Saturday, September 17, 2005

Those Wacky Red Staters

 

Cattleman Acquitted in Neighbor's Murder

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By LARRY O'DELL Associated Press Writer

September 16,2005 | BOWLING GREEN, Va. -- A cattleman was acquitted of murder Friday after telling jurors he was defending himself from a neighbor who came after him with a stick in the climax of a 19-year feud.

Prosecutors had argued that John Ames was seizing a chance to end the feud by shooting the neighbor, Perry Brooks, when he trespassed on Ames' land to retrieve a bull in April 2004.

Brooks' wife, Evelyn, said after the verdict, "I don't know what to think. I've been through so much."

The bad blood between Ames and Brooks began after Ames bought his sprawling farm in 1986 and built a fence to protect his prized Black Angus herd. Relying on an obscure state law, Ames billed his neighbors for part of the cost of the fence. Brooks never paid, despite a 1991 Virginia Supreme Court ruling siding with Ames.

Two court orders had barred Brooks from Ames' property. Testimony showed Brooks tore down the fence and Ames repeatedly impounded the neighbor's bull whenever it wandered onto his property. State law allowed him to charge $500 for the bull's feed and care.

Prosecutor Harvey Latney suggested that threats by Brooks were meaningless rants by a cantankerous man. Ames acknowledged under cross-examination that he had not seen Brooks with a shotgun since the early years of the feud.

Ames, 60, testified that during the confrontation last year, he was going to his truck to get a cell phone to call the sheriff's office about Brooks' bull when he suddenly found himself face-to-face with Brooks, who carried a 3-foot stick he had been using to herd the bull.

Ames testified the 74-year-old Brooks came after him with the stick. He then shot the man four times.

"The look on his face was the meanest look on any human being's face I've ever seen in my life," Ames testified.

Salon provides breaking news articles from the Associated Press as a service to its readers, but does not edit the AP articles it publishes.

© 2005 The Associated Press.


3:29:51 PM    comment []  


Good News From a Great Restaurant

 

 K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen:
The restaurant had some minor damage to the first and second floors due to the high winds and heavy rain. Repairs will start on Monday, September 19th, 2005, and we hope to re-open as soon as the city grants us permission. The French Quarter actually weathered the storm better than many other areas. That says something about the early settlers who constructed the city hundreds of years ago. We are trying to contact the staff that are able to work and have them help in the cleanup and reopening. We will notify you as soon as we start taking bookings for private and corporate catering events and reservations for the restaurant.


3:01:16 PM    comment []  

Arianna Weighs In:

 

Katrina Relief: It's Iraq Deja Vu All Over Again

by Arianna Huffington

Reacting to all the pricey promises the president made in his big Katrina speech, a senior House Republican official told the New York Times, "We are not sure he knows what he is getting into."

If that's true, Bush must have the worst memory since Guy Pearce in "Memento" because he's definitely been down this road before.

The coming attractions for the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast play like a shot-by-shot remake of the mother of all disaster features, the reconstruction of Iraq.

Let's start with the rhetoric.

"We will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes," the president pledged on Thursday. "We will do whatever it takes... we will stay there until the job is done," the president said of Iraq in November 2003. It wouldn't be a "Terminator" movie without "I'll be back," and it wouldn't be a massive mega-billion dollar Bush initiative without a vow to stay the course.

This rhetorical comparison extends to what the president didn't say -- namely, anything about the need for shared sacrifice. He didn't call for it after 9/11, he didn't call for it when we embarked on the war in Iraq, and he didn't call for it as we are embarking on the rebuilding of New Orleans. The closest he came was challenging "scout troops" to "get in touch with their counterparts" in the disaster area and "learn what they can do to help." Wonder if that was part of the Heritage Foundation's post-Katrina policy manifesto: Merit badges for corpse recovery and helping displaced evacuees across the street!

