Americans might have to dig deeper to help the Gulf Coast recover from Hurricane Katrina. Two-thirds of the record-breaking $3 billion in private charity funds raised after Hurricane Katrina have already been spent on immediate relief efforts such as food and water, temporary housing and living stipends, according to a Washington Post survey.
Meanwhile, the federal response continues to fall short. It’s far from certain whether the government will find the hundreds of billions of dollars needed for long-term infrastructure reconstruction.
Millions of dollars were wasted by FEMA on trailers that will never be used. Thousands of people are still living near the wreckage of their homes, waiting for cleanup help. And New Orleans has started allowing residents to rebuild homes at existing levels, in part because FEMA still hasn’t issued guidelines for rebuilding above flood stage.
The immediate federal Katrina response was a mess. But the reconstruction and follow-up aren’t looking any better.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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Poll: Bush Ratings At All-Time Low
(CBS) The latest CBS News poll finds President Bush’s approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, while pessimism about the Iraq war has risen to a new high.
Americans are also overwhelmingly opposed to the Bush-backed deal giving a Dubai-owned company operational control over six major U.S. ports. Seven in 10 Americans, including 58 percent of Republicans, say they’re opposed to the agreement.
The troubling results for the Bush administration come amid reminders about the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina and negative assessments of how the government and the president have handled it for six months.
In a separate poll, two out of three Americans said they do not think President Bush has responded adequately to the needs of Katrina victims. Only 32 percent approve of the way President Bush is responding to those needs, a drop of 12 points from last September’s poll, taken just two weeks after the storm made landfall.
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Poor Mr. Bush, one step forward, two steps back. He’s now lower than Carter’s all-time low. He’s only ten points higher than Nixon when Nixon resigned in disgrace.
The GW Limbo . . . how loowww can he gooow?
The Goverment and incompantance go hand in hand.
Here we are with another hurricane season around the corner and still nothing has been done to support the levees in NO.
A good qustion for FEMA was why it didn’t realize there was a FEMA rule about placing trailers in flood zones before it spent the money on trailers.
Sum1. It’s the government.
It’s what you get with a bunch of unionized leftist that run the bueacracy.
It’s government! *shrugs shoulders* What do you really expect.
I think the silence regarding joe’s outrageous posts is more damning than any attacking post could be. Good idea to just let him go unchecked so readers can see that wisdom unadorned.
Sum1, do you think that it might have something to do with bush appointing the college roomate of a former fema director? I mean, when your previous experience has to be lied about on your resume, and you come to such an important job from being the head of the Arabian horse association, what else could we expect? That lawyer brownie could actually read the law?
Just another crony running the show for bushco.
The person on top is to blame as the person on the bottom who didn’t do their job.
It took the military to get things in order in New Orleans.
KFG:”I think the silence regarding joe’s outrageous posts is more damning than any attacking post could be. Good idea to just let him go unchecked so readers can see that wisdom unadorned.”
Agreed. Pity is more appropriate that censure.
“The person on top is to blame as the person on the bottom who didn’t do their job.”
Joe, You mean Chertoff and Bush? If so, I agree.
How does one punish a President who allows an American city to die a slow, agonizing death? Impeachment. If this doesn’t count as ‘high crimes and misdemeanors,’ I don’t know what does.
Oh, and here’s the Rudepundit’s take on the White House Katrina post-mortem report. You’ll have to scroll down a bit. IT’S RUDE.
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/
Yep. Brown, Chertoff, Bush are to blame.
As the obese union FEMA worker who just wants to stand around smoking a cigarette and not going anything, because they don’t care.
Trust me! I had a friend that drove ice to the region, and he told me how surprised he was along with other truckers on the total incompetence of the average FEMA worker.
What union do the FEMA workers join joe?
Now that you mention it, I guess I NEVER saw a non-union worker standing around doing nothing.
“Wrong Again” Joe never lets facts stand in the way of his righteous indignation.
If he needs evidence, he just makes sh*t up.
Eye wintness account from a reliable source.
American Federation of Government Employees is a union. Strange! Why do you need a union against government? I thought Unions were there to fight the corporations and the evil capitalist.Government is suppose to be their ally.
“The Goverment and incompantance go hand in hand.”
Pancho pretty much nailed it.
But please, continue with the inane idealoguery. It’s entertaining, if nothing else.
The Trouble with Katrina RecoveryThe Hurricane was a natural disaster, not a partisan event. The administration did a very poor job of responding, as did the Mayor of New Orleans, and the Governor of Louisiana. A look at the approval ratings for Nagins show him placing last of four candidates for a March election. Blanco stands at a 32% approval rating. This shows that blame is an equal opportunity punisher.
This is not a defense of the administration. Chertoff’s original handling was and continues to be unacceptable.
http://theflyoverzone.blogspot.com/2006/02/michael-chertoff-needs-to-go.html
The recovery effort has the potential to both waste huge sums of money and fail to do the job well. The recovery needs a strong leader dedicated to that job, with authority commensurate to the responsibility. We don’t have that. Remembering the impact that General Honroe quickly had when he appeared on the scene, perhaps we should look to a sharp no-nonsense retired general to take on the job.
Bush appointed Donald E. Powell, as federal coordinator of Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts in November. A former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, he is probably a fine fellow with great financial expertise. But he says, “This job is not a chief executive,” he said. “This job is more of listening . . . getting opposites together and motivating folks to do the right thing.”
That sounds more like a man who would be a wonderful asset to a “chief executive”. We need a person with direct management skills and an on the ground, get it done orientation. Someone who says, “I want 1,000 trailers moved to that location in 10 days”, and holds people’s feet to the fire to make sure it got done.
Particularly in Louisiana, which makes Chicago look like a model of clean government, listening is not enough. A recovery Czar is going to have to knock some heads together. Appointed in November, Powell does not seem to be fitting that bill. In talking with people who have recently been in New Orleans, they were shocked that even basic clean-up efforts are not underway in enormous areas of the city, and essential services such as electricity have not been restored.
Making grand plans and developing visions for the future of New Orleans are wonderful things, but at the moment, we need someone who will get the debris hauled away.
http://theflyoverzone.blogspot.com/2006/02/trouble-with-katrina-recovery.html
How can the federal government charge a sheriff for diverting a couple ice trucks to a part of Mississippi that needed rather than leaving them idling in a staging area that we all know didn’t get to the people who needed them?
http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060224/NEWS01/602240303/1002
Hurricane season is just around the corner, have they replaced the levees yet?