Down the Drain


Gentilly Girl links Russ Feingold writing about his trip to NOLA, and comparing conditions to areas hit by 2004's tsunami:

I visited Banda Aceh earlier this year on a trip to Indonesia, and earlier this week I visited some of the neighborhoods ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.

I was struck by what the people in Banda Aceh and New Orleans had in common, both because of what they went through, and because of the incredible resilience they have shown in the wake of those tragedies. But I was just as struck by how those places differed - especially how, in many ways, New Orleans seemed worse off than Banda Aceh did a year after the disaster.

When I visited Banda Aceh in February 2006 - a little over a year after the original tsunami hit - though many of the reconstruction programs had yet to be completed, there was visible progress being made, thanks in large part to the generosity of the American taxpayer. I saw homes, roads, buildings, and bridges being built with funds that the American government generously gave to the victims of the tsunami.

What I saw in New Orleans, New Orleans East, the 9th Ward, St. Bernard Parish, and Lakeview, was that in many ways, despite people's tremendous efforts, there has been less progress in those areas than there was in Banda Aceh a year after the tsunami. It is something I will never forget. Imagine driving through your hometown only to find, to this day, deserted streets, destroyed homes, and virtually no sign of reconstruction. While the shells of some homes still stand, they are completely unlivable inside, due to weeks of toxic liquid filth soaking into the structures of every room. Next to some of these homes are concrete slabs where a house used to be, while others have trailers parked in the front yard where a family is living because the house's roof has completely collapsed. There was a house that had the back of it completely ripped off, the front was totally dilapidated and someone had put a sign on the house saying that the insurance company had only paid a little over $10,000 to fix the structure. You could see an orange line around the outside of some houses which showed where the water was standing for some time outside the house. Who knows how high the water got inside the house. This went on for blocks and blocks and blocks of several different areas I toured.

Gulf Coast residents ARE showing an incredible degree of resiliance: those slammed by the criminally negligent flood are dealing with bureaucratic indifference on the part of pathetic Team Bush, vicious bastard insurance companies, and the scorn of professional hate-mongers (the "they should never have lived there in the first place" faction)...but continue to fight on. You'd think this sort of spirit would resonate with the idiots in charge and their hate mongering synchophants, particularly in light of what THEY THINK is a "wise investment," namely, the sheeding of epic amounts of blood and the pissing away of almost unfathomable amounts of money in Mesopotamia...lives lost forever and money that will NEVER show a measurable return:

We are spending $8 billion a month in Iraq. that equates to 2 billion dollars a week, or 267 million dollars a day, or 11 million dollars an hour.

But they don't--instead, they tell the Gulf Coast (a region of vital concern, security-wise) to stick it, while they push for their stupid, destructive war and..."anti-terrorist" dollars for petting zoos and popcorn factories.

Bizarre doesn't even begin to explain it...