Indeed, responding to the devastation caused by Katrina, Treasury Secretary John Snow claimed: "Making the [Bush] tax cuts permanent would be a real plus in a situation like this." Sure, why ask for some sacrifice from the richest Americans when we have scout troops doing their part?

The feeling that the Katrina relief effort is going to be Iraq all over again is unavoidable when you look at the list of the companies already being awarded clean up and reconstruction contracts. It's that old gang from Baghdad: Halliburton, Bechtel, Fluor, and the Shaw Group (which has a tasteful notice on its website saying "Hurricane Recovery Projects -- Apply Here!"). Together again. A veritable moveable feast of crony capitalism.

Even the Wall Street Journal is getting an uneasy sense of déjà vu, pointing out that "the Bush administration is importing many of the contract practices blamed for spending abuses in Iraq," including contracts awarded without competitive bidding, and cost-plus provisions "that guarantee contractors a certain profit regardless of how much they spend." So what's the thinking on this one, Mr. President -- 'If at first you don't succeed...'?

And what about financial oversight of the tens of billions that will be doled out to these corporate chums of the administration? After consistently stonewalling investigations into the corruption that has plagued U.S. efforts in Iraq, the president vowed to have "a team of inspectors general reviewing all expenditures" related to Katrina. But, as Think Progress points out, such promises seem laughable when you remember what happened to Bunny Greenhouse. After blowing the whistle on Halliburton's corrupt Iraq war contracts, the Army Corps of Engineers auditor was demoted. That should really motivate the Katrina contract inspection team.

Another very troubling similarity between the Katrina plan and the Iraq debacle is the failure of Democratic leaders to address the core issues raised by the president's proposals. Mirroring the spineless bandwagon hopping that gave the president a flashing green light on Iraq, Harry Reid responded to Bush's speech by saying, "I think we have to understand that we have a devastation that has to be taken care of. And I'm not finding where we can cut yet."

Really? How about Iraq? We're spending $5 billion a month there. And what about demanding the rollback of the Bush tax cuts? Even a partial rollback would produce about $180 billion in revenue, right around what the Katrina relief effort is estimated to cost. And how about taking a carving knife to the huge slabs of pork that continue to be piled onto legislation like the new transportation bill, which included 6,371 pet projects inserted by members from both parties, at a cost of more than $24 billion. And that's just one bill! But the Senate Minority Leader can't find where to cut yet?

Iraq is an utter catastrophe. The only good that can come from it will be as an object lesson in what not to do with Katrina. But, so far, it's a lesson both the president and the loyal opposition seem unwilling to learn.

As the philosopher said: It's déjà vu all over again.

 

 

"President Coolidge come down on a railroad train

With a little fat man with a notepad in his hand

President say 'Little Fat Man, isn't it a Shame

What the river has done to this poor cracker's land"

--Randy Newman, Louisiana 1927

 

A picture named Rove.jpg

Little Fat Man, 2005 Edition

 Karl Rove's Big Easy

by Arianna Huffington

Creating an independent, bipartisan commission to look into what went so horribly wrong with the response to Katrina is not only an idea supported by an overwhelming majority of the American people -- including 64% of Republicans -- it's also, unarguably, the right thing to do.

After all, we're not talking about a witch hunt to ferret out which public officials should be pilloried in the public square (although surely more than a few members of the administration deserve a good thrashing -- uh, I mean Medal of Freedom) but a chance to make sure that the same mistakes aren't made when the dreaded next terrorist attack hits us. If we look at Katrina as a very wet dry run for our response to Hurricane Osama, an independent commission should have been empanelled the second the bodies started piling up in New Orleans.

And it's not like this kind of fast-track fact-gathering is without precedent. The first of nine investigations into the failures that led to Pearl Harbor convened 11 days after that attack. And LBJ created the Warren Commission seven days after President Kennedy was assassinated.

But a full, public, and unbiased accounting is the last thing the White House and its Congressional allies want. Hence Wednesday's straight party-line vote. Not surprisingly, the GOP prefers the fox guarding the henhouse approach of having a Republican-controlled Congressional panel investigate Katrina.

