Music and Cats

Image courtesy of Suspect Device.

August 28, 2007

Dear Mr. President:

Thank you for visiting New Orleans for the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the worst federal levee-failure disaster in United States history followed by the worst federal disaster response in United States history. We’re also grateful for the $116 billion federal allocation for the Gulf Coast. That $116 billion has served you well, as your spokesmen often cite it as an indicator of your dedication to our recovery. But, it hasn’t served us as well — it’s not enough, it’s been given grudgingly, and only after our elected officials have had to fight for it. So I feel I must correct the record about you and your administration’s dedication to our recovery and implore you to take action to make things better.

Indeed, you have allocated $116 billion for the Gulf Coast, but that number is misleading. According to the Brookings Institute’s most recent Katrina Index report, at least $75 billion of it was for immediate post-storm relief. Thus only 35% of the total federal dollars allocated is for actual recovery and reconstruction. And of that recovery and reconstruction allocation, only 42% has actually been spent. In fact, while your administration touts “$116 billion” as the amount you have sent to the entire area affected by Katrina and the levee failures, the actual long term recovery dollar amount is only $14.6 billion. This amount is a mere 12% of the entire federal allocation of dollars, billions of which went to corporations such as Halliburton for immediate post-storm cleanup work, instead of to local businesses. Contrast that to the $20.9 billion on infrastructure for Iraq that the Wall Street Journal reported in May 2006 that you have spent, and it’s an astonishing 42% more than you have spent on infrastructure for the post-Katrina Gulf region. The American citizens of the Gulf region do not understand why the federal obligation to rebuilding Iraq is greater than it is for America’s Gulf coast, and more specifically for New Orleans.

New Orleans has more challenges and fewer resources than we’ve ever had in my lifetime in the City of New Orleans. Yet, other than FEMA repair reimbursements, the only direct federal assistance this city has received from you has been two community disaster loans that you are demanding be paid back even though no other city government has had to pay back a these types of loans for as long as our research can determine (at least since the 70’s). These loans are being used to balance the city budget to provide basic services to citizens who need far more than the pre-Katrina basics.

Despite this obvious contradiction, your administration blames local leadership for our continued need for federal assistance. But this argument is disingenuous, Mr. President. There are a host of tasks that only you and your administration can accomplish for our recovery. These are some concrete steps you can take to make good on your 2005 Jackson Square promise:

* Completely fix the federally managed levees
* Fully fund our expertly crafted recovery plan
* Give New Orleans all that you have promised to Baghdad - schools, hospitals, infrastructure, security, and basic services
* Forgive the community disaster loans, as authorized by the new Congress
* Appoint a recovery czar who works inside the White House that reports daily and directly to you and whose sole job is the recovery of New Orleans and the rest of the region
* Restore our coast and wetlands
* Work with Congress to reform the Stafford Act
* Cut the bureaucratic red tape

In turn Mr. President, the people of New Orleans are more than willing to do our part. We have already:

* Consolidated and reformed the state levee board system.
* Consolidated and reformed our property assessment system.
* Passed sweeping ethics reform legislation.
* Created an Ethics Review Board.
* Hired an Inspector General.
* Submitted a parish-wide recovery plan.

Much has changed in New Orleans for the better since the storm, and more progress is coming. Civic activism is at an all time high. For the first time in my lifetime, there is an actual reform movement in New Orleans driven by the people. “Best Practices” has become a City Council mantra. We have a new Ethics Board. Our incoming Inspector General, Robert Cerasoli, is considered one of the elite in the Inspector General world, as is our new Recovery Director Dr. Ed Blakely in that world and our Recovery School Superintendent Paul Vallas in the realm of public education. We are attracting the cream of the crop. Young people from around the country seeking to make a difference in their lives are moving to New Orleans to teach in public schools, provide community healthcare, build housing, work for nonprofits engaged in post-Katrina work, and, in general, do whatever they can for the recovery because they all know what I am not so sure that you know, mainly that what happens in New Orleans over the next few years says something about the very heart of America itself.

Mr. President, we are in fact doing our part locally in New Orleans despite contrary comments by your administration. Our intense civic activity and government reform initiatives are serious indicators of our local commitment to do our part for the recovery. But we are drowning in federal red tape. We are being nickel and dimed to death by your Federal Emergency Management Agency. We are resource-starved at the city level. The mission here is not accomplished. What we need is Presidential leadership, not just another speech filled with empty promises. Our recovery’s success, struggle, or failure will be intimately woven into your legacy, for better or worse. What Americans think about America is deeply affected by how this country rises to national challenges, none more significant than post-Katrina New Orleans. Fully restoring New Orleans to its formerly unique and permanent place in American culture is this nation’s greatest domestic challenge. Your leadership of our country through this difficult time will serve as an American character lesson for future generations.

