Cross-posted with permission from the Disaster Accountability Project (author: Ben Smilowitz)

Hurricane Katrina demonstrated that some major disasters can exceed the response/relief capacities of the American Red Cross (ARC) and other Emergency Support Function #6 (ESF-6) Mass Care Providers (described in the National Response Framework (NRF) Annex).In response to post-Katrina lessons realized, the NRF shifted primary ESF-6 Mass Care Responsibilities from the ARC to FEMA (Before/After and After). While this change is a great start, the ARC will still serve a similar function, as demonstrated by recent Mass Care responses to recent tornado disasters. The change will allow the ARC to avoid taking accountability for under-performing after a disaster because main Mass Care responsibilities now lie with FEMA.While the ARC and other ESF-6 organizations have the capacity to help a few hundred families affected by a tornado, these non-governmental organizations will likely run into the same challenges experienced after Katrina should they face another disaster of greater proportion.Furthermore, so long as organizations like the ARC are raising funds in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, there will be strong efforts within these organizations to gloss over or avoid media exposure of mistakes, oversights, or gaps in critical services.... bad press results in fewer donated dollars... These "public affairs" efforts present an inherent conflict of interest for organizations simultaneously fulfilling a role tasked by the federal government and raising billions of dollars in private donations. The public should know exactly what limitations exist for organizations providing such critical services.

The Progressive Democrat Newsletter grew out of the frustration of the 2004 election. Having organized protests against the Republican Convention, I found I had a core of activists who were looking to me for support after Bush "won" re-"election". My carefully thought out suggestions as to where we could go from that defeat led to this more-or-less weekly newsletter.

This week I highlight a couple of primaries progressive Democrats need to focus on for 2008, I revisit the Katrina 11 (the 11 Republicans who voted against helping Katrina victims), I highlight MoveOn.org's efforts for our children's healthcare, I discuss how serious global warming is becoming and how we REALLY need to all act now, and I highlight some local stuff going on in Virginia, New York State, New York City and Colorado.

The Progressive Democrat Newsletter grew out of the frustration of the 2004 election. After much pressure from readers, this email newsletter is now going the blog route. I update the blog once a week focusing on both national issues and issues of interest to particular regions or states. In general, NYC, California, New Jersey, Virginia and the Midwest get special attention simply because those are the areas where I seem to have the most readers. However, these days I am too busy to give each region the attention I used to. As my readership on Daily Gotham and Culture Kitchen goes up, I have to spend more time on those sites. So this newsletter is fading a bit. I hope it is still usefull to you, though.

This week I disucss the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. I also discuss some revelations about the 2000 stolen election in Florida: it looks like at the center of it might have been the touch screen machine industry itself. I have more local focus on New Hampshire, North Caronlina, New Jersey, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. I also continue a new feature that started with an unexpectedly recommended Daily Kos.

The Progressive Democrat Newsletter grew out of the frustration of the 2004 election. After much pressure from readers, this email newsletter is now going the blog route. I update the blog once a week focusing on both national issues and issues of interest to particular regions or states. In general, NYC, California, New Jersey, Virginia and the Midwest get special attention simply because those are the areas where I seem to have the most readers. However, these days I am too busy to give each region the attention I used to. As my readership on Daily Gotham and Culture Kitchen goes up, I have to spend more time on those sites. So this newsletter is fading a bit. I hope it is still usefull to you, though.

This week I am focusing once again on Fox News, keeping antibiotics effective and a critical election THIS YEAR in Mississippi. I also present a new feature that started with an unexpectedly recommended Daily Kos diary as well as some local actions for Michigan, NYC and Indiana.

You saw the Oscar hoopla.  But did you ever see this event covered or filmed, or even reported on a news show?

[ Posted September 9, 2005]

Award-winning vice-Prez Al Gore chartered a plane in Sept. 2005 and flew with it for 2 roundtrips to New Orleans to rescue and medEvac 100s of patients from Charity Hospital and bring them to Tennessee.  The VP declined interviews while he was shuttling the evacuees that Saturday September 3 and for a 2nd return flight he made the next day, but the doctors who flew with him talked about the experience.  

Gore had to work around a sequential blockade by FEMA, which naturally denied his team permissions, repeatedly.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP)- Al Gore helped airlift some 270 Katrina evacuees on two private charters from New Orleans, acting at the urging of a doctor who saved the life of the former vice president's son.

...  [Gore] refused to be interviewed about the mercy missions he financed and flew last Saturday and Sunday. . . .

More below, and a bonus pix

The topic below was originally posted in my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

Campaign 2008 reminds me of something former New York Yankee and member of the baseball Hall of Fame, Yogi Berra once said: "It gets late early around here." The jostling, pandering, fundraising and lying are well underway in both parties for the most wide-open presidential campaign in over a half-century. And it's only February 2007.

Yet as we focus on individual candidates, their platforms, tactics and even how they look in a bathing suit, it's instructive to contemplate what these campaigns say about our culture.

While President Bush recently visited New Orleans in the Katrina aftermath, DNC Chairman Howard Dean issued a newsletter. Following is an excerpt from that letter. I had tried to warn the Democrats to cut Bush some slack, since accepting full responsibility for lackadaisical response IS an honorable thing to do. Instead, Dean wrote these words:

"The callous and inept federal response to Hurricane Katrina revealed that, when faced with a crisis that experts had actually predicted, the Republican administration was utterly unprepared and unresponsive."

Former FEMA Administrator Michael Brown, being interviewed on MSNBC's Hardball, was asked by host Norah O'Donnell about his interview with Playboy Magazine in which he admitted that it was a 'mistake' for him to 'play along with the White House message during Katrina' saying that it was a 'lie'.

