More on Trent Lott

While I have no sympathy whatsoever for State Farm, nor any other insurance company that sought to deny Katrina claims over semantics (i.e., if Category 5 force hurricane winds lift up the goddamn Gulf and slam it into your house, is that wind or flood damage?), I also think that an acting Senator (at the time) using his stature to influence the players in a pending legal case is pretty foul.

Anyway, Wednesday night, I posted an AP news item on a State Farm attorney introducing the prospect that Trent Lott, on behalf of his brother-in-law (and in his own self-interest as a claimant in the case against State Farm), may have urged witnesses to give false information. Under questioning on the issue, Zach Scruggs invoked the 5th.

On Thursday, that attorney, Jim Robie, talked with LegalNewsLine:

"Clearly, the record couldn't be more plain that Sen. Lott and his associates were talking to people that were key advisers to Mr. Scruggs, paid consultants and those who were creating an illusion that simply doesn't have any basic fact," Robie told Legal Newsline on Thursday.

Robie said he will continue his efforts to depose both Richard and Zach Scruggs, during which he will probe the influence of Lott.

"I expect to follow-up deposition of both Zach and Dick, which will now have to take place in a federal penitentiary," Robie said. "They clearly had a close liaison with Sen. Lott."

Robie said Lott, a leading Republican, initiated contact with people surrounding this case, something unprecedented for a U.S. Senator.

"Have you ever had a U.S. Senator call you?" he asked rhetorically.

Bret Boyles, a spokesman for Lott's lobbying firm The Breaux Lott Leadership Group, told Legal Newsline the former senator had no interest in justifying the implication with a response....

...Both Zach and his father invoked their Fifth Amendment right to virtually every question asked of them during their deposition last week. The pair filed a motion Friday asking the court to seal their testimony to State Farm, claiming it could hurt them in future criminal proceedings, and compromise their Fifth Amendment rights.

"There are no seal orders," Robie said. "We filed our motions to compel and they are public record."

Lott's name surfaced during the Scruggs legal odyssey when one of the convicted attorneys testified that Scruggs instructed him to offer a bribe to influence a county circuit judge, not with cash as in the case he pleaded guilty to, but "the influence of Mr. Scruggs' brother-in-law, who was Sen. Trent Lott, to put him on a list to be considered for a federal vacancy.''

Lott did place a call to the judge, but did not nominate him, according to published reports.

Lott unexpectedly announced his resignation from the Senate just days before Richard Scruggs was indicted last November. At the time, CNN reported that Lott's resignation was due in part to an act that took effect at the end of 2007 forbidding lawmakers from lobbying for two years after leaving office.

Lott said his desire to spend more time with family, not the new law, influenced his decision to resign. Less than two months (later) he opened his lobbying firm.

Trent Lott, Witness Coach?

The Scruggs' request to have their testimony sealed was denied. So what's news? According to the AP:

An insurance company's attorney suggested during a sworn deposition that former U.S. Sen. Trent Lott urged witnesses to give false information in a Hurricane Katrina lawsuit, according to court records.

The implication was made last week during a deposition with Lott's nephew, Zach Scruggs, who represented the former Mississippi Republican senator after his Pascagoula home was destroyed by the 2005 storm. Zach Scruggs is the son and law partner of disgraced former attorney Richard ''Dickie'' Scruggs, Lott's brother-in-law.

''Has it been your custom and habit in prosecuting litigation to have Senator Lott contact and encourage witnesses to give false information?'' State Farm Fire & Casualty Cos. attorney Jim Robie asked, according to a transcript of the deposition.

''I invoke my Fifth Amendment rights in response to that question,'' Zach Scruggs responded.

Hmmm.

UPDATE: A bit more on the matter here.

Life is A Road With Lots of Signs...

...so when you're riding through the ruts, don't you complicate your mind.

- Bob Marley
Wake Up and Live

Good advice, but turns out Bob was a better man than I. The ruts have got my mind so complicated my head hurts. Yesterday, we found out that US producer prices (wholesale costs) had risen year over year by the largest amount in 27 years:

The U.S. producer price index increased 1.8% last month, after seasonal adjustments, with energy prices spurting 6% and food prices growing 1.5%, the Labor Department reported.

Over the past 12 months, the producer price index, which tracks inflation at the wholesale level, gained 9.2% -- the largest year-over-year gain since June 1981.

And, simple economics, on to whom does that increase get passed?

If you picked "the consumer" (and God, but do I hate to hear Americans described that way), you're the winner of a tiny gold star!

Today, we get word that consumer prices have also climbed, by the most in 26 17 years (Bloomberg has corrected the story):

Prices paid by U.S. consumers jumped in June by the most since 1982 on spiraling costs for fuel and food, intensifying the pressure on households struggling with falling home prices and the credit crunch.

Prices paid by U.S. consumers jumped in June by the most since 2005 on spiraling costs for fuel and food, intensifying the pressure on households struggling with falling home prices and the credit crunch.

The cost of living soared 1.1 percent, more than forecast, after a 0.6 percent gain the prior month, the Labor Department said today in Washington. Excluding food and energy, so-called core prices climbed 0.3 percent, also more than anticipated.

The figures underscore why Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke yesterday said inflation risks had ``intensified.'' The surge in energy costs has also trimmed consumer and business spending, hurting growth and making it less likely policy makers will boost interest rates to stem even bigger price increases.

