And Haley, You're Doing a Heckuva Job


Well, this will come as no surprise to most of us--it's a Salon feature that chronicles Team Bush generosity towards fellow Rethuglican Haley Barbour in post-Katrina Mississippi, in contrast with their penurious stance towards the Gret Stet. That said, the article notes that some communities east of the Pearl River are still in pretty bad shape:

Outsiders might be surprised to learn then, that despite the plaudits, and despite the fact that Barbour's GOP connections seem to have won him a disproportionate share of relief money from Washington, post-Katrina recovery in some of the hardest-hit areas of the Mississippi coast is moving as fast as molasses in winter.

In Hancock County, Rocky Pullman paints a bleak picture. The recovery is proceeding so slowly that, almost two years after the storm, most of his neighbors still can't get mail. Before Katrina, the majority of Pearlington residents used post-office boxes; but since no post offices -- or any other major city, county or school buildings in Hancock County -- have been rebuilt, they have to drive an hour round-trip to Bay St. Louis to pick up a letter.

"We've been asking for three post offices to be erected in Hancock County for well over a year now and have got no response whatsoever," Pullman says. "Those are the kind of things that really bother you. It's hard to get people to feel good when they have to spend the amount of money they do with the price of gasoline just to get their mail." ...

For the residents of Hancock County, Barbour and Mississippi's ability to capture the lion's share of Katrina relief dollars makes the slow progress in their area all the more demoralizing. The county's 911 system still operates out of a trailer. Damaged wastewater and drainage systems frustrate hopes of a return to normalcy; earlier this month in Waveland, 16 miles east of Pearlington, a 9-and-a-half-foot alligator was found swimming in a drainage ditch next to a bus stop at 8 o'clock in the morning. Mayor Tommy Longo says the creatures freely roam throughout devastated residential areas.

Indeed, Hancock County was one of three Gulf Coast areas recently singled out as having "severe problems" by the Rockefeller Institute on Government and the Louisiana Public Affairs Council, with the towns of Waveland and Bay St. Louis flat-out "struggling to survive." ...

In Hancock County, towns racked up massive debt when federal officials promised to make disaster loans but failed to move quickly enough. The Mississippi Development Bank stepped in and loaned $5.3 million to Hancock County and $4.5 million to the town of Waveland to keep basic operations running. State officials hoped FEMA would reimburse some of the money, but that hasn't materialized.

Now those loans -- about $79 million across the Mississippi coast -- come due in October, and small towns hardest hit by Katrina have no idea how they'll meet the obligation. "We literally had no choice" but to take out those loans, says Waveland's Mayor Longo. "And in the ground zero area of Hancock County and Waveland, we're not in really much better shape economically than we were then. We're certainly not in any shape to pay back those loans right now."

Mayor Longo thinks at least part of Mississippi's post-Katrina tax windfall could go to help his and other storm-crippled communities deal with their debt, but Gov. Barbour has rebuffed the idea. And that has Longo and other local officials in Hancock contemplating the heretofore unimaginable.

"One thing you continually hear from officials from FEMA to the state level is that -- and they love this phrase -- they've 'never seen a city go under because of a natural disaster,'" Longo says. "But there have been so many firsts in Katrina."

The article also points out Shrub's insistence on enforcing the Stafford Act, although thankfully Congress waived that particularly odious decision...meanwhile, Davis-Bacon provisions calling for fair wages are being ignored...that is to say, Bush shows the true face of "compassionate conservativism:" row after row of shark's teeth.

And Haley took it all the way to the bank. But he must've deposited the money in his personal account.