BACKING AND FILLING [AS PREDICTED]
As I predicted, Katherine Harris is claiming that her incomprehensible statements were quoted out of context. To be honest---and as I said----I don't think she intended to condemn separation of church and state, but to say that religious people have a role to play (I guess). But whose fault is it if she can't string a sentence together well enough to make herself understood?
Jeb Bush doesn't support her campaign. The rumors, allegations, and reports currently abroad reveal her to be a person with a number of complicated whorls to her personality, some of which ought to make her supporters, assuming she still has any, question whether the assertion of common religious faith is enough to ensure that she is the best person to represent them.
[quote begins from article at Yahoo.com, "Harris clarifies comments on religion"]
Fundraising has lagged, frustrated campaign workers have defected in droves and the issues have been overshadowed by news of her dealings with a corrupt defense contractor who gave her $32,000 in illegal campaign contributions.
[quote ends]
Call me naive, but to me, being deeply religious means that you should be resistant to underhanded dealings even on this (relatively) petty scale. There are other issues too that should give people pause, such as the whole endorsement flap that was big news a week or so ago.
Here are some additional allegations concerning Katherine Harris that people who think of voting for her should at least read. Link to article in St. Petersburg Times by Anita Kumar. These allegations go to what I have referred to as "the complicated whorls" of her personality. And the famous blogger "Wonkette" has this to add to the account. And much else besides, actually.
And that's where I'm leaving it for now.
PRAYING FOR NEW ORLEANS?
It's hard when you're also within the potential path of a hurricane to feel that you'd rather it go anywhere other than anywhere else, but that's how I feel about New Orleans. Having just watched When the Levees Broke----we saw the last two parts last night----I just don't think the country can stomach any further damage to that already wrecked city.
But then I think of what Katrina did to Biloxi. As Spike Lee's film reminds us, Katrina didn't destroy New Orleans; New Orleans survived the hurricane. In fact, I remember my semi-relief the day after, hearing that New Orleans had been bypassed and seemed to be all right. It wasn't till later that day that my dread started rising with the waters. And the flooding and massive death and destruction distracted attention from what had been done in Biloxi Mississippi and the Delta generally.
The hurricane laid waste to Biloxi. It's easy for people to forget this in light of the massive suffering that the breach of the levees caused to the people of New Orleans, but I don't; I can't forget it because my friend Frannie's sister lives in Biloxi. For several months, their family was torn apart while the parents returned to Biloxi to try to put their lives back together and the daughter lived with Frances and her partner in North Carolina so she could go to school without interruption and have a decent roof over her head. Finally, when the parents couldn't bear the separation anymore, they sent for their child. And they were the lucky ones to have loving relatives with a sense of duty to family.
At the end of the day, what is there to pray for? The best I can do is to pray that the hurricane does the least damage possible to the fewest number of people. Last year, I watched footage from Galveston as Rita headed toward what looked like the destruction of that town; I watched aghast as an elderly woman in a fragile house told reporters that she would not leave; she would not let the hurricane push her off her own porch. In the meantime, the ill-conceived evacuation of Houston and left thousands of people stranded on the highway as the storm approached.
What's needed to deal with what looks like being a long spate (in the best case) of severe hurricanes in the Gulf state is: careful preparation, crisis management, a reconsideration of the existing policies regarding coastal construction, and a whole slough of exactly the sort of long-term strategies that Americans (and particularly the Bush Administration) like least.
It's astonishing to me that with all the work to be done we don't have plenty of work for everyone in America: first the cleaning and reconstruction of the previous damage; then the preparation and planning for the damage that's coming round and round again.
THE LOST CITY.
Thanks are due to The Huffington Post, as always, for putting out the bad news that would otherwise be buried under the OTHER bad news.
The Spike Lee film, and then this article in the L.A. Times, should break American hearts, but we've had so much to cause us pain in the last five years that we are growing resistant to letting all that suffering in.
[quote begins from L.A. Times Article, Katrina Aid Far from Flowing]
From the ghostly streets of New Orleans' abandoned neighborhoods to Mississippi's downtrodden coastline, the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's onslaught is arriving with emerging signs of federal money at work — rented trailers parked in the driveways of flood-ravaged homesteads, teams of Army engineers overseeing levee repairs, beaches swept clean of debris.
But the federal government has spent less than half the rebuilding funds that it amassed for Katrina recovery, which has raised sharp questions about the Bush administration's stewardship of the Gulf Coast's reconstruction and has provoked a chorus of complaints about excessive delays and government sluggishness.
