Tag Archives: Hurricane Katrina

January 8, 2013 · 3:25 AM

Disaster relief for me, not for thee

Shamefully, political partisanship is at an all time high…

The Maddow Blog – Steve Benen

Though it took far longer than it should have, Congress approved $9.7 billion on Friday for the National Flood Insurance Program, giving a boost to victims of Hurricane Sandy. In all, only 67 lawmakers opposed the relief, and in this case, all 67 were Republicans, who opposed the spending under pressure from far-right lobbying groups like the Club for Growth.

Of the 67 opponents of the bill, failed vice presidential hopeful Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) was easily the highest-profile member of the bunch, but TPM flagged another lawmaker whose vote against the emergency aid was even more striking.

Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-MS), whose Mississippi district is situated on the Gulf Coast, was one of 67 Republicans on Friday to vote against a $9.7 billion relief package to victims of Hurricane Sandy.

Mississippi’s Fourth Congressional District, which Palazzo has represented since 2011, includes the city of Biloxi, one of the most heavily damaged communities in the region by Hurricane Katrina. Congress quickly passed an initial $10.5 billion relief package in the immediate aftermath of Katrina in September of 2005.

Making matters slightly worse, Palazzo, about four months ago, stressed the importance of federal disaster relief for his district in the wake of Hurricane Isaac.

“Some of the counties in the fourth congressional district have been the hardest hit by Isaac,” Palazzo said in late August. “This determination comes as good news to our local communities who are dealing with the effects of the storm. We cannot thank the governor’s office and FEMA enough for their continued support.”

Hmm. It sounds an awful lot like the Mississippi congressman loves federal disaster relief, but only if it directly benefits Mississippi.

Asked for an explanation, the Republican’s office issued a statement.

“Congressman Palazzo fully supports a Sandy relief package that includes spending offsets. On the heels of a fiscal cliff deal that added $4 trillion to our existing $16 trillion national debt, we must ensure that disaster relief is paid for. He also hopes we will be able to have a much-needed national discussion on disaster relief reform in the coming days.”

First, mandating “offsets” in the wake of a natural disaster is a new development, that didn’t apply when it was Palazzo’s district that was slammed. Second, the bipartisan fiscal agreement does not ”add $4 trillion” to the debt.

And third, it’s interesting how “disaster relief reform” is needed when New Jersey is hit, but not when it was Mississippi that needed a hand.

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December 13, 2012 · 10:34 AM

GOP Threatens To Hold Disaster Relief Hostage To Spending Cuts — Again

Think Progress

The White House last week requested $60 billion in federal disaster relief to rebuild the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy, but some Republicans are again threatening to hold disaster relief funding hostage unless it is offset by other budget cuts.

A day after Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) called disaster relief for Hurricane Sandy “wasteful spending,” Reps. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Steve King (R-IA), Raul Labrador (R-ID), and Jeff Landry (R-LA), all from the more conservative wing of the House GOP, told The Hill that they will demand offsets for disaster spending:

Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), who sits on the Appropriations Committee, said she will need to see offsets on Wednesday as did Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho).

“We have these emergencies every year and we should prepare for that in our budget,” Labrador said.

“No pun intended, we should have a rainy day fund,” Rep. Jeff Landry (R-La.) said.

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) rebuked conservative members of his caucus for demanding spending cuts for disaster relief. “It is right to borrow to pay for it,” he said. But since the GOP took over the House in 2010, it has routinely made such demands. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) promised to block disaster funding in the wake of tornadoes that devastated Missouri, an earthquake that hit his own state, and Hurricane Irene.

House Republicans also cut disaster relief funding in a 2011 spending measure and cut it this year to preserve military spending. The GOP also reneged on a deal it struck with Democrats to make emergency disaster relief funding easier in the future.

UPDATE 

Politico reports that other Republicans, like Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), want spending offsets for disaster relief:

“This country can’t continue spending money that they don’t have,” said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.). “So rather than go borrow the money, we ought to say, ‘What’s a lower priority than helping the people of Sandy?’ And that’s how we ought to do it.”

Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) told Politico, “Anything needs to be offset right now.” And Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) added, “If you look at what we’ve pushed for in the past, it’s to properly fund for disasters and when we fund for disasters, we also control spending in other places. We can’t give up our desire to control spending on any front.”

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November 7, 2012 · 2:16 AM

The Conquering Hero…

The conquering hero

Congratulations Mr. President – Four More Years…

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October 31, 2012 · 1:44 PM

FEMA boss fires back at Brown

Politico

FEMA Director Craig Fugate had a blunt response on Wednesday to his Bush-era predecessor who criticized President Barack Obama’s early preparation for Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.