Of course, we've seen this foot-dragging, stonewalling, anything-to-avoid-looking-in-the-mirror tactic before. It took 14 months -- and a candlelight vigil outside the White House by the 9/11 families -- before Bush finally relented and the 9/11 Commission was created. Is that kind of public shaming what it's going to take to get to the truth about Katrina? If so, let's not wait 14 months to have the families of Katrina's victims gather outside the White House demanding answers.

There is too much at stake to let Bush and the GOP Congress play politics with our lives.

And speaking of playing politics, I love how the news that Karl Rove has been placed in charge of the reconstruction effort was buried in the ninth paragraph of a twelve-paragraph New York Times story on Bush's big speech.

This assignment proves that despite the president's lofty rhetoric about "building a better New Orleans," his main concern is stanching his political bleeding. Let's be honest, when it comes to large-scale efforts like this, Ol' Turd Blossom isn't exactly Gen. George Marshall, who, before devising the Marshall Plan, had, among other things, been responsible for deploying over eight million soldiers in WW II.

Rove's genius (aside from a Mensa-level mastery of dirty trickery) is for using imagery, spin, and atmospherics to turn political liabilities into political opportunities.

So here is the White House's Katrina Plan in a nutshell: block any independent examination of its failings, put the Einstein of damage control in charge of reconstructing New Orleans, keep the dead bodies out of sight, try to get away with general platitudes and palliatives, offer watered-down acceptances of "responsibility" while trying to pin everything you can on local yokels and fall guys like Brownie, and let Bush's corporate cronies get fat on hefty no-bid reconstruction contracts.

So get ready for the New New Orleans -- Karl Rove's Big Easy -- featuring the Halliburton French Quarter, the ExxonMobil River (formerly the Mississippi), Lake MBNA (formerly Pontchartrain), and Eli Lilly music (formerly jazz).

With deals like that shimmering on the horizon, it's no wonder the president's pals in Congress are doing everything they can to throw a monkey wrench into House Democrats' efforts to investigate the Plamegate scandal, and the Boy Genius' involvement in it -- shooting down a pair of bills that would have required Alberto Gonzales and the Justice Department, and Condi Rice and the State Department to turn over all documents and information pertaining to the outing of Valerie Plame.

God forbid! Mustn't allow anything to get in the way of Reconstruction Karl's efforts to rebuild the president's poll numbers, eh?


12:19:17 PM    comment []  

The Beat Goes On. . .
 
 
FEMA, Slow to the Rescue, Now Stumbles in Aid Effort
 
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER and ERIC LIPTON
 
September 17, 2005

BATON ROUGE, La., Sept 16 - Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Katrina cut its devastating path, FEMA - the same federal agency that botched the rescue mission - is faltering in its effort to aid hundreds of thousands of storm victims, local officials, evacuees and top federal relief officials say. The federal aid hot line mentioned by President Bush in his address to the nation on Thursday cannot handle the flood of calls, leaving thousands of people unable to get through for help, day after day.

Federal officials are often unable to give local governments permission to proceed with fundamental tasks to get their towns running again. Most areas in the region still lack federal help centers, the one-stop shopping sites for residents in need of aid for their homes or families. Officials say that they are uncertain whether they can meet the president's goal of providing housing for 100,000 people who are now in shelters by the middle of next month.

While the agency has redoubled its efforts to get food, money and temporary shelter to the storm victims, serious problems remain throughout the affected region. Visits to several towns in Louisiana and Mississippi, as well as interviews with dozens of local and federal officials, provide a portrait of a fragmented and dysfunctional system.

The top two federal relief officials in charge of the effort both acknowledged in interviews late this week that they too have listened to the frustrated voices of local officials and citizens alike, and find their complaints valid.

"It is not happening fast enough, effective enough and it is not impacting the people at the bottom as quickly as it should," said Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen, standing along the waterfront in New Orleans on Friday. "I have heard frustrations."

