BUSH MEETS NORTHCOM

First, you have to know what NORTHCOM is about:

In addition to defending the nation, U.S. Northern Command provides defense support of civil authorities in accordance with U.S. laws and as directed by the President or Secretary of Defense. Military assistance is always in support of a lead federal agency, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Military civil support includes domestic disaster relief operations that occur during fires, hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes. Support also includes counter-drug operations and consequence management assistance, such as would occur after a terrorist event employing a weapon of mass destruction.

Generally, an emergency must exceed the management capabilities of local, state and federal agencies before U.S. Northern Command becomes involved. In providing civil support, the command operates through subordinate Joint Task Forces.

As I write this, 1,474 days have elapsed since 9-11 and Bush still isn't familiar with NORTHCOM:

Northern Command the main federal entity that will interact with state and local officials during the storm, Bush said. "It's an important relationship, and I need to understand how it works better," he said.

McClellan said Bush's visit to Northern Command will give him a better grasp of federal preparations for the storm, which forecasters predict will strike between Houston, Texas, and the Louisiana state line.

EVEN MORE ON BUSES

(via ATRIOS) Incompetence, privatization and cronyism on display again:

WASHINGTON -- Two days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, as images of devastation along the Gulf Coast and despair in New Orleans flickered across television screens, the head of one of the nation's largest bus associations repeatedly called federal disaster officials to offer help. Peter Pantuso of the American Bus Association said he spent much of the day on Wednesday, Aug. 31, trying to find someone at the Federal Emergency Management Agency who could tell him how many buses were needed for an evacuation, where they should be sent and who was overseeing the effort."We never talked directly to FEMA or got a call back from them," Pantuso said. Pantuso, whose members include some of the nation's largest motor coach companies, including Greyhound and Coach USA, eventually learned that the job of extracting tens of thousands of residents from flooded New Orleans wasn't being handled by FEMA at all. Instead the agency had farmed the work out to a trucking logistics firm, Landstar Express America, which in turn hired a limousine company, which in turn engaged a travel management company.

Mayor C. Ray Nagin has acknowledged in television interviews that the city had hundreds of transit and school buses available to at least begin an evacuation ahead of Katrina's arrival but couldn't find enough drivers willing to chance getting caught in the huge storm.

Though it was well-known that New Orleans, much of it below sea level, would flood in a major hurricane, Landstar, the Jacksonville company that held a federal contract that at the time was worth up to $100 million annually for disaster transportation, did not ask its subcontractor, Carey Limousine, to order buses until the early hours of Aug. 30, roughly 18 hours after the storm hit, according to Sally Snead, a Carey senior vice president who headed the bus roundup. Landstar inquired about the availability of buses on Sunday, Aug. 28, and earlier Monday, but placed no orders, Snead said. She said Landstar turned to her company for buses Sunday after learning from Carey's Internet site that it had a meetings and events division that touted its ability to move large groups of people. "They really found us on the Web site," Snead said.

Unbeknownst to them, two key players who could reach the owners of an estimated 70 percent of the nation's 35,000 charter and tour buses had contacted FEMA seeking to supply coaches to the evacuation effort. The day the hurricane made landfall, Victor Parra, president of the United Motorcoach Association, called FEMA's Washington office "to let them know our members could help out." Parra said FEMA responded the next day, referring him to an agency Web page labeled "Doing Business with FEMA" but containing no information on the hurricane relief effort. On Wednesday, Aug. 31, Pantuso of the American Bus Association cut short a vacation thinking his members surely would be needed in evacuation efforts. Unable to contact FEMA directly, Pantuso, through contacts on Capitol Hill, learned of Carey International's role and called Snead. Pantuso said Snead told him she meant to call earlier but didn't have a phone number. Finally, sometime after 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Pantuso and Parra had enough information to send an SOS to their members to help in the evacuation. By the weekend, more than 1,000 buses were committed to ferrying stranded New Orleans residents to shelters in Houston and other cities.