``Inflation has galloped,'' Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York, said before the report. ``It puts the Fed in a really tricky position. I don't see how they can change rates this year.'' [...]

[...]Americans trimmed purchases of automobiles, furniture and restaurant meals last month as the cost of gasoline soared, a Commerce Department report showed yesterday. Retail sales rose 0.1 percent, less than forecast, a sign the boost from the tax rebate checks is already fading....

...Kimberly-Clark Corp., the maker of Huggies diapers and Scott paper towels, said earnings for this year will trail its previous forecast as expenses rise more than twice as fast as predicted, In May, the company said it would raise prices for a second time this year to counter higher costs for materials such as oil, natural gas and pulp.

UPDATE: Bloomberg has changed this story since it first appeared, softening the language. Yes, consumer prices have jumped by their highest amount since Katrina in 2005, but year-over-year, we're still looking at the largest jump in 17 years:

Prices increased 5 percent in the 12 months to June, the most since May 1991. They were forecast to climb 4.5 percent from a year earlier, according to the survey median.

Not that we needed them to tell us that. Anyone who's gone to the grocery store lately can attest to the fact that stuff just costs a whole lot more these days. Diapers. Paper towels. Food. Have you seen the price of milk? Check your electric bill, add up your monthly gas expenditures, God help you if you've got an ARM fixing to reset.

And then, retreat into your safe place, dim the lights, turn on the Bob Marley and see if you can gain some of that man's chill by sonic osmosis.

Get to Know Roger Wicker

The boys over at Cotton Mouth have been doing a really good job compiling the facts about Roger Wicker and his voting record. Suffice it to say that he's hardly been working for the people of Mississippi. In any case, rather than duplicate all the info here, let me provide you with a menu of the posts over at CM.

So, let's see....Roger "Lockstep" Wicker.....

• Opposed Federal Relief Dollars For Levees and Coastal Restoration


• Voted Against Loans To Help Katrina Victims Help Themselves


• Voted Against Providing Shelter To People Left Homeless By Hurricanes


• Reneges on Debate with Ronnie Musgrove


• Only Started Supporting The Multi-Perils Bill Once He Realized He Needed The Coast


• Opposed Accountability After Hurricane Katrina Decimated Mississippi's Gulf Coast


• Voted 'No' On Possible Solutions To Gas And Energy Prices


• Picked Inaction Over Protecting Mississippi Consumers


• and finally, his record on free trade

Good reading and valuable information to have and share. Wicker is wrong for Mississippi, wrong for America and only right for his corporate donors and the GOP who rest assured in the knowledge that he will never vote to benefit his constituents, only according to party line.

Not So Fast, Good Partner

Saw this brief but interesting piece in today's Northeast Mississippi Journal. Seems even "go to guy" Governor Barbour is getting snubbed by the Bush administration. Now Haley's still spinning on their behalf, but even he is starting to see what the Bush "response" to Katrina truly entails.

Barbour and Mississippi's congressional delegation continue to work to obtain federal funds to help about 35,000 people who either lost their homes or whose homes sustained extensive damage from the storm surge. Insurance companies say their policies do not cover the damage, although Attorney General Jim Hood of Houston is challenging that assertion in court.

Barbour gave an update on his trip to Washington, D.C., late last week where he met with Donald Powell, former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., whom President Bush appointed to work with the states on the recovery effort. [...]

[...] Bush has not included the financial help in his recovery package, although the governor said he believes strong bipartisan support exists in Congress for the proposal. Barbour said he will continue to work to convince the Bush administration to change its mind.

On that note, I'd like to also recommend to y'all the the new Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, being run out of the Institute for Southern Studies (the same good people who bring you Facing South). The launch of this site and the effort it represents is good news indeed for all who care about what happens with regard to reconstruction from here on out.

Pain, Compounded

For some Americans, the cost, the pain, the heartbreak, all of it, it will never end:

JACKSON, Miss. - Just as she was trying to rebuild her own life after Hurricane Katrina, Elaine Oneto was told by military officials that her soldier son lost his in Iraq.

1st Lt. Robert C. Oneto-Sikorski, 33, of Bay St. Louis was on a foot patrol Monday near al Haswah, an area west of Baghdad, when he was killed by a roadside bomb, military officials said.

"He was devoted to his children. He is so much more than any of us could say," Oneto said. "He was a wonderful man who loved everyone and his loss is going to devastate this whole community."

Oneoto-Sikorski was serving in Iraq with the 155th Brigade Combat Team with the mother of his children, Clare Ranger. The 155th, which is made up of about 3,500 Mississippi National Guard soldiers and others from more than a dozen states, is scheduled to begin returning in waves from Iraq by the end of the year.

While in Iraq, storm surge from the hurricane flooded both his mother"s home and his own. But in one of their last phone conversations, they looked to the future and talked about his homecoming.

"I told him, 'Please be careful, you just have two more months. You just have two more months,'" Oneto said.

The back-to-back tragedy has fueled anger for some in Oneto-Sikorski's family. Like other hurricane victims, the family has had a difficult time getting relief and his mother is still waiting for a trailer from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said his aunt, Eloise Kindja.

"What more does she have to give to the country?" Kindja asked. "She gave her only son."

But for Oneto, coping with the loss of her home has taken a backseat for now. Her grandchildren -- ages 6, 8 and 11 -- are staying with relatives near Memphis, Tenn., where they evacuated from the hurricane. She wants to make sure they remember their father.

