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#1 stocks

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Posted 03 February 2008 - 06:07 PM

The judge issued a stinging condemnation of the Corps, saying the agency "cast a blind eye" in protecting New Orleans and "squandered millions of dollars in building a levee system ... which was known to be inadequate by the Corps' own calculations."

But, Duval said, "it is not within the Court's power to address the wrongs committed. It is hopefully within the citizens of the United States' power to address the failures of our laws and agencies."

Breaches at both the 17th Street and London Avenue canals allowed floodwaters to inundate large areas of the city. Plaintiffs lawyers knew they faced a daunting task because the canals were, over time, used as flood control projects by the Corps.

They tried to bypass the immunity issue by claiming that the Corps used the canals as drainage projects and that the levee failures were brought about by canal dredging.

"I knew we had an uphill battle, but we had to do it," plaintiffs lawyer Joseph Bruno said. "It's an outrage. Read the opinion: The judge reads through all the negligence by the Corps, but says he had to rule the way he had to."

The ruling was another blow to the residents of New Orleans, where loathing for the Corps continues unabated.

"This cost people's lives and property," said Gwen Bierria, 66, who is still living in a government-issued trailer and is among the tens of thousands of people who have filed claims against the federal government for damage from the levee breaches.

"Anybody that calls themselves the Army Corps of Engineers should be embarrassed," she said.

Activists said they would not give up on holding the Corps accountable.

"We will stick with our mission of education that this was the worst engineering failure since Chernobyl," said Sandy Rosenthal, founder of Levees.org, a group that has lobbied for overhauling the Corps.

Since Katrina, calls for a makeover of the Corps have gained momentum, and the agency, which has acknowledged mistakes, has re-evaluated its procedures for picking and designing projects.

Duval agreed that legal and bureaucratic change is required.

"The byzantine funding and appropriation methods for this undertaking were in large part a cause of this failure," the judge said, referring to the politics-riddled process Congress has for funding Corps projects.

The Flood Control Act is counterproductive, Duval said, because it negates incentives for good government workmanship and creates an environment where "gross incompetence receives the same treatment as simple mistake."

http://hosted.ap.org...EMPLATE=DEFAULT
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Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change, 
UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.
 

#2 stocks

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Posted 14 July 2014 - 08:43 AM

Popular Mechanics Takes on Katrina Myths

PM took on virtually all of the media myths and misnomers that were so drilled into the citizenry by press representatives that many have become part of the public psyche. Thankfully, its authors made it clear right in the first paragraph that they planned on pulling no punches:

“In the months since the storm, many of the first impressions conveyed by the media have turned out to be mistaken.”



Myth #1: “'The aftermath of Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history.’—Aaron Broussard, president, Jefferson Parish, La., Meet the Press, NBC, Sept. 4, 2005”

In fact, the response to Hurricane Katrina was by far the largest—and fastest-rescue effort in U.S. history, with nearly 100,000 emergency personnel arriving on the scene within three days of the storm’s landfall.”

Myth #2: “'This is a once-in-a-lifetime event.’—New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin, press conference, Aug. 28, 2005”

“Though many accounts portray Katrina as a storm of unprecedented magnitude, it was in fact a large, but otherwise typical, hurricane. On the 1-to-5 Saffir-Simpson scale, Katrina was a midlevel Category 3 hurricane at landfall. Its barometric pressure was 902 millibars (mb), the sixth lowest ever recorded, but higher than Wilma (882mb) and Rita (897mb), the storms that followed it.

Myth #4: “'They have people … been in that frickin’ Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people.’—New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Sept. 6, 2005”

In reality, although looting and other property crimes were widespread after the flooding on Monday, Aug. 29, almost none of the stories about violent crime turned out to be true:
“‘The vast majority of people [looting] were taking food and water to live,’ says Capt. Marlon Defillo, the New Orleans Police Department’s commander of public affairs. ‘There were no killings, not one murder.’ As for sniper fire: No bullet holes were found in the fuselage of any rescue helicopter.”

Myth #7: “‘You have a major energy network that is down … We could run out of gasoline or diesel or jet fuel in the next two weeks here.’—Roger Diwan, managing director, Oil Markets Group, PFC Energy, Business Week, Sept. 1, 2005”

Some of the worst media reporting surrounding this hurricane was directly related to energy prices. In fact, we quickly heard how this was going to cause massive job cuts around the country, lead to a recession, send gasoline to $5 per gallon, and kill the Christmas shopping season.

Much like most economic predictions from the media, none of these prognostications materialized.