"What was the lie?" O'Donnell asked. Brown replied, "The lie was that we were working as a team and that everything was working smoothly. And how we could go out, and I beat myself up almost daily for allowing this to have happened, to sit there and go on television and talk about how things are working well, when you know they are not behind the scenes, is just wrong." Asked if "someone in the White House was telling you to lie," Brown said, "Well, yes. They give you the talking points."

Update [2006-3-4 10:9:55 by Tom Ball]: Looks like Chertoff might only have a few days left:

"In the aftermath of the public revelation of the presidential 'teleconference' and mounting criticism of the performance of Michael Chertoff, Administration sources told Human Events today that the secretary of Homeland Security has 'only a few days left' in the Bush Cabinet." Said one source: "They will give him a little time so it won't hurt his reputation too much, but he's probably got only a few days left."

As Ex-FEMA Director Michael Brown calls for Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff's resignation, rumors are making the rounds that Brown just might get his wish.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff "suddenly canceled his keynote speech at an American Bar Association conference in San Francisco, fueling speculation that he was about to resign." A Department of Homeland Security spokesman dismissed the rumor, claiming Chertoff "had to change his schedule because of urgent preparations for a Friday trip to San Antonio, Texas" to meet with government officials in Mexico.

Of course the fire has been stoked by two recent media revelations:

The AP yesterday released a videotape,
Disallowing Chertoff and Bush to escape...

...the castigation deserved for the Katrina disaster,
For being forewarned but not acting faster.

NOLA Mayor Nagin said of the tape, he was "shocked",
Where was Bush when the Bayou was rocked?

Well, the August 28 conference showed many officials warn,
Of things such as 'levee failure' from the Hurricane's scorn.

But Bush sat silent at the briefing 'fore Katrina struck,
Perhaps he was considering how to best pass the buck.

Nevertheless, before disaster hit, Bush assured us,
'we're fully prepared' - into oblivion he lured us.

Since Bush Ignores warnings of all that matters,
New Orleans was left alone and in tatters.

So further evidence this is of an administration aloof
Led by a smirking, self-righteous, goof.

(fin)

"Don't blame Republicans" who voted for the Iraq War!  Don't blame Democrats for voting for the Iraq War.

Don't Blame the Bush Administration for: 1) 2,245 U.S. service personnel dead; 2) Nearly 15,000 U.S. service personnel injured; 3) As many as 100,000 Iraqis dead by some estimates.

During his State of the Union message, Bush dramatically declared his theme song since the Iraq War began, "We are bringing democracy and freedom to the people of Iraq.  This will spread to all the Middle East!"

A triumphant smile sweeps over Bush's face as he mouths this familiar mantra.  The tragic reality, however, is something quite different.  Since George Bush's leap into the Iraq War on the 100 percent false "weapons of mass destruction" propaganda, Middle East nations have rushed to hard line extremist Islamic religious views.

Republican governor Haley Barbour is livid that the House is taking its sweet time delivering more Katrina-related pork to his niece, who just happens to be "one of the biggest Mississippi-based winners of federal contracts for Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts."

If only Katrina had taken-out the governor's mansion... Mississippi and the rest of the country would be better-off.

Throughout the world people gasp as they analyze the Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Wilma disasters.  This same Cheney-Bush unelected ruling Junta is now seeking to explain the calamitous inaction that has resulted in scores of deaths and caused great suffering for so many who survived.  

Never let it be said that Cheney-Bush Incorporated move slowly all the time.  Take the Iraq War, for example.  After Cheney and Bush flooded the airwaves frightening Americans with an unproven claim that the citizenry faced an imminent "giant mushroom cloud" in the form of attack from Saddam Hussein's arsenal of "weapons of mass destruction."

When Hans Blix led his team of United Nations weapons inspectors into Iraq and sought more time to complete that effort, the vigilant Junta ruled that no further delay could be countenanced, even after Saddam Hussein had begun destroying his already minimized arsenal.  There were even slurs against Blix being a Swede, meaning he had to be some kind of a pacifist to be scorned, to be sure, by the tough computer terminal warriors who one generation earlier opted out of Vietnam service.  This was a slur in the same vein as pegging the French as spineless quiche eaters.  Remember, when they served it on Air Force One is was Freedom Toast as they scuttled the old "discredited" name of French Toast.

Maybe the Bushites thought if FEMA dragged its feet, everyone would forget. As always, they were wrong:

Despite a month-old pledge, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has yet to reopen four of its biggest no-bid contracts for Hurricane Katrina work and won't do so until the contracts are virtually complete. A promise to hire more minority-owned firms also is largely unfulfilled.

The no-bid contracts for temporary housing, worth up to $100 million each, were given to Shaw Group Inc., Bechtel Corp., CH2M Hill Inc. and Fluor Corp. right after Katrina struck. Charges of favoritism helped prompt last month's pledge by FEMA acting director R. David Paulison, but now officials with the Homeland Security Department, which oversees FEMA, say the contracts won't be awarded again until February.

I'm sure the fact that the above-mentioned companies all have strong ties to Bush and the GOP has nothing to do with FEMA's failure to fulfill its pledge. Nothing at all.

The Bush Administration's destabilization of the Middle East led to higher oil and gas prices -- which were then exacerbated by Hurricane Katrina's damage, damage the administration could have minimized with more foresight.

Now we see yet another consequence of the Bush crew's reckless policies:

Employers added only 56,000 jobs, just about a third of the number that many economists estimate is needed to keep up with population growth. The gain left the total number of payroll jobs "little changed," said Kathleen P. Utgoff, the commissioner of labor statistics.

...Auto dealers, department stores, clothing boutiques, hotels, bars and restaurants all cut jobs last month, the [Labor] department reported, after adjusting for seasonal variations.