From: Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM
Date: Sun Oct 02 2005 - 12:53:30 EDT
From Le Monde Diplomatique. Mike Davis, author
__________________________________________________________
> >
> >
> > CATASTROPHIC ECONOMICS
> >
> > The predators of New Orleans
> >
> >
> > After the criticism of his disastrous handling the Katrina
> > disaster, President George Bush promises a reconstruction
> > programme of $200bn for areas destroyed by the hurricane.
> > But the first and biggest beneficiaries will be businesses
> > that specialise in profiting from disaster, and have already
> > had lucrative contracts in Iraq; they will gentrify New
> > Orleans at the expense of its poor, black citizens.
> >
> > By MIKE DAVIS
> >
> >
> > THE tempest that destroyed New Orleans was conjured out of
> > tropical seas and an angry atmosphere 250km offshore of the
> > Bahamas. Labelled initially as "tropical depression 12" on
> > 23 August, it quickly intensified into "tropical storm
> > Katrina", the eleventh named storm in one of the busiest
> > hurricane seasons in history. Making landfall near Miami on
> > 24 August, Katrina had grown into a small hurricane,
> > category one on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale, with 125
> > km/h winds that killed nine people and knocked out power to
> > one million residents.
> >
> > Crossing over Florida to the Gulf of Mexico where it
> > wandered for four days, Katrina underwent a monstrous and
> > largely unexpected transformation. Siphoning vast quantities
> > of energy from the Gulf's abnormally warm waters, 3=B0C above
> > their usual August temperature, Katrina mushroomed into an
> > awesome, top-of-the-scale, class five hurricane with 290
> > km/h winds that propelled tsunami-like storm surges nearly
> > 10m in height. The journal Nature later reported that
> > Katrina absorbed so much heat from the Gulf that "water
> > temperatures dropped dramatically after it had passed, in
> > some regions from 30=B0C to 26=B0C" (1). Horrified
> > meteorologists had rarely seen a Caribbean hurricane
> > replenish its power so dramatically, and researchers debated
> > whether or not Katrina's explosive growth was a portent of
> > global warming's impact on hurricane intensity.
> >
> > Although Katrina had dropped to category four, with 210-249
> > km/h winds, by the time it careened ashore in Plaquemines
> > Parish, Louisiana, near the mouth of the Mississippi river
> > on early 29 August, it was small consolation to the doomed
> > oil ports, fishing camps and Cajun villages in its direct
> > path. In Plaquemines, and again on the Gulf Coast of
> > Mississippi and Alabama, it churned the bayous with
> > relentless wrath, leaving behind a devastated landscape that
> > looked like a watery Hiroshima.
> >
> > Metropolitan New Orleans, with 1.3 million inhabitants, was
> > originally dead centre in Katrina's way, but the storm
> > veered to the right after landfall and its eye passed 55km
> > to the east of the metropolis. The Big Easy, largely under
> > sea-level and bordered by the salt-water embayments known as
> > Lake Pontchartrain (on the north) and Lake Borgne (on the
> > east), was spared the worst of Katrina's winds but not its
> > waters.
> >
> > Hurricane-driven storm surges from both lakes broke through
> > the notoriously inadequate levees, not as high as in more
> > affluent areas, which guard black-majority eastern New
> > Orleans as well as adjacent white blue-collar suburbs in St
> > Bernard Parish. There was no warning and the rapidly rising
> > waters trapped and killed hundreds of unevacuated people in
> > their bedrooms, including 34 elderly residents of a nursing
> > home. Later, probably around midday, a more formidable
> > floodwall gave way at the 17th Street Canal, allowing Lake
> > Pontchartrain to pour into low-lying central districts.
> >
> > Although New Orleans's most famous tourist assets, including
> > the French Quarter and the Garden District, and its most
> > patrician neighbourhoods, such as Audubon Park, are built on
> > high ground and survived the inundation, the rest of the
> > city was flooded to its rooftops or higher, damaging or
> > destroying more than 150,000 housing units. Locals promptly
> > called it "Lake George" after the president who failed to
> > build new levees or come to their aid after the old ones had
> > burst.
