Recruits are still needed for next week's blogathon on Katrina, Rita, New Orleans, Louisiana, Mississippi, and other areas devastated by these storms--which impacted an area nearly as large as the state of Minnesota.

We must never forget, nor must we allow others to forget, what happened in 2005--and how New Orleans has been neglected and her people given the shaft since then.

Three years after Hurricane Katrina plowed into New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast, thousands of people are still picking up the pieces. Despite some hopeful claims by a certain president, the situation on the ground is still a virtual housing crisis.

A new study released today by my organization, PolicyLink, shows that there are still far too few rental homes to come back to and homeowners are finding it nearly impossible to get enough money to actually rebuild.

And guess who's bearing the brunt of the problems? Low-income workers and residents of historically African American neighborhoods. Check out below the fold for some pretty sobering details from "A Long Road Home: The state of Housing Recovery in Louisiana 2008."

UPDATED with new title thanks to some smart folks in the comments...

New Orleans is all better!

John McCain is announcing his VP the day after Obama's convention speech, on his birthday, and on the 3 year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Below, I put something together. Let's send it out as an email for everyone to see. In all fairness, I used parts of others' diaries. Thinking if you all save the pics, then copy/paste them in the email so its not linked to the photo website in case the pics are not available anymore.

Thinking the Subject/Title Should be "McCain's Judgement"

"slinkerwinks diary

Last night I made a valiant effort to watch the forum when John McCain was on the stage, I was doing well until he mentioned going to visit churches after Hurricane Katrina. That specific bit of pandering was particularly offensive to me because I had just done a diary on McCain's Katrina record, and it's not good.

So I have a chance to hear James Carville and Mary Matalin speak next week. Before the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, no less.  

So, the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is coming up, and all of the bad memories about that time are coming back to me. I'm not from New Orleans, but I had lots of friends that were. John McCain's theme for this election is "country first." Does that not also mean DOMESTIC issues? Issues like Hurricane Katrina and the fact that it STILL hasn't been fixed (yet we spend BILLIONS a month on a war in Iraq). Was McCain putting "Country first" when he was eating birthday cake with George Bush.

There's been a lot of reflection on the fact that Barack Obama's nomination as the Democratic Party's candidate for President will fall on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech.  But there's another, more recent milestone associated with the late August time frame.  The day after August 28, 2008 will be the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall in the Gulf Coast and New Orleans, and the third anniversary of the catastrophic levee failure that caused a man-made disaster in one of America's great cities.

over..

By now we've all heard the reasons Democrats have lost elections for the past four decades.  Frames.  Memes.  Defined by opponents.  Attack ads.  Political capitulations.  Weak on defense.  And crime.  And the voters are stupid.  Oh, and the media are biased.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that all of the above are the politics of mass distraction.  The real reason Democrats lost elections for the past four decades?  Just three:

Racism.  Sexism.  Organization.

Please join me over the fold....

Alright, I know I lapsed for a couple of weeks, and I'm pretty much posting this at the ass-end of a Monday, but I really couldn't decide on which songs to post!

I thought it would be a good idea this month to concentrate on topics centering on dignity, especially considering our approach of the 3rd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

Below the fold, paean of the week:

The leading lights of the Republican Party like to endlessly badmouth trial lawyers.  Endlessly, that is, until they need one.  Former Mississippi Senator Trent Lott is no exception.

Back in 2004, Lott ridiculed John Edwards, saying of John Kerry's running mate, "He's a charming guy who was a suing lawyer -- that's S-U-I-N-G lawyer."  But when his own house was demolished by Hurricane Katrina three years ago, Lott was only too happy sue State Farm Insurance to pay for it.  And as it turns out, Trent Lott may soon need a different kind of lawyer – a criminal defense attorney – for his own shady role in the case.

After Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast in August 2005 the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) purchased more than $85M worth of basic supplies for storm victims. For more than two years, until last month FEMA let the supplies sit in warehouses at a cost of $1M/year.

