Question: Why are the following and this legal victory (of sorts) not major local headlines for a week running, while the victory of the Indianapolis Colts makes today’s front page?
September 15, 2005 – Bush: ‘We will do what it takes’
… And tonight I also offer this pledge of the American people: Throughout the area hit by the hurricane, we will do what it takes. We will stay as long as it takes to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives. And all who question the future of the Crescent City need to know: There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans, and this great city will rise again.
… We are the heirs of men and women who lived through those first terrible winters at Jamestown and Plymouth, who rebuilt Chicago after a great fire, and San Francisco after a great earthquake, who reclaimed the prairie from the dust bowl of the 1930s … The churches of Alabama will have their broken steeples mended and their congregations whole. And here in New Orleans, the street cars will once again rumble down St. Charles, and the passionate soul of a great city will return.
February 1, 2007 – Bush plans to shift $1.3 billion from levee work
President Bush is expected to shift $1.3 billion away from raising and armoring levees, installing flood gates and building permanent pumping in Southeast Louisiana to plug long-anticipated funding shortfalls in other hurricane-protection projects, a move Sen. David Vitter [R-La.] describes as a retreat from the president“s commitment to protect the whole New Orleans area.
“I believe your fiscal 2008 budget proposal would be a step back from that commitment, however unintended,” Vitter wrote. “I am deathly afraid that this vital emergency post-Katrina work is now being treated like typical (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) projects that take decades to complete. We will not recover if this happens.”
… Instead [Bush’s] fiscal 2008 budget is expected to “reallocate” $1.3 billion from what Congress appropriated last year to fix the failings of the region“s hurricane-protection system exposed by Hurricane Katrina, the costliest natural disaster in American history.
Another question: Can someone explain to me the rationale for said reallocation, or is this one of those I’m No Longer President In A Bit, So I Don’t Care maneuvers?
In other news, White House Quietly Retracts Entire State Of The Union Address, courtesy of The Onion.
And why was a murder in the 7th Ward reported on page B-3 while photos of suburban Carnival celebrations dominated the Metro section?
They could place both stories (murder and parades) on the front of the Metro section and it would properly represent the current state of the area. That the levees, broken promises and murders take a back seat is unpardonable. If our own mainstream media doesn’t care, how can the average citizen who relies on this same media for information?
I was at a NORA Board meeting and there was talk of todays front page NY Times article about our murder rate.
Do you realy think it matters anymore? There will be no justice. There will be no accountability. The illusion of our serfdom has been dispelled for those of us unlucky enough to pay attention.
The news does not exist to infrm, it exists to sell commercial time. The government does not exist to govern (if in fat they ever did).
It matters because government inaction and lack of accountability makes the difference between life and death for a lot of Americans and foreigners. If they did stuff which had no effect on me and my country, I’d happily ignore them. I don’t care for justice so much as questioning the need for a bloated behemoth for which we pay and pay the price.
Did you mean “the illusion of our freedom?”