Trouble the Water

Sundance Grand Jury Prize Winner for Best Documentary, Trouble the Water, is currently in limited release. Kimberly Rivers Roberts and her husband Scott, residents of New Orleans' lower 9th Ward, were there when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. Kimberly got a video camera shortly before, and she documented what happened to them. I just saw the film, and it's powerful stuff. Here's the trailer:



The film intercuts Kim Roberts' footage with news footage from the time, and the filmmakers film the Roberts throughout their long trek, checking in with them periodically up to roughly the present. The government indifference and incompetence on display is infuriating. The 9/11 calls, and other moments, are heart-breaking. But there are also some pretty inspiring moments, too — from the Roberts, from the people they huddle in an attic with as the water rises in their homes, from a heroic neighbor. The survivors have been treated very poorly, but they're very appreciative toward the National Guard when they finally show up, and they buoy each other through camaraderie, faith, humor, and in at least one case, music. There are too many striking moments to name them all, and I wouldn't want to spoil them, but two involve the camera just staying on Kimberly – recovering a photo from their devastated home, and performing a rap she's recorded.

The site for the film lists theaters that are or will be showing it. It also has links to organizations working to rebuild New Orleans. NPR's Morning Edition interviewed Kim Roberts, and David Edelstein has a good film review. Check out the film if you can. And especially given how bad things already are, here's hoping that Gustav doesn't make them much worse.

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

Hurricane Katrina's Second Anniversary

This great graphic is from Louisiana blogger Suspect Device. (Thanks to Blue Gal for the tip.)

The Washington Post has an interactive multimedia section that shows past and current photos of the areas hit by Hurricane Katrina. They also report:

NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 29 -- President Bush marked a moment of silence Wednesday morning for the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and extolled what he called the federal government's "strong commitment" to rebuild the battered city.

Predicting that "better days are ahead" for New Orleans, he said in a speech at a charter school that his administration is "still paying attention" to the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast, and he pledged that work would be completed by 2011 on improving storm and flood protection infrastructure to a 100-year level.

But the president's appearance here -- his 15th visit to the Gulf Coast since Katrina slammed ashore on Aug. 29, 2005, and killed more than 1,600 people -- was greeted with skepticism by many residents still angry over what they view as the Bush administration's incompetent response to the disaster.

Hmm, ya think? Bush will make a few speeches, but he's hands-off and inept as usual.

NPR has been superb following up on Katrina and the plight of its victims throughout the past two years. They have a three-minute audio slideshow and a page compiling a dozen or so recent stories.

Digby's "Unforgivable" is a wrenching piece on Katrina, and "What Me Worry?" recaps how Bush and his administration astoundingly ignored multiple urgent alarms two years ago today. Meanwhile, Rick Perlstein skewers revisionism on FEMA's response in "Katrina: the "federalist pause"" and examines Haley Barbour's shady conduct in "Katrina: Haley's Come-on." I think the most apt term is "disaster profiteering," and one that Barbour, Bush, Rove and many conservatives, including several think tanks, should be tagged with often. Digby has several great posts on Katrina at Hullabaloo and both she and Rick Perlstein have been writing a great deal on the subject at The Big Con. Scroll through and check out those late August posts. (I'm sure there are many more good pieces out there as well.)

Finally, here’s a video summing things up well in two minutes by Anne Thompson of the Campaign for America's Future. And no, conservatives still haven't discovered compassion. Sadly, like the devastated Gulf Coast, some things just haven't changed.



(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

Go, Go Coast Guard!

In his Washington Postcolumn "Federal Diary," Stephen Barr highlights the heroism, ingenuity and dedication of several members of the United States Coast Guard during Katrina and its aftermath. If FEMA and other areas of government under the current administration can rise to this level of competence, we'll all be better off. But bravo to the worthy individuals Barr notes, as well as the many others who have gone unsung.

Katrina News and Editorials

Thankfully, there is some good news regarding Hurricane Katrina at this point. The most encouraging is that the overall death toll is likely much lower than originally feared. The city of Houston, Wal-Mart and chefs in the Mexican army are among those who have contributed some much needed assistance.

There’s a good — well, I hesitate to call it “good” — summing up of the governmental breakdown here.

