A moment, please, to remember

[bjorn_skurj]

Vibes, please, for the dead, the still-suffering and for all of us in this troubled land.

 

 

Katrina amplifies troubles that exist in your town, too

By RON FOURNIER

Associated Press Writer

 

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Katrina is old news, right? New Orleans _ who cares? It's just another big city with big problems, bad luck and bad weather. Get over it.

 

Actually, please don't.

 

Don't ever get over the tragedy of New Orleans. It's your tragedy, too.

 

What happened to this historic city two years ago is more than the obvious cautionary tale of what might befall your community after a natural disaster or a terrorist strike. It's also a sad reflection of what's happening now _ today, in your hometown and across an anxious and ailing nation.

 

Inadequate health care.

 

A housing crisis.

 

Crumbling infrastructure.

 

Racial division.

 

Poor schools.

 

Rising crime.

 

And at the core of these and other problems threatening our way of life: a pernicious failure of leadership.

 

Katrina did more than claim lives and property. It ripped away the glitzy veneer that made New Orleans' reputation and exposed a festering brew of problems lingering beneath _ problems endemic to the rest of the nation, begging for attention, if we only had the guts to look.

 

If this country can't help New Orleans rebound _ if we and our leaders break the promises made to its citizens _ what are the odds your health care will ever get cheaper? Your bridges safer? Your schools better?

 

"New Orleans is an incubator for all our nation's ills," said historian Douglas Brinkley, author of "The Great Deluge," a book about Katrina.

 

"If you study what's going on in New Orleans, it's just an exaggerated version of what's hitting us in many areas of the country," he said. "Just pick your topic."

 

OK, let's start from the top.

 

____

 

FOR YOUR HEALTH

 

Katrina made a bleak health-care system worse in New Orleans. The death rate jumped 47 percent after Katrina as a city of 270,000 mostly poor and middle-class people lost seven of 22 hospitals and more than half of its hospital beds. Nearly 4,500 doctors were displaced from three New Orleans parishes.

 

The lack of space for mental patients has caused problems for police departments, who have complained of having to use officers' time to drive from hospital to hospital looking for vacant beds.

 

Dr. Atul Gawande, a local surgeon and author, said the city's medical system is in a "death spiral" that is more rapid _ but no less certain _ than the crash course the rest of the nation is on.

 

It goes like this:

 

People rely on employers for health insurance. They lose their jobs. They lose their insurance. They can't afford their pills. They put off doctors' visits. Minor illnesses become major. They go to the emergency room. The emergency overflows with uninsured patients. The hospital loses money. Insurance rates skyrocket. The hospital shuts its emergency room. Uninsured patients crowd other ERs. Doctors leave town. Businesses leave town. Jobs are lost. Repeat.

 

New Orleans is just one city in a country with more than 43 million uninsured, a figure that increased 2 million from 2005 to 2006, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly 20 percent of working-age Americans did not have health insurance in 2006.

 

The percentage of uninsured among the 20 largest states ranged from 7.7 percent in Michigan to 23.8 percent in Texas.

 

"What you see in New Orleans is the extreme of what happens when you live in a flawed health care system. And all of us do," said Gawande, author of "Better," a book about the system's failures. "It's a slow-motion train wreck."

 

___

 

NO ROADS HOME

 

The homeless population of New Orleans has nearly doubled since before Hurricane Katrina. Many of the poor, mentally ill and drug-addicted are squatting in the city's estimated 80,000 vacant dwellings.

 

Tens of thousands of other people are a bit luckier, living in badly damaged homes, government trailers and out-of-state apartments.

 

The state and federal governments are in a petty fight over how to fund the Road Home program, which is supposed to help people repair and rebuild houses.

 

With 183,000 people applying for the aid, the Road Home program's needs exceed its budget by about $5 billion.

 

Nationally, ill winds are stirring up a crisis that sharp eyes saw coming. The combination of higher interest rates and weaker home values has clobbered homeowners, especially those with higher-risk subprime mortgages.

 

Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of borrowers, stand to lose their homes while Washington and the media obsess over the impact on Wall Street.

 

___

 

BRIDGES FALLING DOWN

 

The New Orleans levees were not built to withstand a sizable hurricane, a historic lapse of judgment and competence topped only by this: The levees are still not ready for the next serious storm.

 

The city's 3,200-mile system of water and sewer lines were old, leaky and in need of repair long before the hurricane. The crush of pipe-corroding salt water made things worse.

 

Miles of New Orleans streets were destroyed or damaged by the storm, and remain in disrepair because the city failed to give the federal government a to-do list.

 

This can't be much comfort to the people of Minnesota, where the collapse of an Interstate 35W bridge killed at least 13. President Bush toured the site, promising to cut red tape and rebuild.

 

Just as he toured New Orleans, making promises to be broken.

 

From New York to California, cities are raising utility rates and issuing bonds in hopes of modernizing public works systems straining under increasing populations. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that $1.6 trillion is needed over a five-year period to bring the nation's water systems, runways, dams and roads and bridges to a good condition.

 

Government agencies have set aside just $1 trillion for infrustracture improvements in the next five years, and those budgets are historically raided for other purposes.

