA "was working hard" to slow such development, says Virginia Tech's Krimgold. But such efforts ended after FEMA became part of the Homeland Security Dept.

Aiming for a better balance of risk and development means tough decisions. A city like New Orleans, lying in a vast bowl below sea level and protected by fragile levees in a hurricane belt, probably should never have been built. But once it was there, more effort should have been put into strengthening the levees and the city's pumping system. "We knew this was a danger, and it was clearly brought to our attention," says Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who is working on a bill to improve emergency communications during disasters.

Get serious about climate change
"It is increasingly clear that global warming makes [hurricanes] more severe and destructive," asserts former Energy Dept. official Joseph Romm. "Katrina is the shape of things to come." Plus, action to combat climate change, such as increased development of renewable sources, has the additional beneficial effect of reducing the nation's vulnerability to energy shocks.

Make a Presidential appeal
In the short term, experts suggest, President Bush could minimize the impact on gasoline prices simply by asking Americans to be more aware and careful -- by inflating tires, tuning up cars, and driving more slowly. The Environmental Protection Agency also relaxed clean fuel standards to reduce the number of gasoline formulations refineries need to make and to open the door to more imports. Over the medium term, moving to a single national standard for gasoline would reduce pressure on stressed refineries.

Increase energy diversity
Over the longer term, the answer is greater diversity -- of sources, geographic locations, types of energy -- and greater use of energy-efficiency measures. Combined, these steps would make the economy more immune to energy shocks.

A number of states, for instance, have already required that a certain percentage of electricity be generated from renewable sources. A national standard would help even more to reduce the impact of shortages or price spikes in natural gas.