There are a number of interesting editorials on Hurricane Katrina out there. One of the best I’ve read is Eugene Robinson’s here, dealing intelligently with, among other things, class and race. Colbert King offers a fantastic line advocating honest interaction in his op-ed: “Moreover, the federal government's reconstruction and resettlement czar must not be afraid to be in the company of frustrated and angry black people.” The same paper, The Washington Post, also published what’s overall a rather loathsome piece of intellectual chicanery from Charles Krauthammer. Among other things, he equates those who persecuted Jews and burned witches in past centuries with those who would dare blame George Bush for Katrina. I was so intrigued by his use of faulty argument patterns, straight from a philosophy textbook (when he wasn’t outright lying), I was going to take him on point by point. However, as is the nature of the blogosphere, someone beat me to it and did quite a good job of it. You can read The Poor Man Institute’s critique here.

Meanwhile, if you’ve got the stomach for it, you can see and hear some real hateful commentary from Clear Channel’s Glenn Beck here and the real doozy, talk show host Mark Williams discussing race and Katrina on of all things, ShowBiz Tonight (the link will be changing but can be found under the 9/9 heading). It says something when you can be more hateful than Limbaugh. When will principled conservatives condemn and disown these assholes? The biggest problem is Beck and Williams are not adults, with any sort of intelligence or reflection, yet they are given a standing equivalent to people willing to think and discuss. Somehow, I don’t think Socrates would have tolerated temperamental screaming children or cranky curmudgeons with irritable bowel syndrome in his debates. As Jon Stewart pleaded on Crossfire, let’s elevate the discussion. The first step is not to invite the idiots.

Powell and Obama

On Tuesday, the often eloquent Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) spoke about visiting Hurricane Katrina evacuees in Houston. You can read the full text or watch the video here. He concludes:

Which brings me to my final point. There's been much attention in the press about the fact that those who were left behind in New Orleans were disproportionately poor and African American. I've said publicly that I do not subscribe to the notion that the painfully slow response of FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security was racially-based. The ineptitude was colorblind.

But what must be said is that whoever was in charge of planning and preparing for the worst case scenario appeared to assume that every American has the capacity to load up their family in an SUV, fill it up with $100 worth of gasoline, stick some bottled water in the trunk, and use a credit card to check in to a hotel on safe ground. I see no evidence of active malice, but I see a continuation of passive indifference on the part of our government towards the least of these.

And so I hope that out of this crisis we all begin to reflect - Democrat and Republican - on not only our individual responsibilities to ourselves and our families, but to our mutual responsibilities to our fellow Americans. I hope we realize that the people of New Orleans weren't just abandoned during the Hurricane. They were abandoned long ago - to murder and mayhem in their streets; to substandard schools; to dilapidated housing; to inadequate health care; to a pervasive sense of hopelessness.

That is the deeper shame of this past week - that it has taken a crisis like this one to awaken us to the great divide that continues to fester in our midst. That's what all Americans are truly ashamed about, and the fact that we're ashamed about it is a good sign. The fact that all of us - black, white, rich, poor, Republican, Democrat - don't like to see such a reflection of this country we love, tells me that the American people have better instincts and a broader heart than our current politics would indicate.

We had nothing before the Hurricane. Now we have even less.

I hope that we all take the time to ponder the truth of that message.

Meanwhile, ABC’s 20/20 is broadcasting an interview with Colin Powell tonight, Friday, 9/9. A sneak preview article relates some of Powell’s strikingly similar remarks:

"There was more than enough warning over time about the dangers to New Orleans. Not enough was done. I don't think advantage was taken of the time that was available to us, and I just don't know why," he said.

Powell was asked if the slipshod government response to the disaster was due to racism, since the overwhelming majority of the victims are poor African-Americans.

"I don't think its [sic] racism, I think its [sic] economic," Powell said.

"When you look at those who werent able to get out, it should have been a blinding flash of the obvious to everybody that when you order a mandatory evacuation, you cant expect everybody to evacuate on their own.

"These are people who dont have credit cards; only one in ten families at that economic level in New Orleans have a car. So it wasn't a racial thing --- but poverty disproportionately affects African-Americans in this country. And it happened because they were poor," he said.

Amen. I’ve always felt that while race is undoubtedly an issue in America, class is a much bigger one, yet it’s one we don’t like to talk about. In America it seems almost radical to say that there’s a ruling class, any sort of class structure, or a vast disparity of wealth. I suspect it’s because our country has egalitarian ideals and we wish it wasn’t true.