> >
> > Inequalities of class and race
> >
> > Bush initially said that "the storm didn't discriminate", a
> > claim he was later forced to retract: every aspect of the
> > catastrophe was shaped by inequalities of class and race.
> > Besides unmasking the fraudulent claims of the Department of
> > Homeland Security to make Americans safer, the shock and awe
> > of Katrina also exposed the devastating consequences of
> > federal neglect of majority black and Latino big cities and
> > their vital infrastructures. The incompetence of the Federal
> > Emergency Management Agency (Fema) demonstrated the folly of
> > entrusting life-and-death public mandates to clueless
> > political appointees and ideological foes of "big
> > government". The speed with which Washington suspended the
> > prevailing wage standards of the Davis-Bacon Act (2) and
> > swung open the doors of New Orleans to corporate looters
> > such as Halliburton, the Shaw Group and Blackwater Security,
> > already fat from the spoils of the Tigris, contrasted
> > obscenely with Fema's deadly procrastination over sending
> > water, food and buses to the multitudes trapped in the
> > stinking hell of the Louisiana Superdome.
> >
> > But if New Orleans, as many bitter exiles now believe, was
> > allowed to die as a result of governmental incompetence and
> > neglect, blame also squarely falls on the Governor's Mansion
> > in Baton Rouge, and especially on City Hall on Perdido
> > Street. Mayor C Ray Nagin is a wealthy African-American
> > cable television executive and a Democrat, who was elected
> > in 2002 with 87% of the white vote (3).
> >
> > He was ultimately responsible for the safety of the
> > estimated quarter of the population that was too poor or
> > infirm to own a car. His stunning failure to mobilise
> > resources to evacuate car-less residents and hospital
> > patients, despite warning signals from the city's botched
> > response to the threat of Hurricane Ivan in September 2004,
> > reflected more than personal ineptitude: it was also a
> > symbol of the callous attitude among the city's elites, both
> > white and black, toward their poor neighbours in backswamp
> > districts and rundown housing projects. Indeed, the ultimate
> > revelation of Katrina was how comprehensively the promise of
> > equal rights for poor African-Americans has been dishonoured
> > and betrayed by every level of government.
> >
> > A death foretold
> >
> > The death of New Orleans had been forewarned; indeed no
> > disaster in American history had been so accurately
> > predicted in advance. Although the Homeland Security
> > Secretary, Michael Chertoff, would later claim that "the
> > size of the storm was beyond anything his department could
> > have anticipated," this was flatly untrue. If scientists
> > were surprised by Katrina's sudden burgeoning to super-storm
> > dimensions, they had grim confidence in exactly what New
> > Orleans could expect from the landfall of a great hurricane.
> >
> > Since the nasty experience of Hurricane Betsy in September
> > 1965 (a category three storm that inundated many eastern
> > parts of Orleans Parish that were drowned by Katrina), the
> > vulnerability of the city to wind-driven storm surges has
> > been intensively studied and widely publicised. In 1998,
> > after a close call with Hurricane Georges, research
> > increased and a sophisticated computer study by Louisiana
> > State University warned of the "virtual destruction" of the
> > city by a category four storm approaching from the
> > southwest (4).
> >
> > The city's levees and stormwalls are only designed to
> > withstand a category three hurricane, but even that
> > threshold of protection was revealed as illusory in computer
> > simulations last year by the Army Corps of Engineers. The
> > continuous erosion of southern Louisiana's barrier islands
> > and bayou wetlands (an estimated annual shoreline loss of
> > 60-100 sq km) increases the height of surges as they arrive
> > at New Orleans, while the city, along with its levees, is
> > slowly sinking. As a result even a category three, if slow
> > moving, would flood most of it (5). Global warming and
> > sea-level rise will only make the "Big One", as folks in New
> > Orleans, like their counterparts in Los Angeles, call the
> > local apocalypse, even bigger.
