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Katrina recovery efforts often offered the most help to the most affluent
Aug. 27- The massive government effort to repair the damage from Hurricane Katrina is fostering a stark divide as the state governments in Louisiana and Mississippi structured the rebuilding programs in ways that often offered the most help to the most affluent residents.
The result, advocates say, has been an uneven recovery, with whites and middle-class people more likely than blacks and low-income people to have rebuilt their lives in the five years since the horrific storm.
"The recovery is really the tale of two recoveries," said James Perry, executive director of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center. "For people who were well off before the storm, they are more likely to be back in their homes, back in their jobs and to have access to good health care. For those who were poor or struggling to get by before the storm, the opposite is true."
Louisiana's program to distribute grants to property owners whose homes were damaged or destroyed by Katrina was found by a federal judge this month to discriminate against black homeowners.
Meanwhile, in Mississippi, state officials refused to offer rebuilding grants to property owners who suffered wind damage, explaining that the property owners should have carried private insurance. That rule hit low-income and black homeowners particularly hard, advocates say, because many of them were uninsured, often because they owned property that was passed down through the generations.
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Source: Washington Post |
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American Airlines hit with largest fine ever over maintenance
Aug. 27- Federal regulators hit American Airlines with the industry's largest fine ever, saying the Fort Worth-based carrier failed to properly inspect and repair wires in the wheel wells of its MD-80 fleet in 2008.
The FAA's proposed $24.2 million civil penalty is related to the April 2008 grounding of about 300 American planes, a move that led to 3,000 canceled flights in one week.
"We expect operators to perform inspections and conduct regular and required maintenance in order to prevent safety issues," said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. "There can be no compromises when it comes to safety."
American said it believes that the proposed fine is "unwarranted" and plans to challenge it.
"American Airlines has always maintained its aircraft to the highest standards, and we continue to do so," said American spokeswoman Andrea Huguely. "We assure our customers there was never a safety of flight issue surrounding these circumstances more than two years ago."
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Source: McClatchy Newspapers |
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Medical pot clinics busted for illegal sales
| By Mike Martindale and Jennifer Chambers |
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Aug. 27- Authorities raided two medical marijuana businesses and arrested 15 people for allegedly making illegal sales in a crackdown announced Thursday by Oakland County officials.
The arrests followed an undercover investigation that found marijuana being sold illegally, often without buyers showing state-issued medical marijuana cards, officials said. The cards are distributed to people whose doctors prescribed marijuana for pain relief.
Raids Wednesday night targeted Clinical Relief, a Ferndale clinic, and Everybody's Café, a Waterford Township restaurant that runs an after-hours "compassion club" behind closed doors. Arrests and drug seizures also occurred at Metro Detroit homes and a Macomb County warehouse, officials said.
"This is Michigan, not some Cheech and Chong movie," Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said Thursday at a news conference. Deputies displayed seized items that included bagged and candied marijuana worth $750,000, hash oil, other drugs and growing equipment.
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Source: Detroit News |
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With economy slowing, Bernanke still not ready to act
Aug. 27- The U.S. economy grew at a slower pace during the second quarter of this year than first estimated, the government reported Friday, another indication that the recovery is losing steam and one that prompted Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to pledge new action if the economy deteriorates further.
Although the Commerce Department's first estimate of growth from April through June had been 2.4 percent, the agency revised that number Friday to 1.6 percent. That suggests that the slowdown from strong 3.7 percent growth in the first three months of this year was more pronounced than had been thought. The agency attributed the revision to stronger-than-anticipated growth in imports, which partially reduce domestic growth.
The Commerce Department's revision came hours before a much-anticipated speech by Bernanke on his outlook amid darkening views of the economy.
Speaking at the Fed's annual gathering in the Wyoming town of Jackson Hole, Bernanke restated in a detailed 20-page speech that the Fed's rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee still anticipates growth. He also indicated that he isn't ready to take new aggressive actions until there are clearer signs of economic deterioration.
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Source: McClatchy Newspapers |
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Banks' self-dealing super-charged financial crisis
| By Jake Bernstein and Jesse Eisinger |
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Aug. 26- Over the last two years of the housing bubble, Wall Street bankers perpetrated one of the greatest episodes of self-dealing in financial history.
Faced with increasing difficulty in selling the mortgage-backed securities that had been among their most lucrative products, the banks hit on a solution that preserved their quarterly earnings and huge bonuses:
They created fake demand.
A ProPublica analysis shows for the first time the extent to which banks -- primarily Merrill Lynch, but also Citigroup, UBS and others -- bought their own products and cranked up an assembly line that otherwise should have flagged.
The products they were buying and selling were at the heart of the 2008 meltdown -- collections of mortgage bonds known as collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs.
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Source: ProPublica |
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Good govt. groups raise questions about new White House ethics czar
Aug. 20- When the Obama administration announced last month that Norm Eisen, the specially appointed White House "czar" for ethics and transparency, was leaving to become the ambassador to the Czech Republic, advocates of campaign finance reform and "good government" groups in Washington took the news hard. They describe Eisen's tenure as a "dream come true," and worry that no one will adequately fill his shoes.
When they learned two weeks ago that White House counsel Bob Bauer would take over for Eisen, that sadness turned to angry disbelief. "Bob Bauer doesn't have the DNA to be an ethics czar," charges Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, echoing a complaint common among advocates for greater transparency in government. "He's always defended the ability of special interests to put money into campaigns."
Bill Allison, who works for the Sunlight Foundation, said: "Bauer has used his expertise as an attorney to push the ethical limits as far as possible and try to keep people who clearly did unethical behavior out of trouble. And by pushing the limits of how these rules are interpreted, he's paved the way for more unethical outcomes." Unlike Eisen, who was popularly described as "Mr. No." around Washington, "Bauer cares about doing the things you can get away with."
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Source: Washington Independent |
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Feds probing post-Katrina 'shoot looters' claim
Aug. 27- Federal authorities are investigating allegations that New Orleans police were told after Hurricane Katrina to "take the city back and shoot the looters."
Police spokesman Bob Young said Friday that federal officials have asked police for information and for permission to interview officers about the alleged orders. The U.S. Attorney's office in New Orleans and FBI spokeswoman Sheila Thorne refused to comment on the investigation.
The August 2005 storm flooded 80 percent of the city, knocked out power and police communications and led to widespread chaos. Looters were photographed carrying merchandise from upscale New Orleans stores, gunfire could be heard in many areas of the city and residents were terrified of lawlessness.
In a documentary this week by reporters from The Times-Picayune, PBS Frontline and ProPublica, several incidents were cited in which officers claimed they were authorized by police brass to shoot looters after Katrina.
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Source: Associated Press |
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Cost of the War in Iraq
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| Quote of the Week |
| " Total US deaths in Afghanistan have doubled under President Obama, and when the next US soldier is reported dead, the majority of US deaths in Afghanistan will have occurred under President Obama. " |
-- Robert Naiman, truthout, 8/16/2010.
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