Both these men have been floated as presidential candidates. How about a joint ticket?

Orwell Watch: Firefighters as Props

This story is getting a lot of coverage from the liberal blogosphere. It was first posted by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Utah firefighters are upset because instead of being used for search and rescue, they have been asked to be PR people and background for photos (this photo does not list the firefighters’ place of origin):

Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.
Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.

While there’s something to be said for having folks trained in first aid dealing with evacuees (part of the stated rationale), surely given the immense need for trained search and rescue personnel, handing out fliers would be a perfect task for civilian volunteers... never mind that many of those that would need FEMA help may not have access to a working phone. Still,

a team of 50 [firefighters] Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

(While I am not familiar with this specific paper, when it comes to presidential elections, Utah historically ranks as the most Republican state in the nation, hardly a bastion for Bush-bashing.) Chicago’s NBC affiliate ran a similar story involving some Indiana firefighters who similarly felt wasted, got sick of waiting around, and went home (although they are eager to return).

There are related charges floating around about rescue equipment being shipped in solely for a backdrop for Bush without later being sent to disaster sites. These charges surely warrant more investigation and verification; this is the sort of thing I would hope to god is not true. However, in one of the more striking news clip videos I’ve seen, Senator Mary Landrieu points out areas of New Orleans by helicopter and charges just this sort of negligence (The clip is from ABC’s This World on Sunday, 9/4). The image of only a single piece of construction equipment working on the now infamous 17th Street levee breach is rather disturbing.

To add to the mix, FEMA does not want reporters to photograph the dead. Reuters followed up their short blurb here with a slightly longer piece here.

Meanwhile, in an excellent, now much-cited post (“Making the Rounds” 9/7) Brian Williams reports on the tense atmosphere in New Orleans, where a guardsman aimed a gun at a group of reporters (Williams notes the level of stress and that the guardsman was reprimanded). He also observes:

Someone else points out on television as I post this: the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history.

Josh Marshall has a couple thoughtful posts about these disturbing trends, here and here. I feel he veers a bit too alarmist in one of them, but nonetheless these are important discussions to be having.

On this note of controlling perception, several news organizations and blogs have noted that the number #1, 2 and 3 people at FEMA all lack emergency planning experience. They are all essentially PR people, or less charitably, political hacks.

And as with Iraq - and frankly, everything else - this administration seems to believe that appearance is more important than job performance. I wish to god they would grasp that the best PR is doing a good job in the first place, and put the bulk of their efforts there instead.

UPDATE: Some folks have theorized the Williams’ post pressured the authorities to ease up on their efforts to restrict reporters, because several organizations reported freer access again. Williams got so much attention he’s posted a follow-up, which mentions that Howard Kurtz will be writing about the whole story online for The Washington Post on Friday 9/9.

The Post Gets Played

The Washington Post is one of the most respected newspapers around, and with good reason. One of the chief causes is probably that, like The New York Times, the Post is an independently-owned paper versus one cog of a mighty empire such as Murdoch’s NewsCorp.

However, they made a subtle but significant error in a major article about Hurricane Katrina on Sunday, 9/4/05 when they parroted a Bush administration official’s claim without bothering to fact check it. The sentence reads, “As of Saturday, [Governor] Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said.” The article depicts a bureaucratic turf war. However, the unchallenged false claim about the state of emergency gives undeserved weight to the Bush administration’s suggestions that it was Blanco’s foot dragging that prevented FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security, and Bush from acting.

I’ve heard several flacks spread this lie quite boldly, one to the BBC (I’m trying to get a clip of this). In fact, Blanco declared a State of Emergency on Friday, September 26th. Newsweek, also owned by The Washington Post Company, printed the same error. The Post has since issued a correction.

This was a rather key fact and fairly easy to check, so the question is why it made it into the paper in the first place. The other question is who the administration official was. Was he or she merely mistaken or intentionally trying to deceive? David Brock of watchdog group Media Matters for America has written the Post asking for the official’s identity to be revealed.

I was tipped off to this story in the first place from Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo site. He makes the observation:

Monday's Times, not surprisingly, confirms that the White House damage control operation is being run by Karl Rove and Dan Bartlett.

Add it up.

And who will report this out?