 

___

 

BLACK & WHITE

 

For many blacks, Katrina is their generation's epic reminder of how far the nation is from true racial equality. The hurricane had a predominantly black toll, and many blacks felt the fatally inept response was tinged by racism.

 

Whites were less likely to think so.

 

"You have to go back to slavery, or the burning of black towns, to find a comparable event that has affected black people this way," Darnell M. Hunt, a sociologist and head of the African American studies department at UCLA, said days after the storm.

 

___

 

ABCs

 

Of the students in New Orleans high schools taken over by the state after Katrina, two-thirds flunked the state graduation exam. At least 40 percent of the city's fourth-graders and one-third of the eighth-graders in those schools failed promotion exams. Many flood-ravaged schools remain closed.

 

Most New Orleans schools performed poorly long before Katrina and the school system was riddled with corruption, mismanagement and poor bookkeeping.

 

Sound familiar?

 

Nationally, nearly 40 percent of high school seniors score below the basic level on national math tests. More than a quarter of seniors fail to reach the basic level on the reading test.

 

Three decades ago, the U.S. had 30 percent of the world's population of college students. That has fallen to 14 percent.

 

"A strong school system is providing a variety of community functions that are primarily unseen," said Phil Schlechty, a leading advocate of school reform. "In New Orleans, where the schools are not a part of the community, they couldn't even get the buses out of the parking lots."

 

___

 

IT'S A CRIME

 

Military police in their Humvees still patrol New Orleans streets, where the murder rate has doubled, the number of police has declined and crime suspects walk free because of legal system that was at the brink of collapse before Katrina.

 

Nationally, a lull in violent crime has come to an abrupt halt. The murder rate jumped by more than 10 percent in large cities since 2004. Robberies also spiked, as did felony assaults and attacks with guns.

 

___

 

WHO'S IN CHARGE?

 

Nobody. At least that's the prevailing view of most Americans.

 

Katrina showed governments failing to prevent a crises, moving sluggishly to respond to it and refusing to be accountable. Charities, churches and other institutions couldn't fill the vacuum.

 

We live in an era of failed leadership. Corrupt and incompetent politicians. Thieving CEOs. Priests as pedophiles. Media monopolies. A president's unpopular, intractable war. Steroid-enhanced sluggers.

 

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? Or Harry Truman?

 

A recent Gallup Poll shows that the public is losing confidence with the institutions that make up the fragile fabric of society. The military, police, churches, banks, the U.S. Supreme Court, public schools, the medical system, the presidency, TV news, newspapers, the criminal justice system, organized labor and Congress _ all lost ground from 2006 to 2007 in terms of the public's confidence.

 

More than 7 of 10 Americans think their country is headed in the wrong direction.

 

Katrina is old news, right? New Orleans _ who cares?

 

You should.

[embiggen]

it's an absolute tragedy. prayers for the city of NO and their citizens. I'll never forget watching everything unfold, feeling utterly helpless to do anything and it's hard to believe this city is still in such terrible, declining shape. I love that city.

[ShuckOwens]

Remember when the AP hired journalists?

 

 

What a shitty country. I hate America.

[kidsmoke]

Thanks for posting this, Dan. We can't ever forget what happened in New Orleans & the other hurricane-ravaged towns two years ago. It still breaks my heart.

 

I still remember having a horrible feeling as Katrina approached.....I remember posting here, something like "Everybody stay safe....this thing is a monster." I just had the most incredibly bad feeling about it. Wish I had been wrong.

[Sir Stewart]

NPR All Things Considered just aired an investigative report focusing on the mental health of citizens of New Orleans and the state of mental health care there. Completely depressing.

[Artifex]

I went down there last spring to help with relief efforts in Bay St. Louis...really brought it home for me. It'l be at least a decade before the area is completley recovered.

[quarter23cd]

Remember when the AP hired journalists?

What a shitty country. I hate America.

Say there, that's a nice sarcastic comment. I just wanted to let you know I think you're doing a heckuva job!

[Mr. Kinsley]

Say there, that's a nice sarcastic comment. I just wanted to let you know I think you're doing a heckuva job!

[EL the Famous]

I hate black people.

 

[anodyne]

i wonder if they'll commemorate the two year anniversary of bush talking from jackson square in his photo-op of empty promises.

[cwnorman]

Its pretty rough down there, everything you hear is true. There is a lot of good happening too. Go down and see for yourself. If you want to volunteer your time, that is fantastic, the city needs it. If you want to just go down and get an order of the crawfish cheese cake and Fried chicken at Jaquemos...maybe stroll around the quarter, catch some live music, the city needs that also.

 

If you want to read a great book about the aftermath of the storm and what it was like in the city, you should check this out.

 

One dead in the Attic

[Basil II]

James Howard Kunstler has written a couple of great ,but shrill books on the state of America to come....

 

 

-Robert.

[Good Old Neon]

Ummm...well...ummm...ok...I've never observed an internet moment of silence before...ummm...yeah....not quite sure what the proper etiquette is here...but, ah - here goes.......

 

.....................

