Katrina Coverage

FPM has invited several worthies to discuss this (biased) compendium of stories about looting. The bearded shrimp in the punchbowl is far-leftie Marc Cooper.

Kathleen Blanco's Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation has received $6 million in donations so far. It was established on 9/2, but it hasn't disbursed any money. She's waiting to appoint a board to handle that:
The foundation's Web site says the fund was established "to help provide immediate assistance."
The governor's press secretary, Denise Bottcher, says the foundation […]

Regarding the NBC report discussed in "Incredibly damning" evidence found about flood walls, commenter GeoBandy says the following here:
"Out of tolerance" in this context means "not plumb" (or straight) and has absolutely nothing to do with the strength or adequacy of the levee… in fact the contractor admitted and agreed that the levee was adequate […]

Just because Mike Davis is a Marxist doesn't mean that some of the 25 questions he poses don't have some merit, even if others don't:
#6 is about the USS Bataan.
#9 is about the NORTA buses, and #10 follows our lead in pointing out that NORTA's chairman is a real estate developer.
#12 is about Amtrak.
#25 is […]

NYT:
After Hurricane Katrina left hundreds of thousands of people homeless, the Federal Emergency Management Agency signed contracts for more than $2 billion in temporary housing, including more than 120,000 trailers and mobile homes. But the agency has placed just 109 Louisiana families in those homes.
A month after the disaster, the federal government's temporary housing effort […]

The HuffPost's Jason Leopold offers "An Issue Just as Deadly as Terrorism", about Katrina and the Northeast blackout:
…For years, energy and environmental experts sounded early alarms about the potential for catastrophes like this unless federal lawmakers immediately took the necessary steps to upgrade the country’s aging power grid to stave off widespread power failures.
Whoever Leopold […]

The WSJ's "Misinformation Slowed Federal Response to Katrina" seems to offer support for (finally!) doing something about all those very archaic laws:
Washington's experience in Louisiana has prompted the White House to seek ways to shoulder locals out of the way if another similar disaster crops up in the future. President Bush has asked Congress to […]

The Houston Chronicle goes a bit overboard with the title to "Lessons come at high cost: 107 lives". It's about the evac of Houston before Hurricane Rita:
…But there was no plan for contraflow lanes, the mayor said. So, the city asked Gov. Rick Perry's staff in the middle of the night to get contraflow lanes […]

Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) want answers on the DHS paying $192 million to Carnival Cruise Lines for ships which are now barely unused:
"Even if the Carnival contract were a good one — and it almost certainly is not — it is inexplicable why FEMA would fail to implement the Greek governments […]

Here are some links. Please summarize:
thread: "The story from those that lived in the area is that the 17th street levee was breached because the construction company working on the old Hammond bridge left a big barge in the canal and the hurricane tossed it around and it busted out a section of the wall."
link […]