THE ABRAMOFF SCANDAL

(Via HuffingtonPost)

I haven't followed this very closely, in part because there's so much that is wrong with this Administration, but Bloomberg News has a good summary of the key players and actions. Here are some excerpts:

Abramoff Probe May Threaten Leading Republicans as It Expands
By Jonathan D. Salant

Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- The widening investigation of lobbyist Jack Abramoff is moving beyond the confines of tawdry influence-peddling to threaten leading figures in the Republican hierarchy that dominates Washington.

This week's arrest of David Safavian, the former head of procurement at the Office of Management and Budget, in connection with a land deal involving Abramoff brings the probe to the White House for the first time.

Safavian once worked with Abramoff at one lobbying firm and was a partner of Grover Norquist, a national Republican strategist with close ties to the White House, at another.

THE CULTURE OF CORRUPTION

Firms With Bush Ties Snag Katrina Deals
REUTERS

WASHINGTON (Sept. 10) - Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President George W. Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast.

One is Shaw Group Inc. and the other is Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton.

Bechtel National Inc., a unit of San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp., has also been selected by FEMA to provide short-term housing for people displaced by the hurricane. Bush named Bechtel's CEO to his Export Council and put the former CEO of Bechtel Energy in charge of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

TUCSON, SEPT. 24TH

I can't make it to DC but we are having our own demonstration locally:

SEPT. 24TH
10:00 a.m. -- Rally at Catalina Park (4th Ave. & 2nd St.)
11:00 a.m. -- March for Peace down Speedway to…
Noon to 1:00 p.m. -- Picket for one hour at Military Recruiting Offices
on Speedway between Campbell Ave. and Tucson Blvd.

NORQUIST, ABRAMOFF & ROHRBACHER

Are all 3 "objectively pro-terrorist"? Read The Stakeholder and find out!

MORE ADMINISTRATION NEGLIGENCE

Plan to protect transit systems shared
By LESLIE MILLER Associated Press Writer
Sep 21, 5:07 PM EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A secret government plan to protect the nation's transportation systems from terrorist attacks will be shared with the people who run the systems, the Bush administration said Wednesday.

The plan was ordered by Congress because of concern that people who ride buses, trains and subways were taking a back seat to airline passengers when it came to security.

That didn't make much sense to Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Susan Collins, R-Maine, or the committee's leading Democrat, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.
In a Sept. 15 letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Collins and Lieberman said the people most affected by the plan ought to be able to read it.
"Key partners in transportation security, namely state, local and tribal governments and system owners and operators, are unable to access the document outlining their responsibilities and roles," they wrote.
Collins noted that the Homeland Security Department was allocated $18 billion for aviation security since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but only $250 million for transit security.
Polly Hanson, security chief for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, described the Homeland Security Department's approach to transit security as uncoordinated, underfunded and mired in red tape.

WMATA has gotten only one-tenth of the $150 million it needs to tighten transit security and is waiting for approval to spend federal grant money for the 2005 budget year, which ends in nine days, she said.

The first time a TSA inspector paid a visit to WMATA was on July 7 - the day of the London bombings, Hanson said. He came to learn about the transit system's security measures.
"It was not a good time," she said.

MY KATRINA LTE IS PUBLISHED

In response to the Aug. 15 opinion "Bush bashers all too happy to ignore facts."

Jay J. Ambrose writes, "Not just their careers, but the lives of those public figures will now be defined by a horrid reality that they had trouble accepting."

I can think of two officials who had trouble accepting the reality, Michael Chertoff and George W. Bush. Chertoff read imaginary headlines that said New Orleans had "dodged a bullet." Bush was so out of touch his staff had to make a DVD compilation of newscasts before he went for his photo-op.

Steven J.
Tucson

GREAT SOCIETY PROGRAMS

I had forgotten how much LBJ did accomplish but PBS has a nice summary (go to popup link at bottom of PBS page) :

The first piece of Great Society legislation, the Economic Opportunity Act 1964 (passed in August), tried to give people tools to get out of poverty. The bill created a Job Corps similar to the New Deal Civilian Conservation Corps; a domestic peace corps; a system for vocational training; and Head Start, a pre-school program designed to prepare children for success in public school. The bill also funded community action programs and extended loans to small businessmen and farmers.