During that two year period local government officials and non-profit relief organizations in Louisiana and Mississippi made repeated public pleas for donations of the exact sort of items FEMA had already purchased and were even stored locally.

That these supplies people have needed for years just sat in warehouses until mid-June of this year is bad enough, but FEMA was able to find a way to make this story even more sad and depressing the way only George Bush's administration can.

On Thursday, Americans saw the minimum wage jump to $6.55 an hour.  Boosted by the second of three 70 cent increases passed by the new Democratic majority in Congress after the 2006 mid-term elections, the minimum wage will move to $7.25 next year.  But to be sure, the two million Americans who got a raise today won't have John McCain to thank for it.

The third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is coming up next month.

Today Dolly has been upgraded to a Category 2 hurricane.  And again there are worries about levees:

Coastal officials worried Tuesday that Tropical Storm Dolly may bring so much rain that flooding could break through the levees holding back the Rio Grande.

Some stories don’t ever seem to change.

Not much to expand on here, so you will have to accept it for what it is.

CNN reports this morning on the value of supplies actually given to Katrina storm victims. The Bush Administration, GSA and FEMA proudly claimed they had given away $85 million in relief supplies, but apparently this total was accomplished by assigning the value of a crate of toilet paper to a roll of tp, etc. The real value was a paltry $18 million and not all of that was distributed. Imagine that! A whopping $18 million to an entire city destroyed with hundreds of thousands of people displaced, and much of it never distributed. How generous!

The General Services Administration, which manages federal property, over-counted cases of toilet paper, plastic sporks and other cutlery, by mistakenly counting a single item as being worth as much as multiple items contained in a package of goods.

For anybody who thought Louisiana would get a far better deal from BushCo under GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal than she did under Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco, they'd better think again. For Bush's pattern of abuse against Louisiana seems to transcend her politics. According to the Baton Rouge Advocate,

Bobby Jindal,  angered over the increased costs that storm-wounded Louisiana must shoulder for construction of hurricane protection levees, asked Washington for more time — and a little fairness.

Under the latest war spending bill, Louisiana must kick in $1.8 billion by 2011 in order to activate $5.8 billion in federal funding needed to strengthen the New Orleans-area levee system.

Jindal said Louisiana’s share for repairs to the 360-mile, federally maintained levee system, is higher post-Katrina, than before the storm. "It seems ridiculous," Jindal said, tersely.

It was not  Hurricane Katrina that killed thousands of people in New Orleans. It was the breaching  of the levies. And the incompetence of FEMA administrators who were supposed to mount a rescue. The sheer indifference of the ruling class, symbolized by that flyover by Bush. Even as images of thousands of people taking refuge in the SuperDome filled our TV screens, Bush administration officials were deriding it all as a figment of our imagination. Sounds familiar?

Now a similar catastrophe is under way with the US banking system. The Hurricane is the downturn in the business cycle.  Dare I call it  the recession? The levies are the system of checks and balances put in place after the crash of 1929.  Federal guarantees of deposits under $100K. Freedie Mac and Fannie Mae to help with  mortgage liquidity.

The levies have been breached. Banks are failing. Bears Stearns. Indymac. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae themselves need to be bailed out. The whole system is drowning in bad debt.  And the week before each Bank failed, its Government Regulator assured us that everything is fine. No need to panic. It is all in our mind. It is a mental depression, folks. Don't be whiners, says Dr. Phil Gramm. Like those people in New Orleans.

A memorial, that yet isn't - three years later!  It's almost like an IGTNT diary, but isn't.

The first time I ever looked at a blog or got curious about them was the weekend that Katrina hit because I needed a place to scream.  As the same for many, it made me incredulous, angry, confused and sad about all that happened, was happening, what did not happen, be it the effects of the storm and shameful response to all that occurred in its aftermath. Eventually, I found dKos - one good thing that came out of it, for me at least and not a person affected by the storm itself.

More after the jump and a link to the news article...