Jeffrey Buchanan of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial – Bush Administration Misleads On Gulf Coast Rebuilding – “Despite the Bush Administration declaring to have done its job by sending the ‘big check’, a purported $116 billion, for rebuilding Gulf Coast communities, the article finds less then $35 billion available for rebuilding. Less then 42% of this money has been spent to date despite overwhelming continuing needs.”
NPR: Much Long-Term Recovery Aid Unspent – Another must-read (listen) for those taken in by the “$114 billion in aid” number, which Bush and Donald Powell continue to bring up as the completion of federal obligation in this area.
New Orleans Councilwoman Shelley Midura also sets the record straight at Daily Kos – New Orleans: Mission NOT Accomplished
CNN presents Katrina: Two Years Later – Features Karen Gadbois, Laureen Lentz, Squandered Heritage, PRC‘s Michelle Kimball and the City’s erroneous demolitions. Makes me want to help Idabelle Joshua move into Penya Moses-Fields‘s home.
CNBC’s Against The Tide: The Battle For New Orleans – Features the Citizens’ Road Home Action Team and Shell. My dad liked it, so it must be good.
NPR: New Orleans Suffers Crisis in Mental Health Care – This made me pull the car over to weep. “Family members of the mentally ill plot ways to get their loved ones put in jail, because the parish prison has 60 adult psychiatric beds where patients can get consistent care.”
Anderson Cooper: No Right For Us To Feel Fatigued
NPR’s News & Notes: Bouncing Back From Katrina – Farai Chideya interviews our very own Cliff, Eban and G-Bitch.
Chris Johnston talks about Rising Tide and rebuilding with Christopher Penn of Financial Aid Podcast.
Alan Gutierrez makes a guest appearance at HuffPo in When The Saints Go Marching In.
Dave Zirin, winner of Most Entertaining Rising Tide 2007 Speaker, gives us a high-five at The Houston Chronicle.
Last but not least …
Their money?! – Speaking at a New Orleans school, our Headless Of State makes an insensitive and divisive comment.
The citizens of this country thus far have paid out $114 billion in tax revenues — their money — to help the folks down here.
Never mind the blatant lie of the $114 billion payout (see first and second articles in this list) , did your president just say “their money” to us? Funny, I don’t recall not paying federal taxes to the United States government on moving to Louisiana, and didn’t get a note that a tax discount, much less a reprieve, was proffered on Louisianans for being storm/flood victims. No, we paid our taxes like all good Americans. Therefore, a portion of that $114 billion is mine and, horrifyingly enough, that of the thousands who died here during the storm and the subsequent flood because the federal money promised to further shore up our levee system was busy being spent elsewhere. Calling it “their money” divorces us from the American family, while New Orleans and Louisiana are very much a part of the Union. That Bush and his idiotic supporters think we are not – or, even worse, that we are second-class citizens – is the crux of the slow recovery.
As goes New Orleans, so goes the nation. Mark my words.
Updates: A.M In The Morning – Katrina, Bush’s New Orleanian Betrayal and The American Way
Thanks for putting this together. I didn’t have the time to catch everything yesterday.