Disenfranchised Citizen

Demolition of the B.W. Cooper

From an article on Akiit.com, also posted on New Orleans Ladder:

“Tucked away on the White House Web site under a tab labeled “Additional Issues,”you can read the renewed presidential commitment: “President Obama will keep the broken promises to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He and Vice President Biden will take steps to ensure that the federal government will never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur.”

If Obama is honoring his promise, he is also missing his target. The biggest unmet recovery issue is housing, particularly for low-income residents. It is the most glaring omission in the renewal of New Orleans city life. You can drive by blocks of blight that are either the consequence of the floods — or were like that before the storm. In the areas where the city’s “Big Four” housing projects once stood, you find, at best, partially completed (though posh) mixed-income housing developments or, at worst, gated fields of weeds.

Only 78 percent of the city’s pre-Katrina population has returned. The percentage of African Americans has dropped from 66.7 percent to 60 percent. New Orleans can now say it is less poor, but that’s because tens of thousands of low-income residents haven’t made it back to the city, and may never return. According to a report by the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center and the Brookings Institution, the number of people living below the poverty line in Orleans Parish (which encompasses the city of New Orleans) has dropped by 68,000 people.

More than $40 billion in federal disaster funding has been spent in Louisiana in the last five years. But a lot of that money has not reached residents, families and workers who have the fewest means to recover. Close to 200,000 housing units were destroyed in Louisiana by the 2005 floods, including 80,000 rental units — many subsidized for low-income workers. In New Orleans, 20 percent of damaged rental units sheltered extremely poor households. “There are many areas of unfinished business, such as meeting the demands for affordable rental housing,” the Data Center report says.”

Read the article, it’s important.

Has Obama Kept His Promise to New Orleans?

Have a nice day…

in your house, apartment, condo…

BP gave me the go-ahead to say so, on television even

Reported in the Times-Picayune this morning:

Government scientists say three-quarters of the oil from BP’s massive spill has been cleaned up or broken down by natural forces. White House energy adviser Carol Browner said on morning TV talk shows Wednesday that a new assessment found that about 75 percent of the oil has either been captured, burned off, evaporated or broken down in the Gulf of Mexico.

Interesting.

I’d even like to believe it.

The frustrating thing about statements like this are there is no way to really prove, nor disprove it. The government, British Petroleum and the NOAA have been so scarce with data regarding this spill from day one that all we have left is confusion. They set the precedent. They created the skeptics. They decided straight away they were going to put all information through a giant filter and give the public only what they felt we needed to know. It’s not that this is surprising, governments and corporations have been doing it forever, what is surprising is when they still expect to be trusted.

I realize there are two types of people in this country:

Those that believe corporations and the government have the people’s best interests at heart, their health and well-being and continually try to do the right thing to ensure the people are as well cared for as possible.

These people are often referred to as patriots.

Then there are those who believe quite the opposite, that those in power try to do what they can to maintain their power, that those with the money try to hold onto as much of it as they can, for as long as they can, that people are not the first priority, perhaps not even the second or third or fourth…

These people are often referred to as cynics or idealists.

To say that 75% of the oil is just, gone…and even if it is true, to not also relay what the unprecedented use of dispersants have potentially cost the Gulf ecosystem, well this sounds to me like more of what we’ve been reading in the mainstream press as of late, that the oil spill has been handled, much like Katrina had been handled before, so please America, stop paying attention…

So yes, I am an admitted cynic but in this instance, I would also love to be wrong.

And if I am, a quick look at the numbers:

It was not clear if she was referring to 25 percent of what gushed from the well — about 205 million gallons based on new government estimates released this week — or 25 percent of what made it into the water, about 172 million gallons. The rest was either burned, skimmed or siphoned in the days after the April 20 explosion aboard the offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon.

Using the lower number, 25 percent would be about 43 million gallons. Even if the Gulf well had leaked only that much to begin with, it would still be among the worst oil spills in history. By comparison, the Exxon Valdez tanker spill that wreaked environmental havoc in Alaska in 1989 spilled 11 million gallons.

Yeah…I’m way too cynical. Even good news in the Gulf is bad news.

Read the article,

BP plugs well with mud; feds say much of oil gone

Have a nice day…

The Gulf of Mexico...remember when that was just a boat, not a skimmer? BP, 5 billion dollar disaster profit, Cheers America, You Finally Lost the Revolutionary War!

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

With Bonnie threat gone, critical equipment has already returned to Gulf oil well site – Times Picayune

Dudley Set to Succeed Hayward at BP - Wall Street Journal

Dam fails in eastern Iowa, causing massive flooding – CNN

White House sends 2012 rescue team to Florida – Politico

US Troops Captured in Afghanistan: Report – HuffingtonPost

Germany Love Parade Tragedy: Death Toll Rises After Stampede At Festival – HuffingtonPost

Kyra Phillips Asks if Something Needs to be Done “Legally about Anonymous Bloggers’” – CNN

Researchers Confirm Subsea Gulf Oil Plumes Are From BP Well – Truthout

Everybody but Kyra Phillips…

Have a good night.

...no, not really, okay..a little bit...progress...yeah, suppose it would depend on how you define it, you know, yeah...

“White House officials say the administration’s commitment to science has not wavered.”

Interesting quote from an article in the LA Times., considering what a complete line of crap this is. Remember back in the day, when GW Bush was president and we’d read article after article how federal scientists were pressured to align their research with what the Bush administration wanted as policy? Remember when truth was really a matter of definition? Yeah..thought those days were over didn’t you. I bet a lot of people thought that after Obama became president, when government officials ordered a study of a particular problem, they would read the results of said study and then tailor policy to the recommendations of those in the know. Oops, not quite. The days of setting policy first, then tailoring science to that policy continues.

Assholes.

In this article, read about how the Obama administration has changed very little and of particular interest, read how government scientists were and are alarmed about the use of dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico, but when said scientists asked for time to analyze data, to see  how dangerous their use would be, they were rebuffed. Read how the long range damage of these dispersants aren’t known, read about the suppression of efforts to implement clean water standards, toxicology studies, the continued downplay of the effects of grazing on federal land…

Perhaps that quote should have read, “White House officials say the administration’s commitment to science has not wavered, and the White House and Coast Guard are in charge of the cleanup in the Gulf of Mexico, the banking system has been reformed, the wars have all ended and we no longer spy on citizens in these here United States of America.”

Christ…just because you say it, ass…don’t make it true.

Read on:

Scientists Expected Obama Administration to be Friendlier

Have a nice day…

Or don’t, see if I give a goddamn…sorry…this article pissed me off…

Breathe…

Okay,

Have a nice day.

I mean it.