Admiral Allen, who was put in charge of the federal government's emergency operations along the Gulf Coast a week ago Friday, said entrenched bureaucracies hampered attempts to accelerate his top priorities: aid to residents, providing housing and clearing the vast swaths of wreckage from homes and trees damaged by the storm.

Working from Baton Rouge, William Lokey, FEMA's coordinating officer for the three-state region, echoed Admiral Allen's criticisms. "It is not going as fast as I would like, and yes, I do not have the resources I would like," he said on Thursday. "I am going as fast as I can to get them."

The problems clearly stem largely from the sheer enormousness of the disaster. But the lack of investment in emergency preparedness, poor coordination across a sprawling federal bureaucracy and a massive failure of local communication systems - all of which hurt the initial rescue efforts - are now also impeding the recovery.

FEMA, Mr. Lokey said, is an agency with limited federal money that must quickly expand its operational capacity only after a major disaster strikes. It has not won a large chunk of the new federal homeland security dollars, that have been dedicated to terrorism.

"If the billions of dollars that have been spent on chemical, nuclear and biological response, if some of that had come over here, we would have done better," he said. "But after 9/11, the public priority was terrorism."

The Katrina troubles underscore serious questions about the federal government's ability to handle similar disasters in the future.

"I don't think federal bureaucracy can handle the next disaster," said Toye Taylor, the president of Washington Parish, one of the hardest hit areas in Louisiana, who met with Mr. Bush this week.

"I expressed to the president that it would take a new partnership between the military and private sector," Mr. Taylor said. "Because there will be another one and I don't think the federal government is going to be able to help." Indeed, Mr. Bush said in his address to the nation from New Orleans on Thursday night that the military would play a new role in federal disaster relief.

The struggle to return parishes, towns and individual lives to some semblance of working order is visible throughout the region.

The president of St. Tammany Parish, Kevin Davis, is praying that it does not rain in his sweltering corner of Louisiana, because three weeks after the storm severely damaged his drainage system, FEMA has yet to give him approval to even start the repairs.

Up north in the poor parish of Washington, residents are sleeping in houses that were chopped in half by oak trees. The promised wave of government inspectors have not shown up to assist them.

James McGehee, the mayor of Bogalusa, a small Louisiana city near the Mississippi border, could barely contain his rage in an interview on Thursday.

"Today is 18 days past the storm, and FEMA has not even put a location for people who are displaced," he said. "They are walking around the damn streets. The system's broke."

Some critical aspects of the federal response to the storm are moving significantly faster than expected. The Army Corps of Engineers, which initially predicted that pumping out New Orleans would take up to three months, now predicts that the enormous task will be wrapped up by Oct. 2.

FEMA and its partners have delivered as of Friday morning more than 177 million tons of ice, 63 million liters of water and 26 million ready-to-eat meals throughout Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

More than $1.25 billion of federal disaster aid has also been distributed directly to many of the just over one million victims in the three-state region that registered for aid. Just in Louisiana, another $100 million in disaster food stamp benefits have been distributed.

"The commitment is an aggressive one," said Ann Silverberg Williamson, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Social Services, which is working with federal officials on several of these efforts.

In many affected areas, Americans continue to live in conditions unthinkable in most of the industrialized world, like the rural unincorporated areas in Washington and surrounding parishes, where the uprooted trunks of 20-ton trees have left dinosaur foot-size crevices in roads, and homes are still surrounded by a maze of twisting branches.

In Tangipahoa Parish, the parish president, Gordon Burgess, said he called FEMA officials daily to ask when they would arrive to assist residents with housing. Mr. Burgess said the federal workers say, " 'I'll get to you next week,' and then the next week and then you'd never hear from them again."

Indeed, almost every local leader interviewed - even those sympathetic to FEMA's plight - complained that they could not get FEMA to approve their contracts with workers, tell them when they would be opening help centers or answer basic questions. Often, they say, the FEMA worker on the ground, eager to help, has to go up the chain of command before taking action, which can take days.