“It’s better to be fast than to be late,” Fugate said on NPR’s “Morning Edition.”

Michael Brown, who ran the agency during Hurricane Katrina, told POLITICO Tuesday that he stood by his criticism that Obama moved too quickly federal relief and response to Sandy.

“In the context of the election, I simply said he should have waited,” Brown said. “The storm was still forming, people were debating whether it was going to be as bad as expected, or not, and I noted that the president should have let the governors and mayors deal with the storm until it got closer to hitting the coastal areas along the Washington, D.C.-New York City corridor.”

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October 30, 2012 · 4:18 PM

Bush’s disgraced FEMA director stunned at Sandy response: ‘Why was this so quick?’

Former FEMA director Michael Brown. Photo: Screenshot via YouTube.

Former FEMA director Michael Brown.

Shaking my head at the sheer idiocy of this man’s statements.

The Raw Story

Michael Brown, the former Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) chief under President George W. Bush — best known for his pivotal role in the bungled federal response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 — said Monday night that President Barack Obama’s disaster response effort has been so quick, it might just raise questions.

Brown, who Bush famously called “Brownie” and said he was “doing a heckofajob” while thousands struggled to survive for days in the flooded streets of New Orleans, is today no longer in government. He instead spends his day opinion-making on an AM news radio station in Colorado, where he’s been obsessing about the attack on America’s embassy in Libya for the last several weeks.

Speaking to Denver alt. weekly Westworld for an interview published Monday night, Brown criticized New York officials for what he called a “premature” decision to shut down the public transportation infrastructure. “I don’t object…they should be doing all of that,” he reportedly said. “But in the meantime, various news commentators…[and others] in New York are shrugging their shoulders, saying, ‘What’s this all about?’ It’s premature [when] the brunt of the storm won’t happen until later this afternoon.”

Brown added that he felt Obama’s press conference on Sunday, just one day before Hurricane Sandy barreled into the eastern seaboard, was politically driven. “My guess is, he wants to get ahead of it — he doesn’t want anybody to accuse him of not being on top of it or not paying attention or playing politics in the middle of it. He probably figured Sunday was a good day to do a press conference.”

For the disgraced former FEMA director, that’s the rub: “[Obama] probably could’ve had a little more impact doing it today,” Brown said, failing to note that Obama did hold yet another press conference on Monday.

“One thing he’s gonna be asked is, why did he jump on this so quickly and go back to D.C. so quickly when in…Benghazi, he went to Las Vegas?” he asked, trying to equate an isolated terrorist attack with the largest storm to every hit the U.S. mainland. “Why was this so quick?… At some point, somebody’s going to ask that question…. This is like the inverse of Benghazi.

Continue reading here…

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August 30, 2012 · 12:05 AM

Limbaugh Makes Racist Suggestion About New Orleans

 

The author of the following article thinks Rush Limbaugh’s “shocking and cynical” comments were beyond the pale, even by Rush Limbaugh standards.  I say it’s par for the course.  Limbaugh is simply a racist pig and has always been a racist pig.  End of story.

Crooks & Liars

Talking about showing his true colors!  Does Rush have any advertisers left?  Because I have to wonder if they want their products associated with this racist, disgusting excuse for a human being.  Via Raw Story:

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh on Tuesday proposed putting “bags of money” around the levees in New Orleans so that “Republicans can get rid of even more Democrats” when poor people drowned because they tried to make off with the cash.

“We are mere hours away from Tropical Storm Isaac, which everybody’s desperately hoping becomes a hurricane,” the conservative icon pointed out during his Tuesday morning broadcast. “It’s the Democrats’ wet dream that this thing hits New Orleans!”

Recalling the way that President George W. Bush’s administration bungled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina seven years ago, Limbaugh decided to offer the Republicans a few tip on dealing with the current storm.

The first idea seemed reasonable enough: “First thing we do is offer to send 500 bus drivers to New Orleans, paid for by us, to make sure that the buses that were not used by the Democrat mayor during Hurricane Katrina will be used to evacuate people should it become necessary.”

But the next proposal was shocking and cynical, even by Limbaugh standards.

“The second thing that I think the Republicans ought to do is send bags of money instead of sand,” he said. “Bags full of money to shore up the levees in New Orleans.”

“So, we have Romney’s five sons deliver the bags of money to shore up the levees,” he added. “Now this will accomplish much. It will show our compassion.”

“And it will do something else: Once we publicize that we have sent 500 bags of money — well, whatever number of bags — bags filled with money to shore up the levees, what will happen?  The poor of New Orleans will storm the levees and steal the bags, thereby putting themselves at risk for the eventual flooding that will happen once they remove the bags of money. And that way, Republicans can get rid of even more Democrats in Louisiana and shore up the state for themselves.”

