Interesting. This is the first thing I've heard, out of everything, that really does look like a race-based, rather than a class-based, federal response. And even there, the two are so tangled together that telling what's going on is going to be very difficult.
By DEBORAH SONTAG
NEW ORLEANS, Oct. 22 - Hurricane Katrina turned Willie L. Calhoun Jr. into a hugger. Much to his surprise, the storm stirred up his emotions in a way that made him want to grab people by the hand and pull them in for a quick embrace. Each time he crossed the bridge into the Lower Ninth Ward, he started hugging - pastors, Red Cross volunteers and the few neighbors he encountered in the now ghostly African-American neighborhood where he has spent his life.
Mr. Calhoun, 55, did not hug Max Green, however. Mr. Green, a cowboy-boot-wearing insurance adjuster from Dallas, is handling the claim on 2229 Delery Street, the house where Mr. Calhoun grew up. Mr. Calhoun said jokingly that Mr. Green would get his hug if he wrote out a big check to Mr. Calhoun's 77-year-old mother, Gloria. But the two men could not take even the first step toward that kind of resolution this week.
On Wednesday, the men tried and failed to gain access to Mr. Calhoun's neighborhood. Mr. Calhoun, an inspector of nonfederal airports and a Baptist minister, was stunned. He had repeatedly toured the area since the storm, both when it was unguarded and after troops began blockading the northern half of the Lower Ninth Ward. At a time when the rest of New Orleans was reopened, he never expected to find that the National Guard had sealed his beloved neighborhood so tightly that even Mr. Willie, as he calls himself, could not sweet-talk his way in.
"They're treating us like we're already dead," Mr. Calhoun said after he was turned away at three checkpoints and took his leave of a local police officer - "All right, then, brother" - who informed him that he needed an escort from a City Council member. There were no council members present.
Since the storm surge flooded the Lower Ninth Ward at the end of August, Mr. Calhoun, like so many New Orleans residents, has been "riding a roller coaster of emotions," he said. A pastor and community leader, he said he had tried to inspire his family, his church members and his neighbors to "turn a negative into a positive." This week, though, the closing of his neighborhood provoked in Mr. Calhoun a few flashes of an emotion that he does not usually indulge: anger. "Where are our elected representatives?" Mr. Calhoun said. "Why are we not being addressed? They don't even have so much as a leaflet out here to tell the people of the Lower Ninth Ward what is going on. People fear the worst."
What people fear is that the blockades are more than temporary obstacles. They fear the demise of their neighborhood. To many of them, the Lower Ninth Ward was like a small town in the midst of a big city, incalculably rich in history, character and community. But they worry that outsiders, who may have viewed the Ninth Ward as a blighted, low-lying area whose residents had little to lose, would be willing to write off their neighborhood as a casualty of the disaster, a neighborhood not worth the expense of rebuilding and storm-proofing.
In statements this week, Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans, denied that this would happen. "Read my lips," he said. "We will rebuild the Lower Ninth Ward." But the reality may be more complicated. Local and federal officials already say 30,000 to 50,000 houses citywide will have to be demolished. Mr. Nagin's director of communications, Sally Forman, said in a telephone interview that while the mayor "absolutely intends to embrace a push for any effort that will establish the future of Ninth Ward residents in the Ninth Ward," the only thing that he can absolutely promise now, while assessments are being done, is that they will have a future in the city. [...] Keith Calhoun, Mr. Calhoun's brother and a photographer who has documented the Lower Ninth Ward for decades, pointed out that the residents of St. Bernard Parish, a predominantly white area adjacent to the Lower Ninth Ward and equally hard hit, had been allowed to return to their homes. He said that the city, together with federal troops, should organize excursions into the back of town. "Don't tell me that the powerful military of ours, which has occupied Iraq, can't get together a few little vans for the people right here," he said....
To be fair, St Bernard's Parrish, while having different demographics, reportedly is in somewhat better shape for visiting, even though it flooded just as badly. It sits on somewhat higher ground, and so the water left more easily.
Regardless of the reasons for the federal government to act as it is, life in the Lower Ninth Ward does seem very precarious these days.
NEW ORLEANS - The Lower Ninth Ward saw renewed flooding Monday when a high tide pushed water up through drainage systems.
An Army Corps of Engineers spokesperson said two additional pumps were turned on to remove the two feet of water and expected the work to be completed shortly. WDSU-TV, an NBC affiliate, reported that strong north winds were helping to push the water into these areas but that it was not expected to get worse.
The Ninth Ward, a low-income part of the city, lies about five feet below sea level and saw extensive flooding during Hurricane Katrina.
