Posted on 04/24/2008 11:14:50 AM PDT by CarmichaelPatriot
New Orleans History Post WWII - PresentIn fact, the Governor who followed Long, Richard Leche, was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison for a variety of offenses including mail fraud and tax evasion. Leche and the Long cronies perfected a variety of schemes to siphon funds from the public. According to author Mel Leavitt, “They systematically tapped Levee Board funds, diverting them to private investments.
“You are falsely implying that flood control funds were diverted to other projects. The article you cite doesn’t say that.”
LOL
It says it in the very first sentence:
“It turns out Louisiana has gotten more than its fair share of federal dollars for infrastructure but its own lawmakers thought the New Orleans levees were not a priority.
Money Flowed to Questionable Projects (WaPo, A1)
“Before Hurricane Katrina breached a levee on the New Orleans Industrial Canal, the Army Corps of Engineers had already launched a $748 million construction project at that very location. But the project had nothing to do with flood control.”
????? Am I reading it wrong?
New Orleans Levee Board Under FireLevee board under federal investigation before Katrina hit
Rampant public corruption was doing big business in New Orleans long before Hurricane Katrina ever hit. What then Congressman, now Senator David Vitter calls "corrupt, good old boy" practices were apparent in the New Orleans Levee Board just one year before the collapse of regional levees, emergency communications and government services brought the Big Easy to the brink of anarchy. In fact, Senator David Vitter requested a federal investigation into improper practices of a number of public utilities, including the New Orleans Levee Board, and a new Task Force was to have been initiated in the Baton Rouge office, beginning in July 2004.
Do you think he'd hold his punches and lose votes in order to make another president -- Republican or not -- look good.
Is it possible to be that naive?
And they say he’s not a Pander-Bear.
“So your point is what? Let’s be like them?’
No my point is to FIGHT THEM and stop abadoning the field to the enemy!! I am beginning to think you might be related to Mary Landrieu...LOL (just kiding). No reason to get nasty with each other.
opps...’abandon’....fixed it.
Louisiana Officials Could Lose the Katrina Blame Game(CNSNews.com) - The Bush administration is being widely criticized for the emergency response to Hurricane Katrina and the allegedly inadequate protection for "the big one" that residents had long feared would hit New Orleans. But research into more than ten years of reporting on hurricane and flood damage mitigation efforts in and around New Orleans indicates that local and state officials did not use federal money that was available for levee improvements or coastal reinforcement and often did not secure local matching funds that would have generated even more federal funding.
I disagree with GW Bush on a lot of things but I’m absolutely positive he would never act like this. Agree or disagree with him GW Bush is a man of honor.
Well, thanks for letting us know. Do you have a master list things, like honesty, that don't matter any more?
“He also has been seeking to show how he would be different from fellow Republican Bush, whose approval ratings are at all-time lows for his presidency.”
LOL...the reporter ‘forgot’ to mention that approval ratings for Congress’s ( of which McCain is a member) are lower than Bush’s....LMAO!!
Those were Mississippi River levees, not storm protection levees. And levees in those days were totally a local affair; there was no Federal money involved.
Yes, you are reading it wrong. Congress authorises specific water projects. Local governments have no power to divert funds.
Keesler is in Mississippi, not LA. Its damage was chiefly from storm surge. For the record, the Naval Air Station just outside New Orleans was open for business and heavly involved in relief work. It’s not my issue whether the President came or not, but there was no lack of places he could have landed.
If McCain had been president he would have sided with the hurricane.
Corps chief admits to ‘design failure’
Thursday, April 06, 2006
By Bill Walsh
Washington bureau
WASHINGTON — In the closest thing yet to a mea culpa, the commander of the Army Corps of Engineers acknowledged Wednesday that a “design failure” led to the breach of the 17th Street Canal levee that flooded much of the city during Hurricane Katrina.
Lt. Gen. Carl Strock told a Senate committee that the corps neglected to consider the possibility that floodwalls atop the 17th Street Canal levee would lurch away from their footings under significant water pressure and eat away at the earthen barriers below.
“We did not account for that occurring,” Strock said after the Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing. “It could be called a design failure.”
A botched design has long been suspected by independent forensic engineers probing the levee failures. A panel of engineering experts confirmed it last month in a report saying the “I-wall” design could not withstand the force of the rising water in the canal and triggered the breach.
But until Wednesday the corps, which designed and oversaw construction of the levees, had not explicitly taken responsibility for the mistake.
“We have now concluded we had problems with the design of the structure,” Strock told members of the subcommittee that finances corps operations. “We had hoped that wasn’t the case, but we recognize it is the reality.”
Experts from the National Science Foundation, the external review panel for the corps, said potential problems have been known for some time. They cited a 1986 corps study that warned of just such separations in the floodwalls.
But Strock told the panel that the corps was unaware of the potential hazard before Aug. 29, when Hurricane Katrina drove a massive surge of water against New Orleans’ storm-protection system. He said the corps is evaluating all the levees to see whether they, too, could fail in the same way.
“There may be other elements in the system designed that way that may have to be addressed,” Strock said.
A lawyer who has filed a class-action lawsuit over the levee failures said Strock’s statement may mean little for his case because the corps is generally immune from legal liability by virtue of a 1928 law that put the agency in the levee-building business.
“The words are heavy and important,” Joseph Bruno said. “The problem is legal impediment called immunity. It was tort reform that began in 1928.”
However, lawyer Mitchell Hoffman, who also has filed a lawsuit against the corps, said it could help his case, which seeks to sidestep the corps’ immunity by alleging the levee failure amounted to a massive government seizure of peoples’ homes and land.
“It simplifies the case significantly because we don’t have to have a battle of experts,” Hoffman said. “Now the judge can say because of the enormity, it was a taking and the government needs to pay these people for their property.”
Under questioning from Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., Strock also told the committee that the stunning $6 billion increase in the price of levee protection announced last week was prompted by a request from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to certify the levees to national flood insurance standards.
Strock said FEMA asked the corps what it would take to make the levees strong enough to withstand a 100-year flood, the standard government level for protection.
“Six billion dollars was our preliminary estimate,” Strock said. “That number should come down somewhat.”
However, Strock could not say when he might be able to fine-tune the estimate. Timing is critical because the Bush administration is evaluating how much money to request from Congress for more levee repairs. Without a White House request, FEMA says it can’t release flood maps that tell property owners whether it is safe to rebuild.
Landrieu has threatened to hold up all presidential appointments to executive branch agencies until the White House issues such a request. Louisiana lawmakers hope to include any new levee financing in the pending emergency supplemental spending bill for hurricane recovery and the war on terrorism. The bill passed a Senate panel Tuesday and is expected to reach the floor by the end of April.
. . . . . . .
Bill Walsh can be reached at bill.walsh@newhouse.com or (202) 383-7817.
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