"I'm going to do my best to make sure his kids never want for anything, and they remember him for the honorable and brave man that he was," she said.

New Column

For those of y'all who might be interested, I've got a column in the newest Jackson Free Press. I'll also be posting it to my archive site sometime in the next day or so. It deals with some disconcerting thoughts that came to mind while I was at the Mississippi Rising hurricane Katrina benefit concert at the beginning of this month.

Celebrities stood at the microphone, pouring accolades like anointing oil over the heads of the politicians in attendance. All but one of the Republicans representing the state in Washington sat front row beside and behind Griffith’s old buddy and business partner.

Democratic Reps. Bennie Thompson and Gene Taylor (both somewhat critical of the federal response to Katrina, it should be noted) were nowhere to be found. Odd, that. Amidst standing ovations, a gigantic Mississippi outline filled with a waving American flag, photo montages, star-power, and tales of Barbour’s strength and surety, a sickening feeling set in. Something distinctly manufactured was occurring, something to which I’d unwittingly become party.

It was even more acutely clear watching the rebroadcast than it had been in person. At a certain point in the evening, the mammoth screens that had been in synch with the broadcast for the first part of the show stopped showing the “TV view.” We would no longer see what America saw.

Frequent camera cutaway close-ups of Barbour, Trent Lott, Roger Wicker and Chip Pickering inter-cut with audience members’ glowing adoration cemented the effect. This was a massive GOP photo-op, something only slightly short of a rally. There was a reason it was held in Oxford; Republicans were all but guaranteed a friendly, receptive audience there. An enthusiastic crowd was crucial for success. We were coaxed thusly before airtime.

Rogers has been regularly seeding reporters with speculation of a Barbour presidential run for the last year or so. In recent weeks, Griffith crowed over Haley’s power and influence in Washington equaling Mississippi’s good fortune in Katrina’s wake. Peggy Noonan showers him with praise. All around, the familiar grind of the myth-making machine.

Boom

It's odd. I was just writing about this issue for another project and I was deeply troubled. I had no idea, though, just how pervasive the buyouts were. The coastal air so full of misery, now beset by vultures.

I understand that these folks need the money; many have been hung out to dry by their insurance companies; as many more were underinsured or without insurance at all. These are the ones I worry over. Add to this the fact that wealthy special interests will be rebuilding the destroyed areas in their own image and it all leaves a nasty taste indeed:

The Mississippi coast, wracked by Hurricane Katrina, is caught up in a real estate rush, as speculators and those looking to replace their own wrecked homes pinpoint broken and battered waterfront neighborhoods. In the weeks since the hurricane, prices of many homes -- even damaged properties -- have jumped 10 to 20 percent.

But what Katrina spared, the real estate rush now imperils. The arrival of speculators threatens what's left of bungalow neighborhoods that are among the Gulf's oldest communities, close-knit places of modest means where casino workers, fishermen and their families could still afford to live near the water.

Many, underinsured and with few alternatives, see no choice but to sell.[...]

[...]Those without flood insurance may have even fewer options and buyer Dan Triplett expects many will sell quickly. Triplett, owner of Gulf Coast House Buyers, buys and sells property and has been particularly busy since the storm.

He'll buy storm damaged property or nearly vacant lots for next to nothing. While real estate brokers find top-dollar buyers, Triplett makes cash deals or pays off mortgages in exchange for land.

"I deal with the other part of the spectrum of the market: people who don't necessarily care to get full price but they need to sell quickly," said Triplett, who said most of his post-Katrina business has come from retirees and those who lost their jobs.

In the coming months, as severance pay runs out for casino workers, Triplett expects a "mass exodus" of people looking to sell quickly and leave. [...]

[..]Casino employee Gene Ganucheau, whose home on the east side of Biloxi was hurled from its foundation and pulverized into little more than scrap lumber and metal, is banking on that. Ganucheau, 53, collected what he could, found a "For Sale" sign he once used to sell his car, posted it in the front yard and began taking phone calls.

Ganucheau hasn't sold yet. He thinks Mississippi will allow casinos to rebuild inland and he expects the blue-collar neighborhood to become one of luxury condominiums and casino property.

"Someone's going to buy us up, that and everyone else in the neighborhood," he said.

There's precedent for such a transformation. A year after Hurricane Charley ravaged much of Charlotte County, Florida, real estate agents say housing prices jumped as much as 30 percent as investors and new buyers gobbled up beachfront property.

Whatever it takes, the poor and working class are forever being priced out of the market. My own town, so far removed from the coast and the disaster both has already been so torn asunder and rebuilt to suit the whims of a wealthy vacationer class that our police officers, teachers, and firefighters can no longer afford to live here. This is to say nothing of the cultural blow served by the influx of so much money and all whom are pushed out of its way.

Give these people a blank slate on the coast and there will be no middle class to speak of down there. Mark my words.

The Usual Suspects

So much corruption it makes your head swim? No worries. Salon's War Room has a good summation of some of the Grand Old Party's biggest criminals and ne'er-do-wells (for now), to help you keep track:

Tom DeLay: The House majority leader was indicted today on a felony charge that he conspired to launder corporate campaign contributions through the national Republican Party in Washington and back to legislative candidates in Texas.

Bill Frist: The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are both investigating the Senate majority leader's sale of shares in his family's healthcare business just before the stock's value plummeted in June.