 

....................

 

....................

 

Ok - now that that's over - can we please go back like, retroactively, and fire Bush's ass for the unconscionable way in which the response to this tragedy was handled.

 

 

Please?

[ShuckOwens]

Nyah nyah nyah na-nyah nyaaah!

The "official" Wilco fan club meets to discuss new ways to taunt wayward message board members who don't fall in line:

It is decided that: "It's Bush's fault, dummy" will remain the go-to insult for maximum self-satisfaction.

 

Adjourned.

[Good Old Neon]

The "official" Wilco fan club meets to discuss new ways to taunt wayward message board members who don't fall in line:

It is decided that: "It's Bush's fault, dummy" will remain the go-to insult for maximum self-satisfaction.

 

Adjourned.

 

Cool

[berrylcain]

Have any of you seen Spike Lee's documentary "When the Levees Broke"? If not, you should. It is 5 hours long--5 separate DVD's but well worth every minute. Also, the New Orleans newspaper online has an interesting interactive time line of the breaching levees. I go to New Orleans for work and still enjoy the city when I go, but it is not the same as before Katrina. So sad.

[ShuckOwens]

Cool

[bobbob1313]

Remember when the AP hired journalists?

 

 

What a shitty country. I hate America.

 

Huh? It's a commentary, not a report. Calm down.

 

Ummm...well...ummm...ok...I've never observed an internet moment of silence before...ummm...yeah....not quite sure what the proper etiquette is here...but, ah - here goes.......

 

.....................

 

....................

 

....................

 

Ok - now that that's over - can we please go back like, retroactively, and fire Bush's ass for the unconscionable way in which the response to this tragedy was handled.

Please?

 

I remember the gigantic clusterfuck that was this board in the days following the hurricane hitting and I remember being one of like 3 people that didn't see this as yet another opportunity to jump on Bush. I still feel that way. It wasn't his fault the beauracracy kept anyuone from getting anything done. If Kerry had been in office, the same damn thing would've happened. There are thousands of other things to bitch about with Bush, pick one with an actual basis in reality.

 

As someone who has lived in South Florida all their life, I know all too well the damage hurricanes can cause. People were still recovering from Andrew up until a few years ago. Watching Katrina head to New Orleans was pretty frightening, I remember we were in AP US HIstory and we put the news on to watch the reports on the Superdome. Frightening, frightening stuff, especially for anyone who's ever had their house destroyed by a hurricane, like me.

[anodyne]

the hurricane was a natural disaster. it's debatable if the bush admin is responsible for that (shitty environmental record - although clinton's wasn't much better on wetlands restoration).

 

that said, most of the trauma from this was completely man-made and exacerbated by incompetence. there were offers to help immediately from countries we don't like, so we said no thanks and pretended that we could handle it. incompetence and politics killed people. that incompetence ranges from local to federal and all points between, but the ultimate responsibility for such a disaster is FEMA, a division of Homeland Security, a cabinet level position. "the decider" was playing guitar in a photo op while people were dying. added to reading about the pet goat on 9/11, it's a pattern of fiddling while rome is ablaze.

[Good Old Neon]

Huh? It's a commentary, not a report. Calm down.

I remember the gigantic clusterfuck that was this board in the days following the hurricane hitting and I remember being one of like 3 people that didn't see this as yet another opportunity to jump on Bush. I still feel that way. It wasn't his fault the beauracracy kept anyuone from getting anything done. If Kerry had been in office, the same damn thing would've happened. There are thousands of other things to bitch about with Bush, pick one with an actual basis in reality.

 

As someone who has lived in South Florida all their life, I know all too well the damage hurricanes can cause. People were still recovering from Andrew up until a few years ago. Watching Katrina head to New Orleans was pretty frightening, I remember we were in AP US HIstory and we put the news on to watch the reports on the Superdome. Frightening, frightening stuff, especially for anyone who's ever had their house destroyed by a hurricane, like me.

 

All I could think when this was happening was

[anodyne]

And how maybe the best person to head up FEMA was someone other than the head of the Arabian Horse Association. And how maybe he wouldn

[Tweedling]

I would love to know what countries were "offering" help and what type of help.

[bobbob1313]

the hurricane was a natural disaster. it's debatable if the bush admin is responsible for that

 

President Bush's Anti-Black Hurricane Maker wasn't fully operational until 2 months after the hurricane hit.

 

As for blaming Bush for the aftermath, not much he could've done. It was such a beauracratic mess, so much red tape. If you want to blame anything, blame the system.

[Gobias Industries]

President Bush's Anti-Black Hurricane Maker wasn't fully operational until 2 months after the hurricane hit.

 

As for blaming Bush for the aftermath, not much he could've done. It was such a beauracratic mess, so much red tape. If you want to blame anything, blame the system.

 

If Bush had the guts to write an Executive Order there wouldn't have been a mess...if he can restructure EPA with one, he can damn well save New Orleans with one.

 

What a shitty country. I hate America.

 

Exactly why I want to move to Britain...

[Tweedling]

Exactly why I want to move to Britain...

You should go. I'll pitch in for the one way ticket.