Done Deal

Here’s the deal—in the making and before the fact—and it’s as plain as the nose on your face that Bush administration plans for New Orleans do not include rebuilding the homes of the thousands of hard working poor who managed to own homes by years of doing the worst jobs in a city that historically awarded the majority black populace the lowest paid and dirtiest jobs.

All you have to do is scroll down through the following news article and pay attention to the italicized parts.

New Orleans is being left in a largely uninhabitable state.

Funds appropriated for New Orleans are not adding up, so hugely significant amounts of money (billions) are ill-used or unaccounted for.

The levees that would withstand a category 5 storm are not being built, which would protect any future homes built by the citizens of New Orleans and safe-guard the families of those citizens, as well as providing the sense of well-being necessary to re-settle in New Orleans after surviving the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Instead, Bush-business-as-usual is working to profit from the wreck of this city in the most cynical and Machiavellian ways possible.

Our general populace is too stupid—or too naïve—to recognize the criminal intent of this administration before the fact, or the power to protest is so enslaved by potential money-making opportunities that might trickle down to the slightly less wealthy that voices which might be raised in protest are dumbstruck.

That Bush left the wreck of New Orleans to attend “a closed-door $4 million fund-raiser for the Republican National Committee and Republican candidates at the home of Dwight Schar, a homebuilder and a co-owner of the Washington Redskins” leaves little doubt as to the direction rebuilding of New Orleans will take at the expense of the poor in order to better serve the rich who make donations to Bush and cronies.

This scenario is unacceptable and grossly reprehensible.

America and Americans deserve better.

That George W. Bush is an ill-spoken and self-serving idiot is once again plainly obvious.

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January 13, 2006

In New Orleans, Bush Speaks With Optimism but Sees Little of Ruin

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 12 - President Bush made his first trip here in three months on Thursday and declared that New Orleans was "a heck of a place to bring your family" and that it had "some of the greatest food in the world and some wonderful fun."

Mr. Bush spent his brief visit in a meeting with political and business leaders on the edge of the Garden District, the grand neighborhood largely untouched by the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina, and saw little devastation. He did not go into the city's hardest-hit areas or to Jackson Square, where several hundred girls from the Academy of the Sacred Heart staged a protest demanding stronger levees.

Mr. Bush's motorcade did pass some abandoned neighborhoods as it traveled on Interstate 10 into the city.
"It may be hard for you to see, but from when I first came here to today, New Orleans is reminding me of the city I used to come to visit," the president told the local leaders at the Convention and Visitors Bureau, an independent group set up to attract business and tourism to the city.

Mr. Bush added that "for folks around the country who are looking for a great place to have a convention, or a great place to visit, I'd suggest coming here to the great New Orleans."

Mr. Bush, who appeared to be trying to spread optimism in a city that is years away from recovery, did not tell the group or the city's residents what many were hoping to hear: that he would commit the federal government to building the strongest possible levees, a Category 5 storm protection system.

Instead, on a day when the Bush administration revised the deficit upward to more than $400 billion and blamed it largely on Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Bush restated his support for spending $3.1 billion of federal money on building "stronger and better" levees.

Local engineers say those levees would protect against the 100-mile-an-hour winds of a Category 2 hurricane and the low barometric pressure of a Category 3 or weak Category 4 storm. Hurricane Katrina peaked as a Category 5 storm in the Gulf of Mexico and hit land as a Category 3 storm.

The president ignored questions about the city's new rebuilding plan, introduced Wednesday night to enormous community criticism, and White House officials traveling with Mr. Bush declined to offer opinions. The plan, which depends on nearly $17 billion more from the federal government, gives neighborhoods in low-lying parts of the city from four months to a year to attract sufficient numbers of residents or be bulldozed.

The federal government has so far authorized $85 billion in relief to the Gulf Coast, with $25 billion spent.

"We're not going to weigh in," Donald E. Powell, the president's Gulf Coast recovery coordinator, told reporters on Air Force One on Thursday morning. "It will be their plan."

In the meeting at the Convention and Visitors Bureau, Mr. Bush sat between Mayor C. Ray Nagin and Lt. Gov. Mitchell J. Landrieu. Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, the Democrat with whom Mr. Bush has a chilly relationship, was in The Netherlands looking at the country's flood-control system.

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said that the president had not deliberately timed his visit on a day when Ms. Blanco was not in town, and that the White House had reached out to her but she had a scheduling conflict.

Ms. Blanco's press secretary, Denise Bottcher, said that Ms. Blanco would be returning to New Orleans on Thursday night, just hours after the president left the city, and that she was "disappointed" she had missed his visit.

From New Orleans, Mr. Bush traveled to Waveland and Bay St. Louis in Mississippi, where he viewed destruction along the Gulf Coast. He then headed for Palm Beach, Fla., for a closed-door $4 million fund-raiser for the Republican National Committee and Republican candidates at the home of Dwight Schar, a homebuilder and a co-owner of the Washington Redskins.

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company