Jack Abramoff: The Republican super-lobbyist, known to have bragged about his contacts with Karl Rove, was indicted in Florida last month along with his business partner on wire fraud and conspiracy fraud charges related to their purchase of a fleet of gambling boats. This week, three men were arrested -- including two who received payments from Abramoff's business partner -- in the Mafia-style killing of the man from whom Abramoff and his partner purchased the gambling boats.

David Safavian: The president's chief procurement officer stepped down two weeks ago and was arrested last week on charges of lying to investigators and obstructing a separate federal investigation into Abramoff's dealings in Washington. Some Republicans who received campaign contributions from Safavian are divesting themselves of his money now.

Timothy Flanigan: The president's nominee to serve as deputy attorney general has announced that he will have to recuse himself from the Abramoff investigation if he is confirmed because he hired Abramoff to help the company where he works -- scandal-ridden Tyco International Ltd. -- lobby DeLay and Rove on tax issues.

Michael Brown: The president's FEMA director resigned earlier this month amid complaints about his handling of Hurricane Katrina and charges that he and other FEMA officials got their jobs based on political connections and cronyism rather than competence or qualifications.

Bob Taft: The Republican governor of Ohio pleaded guilty last month to criminal charges based on his failure to report gifts as required by state law, among them golfing trips paid for by Tom Noe, a major Republican fundraiser who is the subject of his own scandal regarding the state's investment in $50 million in rare coins, some of which have mysteriously gone missing.

Randy "Duke" Cunningham: A federal grand jury in San Diego is investigating allegations that the veteran Republican congressman received financial favors from a defense contractor who allegedly bought Cunningham's house at an inflated price and let him live for free on the contractor's 42-foot yacht.

And then there's Karl Rove and Scooter Libby. The grand jury investigating the outing of Valerie Plame is scheduled to complete its work in late October. While neither Rove nor Libby is apparently a "target" of the investigation -- and while the "corruption" in Plamegate is moral rather than financial -- both men are known to have played a role in revealing or confirming Plame's identity in conversations with reporters, which may be a crime under federal law.

Undoubtedly more to come....stay tuned.

This is Still Not America

Good. More ugly precedent. Heavily armed mercanaries, beholden to no one, on the streets of an American city. By way of The Nation, Blackwater Down:

The men from Blackwater USA arrived in New Orleans right after Katrina hit. The company known for its private security work guarding senior US diplomats in Iraq beat the federal government and most aid organizations to the scene in another devastated Gulf. About 150 heavily armed Blackwater troops dressed in full battle gear spread out into the chaos of New Orleans. Officially, the company boasted of its forces 'join[ing] the hurricane relief effort.' But its men on the ground told a different story.

Some patrolled the streets in SUVs with tinted windows and the Blackwater logo splashed on the back; others sped around the French Quarter in an unmarked car with no license plates. They congregated on the corner of St. James and Bourbon in front of a bar called 711, where Blackwater was establishing a makeshift headquarters. From the balcony above the bar, several Blackwater guys cleared out what had apparently been someone's apartment. They threw mattresses, clothes, shoes and other household items from the balcony to the street below. They draped an American flag from the balcony's railing. More than a dozen troops from the 82nd Airborne Division stood in formation on the street watching the action.

Armed men shuffled in and out of the building as a handful told stories of their past experiences in Iraq. 'I worked the security detail of both Bremer and Negroponte,' said one of the Blackwater guys, referring to the former head of the US occupation, L. Paul Bremer, and former US Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte. Another complained, while talking on his cell phone, that he was getting only $350 a day plus his per diem. 'When they told me New Orleans, I said, 'What country is that in?'' he said. He wore his company ID around his neck in a case with the phrase Operation Iraqi Freedom printed on it.

Go read the whole thing. Wonder if they'll be comandeering apartments in Houston, too. Guess we'll see.

An Example to the World.

A shining city upon a hill and all that. As I'd heard someone remark when the poor of Louisiana and Mississippi were left by the powers that be to die, "We're showin' the world our ass now...." From the Guardian UK::

"US-style ghetto segregation in Britain 'could be getting worse', the former head of the Commission for Racial Equality, Lord Ousley, said today [...]

[...] On Thursday, Mr Phillips will tell the Manchester Council for Community Relations that the "nightmare" of "fully fledged ghettos" - similar to those in New Orleans whose existence was highlighted by Hurricane Katrina - could emerge in this country. [...]

[...] The minister for constitutional affairs, Harriet Harman, agreed that some of Britain's black and poor communities were beginning to resemble those in the US.

"We don't want to get into a situation like America - but if you look at the figures we are already looking like America," she told the Independent. "In London, poor, young and black people don't register to vote."[...]

[...] Mr Phillips admits his message is "bleak", but says the UK must heed the lessons of Hurricane Katrina.

"The fact is that we are a society which - almost without noticing it - is becoming more divided by race and religion," he will say.

Those lucky Iraqis.

'Reckless and Irresponsible'

Quickly, quickly, now. Everyone stand like you were...before. Make like nothing's happened.

The urge to "get back to normal" is well understood and empathized with, but to rush people back into an environmental mess of absolutely historic proportions--inside Cancer Alley to begin with--is just wrong. AP reports:

A new health risk emerged Friday from the sediment of New Orleans - test results showing that diesel and fuel oils, which can take years to break down, make up as much as a 10th of the weight of some sediment samples.

The test results came from 18 sediment samples drawn Sept. 10 from across the New Orleans area, where there have been five flood-related oil spills since Hurricane Katrina struck Aug. 29.

