Breaux and his DLC/NDN cronies make a play to take over NOLA reparations.
The Hurricane Katrina Commission will focus on how New Orleans should be rebuilt, not whether it should be rebuilt, he said. “Just as the commission formed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center never sought to recommend whether the twin towers should be rebuilt.”
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But Breaux said despite what could have been done before Katrina hit to protect New Orleans from the massive flood waters that blanketed the city when its levees failed, neither he nor the national commission he is working to form will be part of “the blame game.”
“This is not the time or forum,” he said, to blame local, state or federal officials. “Blame does not save lives, feed families or compensate for loss.”
He praised city officials for working with Gov. Blanco and the National Guard to evacuate the thousands who were evacuated before the storm and continue to be evacuated and said that each day, the situation is improving.
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Breaux rejected the idea that food, water and supplies were slow to reach those stranded at the Superdome and Convention Center because of racial motivations.
“Mayor Ray Nagin is an African American, almost the entire New Orleans City Council is made up of African-Americans. To suggest that these African-American leaders would shortchange their own citizens is a suggestion that is absolutely without merit.” [No fingers pointed here!!]
Breaux said areas surrounding New Orleans with a higher percentage of white were just as slow to receive supplies.
Breaux is the co-founder along with LIEberman and Rosenberg of NDN… an organization which accepts donations by Republican bigwigs like Koch Industries.
Moments after Katrina hit…Breaux went on air calling saying that it was reprehensible for Democrats to make political hay
BREAUX: I’ve heard the racial implications. I would categorically reject that. Our good Mayor Ray Nagin is African- American and almost all the city council is African-American. The sheriff is African-American. The areas south of New Orleans, Plaquemine and St. Bernard Parishes are predominantly white and the rescue efforts down there were certainly no faster. If anything, they were slower down there.
M. O’BRIEN: I’m talking also, though, about Democrats using this to make political hay with elections upcoming. In that own way, that’s reprehensible too, isn’t it?
BREAUX: That is totally reprehensible. There will be time to find out what went right and what went wrong. But I think it’s not the time to start talking about political implications. I’m a Democrat. I would heartedly reject that. People are trying as hard as they can to get what is done, being done accomplished right away. Should it have been done sooner? Absolutely, no question about it. But there will be a lot of time for soul searching later on.
Democrats can not get ahead not because we don’t go to church as much as Republicans, or that we believe in the right for women to make their own medical descions or that we are against an immoral war… Democrats can not get ahead because we have to many backstabbing Republicans in Democratic clothing weaking the party from inside… you know who you are.
This is why no one is covering the security issue… because it would actual “hurt” the Republicans….can’t bite the hand that feeds you.
what Mayor Nagin said on race today
“Definitely class, and the more I think about it, definitely race played into this,” he said. “How do you treat people that just want to walk across the bridge and get out, and they’re turned away, because you can’t come to a certain parish? How do resources get stacked up outside the city of New Orleans and they don’t make their way in? How do you not bring one piece of ice?
“If it’s race, fine, let’s call a spade a spade, a diamond a diamond. We can never let this happen again. Even if you hate black people and you are in a leadership position, this did not help anybody.”
No demographic is safe, with FEMA eviscerated by privatization and transfer of responsibilities to an untested and unprepared DHS. That’s what it looks to me. nonetheless, it seems obvious that issues of class and race affected the response — why wouldn’t they?
And I suppose Breaux and his cronies will attempt to destroy and limit the rebuilding of low income housing to keep those African Americans from coming back in large numbers.
He might be suprised though at the level of public scrutiny that will come with rebuilding.
What with national reaction to Baker’s comments, even Dean chiming in, it’s a bit different climate these days for politics as usual.
Breaux is cover for his real party the Republicans… they can spout bipartisan appeal…when in fact they are all Republicans…
And I suppose Breaux and his cronies will attempt to destroy and limit the rebuilding of low income housing to keep those African Americans from coming back in large numbers.
I think it’s a virtual certainty that there will be no provisions made for low income people in the new New Orleans.
Already the middle class is having their hotel bills paid for by the Red Cross while the poor are reduced to begging for housing, and living in Domes and parking lots in Mississippi. this is the same ‘equitable’ distribution of funds seen after 9/11 except in this case they’re using the faces and situation of the poor to siphon off huge sums of money when most of the recipients have credit and property insurance.
And note Mr Breaux’s dismissal of the notion that there is no racism involved because Naglin is black. Thereby deliberately avoiding all the central points and problems. The LA Democrats seem to think that token African-Americans justify their business as usual and the business as usual isn’t all that different from business as usual in Mississippi.