Sincerely,

Shelley Midura
New Orleans City Councilmember
District A

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KATRINA: TWO YEARS LATER
FACT SHEET

1. REBUILDING
• 22% or $7 billion of FEMA’s 2005 disaster relief budget was spent on administrative costs, not rebuilding(Institute for Southern Studies)
• The figure used consistently by the Bush administration when discussing the amount of federal dollars allocated to Gulf Coast recovery is $116 billion. Of that amount, only 30% or $35 billion goes to long-term recovery projects (Jeffrey Buchanan, RFK Memorial Center for Human Rights)
• Of that $35 billion, less than 42% has been spent to date(RFK Memorial Center for Human Rights)
• The City of New Orleans has received approximately $187 million from FEMA and $150 million in Community Disaster Loans (City of New Orleans)

2. LEVEE REPAIR
• Currently, the United States Army Corps of Engineers has spent only 20 percent of the $8.4 billion allocated for New Orleans levee repair (Institute for Southern Studies)

3. COASTAL RESTORATION
• Since 1932, nearly 600 square miles of protective wetlands surrounding New Orleans have been lost (Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation)
• 30 square miles of these wetlands were lost since the US Army Corps of Engineers built the MRGO (Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation)
• 80 square miles of these wetlands were lost during Hurricane Katrina (Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation)
• The cumulative impact of these lost wetlands is a New Orleans with no natural protection against storm surges from tropical storms and hurricanes (Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation)

4. ECONOMY AND JOBS
• Two contracts of the 140 FEMA awarded for travel trailers, pre-fabricated homes, and other items, went to Louisiana and accounted for less than half of 1 percent of the $1.6 billion total (Times Picayune, Bill Walsh, “Fema Isn’t Hiring Louisiana Companies, Workers; Out-of State Firms Get Most of Business”, Washington bureau)
• According to Senator Carl Levin, D-Mich., 75 Louisiana electricians working at the Naval Air Station in Belle Chasse are out of a job as Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, now holds the contract (Bill Walsh)
• Four contracts, let by the US Army Corps of Engineers, for removing debris created by Katrina, worth a total of $2 billion with an option for $500 million more, went to Florida, Minnesota, and California (Bill Walsh)
• US Army Corps of Engineers contracts specified that the award process should give preference to local companies hit hardest by the storms (Bill Walsh)
• Although $4.5 billion in Gulf Opportunity Zone projects have been approved in Louisiana, only 1 is located in New Orleans. Strangely, a 10-unit luxury condo development in Tuscaloosa, Alabama (approximately 4 hours from the coast) is the recipient of GO Zone tax breaks (Institute for Southern Studies)
• The Small Business Administration finished processing loan applications for Katrina-impacted businesses in May of 2007, 21 months after the storm (Institute for Southern Studies)
• Federal agencies claimed that 259 contracts went to Louisiana small businesses but were later discovered to have gone to big companies or ineligible recipients (Institute for Southern Studies)

5. SPENDING IN IRAQ
• The federal government has currently spent over $455 billion on the war in Iraq (MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olberman, August 3, 2007 and www.nationalpriorities.org ) vs. $116 billion for the Gulf region’s recovery.
• The Bush Administration has spent $20.9 billion to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure (Wall Street Journal, May 10, 2006) as compared with the $8.4 billion allocated for New Orleans levee repair (Institute for Southern Studies)
• Congress has authorized $44 billion in funds for rehabilitation and reconstruction projects in Iraq, yet Bush has threatened to veto due to cost the $21 billion water resources bill being considered by Congress of which only $1.9 billion would be devoted to restoring Louisiana’s coastal wetlands (Institute for Southern Studies and www.voanew.com )
• USAID (United States Agency for International Development) has created a $4 million program to save Iraq’s Mesopatamian Marshlands (The Iraq Foundation)

From Ashley Morris.

When Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip came on tonight, I had just begun writing a post about holiday music. This is not the post I started out to write.

I love holiday music of all sorts: polyphonic chant, winter standards, carols medieval to modern, world music for Christmas, Solstice, Chanukah. Even the most tired, much-Muzaked melody, when performed by someone who loves the music, will cheer or move me.