> >
> > Lest politicians have difficulty understanding the
> > implications of such predictions, other studies modelled the
> > exact extent of flooding as well as the expected casualties
> > of a direct hit. Supercomputers repeatedly cranked out the
> > same horrifying numbers: 160 sq km or more of the city under
> > water with 80-100,000 dead, the worst disaster in United
> > States history. In the light of these studies, Fema warned
> > in 2001 that a hurricane flood in New Orleans was one of the
> > three mega-catastrophes most likely to strike the US in the
> > near future, along with a California earthquake and a
> > terrorist attack on Manhattan.
> >
> > Shortly afterwards, the magazine Scientific American
> > published an account of the flood danger ("Drowning New
> > Orleans", October 2001) which, like an award-winning series
> > ("The Big One') in the local newspaper, the Times-Picayune,
> > in 2002, was chillingly accurate in its warnings. Last year,
> > after meteorologists predicted a strong upsurge in hurricane
> > activity, federal officials carried out an elaborate
> > disaster drill ("Hurricane Pam") that re-confirmed that
> > casualties would be likely to be in the tens of thousands.
> >
> > The Bush administration's response to these frightening
> > forecasts was to rebuff Louisiana's urgent requests for more
> > flood protection: the crucial Coast 2050 project to revive
> > protective wetlands, the culmination of a decade of research
> > and negotiation, was shelved and levee appropriations,
> > including the completion of defences around Lake
> > Pontchartrain, were repeatedly slashed.
> >
> > Washington at work
> >
> > In part, this was a consequence of new priorities in
> > Washington that squeezed the budget of the Army Corps: a
> > huge tax cut for the rich, the financing of the war in Iraq,
> > and the costs of "Homeland Security". Yet there was
> > undoubtedly a brazen political motive as well: New Orleans
> > is a black-majority, solidly Democratic city whose voters
> > frequently wield the balance of power in state elections.
> > Why would an administration so relentlessly focused on
> > partisan warfare seek to reward this thorn in Karl Rove's
> > side by authorising the $2.5bn that senior Corps officials
> > estimated would be required to build a category five
> > protection system around the city? (6).
> >
> > Indeed when the head of the Corps, a former Republican
> > congressman, protested in 2002 against the way that
> > flood-control projects were being short-changed, Bush
> > removed him from office. Last year the administration also
> > pressured Congress to cut $71m from the budget of the
> > Corps's New Orleans district despite warnings of epic
> > hurricane seasons close at hand.
> >
> > To be fair, Washington has spent a lot of money on
> > Louisiana, but it has been largely on non-hurricane-related
> > public works that benefit shipping interests and hardcore
> > Republican districts (7). Besides underfunding coastline
> > restoration and levee construction, the White House
> > mindlessly vandalised Fema. Under director James Lee Witt
> > (who enjoyed Cabinet rank), Fema had been the showpiece of
> > the Clinton administration, winning bipartisan praise for
> > its efficient dispatch of search and rescue teams and prompt
> > provision of federal aid after the 1993 Mississippi River
> > floods and the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake.
> >
> > When Republicans took over the agency in 2001, it was
> > treated as enemy terrain: the new director, former Bush
> > campaign manager Joe Allbaugh, decried disaster assistance
> > as "an oversized entitlement programme" and urged Americans
> > to rely more upon the Salvation Army and other faith-based
> > groups. Allbaugh cut back many key flood and storm
> > mitigation programmes, before resigning in 2003 to become a
> > highly-paid consultant to firms seeking contracts in Iraq.
> > (An inveterate ambulance-chaser, he recently reappeared in
> > Louisiana as an insider broker for firms looking for
> > lucrative reconstruction work in the wake of Katrina.)