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August 30, 2011 · 1:47 PM

Melissa Harris-Perry: U.S. Has Yet To Learn Lessons Of Hurricane Katrina (VIDEO)

MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry marked the sixth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina with a searing monologue about what she saw as the country’s failure to learn from the disaster on Monday’s “Rachel Maddow Show.”

Harris-Perry was in New Orleans filling in for Maddow, who was on vacation. Hurricane Irene had made it impossible for her to fly to New York, but the Tulane professor called the arrangement “strangely apropos,” seeing as it was the sixth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

She criticized the country’s lack of progress on the vulnerabilities that Katrina exposed, namely the inadequacies in public infrastructure and the racial and economic disparities that made the hurricane so devastating. She recalled, “We watched as Americans were abandoned on the rooftops of their homes, and we realized that our system could not even get water to the people of a major American city for days.”

“Whatever momentum our renewed sense of responsibility brought has been halted by this recession,” Harris-Perry said. She cited cuts to the social safety net, and opposition to environmental regulation and infrastructure as examples of the government actively working against that progress.

Harris-Perry said that while Hurricane Irene showed that people have learned to prepare for short-term disasters, the long-term lessons of Hurricane Katrina have fallen by the wayside. “Six years later, the long-term lessons about public policy, mutual investment is what we as a people are still refusing to learn,” she concluded.

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August 6, 2011 · 7:59 PM

Five Cops Guilty in Post-Katrina Shootings

Time Magazine

A federal jury on Friday convicted five current or former police officers in the deadly shootings on a New Orleans bridge after Hurricane Katrina.

All five officers were convicted of charges stemming from the cover-up of the shootings. The four who had been charged with civil rights violations in the shootings were convicted on all counts.

However, the jury didn’t find that Brisette or Faulcon’s shootings amounted to murder.     (See pictures of New Orleans.)

Prosecutors contended during the five-week federal trial that officers shot unarmed people without justification and without warning, killing two and wounding four others on Sept. 4, 2005, then embarked on a cover-up involving made-up witnesses, falsified reports and a planted gun.

Defense attorneys countered that the officers were returning fire and reasonably believed their lives were in danger as they rushed to respond to another officer’s distress call less than a week after Katrina struck.

Convicted were former officer Robert Faulcon, Sgts. Robert Gisevius and Kenneth Bowen, Officer Anthony Villavaso and retired Sgt. Arthur Kaufman. Faulcon, Gisevius, Bowen and Villavaso were convicted in the shootings and with taking part in the alleged cover-up. Kaufman, who investigated the shootings, was charged only in the alleged cover-up.    (See pictures of America’s gun culture.)

The trial was a high-profile test of the Justice Department’s effort to clean up a police department marred by a reputation for corruption and brutality. A total of 20 current or former New Orleans police officers were charged last year in a series of federal probes. Most of the cases center on actions during the aftermath of the Aug. 29, 2005, storm, which plunged the flooded city into a state of lawlessness and desperation.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Theodore Carter said in closing arguments Tuesday that police had no justification for shooting unarmed, defenseless people trying to cross the bridge in search of food and help mere days after Katrina struck.

“It was unreasonable for these officers to fire even one shot, let alone dozens,” he had said.

Defense attorneys argued, however, that police were shot at on the bridge before they returned fire.

“None of these people intentionally decided to go out there and cause people harm,” said Timothy Meche, Villavaso’s lawyer. He said they did their best, operating under “terrible, horrible circumstances” after Katrina.(See pictures of a New Orleans neighborhood.)

Faulcon, the only defendant to testify, said he was “paralyzed with fear” when he shot and killed a 40-year-old mentally disabled man, Ronald Madison, as he chased him and his brother, Lance Madison. Faulcon didn’t dispute that he shot an unarmed man in the back, but he testified that he had believed Ronald Madison was armed and posed a threat.

Prosecutors contended at trial that Kaufman retrieved a gun from his home weeks after the shootings and turned it in as evidence, trying to pass it off as a gun belonging to Lance Madison. He also is accused of fabricating two nonexistent witnesses to the shootings.

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May 25, 2011 · 3:53 PM

‘Heckuva Job’ Brownie Criticizes Obama For ‘Toasting The Queen’ During Tornadoes

These people are becoming unbearable with their Obama Derangement Syndrome. 

They actually think that the POTUS should have cut his state visits short because of a rash of unpredictable tornadoes, which by the way, is probably a result of global warming, to come back home and direct FEMA and other related agencies to do whatever it is they do. 

Oh, wait!  He did exactly that, while in Ireland and in Great Britain.