Thing is, I'd bet that under normal circumstances, that sort of thing wouldn't happen simply due to a high tide -- or else nobody would have noticed. New Orleans' pump system was designed to contain ordinary low flood levels; it's been so thoroughly battered that it has a hard time keeping up these days.
There is also this: for all the discussion of the racial origins of the terrible federal response to Katrina ... there's no arguing that the results of Katrina are highly racialized, in part, again, because of that vicious race/class intersection in this country.
Evacuees Begin to Put Down Roots
By John Pomfret
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 22, 2005; A08
AUSTIN -- Tyler Smith, a stocky 8-year-old with enormous feet, returned home from school one day this week with the results of a geography quiz. "I got an A," the third-grader boasted as he presented the results of his handiwork to his grandmother, Dolores. "I really like my school," he added. "I like Austin, too."
His 10-year-old brother, Deron, seconded that emotion. "I have a girlfriend already," he announced before retreating to a place on the floor near his father's bed to resume a marathon phone call with his new sweetheart, Ambry.
As thousands of families victimized by Katrina begin the agonizing process of deciding where to piece together their broken lives, to return home or to try their luck in a new community far from the familiar, the sentiments expressed by children such as the Smith boys are bound to figure mightily.
Interviews with a dozen families and individuals in Texas in recent weeks reveal a battle being waged across cultural and experiential fault lines that will help determine the fate of New Orleans and other areas destroyed by Katrina. In the Smith family, the key factor is generational, with the young lobbying to stay, the elderly angling to return, and Ryan Smith, the 37-year-old father and a federal government employee, stuck in between.
For weeks, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin has been urging New Orleans residents to come home. But in Texas, many of the 400,000 evacuees are leaving shelter for apartments and houses and putting down roots.
In Austin, the local school district started with about 1,000 children from Katrina-affected zones. Today, more than 700 remain....
The Economics of Return
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 19, 2005; A01
NEW ORLEANS -- It was a Thursday, the first of September, just four days after Hurricane Katrina, and floodwater stood seven feet deep in the living room of Robert Bouchon's big brick house on Memphis Street in Lakeview, this city's largest middle-class, white neighborhood.
The Bouchon family, though, had already assembled an interim middle-class life on the outskirts of Houston, where Robert and his wife, Cathy, together with their three young children, had fled in their minivan.
They moved into a furnished two-bedroom apartment in a gated enclave in a suburb called Kingwood. They had enrolled the children in a Roman Catholic primary school similar to the one that was still underwater in Lakeview. They had also called State Farm Insurance to collect on their house and their BMW X3, a three-month-old SUV that was submerged in the driveway back home. They registered online for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and decided for the sake of family mental health not to watch news coverage of "the craziness" back in New Orleans.
"Everything was out of control, so we just kind of put on blinkers to our little Kingwood experience," Bouchon, 43, a soft-spoken structural engineer, said in a recent interview as he sat on a sofa in his Houston apartment.
When Katrina blew in and levees gave way, the high water, in many neighborhoods, was colorblind and classless. It clobbered Lakeview, a leafy and serene white area where longtime residents cannot remember serious flooding, as cruelly as the Lower Ninth Ward, a black neighborhood with a long, dismal history of high water.
But in New Orleans, where affluent whites live high and working-class blacks live low, the privileges of neighborhood quickly asserted themselves. For many, race and class predicted patterns of escape, dictating whether flight would be a nervous drive out of town or a caged week of torment and humiliation.
These days, as planners and politicians look ahead, many realize that the future of this city, which before the storm was more than two-thirds black and nearly one-third poor, swings on two simple questions:
Are residents coming home? If so, which ones?
It now appears that long-standing neighborhood differences in income and opportunity -- along with resentment over the ghastly exodus -- are shaping the stalled repopulation of this mostly empty city....
I will say this much: I know a few people who live, or lived, in that city. All of the white people are returning, or planning to do so, and have been thoroughly incensed at the concept that they would consider any other such thing. All of the black people ... are thinking very hard about the issue. But there, again, are some confounding effects. There's little income differential, as far as I know, between the black and white New Orleanians of my acquaintance; most would be considered middle-class professionals. The difference is, the blacks chose to live where they had family, where they had friends, where they felt the most comfortable -- in other words, they self-segregated themselves into the Lower Ninth Ward.
And then, of course, we discover that there's no problem that Congress can't make worse.
Scrambling to salvage a tough new spending reduction plan, House Republican leaders delayed a vote on deeper cuts until next week and said they would broaden their list of targets to win the GOP votes needed for passage.
The House and Senate are in the process of slicing $35 billion in mandatory spending over five years, and House GOP leaders had intended to vote today to increase the total to $50 billion. But the proposal ran into problems with conservatives, who did not think it went far enough, as well as moderate Republicans, who objected to further trims in programs such as health care for the poor and elderly, student loans, and food stamps, while discretionary spending was ignored.