Now, I’m sure local and state officials deserve some of the blame, even while each new revelation about FEMA’s Mike Brown raises the question, just how incompetent is this guy? (He was and is clearly in way over his head. It’s like some sick joke illustrating the Peter Principle as executed by Satan.) Still, Blanco should be criticized for her actual performance versus some lie about it.

The new spin line from the Bushies is that Bush called New Orleans mayor Nagin and begged him to evacuate the city (in other words, if only Bush had been heeded, things would have gone much better). This did not smell right to me, all the more so because Bush was still touring the West at the time (I don’t have an hour-by-hour accounting, but the morning of the evacuation order Bush was sharing a birthday cake with John McCain and delivering a speech on Medicare).

Media Matters has a clip of Fox News’ Brit Hume pushing this story. They also refute it nicely with additional links. Meanwhile, Larry Johnson offers a glimpse into MSNBC's shameful handling of the same spin.

It appears instead that Bush called Blanco shortly before she and Nagin held a press conference announcing the evacuation. Apparently, while Blanco mentioned the call with Bush to give the evacuation order more weight, the decision had already been made. I’m expecting more details on this will come out shortly.

You really, really have to watch these guys.

FEMA: The Model of a Federal Agency

I recently read a blogger’s post quoting Ronald Reagan’s quip that the ten scariest words in the English language were “I'm from the Federal Government, and I'm here to help.” The blogger’s response: “I'd venture that "there's no clean water, shelter, food, medical facilities, or security" is more frightening.”

The worst government programs are inefficient, or pork projects, or suffer from leaders placed through cronyism. The best achieve immediate or lasting good and are staffed by intelligent and dedicated folks (have you had a conversation with a park ranger recently? They’re not doing it to get rich!). Rural electrification, the Interstate Highway System and the New Deal (sorry conservatives) spring to mind as phenomenally successful — good government in action. Similarly, the Marshall Plan is viewed by most everyone as a brilliant move whose positive effects are still being felt.

Until Hurricane Katrina, I didn’t know much about the history of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. There’s a great article here. Apparently, it was pretty inefficient until Clinton appointed James Lee Witt, who unlike any of his predecessors actually possessed emergency management experience. On Witt’s watch, FEMA become a model government agency, earning bipartisan praise. Bush’s appointment to head FEMA was a campaign donor, Joe Allbaugh, who in turn hired a college buddy, Mike Brown, as his deputy. Brown was made the head of the agency roughly two years ago (prior to his FEMA stint Brown had been forced to resign from his job running horse shows.) While folding FEMA into the Department of Homeland Security was a horrible idea, the bigger problem was slashing its budget and chasing away some very experienced, dedicated folks. The Washington Post published an impassioned op-ed pleading to rescue FEMA, penned by Eric Holdeman (director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management). The paper also documents the under-funding flood control has recently suffered in New Orleans.

American conservatism used to stand for fiscal conservatism, and it would be splendid if this strain reclaimed the Republican party from lunatics like Karl Rove’s close friend Grover Norquist who has proclaimed his “goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years,“ shrinking it “to the size that we can drown it in a bathtub.” We need something better than blanket hostility without explanation towards government programs simply because they are government programs (never mind the irony that a “small government” administration created the Department of Homeland Security in the largest government expansion in years). The New York Times’ Paul Krugman hits on this point in a scathing editorial. At some point it would be lovely to discuss government programs in terms of efficiency, cost-effectiveness, goals and — radical thought here — competence.

The news coming from New Orleans is absolutely appalling. While aid workers have been heroic, the management from Mike Brown and others on the upper tier has been criminal and unconscionable. “Situation Normal — All Fucked Up” is simply not acceptable when human lives are on the line. New Orleans’ Times-Picayune, in an open letter to President Bush, has called for the firing of Mike Brown and his top staff. But even as Brown failed to rescue the people of New Orleans, let’s rescue FEMA from him and cronyism. We can’t afford another Katrina.

Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina’s devastation, both human and physical, is all the more harrowing with the anniversary of 9/11 right around the corner. I’m donating some money and I have some friends donating blood. They advise to go through the Red Cross website to set up an appointment versus calling as the phone lines have been swamped. Also, one of my brothers forwarded the following list of charities. I fear the aftermath of this one will be felt for a long time, but the more help, the quicker the recovery.