Think Progress

After violent storms slammed three mid-western states and claimed 14 lives yesterday, President Obama announced he would be returning from his long-planned European trip to visit Missouri on Sunday. But that wasn’t good enough for Michael Brown, the FEMA director during Hurricane Katrina who is widely blamedfor the Bush administration’s incompetent handling of the crisis that left tens of thousands of New Orleans residents stranded and helpless.

Brown, whose prior experience included working for the International Arabian Horse Association, resigned in disgrace amid a public uproar when it came to light that he had virtually no experience in disaster response — but only after President Bush famously patted him on the back in front of TV cameras, telling him, ”Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job.” At least 1,836 people died as a result of the worst natural disaster in modern American history, many because FEMA help did not come quickly enough. As the nation reeled at images of the devastation, Brown tried to blame the victims themselves “by noting that the crisis was worsened by New Orleans residents who did not comply with a mandatory evacuation order.”

Yet Brown evidently thinks he has the moral authority to condemn Obama’s handling of the tornado disaster. In an interview with Fox New’s Neil Cavuto, Brown blasted Obama for “playing ping-pong” while people died and “being more concerned with toasting the Queen” than taking care of tornado victims:

BROWN: In this situation, they’re almost tone-deaf. I mean, you stop and think about it, your press office should be recognizing that the visuals that Americans are seeing is of this devastation. Don’t put a visual of the president up playing ping-pong. It’s awful.

CAVUTO: So you don’t have a problem with the president being abroad with the Queen and the Irish prime minster just doing fun stuff?

BROWN: No, I do have a problem with that. It’s not like he’s at a G8 summit. This is not a diplomatic trip of any sort. This is just a — he went to Ireland for God’s sake to visit relatives! It’s time to come home…in this case, the perception is that the president is detached. He’s more concerned about raising a toast to the Queen. People have died.

Watch it:

Continue reading…

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March 18, 2011 · 1:45 AM

Report on NOPD cites ‘clear pattern’ of excessive force

New Orleans Police Department

Image via Wikipedia

The New Orleans Police Department’s actions in the wake of Hurricane Katrina was  questionable at best and despicable in it’s worst form, but the Department of Justice has found that there has been a systemic problem of gross misconduct and unjustifiable killings of civilians within the NOPD.

NOLA.com

In federal court during the past year, prosecutors have accused New Orleans police officers of committing at least seven unjustified shootings in the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina, resulting in indictments accusing them of civil-rights violations and cover-ups.

But the report issued Thursday by the U.S. Department of Justice outlines a more pervasive culture of excessive force used by NOPD officers. During the past couple of years, it says, not only have officers used force inappropriately against civilians, but the department also has systemically failed to investigate these incidents.

The report, a broad look at systemic problems within the agency, takes pains to separate itself from the ongoing criminal probes against members of the department. Still, some of the findings mirror aspects of the criminal investigations, particularly the descriptions of the inadequacy of probes into officer-involved shootings.

The report notes that while the Justice Department’s civil investigators were looking at cases only within the past two years, they too found a “clear pattern of unconstitutional uses of force by NOPD officers.”

The authors found that New Orleans police officers often use deadly force when it is not warranted. Officers also tend to use less-lethal force, including against people in handcuffs, in ways that the report described as “retaliatory.”

Too often within the NOPD, supervisors do not enforce department policy about reporting use of force, which can include arm twists, strikes with hands, strikes with a baton, pepper spray and the deployment of a Taser. Many supervisors, the report found, do not fully understand the agency’s requirements for reporting and investigating use of force.

The report concluded that NOPD appears to be underreporting its use of force, noting that there were only 34 reports filed about force in June 2010, a month when officers made 6,787 arrests. Nationwide, officers tend to use force in 2 percent to 5 percent of arrests, which means that in New Orleans, officers that month probably used force in 135 to 340 cases, according to the investigation.

Perhaps the most troubling finding centered on the handling of officer-involved shootings, which are investigated by the NOPD’s homicide division if a person is killed or injured. The Public Integrity Bureau investigates shootings if the officer misses or hits an animal or inanimate object.

[...]

Among the flaws:

  • Investigations were too cursory to determine whether the shooting was justified under the law, which requires that an officer perceive he or somebody else is in imminent danger of death or bodily injury.
  • Officers under investigation were temporarily assigned to the homicide division, a practice that seems to be a conflict on its face.
  • Sometimes, homicide detectives would tell the officer under investigation that his statement was being “compelled,” meaning his statement could never be used against the officer in a criminal prosecution.

“It is difficult to view this practice as anything other than a deliberate attempt to make it more difficult to criminally prosecute any officer in these cases, regardless of the circumstances,” the report contends.   More…

 

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