Despite four emergency spending bills approved by Congress to provide more than $110 billion in aid, federal agencies have spent only $44 billion. Even as President Bush insisted last week and in his radio address Saturday that $110 billion was a strong commitment, he conceded that the recovery effort was plagued with bureaucratic hurdles.
The scale of the catastrophe continues to overwhelm the government's capacity to respond. Aid agencies are only now contending with the long-term needs of hundreds of thousands of evacuees and with the landscape of shattered houses and public infrastructure that will take years to restore....
The telltale effects of the unspent billions emerge in the bitter accounts of homeowners who have waited for months for trailers that have not arrived, merchants who agonize over government loans still pending, town officials frustrated by rebuilding efforts stalled by the vagaries of federal regulations....
[quote from article ends]
Since a city hit by a terrorist attack would be in exactly the same position, this ought to scare the shit out of all the people whose political choices are governed by fear of terrorism, except they're already too scared of death to think about what follows if you survive. It's better to be homeless than to be dead, I suppose. But not by much it needn't be---particularly if you've also lost your family, your cat, and all your possessions.
This last bit---the waiting for help----is the slow, grinding, tedious part of the horror; the hellish part that goes on after the death you didn't die where you've seen all your life laid waste without even the dignity of judgment.
DEPERSONALIZING COMPASSION.
Katrina teaches a lot of lessons to those with ears to hear, one of which is that you can't expect humanity from inhuman entities, i.e., corporations. Since we don't live in communities anymore in which neighbors get together to shelter those who have suffered misfortunes, we pay lots of money to insurance companies to ensure that someone will.
Why isn't the average person on the street more disturbed by allegations such as the ones concerning State Farm?
[quote begins from Yahoo News article Sisters Blew Whistle on Katrina Claims]
That startling admission — and their subsequent resignations — ended a risky charade. The Rigsbys say they spent months collecting reams of internal State Farm reports, memos, e-mails and claims records before they gave them to Scruggs and state and federal authorities.
The sisters, who managed teams of State Farm adjusters, say the documents show that the insurer defrauded policyholders by manipulating engineers' reports so that claims could be denied.
"I think we've given him the smoking gun," Cori Rigsby, 38, told The Associated Press during a recent interview at the home she shares with her sister near Ocean Springs....
Hundreds of homeowners on Mississippi's Gulf Coast have sued their insurance companies for refusing to pay for millions of dollars of damage from Katrina. A judge who presided over the first Katrina insurance trial ruled this month that Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. must pay for damage caused by wind but not from flooding, including storm surges....
The Rigsby sisters were both eight-year employees of E.A. Renfroe, a firm that helps State Farm and other insurers adjust disaster claims. Although they weren't State Farm employees, the company issued them computers and business cards that identified them as State Farm representatives. They also had confidentiality agreements with State Farm.
"We have always been proud to work with State Farm," Cori Rigsby said.
The sisters say that pride faded, however, as they began to suspect the company was pressuring engineers to alter their conclusions about storm damage so claims could be denied.
Kerri Rigsby says her suspicions grew in November after finding a handwritten note attached to an engineer's report that read: "Put in Wind file — DO NOT pay bill. DO NOT discuss."
She said the engineer's report, dated Oct. 12, concluded that Katrina's wind caused most of the damage to a Biloxi policyholder's home. That should have been good news for the policyholder, she noted, since State Farm's policies cover damage from wind but not water.
But when Kerri Rigsby pulled the policyholder's file, she said she found a subsequent report based on a second inspection of the home Oct. 18. This time, the same engineering firm concluded that water caused most of the damage, according to the report, which the AP reviewed.
"The policyholder did not get a copy of the one that said wind," said Kerri, 35. "He should have gotten lots more money."
It wasn't the only case in which State Farm's engineers drafted conflicting reports on storm damage, according to the Rigsbys. They say managers were surprised and disappointed that many initial engineering reports blamed damage on wind.
[quote from article ends]
I don't know whether there was malfeasance by this insurance company or not, but if you pay attention---and alas, people never do---you know that insurance companies are not in business to PAY OUT claims. They live by collecting premiums and by avoiding pay outs as much as possible.
The good ones---and I've been MOSTLY lucky with mine----will do the right thing when the time comes, but when disaster strikes and your company is asked to pay out large amounts of money to many subscribers all at the same time, then they are going to do whatever they have to to cut their losses, even if it means you eat your own.
