Dec

26

Private vs. Public

December 26, 2005 | 1 Comment

Interesting article in the NYT today on the cleanup after Katrina:
The cleanup from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita was 45 percent finished in jurisdictions that called in the corps, and nearly 70 percent complete in communities that employed private contractors, state records showed. The imbalance remained even when New Orleans, where the cleanup has been particularly […]

Sep

22

Getting it Right

September 22, 2005 | Leave a Comment

Yes, school buses work rather better when they leave town early and often taking the poor out of harms way. New Orleans taught some lessons but I suspect the biggest lesson was to follow the plan.

Sep

22

Cat 5

September 22, 2005 | Leave a Comment

As the death toll from Hurricane Katrina passed 1,000, oil prices hit $68 a barrel and Rita, potentially more powerful, bore down on the Texas coast. It is expected to hit land on Saturday. Officials in New Orleans issued a warning that even 3in of rain could overwhelm the damaged protective levees. Army engineers worked […]

Sep

21

Again….

September 21, 2005 | Leave a Comment

Rita was upgraded to a Category 3 storm and the National Hurricane Center said it probably would develop into a Category 4 on Wednesday, the same classification as Hurricane Katrina, which devastated parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama last month.reuters
Bush must really have it in for the Gulf coast.
Let’s hope this hurricane breaks down before […]

Sep

20

We’re Coming Momma

September 20, 2005 | 4 Comments

I took a bit of heat for suggesting that if your mother is slowly drowning in a nursing home you don’t wait for the feds you go and get her yourself. And, in comments various places I suggested that Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, La.’s story on TV did not quite add up….Well, via […]

Sep

14

Huricane Steyn hits the Press

September 14, 2005 | Leave a Comment

I’ll leave it to future generations of historians to settle the precise moment at which Hurricane Katrina finally completed its transformation into a Kansas-type twister, and swept up the massed ranks of the world’s press to deposit them on the wilder shores of the Land of Oz. But for a couple of weeks now they’ve […]

Sep

14

Katrina’s next victims

September 14, 2005 | 4 Comments

Cultural disintegration is present when two or more strata so seperate that these become in effect distinct cultures; and also when culture at the upper group level breaks into fragments each of which represents one cultural activity alone. t.s. eliot, notes towards the definition of culture
Eliot is writing about culture in an artistic literary sense; […]

Sep

12

Colby is not impressed..

September 12, 2005 | 1 Comment

We’ve got a million or so human beings living in a low-lying area created in the first place by government engineers. The local government of New Orleans, apprised of an approaching storm, summarily orders everybody out of the city about 36 hours too late without lifting a finger to provide the means to do so. […]

Sep

12

An Ill Wind Which Blows No Good

September 12, 2005 | 2 Comments

“Hurricane Katrina was definitely a catalyst for gas prices but even before that we were facing an upward trend in prices,” said Mike Chung, market analyst at auto website Edmunds.com.
“In response to that, consumers were beginning to look at other vehicles outside of large SUVs. The SUV boom has definitely changed. The whole segment has […]

Sep

7

Politics and Disaster

September 7, 2005 | 5 Comments

As I’ve written and commented there is plenty of blame to go around on Katrina. If that’s what you enjoy doing then take whatever shots you want at the Mayor, the Governor, the Head of FEMA and President Bush who, as Hog on Ice pointed out, personally slashed the tires of all those school buses […]

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