In 1964, 44 percent of seniors had no health care coverage, and with the medical bills that come with older age, this propelled many seniors into poverty. In fact, more than one in three Americans over 65 were living below the poverty line -- more than double the rate of those under 65. Medicare was an important and big change in American health care -- it was called the "biggest management job since the invasion of Normandy" -- and it was up to John Gardner to make it work. He helped shepherd Medicare to reality, and the results have been extraordinary: virtually all seniors now have health care, and the poverty rate for the elderly has fallen to approximately one in ten -- a rate lower than that of the general population. Along with Medicare, the Johnson Administration established the Medicaid program to provide health care to the poor.

Education reform was also an important part of Johnson's Great Society, and a particular passion of Gardner's. In 1964, 8 million American adults had not finished 5 years in school; more than 20 million had not finished eight years; and almost a quarter of the nation's population, around 54 million people, hadn't finished high school. In 1965, Congress passed the groundbreaking Elementary and Secondary Education Act which for the first time provided federal funding for education below the college level, and passed the Higher Education Act, which created a National Teachers Corps and provided financial assistance to students wishing to attend college. Urban renewal and conservation was the third major component of the Great Society. Ever since the end of World War II, cities faced a shortage of good, affordable housing, At the same time, the suburbanization of America along with the changing economy meant that many businesses began to leave city centers, an exodus that was accelerated by urban rioting that began in earnest after the Watts riot in 1965 in Los Angeles, and continued throughout Johnson's term. As part of a response, Johnson signed the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965 that established the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and expanded funding for public housing. In addition, he provided aid to cities to rebuild blighted areas.

LBJ'S "GREAT SOCIETY"

After reading about all the "welfare queens" and "lack of responsibility" from the wingnuts over New Orleans, I thought it might be good to look at where things were almost 50 years ago. In 1959, the overall poverty rate was 22.4% and by 1969 it had decreased to 13.7%.

A large amount of that decline was due to Lyndon Johnson's decision in 1964 to move America toward a truly Great Society. Here's an excerpt from his speech in May 1964 at the University of Michigan:

The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.

The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.

It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what it adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.

But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.

FORBES: CLINTON BEST AT ECONOMY

Forbes Magazine declares the Clinton was the best of all 10 post-war presidents at handling the economy:

Presidents And Prosperity
Dan Ackman, 07.20.04, 3:00 PM ET

Clinton's two terms in office (1993-2001) were marked by strong numbers for gross domestic product (GDP) and employment growth and especially for deficit reduction. His overall ranking puts him first among the ten postwar presidents--ahead of Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy and Reagan, who were tightly grouped behind the 42nd president and recent autobiographer.

To create our rankings we looked at six measures of economic performance--GDP growth, per capita income growth, employment gains, unemployment rate reduction, inflation reduction and federal deficit reduction--for each of the ten postwar presidencies. For each measure we looked at whether the situation improved or got worse, and we ranked the presidents from 1 to 10. We then averaged the ranks to come up with a final score.

"SPITBALLS" (ZELL MILLER)

You might recall that Miller accused John Kerry of not supporting out military to such a degree that we would be forced to fight with "spitballs." Well, apparently Bush doesn't want much better for the Iraqis:

Ex-Iraqi defence minister wanted over $1bn fraud
· Warrant issued after army left with old weapons
· Allawi regime blamed for lack of checks on ministry

Michael Howard in Baghdad
Tuesday September 20, 2005
The Guardian

Iraqi authorities are preparing an arrest warrant for the country's former defence minister in connection with a massive fraud case involving the "disappearance" of more than $1bn from ministry coffers.

Judge Raid al-Radhi, who is head of Iraq's commission on public integrity, said yesterday that he had given Iraq's central criminal court a dossier of evidence against Hazim Shaalan, who was minister of defence under the former government of Ayed Allawi.

"What Shaalan and his ministry were responsible for is possibly the largest robbery in the world. Our estimates begin at $1.3bn [£720m] and go up to $2.3bn," Judge Radhi, who is Iraq's senior anti-corruption official, told Reuters.