> >
> > Since its absorption into the new Department of Homeland
> > Security in 2003 (with the loss of its representation in the
> > cabinet), Fema has been repeatedly downsized, and also
> > ensnared in new layers of bureaucracy and patronage. Last
> > year Fema employees wrote to Congress: "Emergency managers
> > at Fema have been supplanted on the job by politically
> > connected contractors and by novice employees with little
> > background or knowledge" (8).
> >
> > A new Maginot Line
> >
> > A prime example was Allbaugh's successor and protege,
> > Michael Brown, a Republican lawyer with no emergency
> > management experience, whose previous job was representing
> > the wealthy owners of Arabian horses. Under Brown, Fema
> > continued its metamorphosis from an "all hazards" approach
> > to a monomaniacal emphasis on terrorism. Three-quarters of
> > the federal disaster preparedness grants that Fema formerly
> > used to support local earthquake, storm and flood prevention
> > has been diverted to counter-terrorism scenarios. The Bush
> > administration has built a Maginot Line against al-Qaida
> > while neglecting levees, storm walls and pumps.
> >
> > There was every reason for anxiety, if not panic, when the
> > director of the National Hurricane Centre in Miami, Max
> > Mayfield, warned Bush (still vacationing in Texas) and
> > Homeland Security officials in a video-conference on 28
> > August that Katrina was poised to devastate New Orleans. Yet
> > Brown, faced with the possible death of 100,000
> > locals,-exuded breathless, arrogant bravado: "We were so
> > ready for this. We planned for this kind of disaster for
> > many years because we've always known about New Orleans."
> > For months Brown, and his boss Chertoff, had trumpeted the
> > new National Response Plan that would ensure unprecedented
> > coordination amongst government agencies during a major
> > disaster.
> >
> > But as floodwaters swallowed New Orleans and its suburbs, it
> > was difficult to find anyone to answer a phone, much less
> > take charge of the relief operation. "A mayor in my
> > district," an angry Republican congressman told the Wall
> > Street Journal, "tried to get supplies for his constituents,
> > who were hit directly by the hurricane. He called for help
> > and was put on hold for 45 minutes. Eventually, a bureaucrat
> > promised to write a memo to his supervisor" (9).
> > Although state-of-the-art communications were supposedly the
> > backbone of the new plan, frantic rescue workers and city
> > officials were plagued by the breakdown of phone systems and
> > the lack of a common bandwidth.
> >
> > At the same time they faced immediate shortages of the
> > critical food rations, potable water, sandbags, generator
> > fuel, satellite phones, portable toilets, buses, boats, and
> > helicopters, Fema should have pre-positioned in New Orleans.
> > Most fatefully, Chertoff inexplicably waited 24 hours after
> > the city had been flooded to upgrade the disaster to an
> > "incident of national significance", the legal precondition
> > for moving federal response into high gear.
> >
> > Far more than the reluctance of the president to return to
> > work, or the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, to interrupt a
> > mansion-hunting trip, or the Secretary of State, Condoleezza
> > Rice, to end a shoe-buying expedition in Manhattan, it was
> > the dinosaur-like slowness of the brain of Homeland Security
> > to register the magnitude of the disaster that doomed so
> > many to die clinging to their roofs or hospital beds.
> > Lathered in premature, embarrassing praise from Bush for
> > their heroic exertions, Chertoff and Brown were more like
> > sleepwalkers.
> >
> > As late as 2 September, Chertoff astonished an interviewer
> > on National Public Radio by claiming that the scenes of
> > death and desperation inside the Superdome, which the world
> > was watching on television, were just "rumours and
> > anecdotes". Brown blamed the victims, claiming that most
> > deaths were the fault of "people who did not heed evacuation
> > warnings", although he knew that "heeding" had nothing to do
> > with the lack of an automobile or confinement in a
> > wheelchair.