Heard Nagin this morning on Meet the Press. He was surprisingly strong on the issue of having the citizens participate in the reconstruction of New Orleans.
He said there were those who are trying to circumvent the participation of New Orleanians in this rebuilding process. He said there are huge trailer parks being constructed to house the displaced, and he decried this, saying he felt people are getting better attention and help in the shelters.
We need to cover, and I hope others do on this site, the issue of citizen participation in the rebuilding process.
There are words and actions… I think Nagin is pretty much through with his former Republicans party after they sic’d Rush on him and called him “Mayor Nayger”…
So far his actions have been honorable…let’s see if the party gets behind him or the Republican Breaux.
I’m just wondering if re-building New Orleans means building a corridor to the French Quarter and Downtown where it wasnt damaged so severly by water and holding that out as a plum by the politicians for the great job they have done in “rebuilding New Orleans”.
Because…you guys are there…what insurance companies will underwrite new construction in neiighborhoods that went underwater? If NO it is below sea level and continuing to sink, don’t they have to fill it in and UP and then repair the wetlands and levees in order for it to have some chance of survival if there is another hurricane? Wetland repair and Levee repair are doable, but is filling it in and up?
They said they were going to rebuild the twin towers. That’s nothing compared to this and they haven;t done a thing.
If they do rebuild and people from New Orleans are hired to do the rebuilding….I mean… a lot of those jobs are specifically jobs that require construction related skills, carpenter, bricklayer etc. Just employing displlaced people who may have had jobs that are unrelated to construction. How does that work?
How are they going to prevent the Real Estate “industry” from bulldozing all the water damaged homes, buying the land for nothing (cause that’s what it’s worth right now) and selling it to the wealthy?
Also, How are people whose homes were destroyed and paperwork, destroyed going to be able to claim ownership of a plot of land that they may bulldoze into something totally unrecognizable?
Lots of bureacracy works in the favor of Real estate people. It will take a lot of work for single family home owners to claim their property. This is I suspect another kind of diisaster waiting to happen
I imagine there may be a lot of problems
It is official they will not rebuild for the poor:
Indeed, state Sen. Ann Duplessis (D-New Orleans) reported at a state legislative hearing Friday that she’d been told by several officials that water damage and toxic contamination meant her east-side district, which contains some of the city’s poorest and hardest-hit neighborhoods, “will never be rebuilt. They’ll just clean it, level it and — I don’t know — maybe build an airport there. My district is gone. It has turned into a wetland, a marsh.”
“The city,” she told her colleagues in Baton Rouge, “is probably going to be a smaller city and go vertical.”
Dan Packer would agree. The head of New Orleans’ power company, Entergy New Orleans, was at the mayor’s side last week, troubleshooting problems that arose as crews began trying to relight portions of the city.
“I think we will end up with a smaller population,” said Packer, 58, who has lived in New Orleans since he was a boy. “I think the city will be viable as a tourist attraction, and who knows? We may find ourselves with other businesses,” lessening the city’s economic reliance on port trade and tourism.
And now a report…our lifeline to any kind of real news from Britain that New Orleans may be uninhabitable for 10 years due to toxic waste. I had heard that just pumping the water out isn’t enough. Becuase the toxic chemicals will dry and then become airborne. But I don’t really understand the chemistry of this.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article311818.ece
I just think this is one of the beginnings of more and more blowback from everything that has happened. This continues to spin out of control.
Just want to point out and excellent comment to this same diary on MyDD
Click on link to read the rest.
I want to add my 2 cents worth here and this is how I saw it. I think the officials…mostly republican and federal, intended the population to die…out right die so they would not have to deal with this mess…and everything that is going to be involved in cleaning up the mess…now, I think they thought they could go without paying ss checks and welfare checks and veterans checks all together. I feel in my own heart that is what they wanted to do to the helpless in NO and others in outer lying areas. I saw absolute negligence, ecessively….I know this is a harsh statement, but that is how I saw it. I just could not believe they would turn back pll who was willing to walk out of the city on their own steam..to take away their water, shelters [made of their own stuff. It is think and times like this that turned my stomach badly. It was the way they handled the evacuation of the dome and convention center. The days on end that they left them without even a drop of water or food. When the press was getting in and the fact that they could not go in with materials available to them to get them out. Criminal is not the word for it..it is worse than criminal. I simply want these ppl tried and convicted for their negligence of everything. Be it local, state or federal…they have to take responsibility…that is a given in my book. to do less is going to be hard for us as a society to swollow.