Read more: http://newsbusters.o...s#ixzz37Rx0ixhn
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Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change, 
UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.
 

#3 stocks

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Posted 18 July 2014 - 02:04 PM

The judge issued a stinging condemnation of the Corps, saying the agency "cast a blind eye" in protecting New Orleans and "squandered millions of dollars in building a levee system ... which was known to be inadequate by the Corps' own calculations."

The byzantine funding and appropriation methods for this undertaking were in large part a cause of this failure," the judge said, referring to the politics-riddled process Congress has for funding Corps projects.

LSU and a state agency paid former coastal researcher Ivor van Heerden $435,000 to settle court claims that his LSU career was destroyed because he alleged engineering mistakes allowed New Orleans to flood during Hurricane Katrina,

The expert in geology and marine science publicly alleged in 2005 that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers caused New Orleans to flood during Katrina’s assault by designing and building levees that were “way too shallow.”

That lack of depth, van Heerden said, caused the structures to buckle and sag, permitting the storm surge to drown hundreds of New Orleans-area residents.



http://theadvocate.c...an-heerden-case
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Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change, 
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Posted 16 February 2015 - 09:02 AM

2006 - NBC News and Brian Williams win the prestigious Peabody Award for coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

2015 - WashPost Finds More Brian Williams Myths

“We were desperate for food and drink. But not like the people we were seeing in the streets,” he said in the [2006 prime-time] documentary “In His Own Words: Brian Williams on Hurricane Katrina.”

“I remember seeing a box of Slim Jims and thinking, ‘That’s better than any restaurant meal right now. That’s the greatest thing I’ve ever seen,’” he said.

However, there was abundant food at the Ritz-Carlton, according to DeGersdorff. The hotel was stocked for a fully booked weekend, and it set out buffet breakfasts, lunches and dinners each day.

The Post also underlined that Williams never mentioned his wild claims – the dysentery, the gangs overrunning his hotel – in his blogs or newscasts at the time.

The credibility of his claims is undercut by the fact that Williams appears to have made no mention of them during his frequent appearances on news programs during the storm or in the daily blog posts he wrote while in New Orleans.

Williams stayed at the Ritz-Carlton hotel situated at the edge of the French Quarter. Myra DeGersdorff, who managed the hotel at the time, said in an interview that “by no means had gangs overrun the hotel.”


http://newsbusters.o...-williams-myths

http://www.today.com...s/#.VOHy24Io5jo
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Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change, 
UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.
 

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Posted 28 August 2015 - 07:43 AM

2006 - NBC News and Brian Williams win the prestigious Peabody Award for coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

2015 - WashPost Finds More Brian Williams Myths

The Post also underlined that Williams never mentioned his wild claims – the dysentery, the gangs overrunning his hotel – in his blogs or newscasts at the time.


MSNBC 'cuts back Katrina anniversary coverage to avoid awkward references to Brian Williams' rubbished claims that he saw dead body float past his New Orleans hotel while reporting on the deadly storm'


http://www.dailymail...eans-hotel.html
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Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change, 
UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.
 

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Posted 02 April 2016 - 08:30 AM

Former Mayor Ray Nagin is the corruption focus of the season debut episode of 'American Greed'

 

From accepting bribes to corrupting the rebuilding efforts after the storm in New Orleans, the episode looks into Nagin, who has been serving his 10-year sentence at a federal prison in Texas.

 

 

 

 

http://www.wdsu.com/...-greed/38762792

 

 


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Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change, 
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#7 stocks

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Posted 15 July 2019 - 10:34 AM

Hurricane Ignorance - Louisiana Media Trashes National Media

 

“America’s weatherman,” Al Roker, provided some unsolicited advice to the good people of New Orleans: If he lived here, he would “make plans now” to evacuate. 

 
It’s a bad idea for people in New Orleans to listen to Al Roker instead of the actual experts on the ground in Louisiana, and it’s an even worse idea for people like Al Roker to imply, as he did, that they have a better understanding of the situation than Mayor LaToya Cantrell or Gov. John Bel Edwards.
 
Right now, as Barry marches on its path toward Morgan City, the wind is beginning to pick up in New Orleans, but the only people who want us to panic seem to be those who think the main lesson of Hurricane Katrina was that the city should have evacuated more quickly.
 
New Orleans, of course, did not flood in 2005 because it was hit by a hurricane. It flooded because the federal government’s levee protection system failed. The catastrophic flooding began after Katrina left.   https://www.bayoubri...s-own-disaster/

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Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change, 
UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.