Mr Allawi said the rampant corruption and fraud at the defence ministry had left the new Iraqi army with second-rate weapons with which to confront the insurgency. "Huge amounts of money have disappeared. In return we got nothing but scraps of metal," Mr Allawi said.

Ayed Allawi's government was in power from the end of June 2004 until late February this year. The new Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has repeatedly complained about the legacy of administrative and financial corruption.

Judge Radhi said there was also evidence against the transport, trade, interior, public works and labour ministries, and that up to 50 officials could be brought to justice.

CLUB FOR CORRUPTION (GOP STYLE)

FEC FILES SUIT AGAINST CLUB FOR GROWTH INC.

WASHINGTON --- The Federal Election Commission (FEC) today filed suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the Club for Growth Inc. (Club) alleging that the Club has violated the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) by failing to register as a political committee even as it raised and spent millions of dollars to affect Congressional elections in the 2000, 2002, and 2004 campaigns.

The FEC’s court filing describes numerous solicitations by the Club between 2000 and 2004 which stated that funds raised would be used to help elect or defeat specific Congressional candidates, making proceeds from these solicitations contributions under the law. The Club also spent more than $1 million in the last three cycles on advertising related to specific federal campaigns, often advocating the election or defeat of candidates.

The complaint alleges that the Club, having met the threshold for political committee status, received more than $4 million in 2004 alone in contributions that exceeded limits contained in the FECA. The Club also accepted nearly $350,000 in 2000 and 2001 from corporations who are prohibited from making contributions in federal elections.

THE "SOLID SOUTH" BEGINS TO CRUMBLE

Mistake
· Iraq war tragic
September 13, 2005

REMARKABLY, two West Virginia Republican mayors have denounced the Iraq war launched by Republican President George W. Bush — and one is backing a council resolution seeking withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Charleston Mayor Danny Jones, who fought in Vietnam, told reporter Paul Nyden that he wouldn’t want his 16-year-old son “involved in this enterprise.” He asked: “Is it really worth spending $150 million a day?” If America had a draft to obtain soldiers for Iraq, Jones said, “there would be blood in the streets.”

South Charleston Mayor Richie Robb, who earned a Bronze Star in Vietnam combat, said “I am not sure what we are doing,” because White House reasons for the war change each time a previous reason proves untrue.

He said that to invade Iraq in retaliation for the 9/11 terrorist attack — which had no connection to Iraq — “would have been like invading Mexico after Pearl Harbor.”

Robb supports a proposed resolution by Council President Dayton Griffith which says the U.S. occupation “is serving to prolong the insurgency there” and “has led to greater instability.” The resolution demands return of American soldiers by the end of this year.

MORE ON THE MISSING BUSES

Gov. Blanco wanted the 500 buses FEMA promised and was told that they were on their way. Unfortunately, she thought Michael Brown was competent.

Blanco says feds pledged buses
By MICHELLE MILLHOLLON
mmillhollon@theadvocate.com
Capitol news bureau
9/18/05

Hours after the hurricane hit Aug. 29, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced a plan to send 500 commercial buses into New Orleans to rescue thousands of people left stranded on highways, overpasses and in shelters, hospitals and homes.

On the day of the storm, or perhaps the day after, FEMA turned down the state's suggestion to use school buses because they are not air conditioned, Blanco said Friday in an interview.

The state had sent 68 school buses into the city on Monday.
Blanco took over more buses from Louisiana school systems and sent them in on Wednesday, two days after the storm. She tapped the National Guard to drive them. Each time the buses emptied an area, more people would appear, she said.
The buses took 15,728 people to safety, a Blanco aide said. But the state's fleet of school buses wasn't enough. On Wednesday, with the FEMA buses still not in sight, Blanco called the White House to talk to Bush and ended up speaking to Chief of Staff Andy Card.

"I said, 'Even if we had 500 buses, they've underestimated the magnitude of this situation, and I think I need 5,000 buses, not 500,'" Blanco recounted.
"'But, Andy, those 500 are not here,'" the governor said.