Earlier tests turned up dangerous amounts of sewage-related bacteria and lead in floodwaters and more than 100 chemical pollutants.

The Environmental Protection Agency said Friday it also found E. coli bacteria in the sediment - the residue left from water, soil from backyards and road and construction debris - as well as slightly elevated levels of arsenic and lead. It didn't report the levels of E. coli bacteria, and there's no health standard for how much E. coli can be in soil or sediment. [...]

Fuel oils such as kerosene, jet fuel, range oil and home heating oil irritate the skin and, if breathed, cause nausea, headaches, increased blood pressure, light-headedness, appetite loss, poor coordination and difficulty concentrating. Breathing diesel-fuel vapors for long periods can cause kidney damage and lower the blood's ability to clot.

William Farland, EPA's acting science adviser, said he was not seeing anything in the sediment that suggests a big public health risk, "as long as people are careful to remove the sediment, keep it from getting on their bare skin and clean it off if they do."

New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said this week he expects some of the city's neighborhoods to reopen and up to 180,000 people to move back over the next two weeks as electricity and water are restored .

180,000 people walking into this toxic slop, with the EPA basically telling them to be sure and wash up, and all will be well. Why do I have such a sense of deja vu? Oh yeah. Shades of Ground Zero.

Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at EPA who has been a longtime whistleblower within the agency, called it "reckless and irresponsible" for EPA to imply that people moving back into New Orleans will be safe.

While EPA has conducted limited monitoring by aircraft of air pollution in New Orleans, Kaufman said there has not been an environmental assessment of all of the contaminants in the air "to allow the public back in, especially without respirators and other protective gear."

"This is the same situation that occurred in New York City after the Twin Towers came down," he said. "It's as outrageous as when (former EPA Administrator Christie) Whitman went on record just days after the attacks and said the air was OK to breathe."

Dollar Bill Y'all

By way of Facing South, exactly the sort of financial fallout to which I was referring some posts back:

Jerry and Deborah Alciatore fled New Orleans with nothing but a couple of overnight bags, an ice chest and their credit cards. The bags emptied quickly, but two weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit, the balance on the credit cards is mounting fast.

Their first week on the road, they charged $1,600 in food and hotel bills in Houston, about $400 worth of clothing, mostly from discount stores, and a couple hundred more on gasoline.

Jerry Alciatore splurged $1,200 on a laptop to keep in touch with employees of his small architectural firm, pushing the credit card bill to about $5,000. They'll soon have to make another mortgage payment on their house in Metarie, which was damaged but not destroyed by 3 feet of floodwater.

It should be noted that many homeowners' insurance policies do not include flood damage in their umbrella coverage. In Mississippi, for example, State Attorney General Jim Hood has brought suit against insurance companies claiming damage from Katrina was flood damage and therefore not covered:

Hood filed a lawsuit Thursday in Hinds County Chancery Court seeking a temporary restraining order against all insurance companies with policies that insure against property loss and damage from storms and hurricanes, but exclude loss or damage from water.

"They are taking advantage of people in dire strait," Hood said of the insurance companies. "Some are trying to do the right thing, but you have some trying to use the exclusion."

Insurance industry officials said if the lawsuit is successful, it will destroy the viability of every insurance policy in the state and undermine every legal contract in the nation.

"The flood loss exclusion in homeowners' policies is clearly worded, has existed for decades and has withstood previous legal and political challenges," Property Casualty Insurers Association President Ernie Csiszar said in a statement. "We're outraged by this attempt to retroactively rewrite policies so that every risk will be covered, regardless of the cost to millions of American consumers."

Hood's lawsuit comes as an insurance company is lobbying Congress to create a fund that would allow the federal government to help cover natural disaster-related claims.

Back to the unfortunate story of the Alciatores. Though it matters little, the article fails to mention whether or not they have insurance....

"I'm worried. We have about a one-month gap where my income will be cut off and so will my wife's," he said. "I have to see if my business is still going to be OK. We're going to be out of our house for maybe three months, but I have a mortgage payment every month, and now we have to rent an apartment."

The Alciatores are quick to say they are lucky compared to others who suffered so much more. They consider themselves middle class, maybe upper middle class.

Still, financial experts say the couple is right to be worried. The Alciatores and other Katrina victims who thought they were financially secure must keep their debt in check while facing huge relocation costs and uncertainty about their income. It's not easy.

"People in a crisis are not thinking clearly. Their emotions take over, and that's not a good place to be when it comes to your finances," said Deb Outlaw, a CPA and financial planner in Dallas. "Sometimes they feel like they have to get back to what they had before the disaster, but they need to be patient."

Like much else surrounding Katrina, the financial aftermath is a story of haves and have-nots.

Again, as many Americans think themselves more affluent they they actually are, many more poeple think they can afford to finance their recovery this way than actually can. Pile on the bankruptcy law restricitions and the inability of even disaster victims to find some repireve and you begin laying the foundations for some horrible, horrible economic realities...for the have nots, of course.

WHO on the Coming Pandemic

More on the bird flu:

Avian flu will mutate and become transmissible by humans and the world has no time to lose to stop it becoming a pandemic, the head of the U.N. World Health Organization said on Thursday.

Lee Jong-wook, a South Korean doctor, delivered his stark warning as the United States worked to rally states behind a new U.S. plan to fight the disease, which has already killed more than 60 people in Asia and spread to Russia and Europe.

