Demo response to State of Union to emphasize making N.O. a priority
I've decided to nickname this idiot.......Jon Cary Jr..
02:35 PM CST on Monday, January 22, 2007
Becky Bohrer / Associated Press
Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, set to deliver the Democrats' rebuttal to Tuesday's State of the Union address, said rebuilding New Orleans is "a point of national priority," and he suggested money already spent in Iraq might have been better spent bringing the city back from Hurricane Katrina.
WWL
Nazario Mena said he planned to retire in his home, but after Hurricane Katrina he's not sure if he'll be able to rebuild.
Webb recently questioned continued spending of federal money in Iraq while New Orleans has languished in the nearly 17 months since the storm. He said Monday that his "gut instinct" tells him not to support more funding for reconstruction in Iraq until there's a full accounting of what's been spent there so far.
"If we're putting all this money into Iraq and ignoring New Orleans, then we're doing something wrong," he told reporters during a teleconference.
But Webb, a freshman senator, stopped short of calling for money earmarked for Iraq to be diverted to New Orleans, a city whose recovery he believes the Bush administration mishandled and one whose struggles have "kind of fallen off the national radar screen over the last year."
"It is really a point of national priority, in my opinion, to do what we can, within the bounds of reasonableness, to get New Orleans back on its feet," Webb said, "and I don't think that's happened."
Webb would not say what additional resources the city needed or whether he would bring up New Orleans during his rebuttal address Tuesday night.
A spokesman for Mayor Ray Nagin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco said the state deserves "a full recovery" from 2005's hurricanes Katrina and Rita and that she is working with Democratic congressional leaders "to remove federal bureaucratic hurdles and secure Louisiana's fair share of recovery resources."
The politicizing of New Orleans' recovery goes back to the aftermath of the 2005 storm, and it remains the subject of finger pointing. Nagin and other city officials have accused the state and federal governments of being slow to disburse much-needed rebuilding dollars. City leaders say they have had to cut through considerable red tape -- and spend front money they are hard pressed to find -- to tap federal dollars needed to rebuild hurricane-damaged buildings and other basic infrastructure.
But Blanco has said Nagin's office has had difficulty understanding the process through which federal aid flows. A state agency just last week said the city has nearly $600 million available to it -- if only it would ask -- and that the city last summer wound up repaying $1.7 million in interest on aid money it let sit.
Parts of New Orleans remain devastated, with houses vacant, and many small businesses struggling. The Lower Ninth Ward, one of the hardest-hit neighborhoods, still lacks telephone service. Street lights work intermittently. And the city's criminal justice system is in shambles.
The city is still without a comprehensive recovery blueprint, though a final plan is expected to begin making its way through city government by month's end. Less than half of the city's pre-storm population of about 454,000 people have returned.
Webb, who's visited New Orleans, said the enormity of what happened here "is almost beyond description, but we haven't, as a government, really stepped forward to do anything about it."
Patricia Jones, the executive director of a Lower Ninth Ward advocacy group, said government needs to do more.
"We are spending a lot of money away from home that probably should be reallocated not only to New Orleans, but other parts of the region, for other needs in the country," she said. "You can't justify that kind of spending (in Iraq)."
http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/w...s.bef3530.html
"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself."
Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)
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