Tonight’s episode of Studio 60 included a subplot about a talented young trumpeter subbing for a musician from the fictional comedy show’s band. As the show unfolds, we learn that musicians around Los Angeles are calling in sick, and asking New Orleans musicians - members of the post-Katrina diaspora - to fill in for them. It’s a way for the LA musicians to help their displaced brethren make a little extra cash for the holidays. Studio 60’s producers are moved by this generosity, and they have an idea…

At the end of the episode - the middle of the fictional Studio 60 airing - the stage goes dark. A follow spot picks out the face of an actor, who announces, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the City of New Orleans.” The lights come up on several dark-suited musicians, arrayed against an aerial view of a New Orleans neighborhood. It’s a familiar image; I’m sure you can conjure up one much like it, even if you didn’t see the show. A crooked patchwork grid of roofs and treetops, with only water where the streets once ran. A city drowned.

Against that image, the young trumpeter lifts his horn and begins to play O Holy Night. Quietly, simply, the familiar tune floats from his horn. The words I’ve sung so often hover at the edge of my consciousness:

O Holy Night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of the dear Saviour’s birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining.
Till He appeared and the Spirit felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

As the other musicians join in on trombone, saxes and sousaphone, the backdrop image changes, becomes more human-scaled. Faces of children and the elderly, houses ruined and standing, hands reaching to comfort, to rebuild, to hold. The arrangement is lovely, the playing powerful yet restrained. As I listen, already misty-eyed, to the instrumental on the television, the lyrics echo my head. And, as it always does, the final verse grabs me, demanding to be heard.

Truly He taught us to love one another,
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother.
And in his name all oppression shall cease.

This is the message of Christmas, a message that any who celebrate this holiday should keep in their hearts every day of the year. It’s not an easy message to follow, and even when we try, it’s easy to fail. As a nation, we have failed the City of New Orleans. We have failed her people. We have failed her musicians.

The final image from tonight’s Studio 60 showed the musicians from New Orleans standing in front of a life-sized photo of a New Orleans street - a street before Katrina, its brick buildings adorned with cast-iron lace, its street lamps aglow. Through the haze of tears in my eyes, they almost looked like they were home.

(more…)

I remember New Orleans, and all of her people trying to make it home. I remember that the disaster that befell her was predominantly manmade.

And I remember the towns of the Mississippi coast: Pass Christian. Gulfport. Biloxi. Pearlington. Bay St. Louis. Waveland. Gautier. Pascagoula. Ocean Springs.

I remember the lives lost, and the lives turned upside down. And as I remember, Phil Ochs’ words keep me company: There but for fortune go you or I.

Image from Traveling Mermaid.
Tags: Katrina + New Orleans + We Are Not OK

Hey, look! A little scrap of good news coming from the U.S. Capitol! There’s a move afoot in the Senate to provide funding for some Katrina Cottages, no matter what the President and FEMA think about it. How? By using the time-honored Congressional tradition of tacking the funding onto a must-pass appropriations bill primarily intended to fund something else entirely.

Yesterday, the Senate Appropriations Committee, headed by Mississippi Republican Senator Thad Cochran, approved $1.2 billion for a Katrina Cottage pilot program as an amendment to the FY 2006 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Hurricane Recovery. Sure, hurricane recovery made it into the title of the bill, but this is a case of last being least. The Senate Appropriations Committee’s version of the bill totals $106.5 billion in emergency funding: $72 billion for the “Global War on Terror” and $27 billion for hurricane recovery efforts. (Also $4 billion for agricultural disaster relief, $2.3 billion “to prepare for and respond to the threat of avian flu,” and… well, I’m sure that other $1.2 billion is accounted for somewhere… )

But back to the Katrina Cottages: in order for this proposed pilot program to become real, there’s still a lot that has to happen. The proposed funding must make it through Senate approval of the bill. Since the funding for Katrina Cottages is not included in the House-approved version of the bill (H.R. 4939), it must then survive the conference committee’s work of reconciling the House and Senate bills, and be part of the bill passed by the full Congress. Finally, it goes to the Oval Office. If the President had a line item veto, do you think there’s any chance that a Katrina Cottage program would make it off his desk intact? Me neither. But he doesn’t, and he wants all that military funding so he can keep on spreading freedom around the world, so I’m betting a piddling $1.2 billion for decent emergency housing won’t stop him from signing the bill into law.

This bill will be on the Senate floor the week of April 24. It’s time to write to your Senators. While you’re at it, write to your Representative, too. While you’re urging them to support building Katrina Cottages, you might also suggest that they take a little of that $6 billion a month that’s going to Iraq and Afghanistan, and use it to fully fund levee upgrades and coastal wetlands restoration on the United States Gulf Coast.

And then join me in singing along with that little scrap of paper on Capitol Hill:

But I know I’ll be a law someday
At least I hope and I pray that I will,
But today I am still just a bill.

Technorati tags: hurricane katrina + katrina cottage