"People on the ground are wonderful but the problem is getting the 'yes,' " said Mr. Davis of St Tammany parish, who has a contractor ready to clean his drainage system of the same trees FEMA allowed him to take off his streets, and to repair parts of the sewage system.

"I'm saying, 'Wait a minute, you pick up debris on the road but not the drainage?' If it rains, I've got real problems. I just need someone to tell me make the public bids and I could rebuild our parish in no time."

Perhaps the greatest frustration expressed by state and local officials - as well as by some federal officials - is the pace of finding or setting up temporary housing to move people out of emergency shelters and the slow opening of specialized recovery centers.

The Bush administration had set Oct. 1 as the deadline for moving those 100,000 people in shelters out of these often overcrowded and uncomfortable facilities and into temporary homes. The goal is to install tens of thousands of mobile homes and trailers, so people are not only out of the shelters, but they can move back closer to their homes. But progress on the installation of these new homes is off to a slow start.

"That is not going to happen," Mr. Lokey said Thursday afternoon of the Oct. 1 goal. "It is just too big." By Thursday night, in his speech to the nation, Mr. Bush had revised the deadline to Oct. 15, which Mr. Lokey said would still be hard to meet.

Tempers are already flaring among many of the thousands of people displaced by the storm who have had a hard time getting through to FEMA on the telephone or finding centers where FEMA representatives can answer questions about various federal assistance programs. Only 8 of 40 promised sites have opened in Louisiana.

"I still do not have a firm date as to when they will put a site," said Mr. Taylor of Washington parish. Baton Rouge, which has received a huge influx of evacuees, did not get such a center until this Thursday. Evacuees and local officials also complain that FEMA's request for them to register on line or via phone is unrealistic, given that as of Wednesday 310,000 households in Louisiana were still without telephone service and 283,231 were still awaiting power, or nearly 30 percent of the state's households. And the phone lines are almost always jammed anyway. As such, those with cars drive miles to operating help centers in other counties, where the lines are sprawling. Confusion is rampant.

"FEMA don't communicate with you very well," said Tommy Nelson, as he cleaned out the home of his girlfriend's mother in Waveland, a Gulf Coast town now more of a memory than a place. "You got to learn things second-hand. We just happened to be in a post office line and we just happened to learn you got to register down here for a trailer. I was talking to a FEMA representative about trailers yesterday and she didn't have a clue." The best way to reach FEMA is about 2 a.m., various evacuees said.

Meanwhile, truck drivers carrying tens of thousands of tons of ice and driving water have been sent on a cross-country tour, from city to city, only then to be told to wait for up to a week in a parking lot in Memphis, with their engines, as well as their tabs as drivers running.

"It is a sad experience," said Frank Link,, who was sent from to Missouri, then to Mississippi, then to Alabama and then to Tennessee - all with the same load of 41,580 pounds of ice that he had loaded in Chicago. "I went down there to help. All I did was get the runaround from FEMA."

But the disaster has also exposed several serious flaws that hampered FEMA's response. Communication systems, especially in rural areas, were crippled and have still failed to return, making it impossible for residents as well as local officials to reach the federal government.

Further, many of the residents affected had few resources and limited power to begin with. Isolation proved to be a liability. Those who had leaders with access to television cameras and a little political influence have begun to make out better than those without.

Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, assailed the federal government on national television the first days after the storm. Today he boasts that FEMA has moved "at lightning speed" to get his parish housing, paychecks for workers, and carries in his tote bag a personal letter from the president.

Admiral Allen, whose jurisdiction spreads across the Gulf Coast region, said he recognized that he had a brief window in which to turn things around for the hundreds of thousands of affected residents. "There should be a low tolerance for a learning curve on my part," Admiral Allen said. "It is not weeks. It is days. And if it is not days, it is hours."



11:31:33 AM    comment []  

The Wingnut Report. . .