But this sort of thing never matters to anyone when they go to the polls because they simply don't scrutinize the links between insurance companies and candidates for political office. The insurance industry, like the health care industry and many other industries, really needs to be monitored and reined in to ensure that their shareholders' dividends don't end up taking priority over their subscribers' losses; but their contributions to your favorite candidate's political campaign buy them way more influence than your contributions buy for you. It's as simple as that.
Thus the Katrina victims: eating more and more of their own losses with every day that passes.
THE LOST CULTURE.
There's also this article in the BBC:
[quote begins from BBC news online article by Stephen Sackur One Year On: Katrina's Legacy]
[T]he photogenic French Quarter and the grand homes of the white establishment in the Garden District have regained much of their former charm but don't be fooled - even on Bourbon Street amid the jazz clubs and stores touting souvenir kitsch there is a pervasive sense of desolation....
More than 1,000 people lost their lives to Katrina - the floodwaters left the city uninhabitable.
A year on and still New Orleans is eerily empty. Of a pre-Katrina population of half-a-million fewer than 200,000 have returned.
Ken Wilkens, social worker by day and a rapper known as Snoop by night...took me on a drive down Interstate 10, into the Ninth Ward, the heart of the city's black community. "Katrina still has a smell," he said and he was right.
Sickly sweet, fetid fumes were still coming up from the residue of filth left behind when the floodwaters receded....
On my most recent visit to New Orleans, just a week ago, the housing situation was little better. Snoop had finally moved himself out of his run-down hotel room into a small apartment, but most of his friends are still stuck in faraway cities, exiled from their pre-Katrina lives.
"If you don't get these people back then you gonna kill the whole spirit of New Orleans," Snoop told me, "because that's where the food, the music, the language comes from - that's the flavour in the gumbo."
But there are powerful forces in New Orleans who are not interested in restoring the city to the way it was before.
Boysie Bollinger, doyen of the white business elite, is one of them....
He lost most of his African-American workforce when Katrina destroyed their homes - he has replaced many of them with Mexicans. He is thinking about hiring Filipinos and Romanians too.
Boysie wasn't enamoured with the way New Orleans was going before Katrina - he points to the drugs, the crime, the endemic poverty in some of the African American neighbourhoods. He talks about the "cleansing" effect of Katrina.
"You're going to see a culture change," he told me, with the confidence of a man used to getting his own way. "A lot more Latin people here as permanent residents, people who want to come and create new communities."
It is a message which sounds like a veiled threat to many African-Americans, but Boysie doesn't care.
"We want people who are willing to work. It's not directed at blacks, or at whites, just anyone who fits the description," he adds.
Boysie is a good friend of George W Bush. He is a key player on the Bring New Orleans Back Commission and a host of other influential bodies. When it comes to finalising the plan for the rebuilding of New Orleans it is likely to have the Bollinger stamp of approval....
New Orleans is a city where the heart has always ruled the head. Good times today have always outweighed worries about tomorrow. But maybe that's not sustainable anymore.
[quote ends from BBC article by Stephen Sackur]
Idon't know what to say about this. Will New Orleans become "the New Orleans theme park"?
To talk of rebuilding the true original city is in many senses----we all know this---a dream that not only won't come true, but should not come true. The Big Easy has been famous for a lot of things, one of which is crime.
It's profoundly troubling to me that the automatic underlying assumption of the press and the media is that to bring back the African-American population is to bring back the criminal class and the class of layabouts.
I strongly suspect that the so-called "carpetbaggers"who are currently invading the city will bring their own particular brand of crime. And IF we adopt the assumption of those who assume that the lost black population = the former criminal classes---and it's my personal belief that those African-Americans who were engaged in criminal activities were at the bottom of the criminal food chain---we are simply trading one sort of opportunism for another. And what we're getting in return isn't coming to us with the history, the traditions, the roots, the color of the true New Orleans culture. It's bland, watered-down, not the real thing.
If we can't have New Orleans back the way it was? With its beautiful and flawed culture, its beautiful and flawed people, and its unique traditions? Well, I'm sorry, but in that case I don't want it back at all. Better to mourn the loss of the true and unique city than to bequeath to future generations a shallow and sanitized theme park New Orleans. I'm not willing to have my tax dollars used to help finance a giant "tourist attraction."
If people want tourist attractions, let them come to Florida.