> >
> > Despite claims by the Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld,
> > that the tragedy had nothing to do with Iraq, the absence of
> > more than a third of the Louisiana National Guard and much
> > of its heavy equipment crippled rescue and relief operations
> > from the outset. Fema often obstructed rather than
> > facilitated relief: preventing civilian aircraft from
> > evacuating hospital patients and delaying authorisations for
> > out-of-state National Guard and rescue teams to enter the
> > area. As an embittered representative from devastated St
> > Bernard Parish told the Times-Picayune: "Canadian help
> > arrived before the US Army did" (10).
> >
> > A conservative New Jerusalem
> >
> > New Orleans City Hall could have used Canadian help: the
> > emergency command centre on its ninth floor was put out of
> > operation early in the emergency by a shortage of diesel to
> > run its backup generator. For two days Nagin and his aides
> > were cut off from the outside world by the failure of both
> > their landlines and cellular phones. This collapse of the
> > city's command-and-control apparatus is puzzling in view of
> > the $18m in federal grants that the city had spent since
> > 2002 in training exercises to deal with such contingencies.
> > Even more mysterious was the relationship between Nagin and
> > his state and federal counterparts. As the mayor later
> > summarised it, the city's disaster plan was: "Get people to
> > higher ground and have the feds and the state -airlift
> > supplies to them." Yet Nagin's Director of Homeland
> > Security, Colonel Terry Ebbert, astonished journalists with
> > the admission that "he never spoke with Fema about the state
> > disaster blueprint" (11).
> >
> > Nagin later ranted with justification about Fema's failure
> > to pre-position supplies or to rush buses and medical
> > supplies promptly to the Superdome. But evacuation planning
> > was, above all, a city responsibility; and earlier planning
> > exercises and surveys had shown that at least a fifth of the
> > population would be unable to leave without
> > assistance (12). In September 2004 Nagin had been
> > roundly criticised for making no effort to evacuate poor
> > residents as their better-off neighbours drove off before
> > category-three Hurricane Ivan (which fortunately veered away
> > from the city at the last moment).
> >
> > In response, the city produced, but never distributed,
> > 30,000 videos targeted at poor neighbourhoods that urged
> > residents "Don't wait for the city, don't wait for the
> > state, don't wait for the Red Cross, leave." In the absence
> > of official planning to provide buses or better, trains,
> > such advice seem to imply that poor people had to start
> > walking. But when, after the breakdown of sanitation and
> > order in the Superdome, hundreds did attempt to escape the
> > city by walking across a bridge into the white suburb of
> > Gretna, they were turned back by panicky local police who
> > fired over their heads.
> >
> > It is inevitable that many of those left behind in drowning
> > neighbourhoods will interpret City Hall's unconscionable
> > negligence in the context of the bitter economic and racial
> > schisms that have long made New Orleans the most tragic city
> > in the US. It is no secret that its business elites and
> > their allies in City Hall would like to push the poorest
> > segment of the population, blamed for high crime rates, out
> > of the city. Historic public-housing projects have been
> > razed to make room for upper-income townhouses and a
> > Wal-Mart. In other housing projects, residents are routinely
> > evicted for offences as trivial as their children's curfew
> > violations. The ultimate goal seems to be a tourist
> > theme-park New Orleans, Las Vegas on the Mississippi, with
> > chronic poverty hidden away in bayous, trailer parks and
> > prisons outside the city limits.
> >
> > Not surprisingly, some advocates of a whiter, safer city see
> > a divine plan in Katrina. "We finally cleaned up public
> > housing in New Orleans," a leading Louisiana Republican
> > confined to Washington lobbyists. "We couldn't do it, but
> > God did" (13). Nagin boasted of his empty streets and
> > ruined neighbourhoods: "This city is for the first time free
> > of drugs and violence, and we intend to keep it that way."