'Human influenza is coming, we know that, and no government, no leaders can afford to be caught off-guard,' Lee said.

'We must pounce on human pandemic outbreaks with all medicines at our disposal and at the earliest possible moment,' he told a news conference in New York.

'When the pandemic starts, it is simply too late.'"

It seems our own President is beginning to see the threat, too. Or, more likely, in the face of an unmitigated, disastrous failure in responding to the devastation of Katrina, Karl Rove sees the writing on the wall and knows he needs Bush to at the very least pay some lip service to the threat so as not to seem totally clueless:

U.S. President George W. Bush unveiled a plan at the United Nations on Wednesday under which countries and international agencies would pool resources and expertise to fight bird flu.

His International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza reflects growing concern that avian flu could becomes a human pandemic, a threat Bush said the world must not allow.

It's the first I've heard of this. If it's anything more than fluff and PR, I'll be shocked, but I'll withhold judgment until I see some specifics. For now it's more of the same old yada yada. From the transcript of Bush's announcement:

As we strengthen our commitments to fighting malaria and AIDS, we must also remain on the offensive against new threats to public health such as the Avian Influenza. If left unchallenged, this virus could become the first pandemic of the 21st century. We must not allow that to happen. Today I am announcing a new International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza. The Partnership requires countries that face an outbreak to immediately share information and provide samples to the World Health Organization. By requiring transparency, we can respond more rapidly to dangerous outbreaks and stop them on time. Many nations have already joined this partnership; we invite all nations to participate. It's essential we work together, and as we do so, we will fulfill a moral duty to protect our citizens, and heal the sick, and comfort the afflicted.

I do hope there's some sort of substance to this. An avian flu pandemic would make the death count of the Asian tsunami pale in comparison.

Compare and Contrast

Though Governor Haley Barbour seems quite happy with the Federal response in this state, and though both people and the press are talking about how he received preferential treatment from the president in the immediate aftermath of Katrina, the whole thing is a sham.

The real truth is simply that Barbour is, of course, a GOP Uber Alles type of hack; always has been, always will. That it becomes so plainly relevant and clear in the aftermath of this disaster is worst of all. The other day, USA Today examined the two different experiences --obviously partisan driven-- of the governors of Louisiana and Mississippi with regards to the federal response to FEMA. Whereas Gov. Blanco was in a never ending runaround and game of phone tag, trying desperately to reach the president while New Orleans filled with water, Barbour, my own unfortunate Governor--because of his tight bond with the administration--claims a much different state of affairs for him:

Barbour hasn't had to wait hours to talk to Bush. In fact, Barbour said in an interview with USA TODAY, the president called him three to four times in the wake of Katrina. "I never called him. He always called me," he said.

Wow, Gub'ner, aren't you so cool and special....Why, look, even your longtime partner in crime thinks you're the man:

Ed Rogers, Barbour's longtime friend and business partner, says Barbour "has a very sophisticated working knowledge of this administration and this city (Washington).

He knows what people can do and what they can't do. He knows who to call, and they know him."

Hey Ed, how's that war profiteering working out for ya? Bet you'd hate to see anyone do something as cowardly as set a timetable for withdrawl.

Anyway, we're to equate the Federal response to Katrina in Mississippi being what it is because of Haley's "in" with the current administration. We're so lucky. He's one of the boys., Why, he's a former RNC chairman and high-powered fat-cat lobbyist. And to hear him tell it, the Feds are doing a bang up job:

The onetime party leader declined to comment on Republican plans to push for tax cuts despite mounting federal deficits driven by Katrina and the Iraq war.

"I just haven't got anything to do with it," he says of the national agenda. "I got a full-time job down here."

Upbeat and good-natured, Barbour also has refused to express much frustration with a federal relief operation even Bush acknowledged was flawed. He repeatedly says the federal government has been "a good partner."

Bush offered Mississippi as well as Louisiana a federal takeover of relief efforts. "I told him we didn't need it," Barbour says, "that we were doing well."

I've noted earlier Barbour's satisfaction with the federal relief efforts on the coast, and he's the first one to applaud their efforts as thorough and satisfactory. It's 'cause he and the Pres are such close buds, y'see.

Meanwhile, back in the Reality Based Community, people are screwed. We keep reading first-hand accounts that clash wildly with Haley's assertions, such as this piece by Karen Lash, an attorney who went down to the Mississippi Coast to offer free legal assistance to hurricane victims, writing in Salon yesterday:

[...] when I arrived in Gulfport on Saturday, I was simply not prepared for what I saw. Chaos, devastation and an apparent inability to deliver the most basic help to so many people in so much despair. It was day 13 after Katrina struck, and no one was coordinating the relief effort in one of the poorest communities along the coast.

We never found a resident who had ever seen even one FEMA official. No one had been able to successfully complete "Registration Intake" via the talebearer number. Most people we met still didn't have electricity or phone service. We finally heard of one man who got through to FEMA -- at 2:30 a.m. But when asked for insurance information he didn't have and didn't know how he could get since he'd lost everything and had no place else to turn, he just broke down and cried. The bureaucracy was killing him.

FEMA and signs of the federal response Haley crows about are still nowhere to be found for a great many Mississippians. People are scrounging for the most basic life-sustaining supplies. The "faith-based administration" has left it to the churches to pick up their slack. And party hack Barbour is only too willing to play along. Far be it from him to cast aspersions on Bush. No, there's too much at stake here.

