Katrina Coverage

From the source:
The authority will focus on key state issues such as housing, jobs, transportation, healthcare and education… Governor Blanco tapped her point-person on recovery, Chief of Staff, Andy Kopplin to head the agency… The authority will also focus on issues such as infrastructure, economic and workforce development, family services and the environment…
Unlike other things […]

The article Many migrants flocking to Gulf Coast are exploited, advocates say from William E. Gibson and Ihosvani Rodriguez seems to have a bit of a blind spot.
Namely, it doesn't discuss the concept - shared no doubt by the vast majority of Americans - that those who were driven out of work by the storm […]

From this:
A frustrated New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin warned Thursday that it would be in the state's best interest to help the Crescent City jump-start its Hurricane Katrina-riddled economy, saying the impact on the state — if nothing is done — will pale in comparison to the layoffs the city recently announced.
"You think 3,000 layoffs […]

From "Gulf Coast: A Vision to Revive, Not Repeat":
The work facing architects and urban planners who convened [in Biloxi] today at a battered resort is visible right outside the window. A beach strewn with uprooted trees and the detritus of ravaged buildings. Deserted streets lined by flooded empty houses. Hulking casino hotels gone dark.
Over the […]

From this (also here):
The message is clear on storefront marquees, brightly colored banners and the handwritten signs merchants taped inside windows across this battered city: businesses reopening after Hurricane Katrina have a surplus of jobs and not enough workers to fill them…
Most of the people who've been able to return to New Orleans have been […]

From Rebuilding the Mississippi Gulf: Architects Respond:
The Mississippi Governor's Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding, and Renewal aims for no less than an "economic renaissance for coastal Mississippi," said its chairman Jim Barksdale, a former president and CEO of Netscape. To help create a physical plan, state officials invited New Urbanist Andres Duany, FAIA, to lead a […]

Carl Quintanilla offers this short article on New Orleans' working class not coming back:
Despite the mayor’s attempts to bring them home, New Orleans has become a closely-watched experiment in what happens when an entire income bracket disappears.
“If they can’t bring back these people, you’re going to see the city’s infrastructure fall apart,” says Dr. Robert […]

Will below-market illegal laborers, working in substandard or illegal conditions and working under federal government contracts, rebuild New Orleans? Will major, connected contractors pocket the difference between what they will pay those illegal aliens and what they would have paid Americans?
And, will both "liberals" and "conservatives" look the other way or even allow this to […]

Speaking before a Senate panel, David Paulison, acting head of FEMA, says they're going to get new bids on $400 million worth of contracts:
"It sure looks, with hindsight, that FEMA would have been in a much better position if it had had a lot of contracts in place that had been bid that were standby […]

Hey, let's counteract some bad publicity and try to look better! Hand me that $12 million over there:
BILOXI, Miss. – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a small business contract worth up to $12 million to a small, disadvantaged Pascagoula business to install blue roofs for FEMA’s Operation Blue Roof program on […]