My semi-daily unearthing of web articles chronicling the ongoing malevolence of the Bush Administration, Evangelical Christendom, Corporate Fascism, Faux News, Rush Limbaugh and His Shittoheads, and other Toadstools of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy:

How to rebuild New Orleans? Pass more tax cuts

You could be excused for imagining that September was a bad month for the Grover Norquists of the world -- you know, those "starve the beast" foes of big government who hold that nothing is more sacred than cutting taxes. The damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina, and the ensuing rush by Congress and President Bush to pull out the federal checkbook and start firehosing cash into the Mississippi Delta, are pretty good evidence, after all, that there is a role for government. By the people, for the people, blah blah blah -- we need government to take care of the people.

Such wishful thinking, however, would be a sad underestimation of the determination of the hardcore to pursue their agenda in the face of any setback, no matter how catastrophic. A "WebMemo" published Sept. 7 by the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation makes it clear that the best antidote to Katrina mayhem is even less government.

Titled "From Tragedy to Triumph: Principled Solutions for Rebuilding Lives and Communities," the Heritage Foundation manifesto is a laundry list that reiterates every fevered hope of a ruling class that has suffered for far too long under the weight of onerous regulations and IRS savagery. New Orleans and the neighboring regions should be declared "Opportunity Zones" where the following recommendations can be followed: Suspend the minimum wage! Suspend environmental regulations! Repeal the death tax! Support school vouchers! "Repeal or waive" any Clean Air Act regulations that might get in the way of refinery building or highway repair. Allow more drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve!

(No joke: The Heritage Foundation believes that necessary steps to rebuilding New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are to allow drilling in Alaska and support school vouchers. If nothing else, you have to give these guys credit for chutzpah.)

Now, there's something to be said for mobilizing all available resources to rebuild a ravaged region, and if that means getting a little casual with bureaucratic red tape, that's probably not too high a price to pay. But the Heritage Foundation's recommendations are so insultingly self-serving that they put the immediate lie to any notion that the actual well-being of the locals is the think tank's real concern. Instead, its interest, which for all intents and purposes is synonymous with the goals of the current administration, is the same as it has always been, to serve the greed of the few at the expense of the many.

And if the storm winds of Katrina weren't powerful enough to blow the blinders off the eyes of anyone who still doesn't see that clearly, then heck, bring on the Opportunity Zones! If you were shocked at the "Third World" scenes of devastation post-Katrina, wait to see what the region looks like after a couple of years with no rules whatsoever.

-- Andrew Leonard, salon.com

 


10:51:59 AM    comment []  

Nothing Like a Good Conservative Upbringing

Son of Florida Gov. Bush Arrested

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September 16,2005 | AUSTIN, Texas -- The youngest son of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was arrested early Friday and charged with public intoxication and resisting arrest, law enforcement officials said.

John Ellis Bush, 21, was arrested by agents of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission at 2:30 a.m. on a corner of Austin's Sixth Street bar district, said commission spokesman Roger Wade.

The nephew of President Bush was released on $2,500 bond for the resisting arrest charge, and on a personal recognizance bond for the public intoxication charge, officials said.

Wade said he had no further details about the charges.

Gov. Bush and his wife Columba appeared Friday evening at a museum reception in Miami.

"My son's doing fine. It's a private matter. We will support him. We're sad for him. But I'm not going to discuss it on the public square with 30 cameras," the governor told reporters.

It's not the first time Florida's first family has experienced legal problems with one of their children.

Noelle Bush, the governor's daughter, was arrested in January 2002 and accused of trying to pass a fraudulent prescription at a pharmacy to obtain the anti-anxiety drug Xanax. She completed a drug rehabilitation program in August 2003 and a judge dismissed the drug charges against her.

Salon provides breaking news articles from the Associated Press as a service to its readers, but does not edit the AP articles it publishes.

© 2005 The Associated Press


1:45:55 AM    comment []