The fate of his fellow Mississippians? Well, not exactly:

Barbour, 57, took a 20-year detour to Washington, where he developed close ties to President Bush and other important Republicans as a White House political director, national party chairman and high-powered lobbyist.

He's said and done nothing in the past two weeks that stands to damage a career that could be headed for a White House bid. "He's managing to at least look authoritative," says Marty Wiseman, executive director of the Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University. "So far, he gets a passing grade from most people."

New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani set the standard for disaster management after 9/11, projecting a compelling mix of command and vulnerability. Some analysts liken Barbour to Giuliani.

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, calls Barbour "the only political figure to gain" from the Katrina fiasco. "A Giuliani-Barbour ticket in 2008? Or is it Barbour-Giuliani?" he wondered.

As if. We have a strong sense of memory in the South. It's inherent, nearly genetic. More from Lash:

We stopped first at the Good Deeds Community Center, which was serving hot meals and distributing donated goods to hundreds of North Gulfport and Turkey Creek residents. Red Cross volunteers told us the Florida church that had been feeding more than 600 residents two hot meals a day was leaving on Sunday and asked if we could track down another mobile kitchen. Without a second thought, we set out to help. But this was crucial stuff. Why were we doing it? Where was FEMA?

That effort had us going to area churches -- where we found similar stories. Arkansas church members set up at the Grace Memorial Baptist Church had been serving up hundreds of hot meals since Thursday. They were almost out of food, leaving on Monday, but offered us their several hundred peanut butter and jelly sandwich surplus. We gratefully took it.

Another church in Ocean Springs didn't have a kitchen or cleaning supplies but could send new clothes and canned goods in a truck returning to Kentucky. Everywhere we went people asked for bleach -- both to kill the bacteria from raw sewage so they could safely take a bath, and also to stop the spread of black mold that was swallowing the walls of those fortunate enough to still have a home.

The sympathetic workers in the county courthouse had few ideas for us. When asked where FEMA was, one responded, "Your guess is as good as mine."

Yeah. Your guess is as good as mine. But all is fine with the Governor. God forbid he should try to leverage that smarmy influence for the betterment of those who are supposedly his people.

Running the Disaster

If we're bringing criminal charges against those whose negligence cost the lives of the poor elderly folks at St. Rita's Nursing home--ostensibly for dereliction of their duty to protect the residents of the home--there's plenty more indicting and, God willing, prosecuting to come. Starting right at the top. From KR comes a blistering report on a memo DHS Secretary Chertoff sent....late on the Tuesday after the storm:

"The Chertoff memo indicates that the response to Katrina wasn't left to disaster professionals, but was run out of the White House, said George Haddow, a former deputy chief of staff at FEMA during the Clinton administration and the co-author of an emergency management textbook.

'It shows that the president is running the disaster, the White House is running it as opposed to Brown or Chertoff,' Haddow said. Brown 'is a convenient fall guy. He's not the problem really. The problem is a system that was marginalized.'

A former FEMA director under President Reagan expressed shock by the inaction that Chertoff's memo suggested. It showed that Chertoff 'does not have a full appreciation for what the country is faced with - nor does anyone who waits that long,' said Gen. Julius Becton Jr., who was FEMA director from 1985-1989.

'Anytime you have a delay in taking action, there's a potential for losing lives,' Becton told Knight Ridder. 'I have no idea how many lives we're talking about. ... I don't understand why, except that they were inefficient.'"

The Proverbial Nail

The Financial Times (subscription-only) hits the nail smack dab on the head. This entire catastrophe is a visual representation--with all attendant disastrous consequences--of how an America governed by"conservative" principles responds to a crisis that cannot be addressed by military aggression.

For the past quarter century in Washington, since the Republican Ronald Reagan rode a conservative backlash all the way to the presidency, US politics has been dominated by the conviction that what was wrong with America would be solved by getting government off the people's backs. [...]

[...] With the New Deal in the 1930s, helping those who could not help themselves became a mission that spawned a vast expansion of government's role. After a generation of determined effort the conservative movement has succeeded in squelching that mission. In the aftermath of Katrina, its success appears to have come at high cost."

Vacationing Through an Apocalypse

Howell Raines, former NY Times Editor, tears a hole in the president in this column from yesterday's LA Times. Not sure how I missed this one:

Certainly the sacrifices of New Orleans need a kind of national reckoning, one that would enable the people to see the president who forgot to care for what he is. Every great disaster — the Blitz, 9/11, the tsunami — has a political dimension. The dilatory performance of George Bush during the past week has been outrageous. Almost as unbelievable as Katrina itself is the fact that the leader of the free world has been outshone by the elected leaders of a region renowned for governmental ineptitude.

Louisiana's anguished governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, climbed into a helicopter at the first possible moment to survey what may become the worst weather-related disaster in American history. Even Gov. Haley R. Barbour of Mississippi, a tiresome blowhard as chairman of the Republican National Committee, has shown a throat-catching public sorrow and sleepless diligence that put Bush to shame.

While I'd written earlier of my outrage over Governor Barbour--indeed all the governmental apparatus; local, state and federal--enacting no plan to rescue those whom they all knew would have no means to evacuate on their own, I know he is not unmoved by the disaster that has struck this state. I also think he knows how horribly he'd screwed up the planning; whether it was rooted in callousness, ineptidude, or naivete, perhaps we'll never know. He'll never admit as much, of course. Still, his response to the tragedy was practically Churchilian compared to the forever AWOL Bush; though only when in that juxtaposition. The point remains: Bush has been and remains entirely irrelevant to this situation.