> >
> > A partial ethnic cleansing of New Orleans will be a fait
> > accompli without massive local and federal efforts to
> > provide affordable housing for tens of thousands of poor
> > renters now dispersed across the country in refugee
> > shelters. Already there is intense debate about transforming
> > some of poorest, low-lying neighbourhoods, such the Lower
> > Ninth Ward (flooded again by Hurricane Rita), into water
> > retention ponds to protect wealthier parts. As the Wall
> > Street Journal has rightly emphasised, "That would mean
> > preventing some of New Orleans's poorest residents from ever
> > returning to their neighbourhoods" (14).
> >
> > Epic political dogfight
> >
> > As everyone recognises, the rebuilding of New Orleans and
> > the rest of afflicted Gulf region will be an epic political
> > dogfight. Already Nagin has staked out the claims of the
> > local gentrifying class by announcing that he will appoint a
> > 16-member reconstruction commission evenly split between
> > whites and blacks, although the city is more than 75%
> > African-American. Its "white-flight" suburbs (social
> > springboards for neo-Nazi David Duke's frightening electoral
> > successes in the early 1990s) will fiercely lobby for their
> > cause, while Mississippi's powerful Republican establishment
> > has already warned that it will not play second fiddle to
> > Big Easy Democrats. In this inevitable clash of interest
> > groups, it is unlikely that the city's traditional black
> > neighbourhoods, the true hearths of its joyous sensibility
> > and jazz culture, will be able to exercise much clout.
> >
> > The Bush administration hopes to find its own resurrection
> > in a combination of rampant fiscal Keynesianism and
> > fundamentalist social engineering. Katrina's immediate
> > impact on the Potomac was such a steep fall in Bush's
> > popularity, and, collaterally, in approval for the US
> > occupation of Iraq, that Republican hegemony seemed suddenly
> > under threat. For the first time since the Los Angeles riots
> > of 1992, "old Democrat" issues such as poverty, racial
> > injustice and public investment temporarily commanded public
> > discourse, and the Wall Street Journal warned that
> > Republicans had "to get back on the political and
> > intellectual offensive" before liberals like Ted Kennedy
> > could revive New Deal nostrums, such as a massive federal
> > agency for flood -control and shoreline restoration along
> > the Gulf coast (15).
> >
> > The Heritage Foundation hosted meetings late into the night
> > at which conservative ideologues, congressional cadres and
> > the ghosts of Republicans past (such as Edwin Meese, Ronald
> > Reagan's former Attorney General) hashed a strategy to
> > rescue Bush from the toxic aftermath of Fema's disgrace. New
> > Orleans's floodlit but empty Jackson Square was the eerie
> > backdrop for Bush's 15 September speech on reconstruction.
> > It was an extraordinary performance. He sunnily reassured
> > two million victims that the White House would pick up most
> > of the tab for the estimated $200bn flood damage: deficit
> > spending on a scale that would have given Keynes vertigo.
> > (It has not deterred him from proposing another huge tax cut
> > for the super-rich.)
> >
> > Bush wooed his political base with a dream list of
> > long-sought-after conservative social reforms: school and
> > housing vouchers (16), a central role for churches, an
> > urban homestead lottery (17), extensive tax breaks to
> > businesses, the creation of a Gulf Opportunity
> > Zone (18), and the suspension of annoying government
> > regulations (in the fine print these include prevailing
> > wages in construction and environmental regulations on
> > offshore drilling).
> >
> > For connoisseurs of Bush-speak, the speech was a moment of
> > exquisite deja vu. Had not similar promises been made on the
> > banks of the Euphrates? As Paul Krugman cruelly pointed out,
> > the White House, having tried and failed to turn Iraq "into
> > a laboratory for conservative economic policies", would now
> > experiment on traumatised inhabitants of Biloxi and the
> > Ninth Ward (19). Congressman Mike Pence, a leader of the
> > powerful Republican Study Group which helped draft Bush's
> > reconstruction agenda, emphasised that Republicans would
> > turn the rubble into a capitalist utopia: "We want to turn
> > the Gulf Coast into a magnet for free enterprise. The last
> > thing we want is a federal city where New Orleans once
> > was" (20).
