President Obama Isn’t Shedding Any Tears Over Katrina Victims
By Anita Finlay ("Ani") on August 29, 2009 at 6:01 PM in CNN, Hillary Clinton, Louisiana, Obama Administration, Obama's Broken Promises, President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Stimulus Plan
Actor/author/director/satirist Harry Shearer wrote an excellent commentary for CNN about his “adopted hometown: “Does Obama Care About New Orleans.” First he discussed the encouraging news that the city is becoming a leader in charter school enrollment, working to clean up local politics and is a city once again “throbbing with energy” but then Mr. Shearer dropped the bomb.
New Orleans, hit so hard by what so many (including President Obama in his Sunday interview with the local newspaper) still see fit to describe, mistakenly, as a natural disaster, is making remarkable progress, while the agency that so disastrously failed at building a protective system mandated by Congress — the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — may be making some of the same mistakes in rebuilding that system. And the White House, for the second consecutive administration, seems not to care.
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While the national media packed up and moved away after the initial orgasm of anger at FEMA, the local media reported something remarkable: The Corps was claiming that the flooding was due to the “overtopping” of its levees and floodwalls, while two teams of pro-bono forensic investigators were finding evidence that no overtopping had occurred.As the Corps started denigrating these investigators, they kept digging, and kept coming up with the real story, available now for all to see (though all too few have) as the ILIT report from the University of California at Berkeley and the Team Louisiana report from Louisiana State University.
Their conclusions: The “hurricane protection system” built by the Corps had serious design and construction flaws, baked into the system over 40 years under administrations of both parties, that caused catastrophic failure in more than 50 locations under storm surge conditions markedly less than the system was advertised to withstand.
You and I, federal taxpayers, had paid to flood New Orleans.
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Since the Obama administration took office, the Corps has: announced that one part of the new “system” will be built using a “technically not superior” solution, because of funding problems; and, defying a Congressional mandate, delivered a report supposed to offer a post-2011 plan for so-called Category 5 storm protection 20 months late and lacking a specific plan, offering only a menu of possible options. It’s almost as if the Corps is inviting someone else to do the job.
Mr. Shearer points out that “New Orleans architect, David Waggonner, has been convening a group of local architects and planners and engineers and their Dutch colleagues to mine the eight centuries of collective wisdom of the Netherlands about the challenge of living with water.”
They have come up with a new approach and sadly, it looks as though there is no “federal impetus” of adopting it.
President Obama, who has mainly limited his comments about New Orleans to feel-good boilerplate, did pledge to make good on President Bush’s promise on that eerie, floodlit night in a deserted Jackson Square in 2005, to rebuild New Orleans better and stronger. But he has yet to actively intervene to make sure New Orleans gets state-of-the-art flood protection and robust and timely coastal wetland reconstruction. Like President Bush, President Obama so far seems to be acting as if just saying it makes it so.
Granted, President Obama has his hands full, but he did want the job and the job requires multitasking. Could this be considered part of a stimulus plan? Putting people back to work rebuilding the levees properly?
I wish to point out only one thing that struck me when I read Mr. Shearer’s commentary – after the New Hampshire primary, and Hillary Clinton’s unexpected win over her rival, Barack Obama, his campaign co-chair, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., commented on CNN that “Hillary Clinton never cried for Katrina victims.” His incendiary remark was clearly a tasteless attempt to alienate the African American community from Hillary since he had and has no idea what she cries about. Fast forward 18 months and one thing is absolutely clear. President Obama is the one who never cried for Katrina victims.
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
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