This president who flew away Monday to fundraisers in the West while the hurricane blew away entire towns in coastal Mississippi is very much his father's son. George H.W. Bush couldn't quite connect to the victims of Hurricane Andrew, nor did he mind being photographed tooling his golf cart around Kennebunkport while American troops died in the first Iraq war. After preemptively declaring a state of emergency, the younger Bush seemed equally determined to show his successors how to vacation through an apocalypse.

On Tuesday, he urged people to stay where they were, even if their evacuation residence might be the leaking-roof, clogged-toilet Superdome. On Wednesday, as he met by intercom with his emergency team and decided to return to Washington, as Pentagon and Homeland Security promised relief by the weekend, intensive-care patients were dying at Charity Hospital in New Orleans. They had languished for two full days because the overworked Coast Guard helicopter crews available in New Orleans did not have time to reach them.

The populism of Huey Long was financially corrupt, but when it came to the welfare of people, it was caring. The churchgoing cultural populism of George Bush has given the United States an administration that worries about the House of Saud and the welfare of oil companies while the poor drown in their attics and their sons and daughters die in foreign deserts.

The View From Barthelme

Frederick Barthelme, writing from Hattiesburg, MS, 70 miles inland.

In Hattiesburg, our Hurricane Katrina was a land-based Category 2 storm with sustained 100-mile-per-hour winds. Our trees were knocked silly, shingles and even whole roofs were lifted off buildings, stores were blown out as if bombed, old buildings collapsed, gas stations were mauled. But mostly what I see now, in the aftermath of the storm, is people driving around in their S.U.V.'s, going slowly, as if on parade, witnessing the drama. If New Orleans, post-storm, is a new third-world country, Hattiesburg is more like an old bombing range the Air Force recommissioned in the last 15 minutes.

Hattiesburg is today home to 50,000 or more evacuees. I'm making up this number, but it can't be far off. We're right on the main routes north out of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. People who are hopeful or tired or just don't know much about hurricanes think it's safe to stop here. It isn't, of course. We have our own dead - not so many as the coast or New Orleans, but just as dead.

Here too, at the Mississippi-Tennessee border, we have refugees as well. One of the local churches close to the Square has been set up as a Red Cross shelter. Those of you who are in Mississippi or within close enough distance to do so, they need money, canned food, and volunteers, toiletries. Back to Barthelme:

Without power and water, Hattiesburg becomes a sweat palace, a 100,000-person sauna, and everyone who can be in his or her car is in his or her car, where the air, thank God, is still conditioned. At least as long as the gas holds out, which, from the look of things, isn't going to be all that long. By Thursday afternoon the lines at the pumps are beyond silly, past ludicrous, all the way to ridiculous. Yesterday you waited three hours if you were lucky. Today it's six hours, and a line of 200 cars circling up an off-ramp from Highway 59. And the word is that the government - federal, state, city, who knows? - is taking over the gas allocation tomorrow.

But if they have the gas, the people are out touring the devastation - four, five sometimes six to a car. Most beautiful among the sights are the great downed trees, bringing a stately majesty to our streets, something like what the sculptor Mark di Suvero might have done in his heyday, which I don't quite remember now. He is the guy who made art out of giant tree trunks and he would be happy here today. The avenues are littered with exquisitely poised trees - tilted, angled, jilted, twisted, spun, splintered, bent over, transformed by the storm into great barricades, graceful arches, lovely bridges over roads. It's as if God got tired and tossed a God-sized handful of these 80-foot pine trees, pick-up-sticks fashion, on our town.

The good news was that the storm came in the daylight, when you could at least see as your house was about to be crushed by falling timber (mine, fortunately, was relatively unscathed). Early Monday morning, when those "outer bands" that the TV announcers like to remark on hit us, the power was still on, so we had the TV to guide us, to hold our hand, to show us the infrared, convection, visible satellite imagery, radar and other views, all of which we took in somberly, all of which seemed to say that we were spectacularly badly placed for the hurricane's passage north.

As I'd mentioned with the superficiality it deserves, Katrina came through up here as well doing relatively no damage at all. Our power was back on the next day, and aside from losing some trees, the effects paled in comparison.

The Gulf Coast is a wreck. It looks like that documentary film you always see about the power of the atom bomb, everything just blown away, houses reduced to debris, a rubble-land, buildings razed as if by one of the companies that do that for a living. And the Mississippi Gulf Coast casinos, which are, by ordinance, floating things, three-story barges heaped with gaudy neon, have been tossed like the fat cats they are up onto the shore, crushing everything in their path.

One, the Grand Casino in Gulfport, with which I have a dark history, got its just desserts when it was thrown into the middle of Highway 90. There it sits, in the helicopter footage, like a big useless slab of suet, bringing its many benefits to the state. The nastiest remark I heard was from someone who, on hearing the bad luck of the casinos being destroyed, said that they were all no doubt insured to the gills, and that they would probably make money on this, too. Too, he said. He was a man after my own heart.

You know they will. Go read the whole thing. It's worth your time.

Godspeed

Not Katrina or incompetence related, but a tragedy nonetheless. R.L. Burnside passed away in Memphis yesterday. Tip a glass to the man.