> >
> > Symptomatically, the Army Corps in New Orleans is now led by
> > the official who formerly oversaw contracts in
> > Iraq (21). The Lower Ninth Ward may never exist again,
> > but already the barroom and strip-joint owners in the French
> > Quarter are relishing the fat days ahead, as the Halliburton
> > workers, Blackwater mercenaries, and Bechtel engineers leave
> > their federal paychecks behind on Bourbon Street. As they
> > say in Cajun, -- and no doubt now in the White House too --
> > "laissez les bons temps rouler!"
> >
> >
> >
> > * Mike Davis is the author of 'The Monster at Our Door. The
> > Global Threat of Avian Flu' (New Press, New York, 2005),
> > 'Dead cities, and other tales' (New Press, 2002), 'Late
> > Victorian holocausts: El Nino famines and the making of the
> > third world' (Verso, London and New York, 2001), 'Ecology of
> > fear: Los Angeles and the imagination of disaster' (Picador,
> > London, 2000) and many other works.
> >
> >
> > Original text in English
> >
> > (1) Quirin Schiermeier, "The Power of Katrina," Nature,
> > no 437, London, 8 September 2005.
> >
> > (2) Editorial note: legislation dating from the New Deal
> > obliging public employers to respect the minimum local wage.
> >
> > (3) Though Louisiana voted for Bush in 2004 (56.7%), New
> > Orleans is traditionally Democrat.
> >
> > (4) Study by engineering professor Joseph Suhayda
> > described in Richard Campanella, Time and Place in New
> > Orleans, Gretna, Los Angeles, 2002.
> >
> > (5) John Travis, "Scientists' Fears Come True as
> > Hurricane Floods New Orleans", Science, no 309, New York, 9
> > September 2005.
> >
> > (6) Andrew Revkin and Christopher Drew, "Intricate Flood
> > Protection Long a Focus of Dispute," New York Times, 1
> > September 2005.
> >
> > (7) "Katrina's Message on the Corps," New York Times, 13
> > September 2005.
> >
> > (8) "Top Fema Jobs: No Experience Required," Los Angeles
> > Times, 9 September 2005.
> >
> > (9) Congressman Bobby Jindal, "When Red Tape Trumped
> > Common Sense," Wall Street Journal, 8 September 2005.
> >
> > (10) Melinda Deslatte, "St Bernard Parish residents
> > overflow the Capital," Times-Picayune, 12 September 2005.
> >
> > (11) New York Times, 7 and 11 September 2005.
> >
> > (12) Tony Reichhardt, Erika Check and Emma Morris,
> > "After the flood," Nature, no 437, 8 September 2005.
> >
> > (13) Congressman Richard Baker (Baton Rouge) quoted in
> > "Washington Wire," Wall Street Journal, 9 September 2005.
> >
> > (14) "As Gulf Prepares to Rebuild, Tensions Mount Over
> > Control," Wall Street Journal, 15 September 2005.
> >
> > (15) "Hurricane Bush," Wall Street Journal, 15 September
> > 2005.
> >
> > (16) Editor's note: rental vouchers were issued, backed
> > by Congress-approved funds, to 20,000 homeless after the
> > 1994 Los Angeles earthquake to pay for rent anywhere in the
> > state.
> >
> > (17) Editor's note: a plan to distribute federal land to
> > those who would pledge to erect a house on it and could
> > afford to do so. It is estimated that this would provide
> > about 4,000 sites for 250,000 displaced people, 125,000 of
> > whom were renting.
> >
> > (18) Editor's note: a zone in which relief is related to
> > private financial initiatives.
> >
> > (19) "Not the New Deal," New York Times, 16 September
> > 2005.
> >
> > (20) John Wilke and Brody Mullins, "After Katrina,
> > Republicans Back a Sea of Conservative Ideas," Wall Street
> > Journal, 15 September 2005.
> >
> > (21) Editorial, "Mr Bush in New Orleans," New York
> > Times, 16 September 2005.
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