Now, "everything is on the table," said Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.), one of the House leaders trying to save the steeper reductions. That means even defense and homeland security spending, which had been exempted, are subject to the ax -- a key addition that House leaders hope will attract enough votes to close the deal.
Democrats noted that the cuts are only one-half of a two-part budget exercise, the second act being a new slate of tax breaks. Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) called the GOP's effort to further cut spending "another rip-off of the middle class to give tax cuts to those at the highest end . "
The Senate, meanwhile, is struggling to meet the original $35 billion target, established this spring in the 2006 budget resolution. The budget lays out spending reduction goals for individual committees to meet, but the heavy lifting -- identifying specific cuts -- is unfolding in Congress this month.
Senate Finance Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said he remained two votes short on his committee for a package that would save $10 billion over five years, mostly from Medicare and Medicaid. His package also could include spending increases, including Medicaid assistance for Hurricane Katrina victims, along with other storm-related relief, added to the bill at the urging of Sen. Trent Lott (R), a Finance Committee member who represents storm-ravaged Mississippi.
In a conference call yesterday with Iowa reporters, Grassley said the two holdouts are Republicans who "were complaining because we were . . . spending money someplace else," instead of cutting Medicaid and other programs as deeply as possible. In response to concerns from committee GOP moderates Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) and Gordon Smith (Ore.), Grassley crafted the Medicaid reductions to avoid directly affecting beneficiaries. The committee has until Wednesday to produce its budget package...
So let me get this straight-ish: Congress, in its wisdom, is trying to cut aid for the poor at a time when, in all likelihood, the number of poor in this country has just jumped drastically, and when those in that area have even less than they did before. But a-ha! Some in Congress feel that perhaps they should exempt Katrina's victims, because making their lives even more miserable would be really just a tad gauche ... except, if I read this article correctly, there are some in Congress who simply don't care and would be perfectly happy to cut aid to Katrina's displaced poor as well.
And then, of course, there's this:
Katrina Contracts Go to Companies in Loop
By HOPE YEN
Washington Post/The Associated Press
Wednesday, October 19, 2005; 9:27 PM
WASHINGTON -- When Hurricane Katrina struck, AshBritt Inc. was well-positioned to take advantage of the torrent of government dollars that followed.
The Pompano Beach, Fla., firm had spent years cultivating its relationship with the federal government, contributing tens of thousands of dollars to the Republican Party and, more recently, hiring a powerful firm to lobby the Army Corps of Engineers on "disaster mitigation."
After Katrina hit, AshBritt was given the largest award to date _ a deal worth up to $1.1 billion from the Corps for debris removal.
It is a story of government ties that is repeated time and again for the winners of the 10 largest Katrina contracts, according to an Associated Press review. At least four of those contracts are now being reviewed for possible waste and abuse.
All 10 companies are located outside the affected Gulf Coast region, most are politically active and most got the work after a limited bidding process.
"How can the government say it is serious about reconstructing the Gulf Coast and edge out small and minority-owned businesses?" said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Homeland Security. "The only way to make sure the relief funds reach hurricane victims and damaged areas is to be aggressive about oversight."
The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Army Corps, which award the bulk of Katrina contracts, say they are committed to handing out contracts based on merit and open competition.
FEMA also has pledged to rebid four contracts worth $100 million each to politically connected firms _ Shaw Group Inc., Bechtel Corp., CH2M Hill Inc. and Fluor Corp. _ that were awarded with little or no competition. Priority will be given to small and minority-owned businesses.
But the winners of even larger Katrina deals _ those valued at $170 million or more _ will not have to rebid or renegotiate. Most of the companies had done previous work for the government, either with earlier hurricanes or in Iraq, and those existing relationships were key to winning new deals....
Tracking Katrina contracts not easy
WASHINGTON - Trying to track who’s getting what portion of the billions of dollars in federal Hurricane Katrina aid is enough to give any auditor a headache — and is a problem that critics say creates alarming gaps in public oversight.
The database of contracts is incomplete. Information released by federal agencies is spotty and sporadic. And disclosure of many no-bid contracts isn’t required by law.
“On any given day, the government is spending millions of taxpayer dollars, but we simply have no visibility on these purchases,” said Christopher Yukins, a contracting law professor at George Washington University. “They just buy from the same person year after year.” [...] The concerns have prompted several bills, including versions by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., and Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., that would require full disclosure of contract awards in one centralized database. The aim is to improve accountability by providing information such as contract terms, a contractor’s past history of spending abuse or political ties....
Given all the fun that we had regarding contracts awarded in Iraq, I suppose this shouldn't be even the tiniest bit surprising.
Posted by iain at October 24, 2005 08:32 PM
