Pajama Pundits

The Washington Post headline is - Louisiana Goes After Federal Billions. What the article doesn't make clear is that it's really hard to tell just how many of the billions the Louisiana delegation (led by Senator Mary Landrieu) is really going after.

After reading parts of the text (pdf, html) and the entire summary (pdf) of S.1765 on Landrieu's site, it is apparent that the summary is misleading and I have to wonder whether that is purposeful. There's little doubt in my mind that the average citizen is going to opt for the 9 page summary over the 440 page text of the bill.

If there hadn't been so many glaring omissions of $ amounts in the summary, it's not likely I would have started digging into the full text either. I'm not a masochist!

The total of all the items in the summary with a $ amount listed in the summary is $241.2 billion. That's a little shy of the Washington Post's estimate of $250 million, which I'm beginning to think may also be an underestimate.

This is the summary of Subtitle A--Department of Defense--Military:

• $743 million for Defense Operation and Maintenance expenses incurred during relief efforts.
• $547 million for the Department of Defense to procure needed equipment.
• Two year increase in the Family Separation Allowance to from $250 to $350, effective 29 August 2005.
• Ensures that all deployments in support of Hurricane Katrina relief efforts shall be credited towards the “mobilization” requirement in the six year deployment cycle policy of the Army National Guard, Air National Guard, and Army Reserve.
• $748 Million for Defense reconstruction of military facilities and family housing in Louisiana.
• $160,000,000 of the Military Construction fund will be directed to the City of New Orleans to implement the proposed “Federal City” initiative.

First, using the amounts listed in the full text, I come up with $762.5 million for the first item.

Add to that the $82.5 million in the full text for the Family Separation allowance and we've got a little over $2.3 billion in this section alone.

But wait! There's more. The summary doesn't include the part about the Navy turning over to either the City of New Orleans or the Port of New Orleans "...all right, title and interest of the U.S. in and to a parcel of real property, including any improvements and facilities thereon, consisting of all acreage at the Naval Support Activity (east bank of the Mississippi)... for the purpose of facilitating the development and expansion of the City or Port Authority."

Even after the damage Katrina caused, this property is bound to have some value. If it's part of the "Federal City" plan, was the plan to turn it over to New Orleans before Katrina hit? It appears that several items besides the $160 million specifically designated to New Orleans for the "Federal City" are designed to facilitate or enhance that project, which was supposed to cost the feds $0 and Louisiana $200 million. Is the state of Louisiana still planning to contribute $200 million to the project?

There's little doubt the military is running up some bills doing law enforcement, search and rescue, and numerous other tasks, and I generally have little problem with funding for the military. In this instance, it appears that the Louisiana delegation is attempting to enhance its existing agreements with the military and possibly grab a few military goodies they didn't already have.

With that, I've got a problem. This is a reconstruction bill, not a new construction bill.

Granted, I'm griping about a measly $2+ billion, a mere drop in the bucket. That's only because I haven't got around to reading the rest of the full text of the bill yet.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse says it's not unlike the way the flood set off looting.

(Transcribed from notes made while reading the latest Scientific American and S.1765 by generator-powered lamp.)

Damn... the Japanese, the U.S., and the European Union are trying to dig a hole to China. That had to be as irresistable to write as all the pithy observations about the spiciness of Louisiana politics.

What the ship Chikyu is designed for is drilling through the earth's crust to the mantle and extracting samples.

This amazing ship carries a drill pipe that is 9.5 kilometers long -- 22 times the height of the Empire State Building and it cost only $540 million to build. For perspective, that's just a little over 2% of what Louisiana's Congressmen and Senators want to rebuild after Katrina, none of which could possibly be called pork, right?

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution suggests a Swiftian solution to gridlocked evacuations, such as the recent one from Houston:

Pay people who stay behind. By the day, of course. And only if they own cars.

Just in case his tongue wasn't firmly planted in his cheek, I've got to post disagreement. In last week's evacuation, most people thought it was worth the cost to evacuate. Staying behind is almost always cheaper (barring loss of life).

The truly Swiftian way to handle it would be to make evacuation even more expensive. The gridlock sort of did that, didn't it? Next time a hurricane is headed toward Houston, that will be remembered and more people will choose to stay behind.

It's more a pendulum of experience. New Orleans is primed to over-react to the next hurricane threat and Houston is primed to under-react. Enough experiences (like Florida has had) will eventually lead to a moderate, more efficient response.

On a slightly different tangent to the cost of evacuating, those who end up in shelters need to be treated just a little less like victim royalty. While I've heard (all my life) of the Red Cross not accounting for how it uses its funds well enough, what I've not heard about is an evaluation of its theories on how shelter residents are treated.

While residents are relegated to waiting and hours of boredom, volunteers (or paid staff) rush around making coffee, serving food, and cleaning up. Wouldn't the residents be happier and less demoralized if they were doing more of these things for themselves?

I understand that some things (food preparation and storage involving raw ingredients, for example) must be more closely controlled than others. I do not understand what appears to be an encouragement of helplessness, resulting in a more demoralizing experience than necessary.

The photographer that actually took them asks that you slap cousin Bill for him. Well, slap him only if cousin Bill claims the photographer is anybody other than Mike Hollingshead.

The one thing the emails have right is that the photos are amazing. That's all the more reason the photographer should get the credit! He's bemused that so many want to claim they took them.

What they honestly get out of that and how it makes their daily lives better I don't know.

They're jealous, maybe?

If the html works like I want it to, you should be able to see when and where each photo was taken by holding your mouse over it. Click on it and the link should take you to the Mike Hollingshead page where the photo can be found. Take some time to explore Extreme Instability. I'll never think of the midwest as "boring" again! He's got great photos of his cat and dog too.

Snopes has more on the history of these "all-purpose storm photos".

The Cloud Appreciation Society is stunned and amazed that no one else has pointed out that one of photos is an eerie likeness of Margaret Thatcher.

And let this be his campaign slogan:

(via Ace of Spades)

UPDATE: Video here.

UPDATE II: Of course I was laughing when I typed the title to this post, but it's not that bad an idea. Gen. Honore is capable, competent, organized, honest, respected by those who work with him... all perfect opposites of the Louisiana politician. (There may be exceptions. Please put examples in the comments!)

There is a Recall Kathleen Blanco site up. I've requested a petition to sign. Even if ultimately unsuccessful, I think this is a worthwhile effort for at least two reasons:

1. Louisianans have accepted that political corruption is a way of life here. Maybe we have some variation of Stockholm Syndrome.

2. Such a petition could serve as a sort of wake-up call for other public servants in the state, all the way down to dogcatcher. They'd likely hit the snooze button, but with the voters having set the alarm, it's unlikely all of them would toss the clock out the window.

In California, prior to the successful recall of Gov. Gray Davis, only four of more than 107 recall efforts since 1911 qualified for the ballot. We've got to start somewhere.

Another thing we can do is tell our lawmakers we'd like to be able to recall them a little more easily. Of course, they're not going to like that idea, but they might throw a bone or two our way. Mostly Cajun sums up what it currently takes to recall an elected official here:

...the state legislature provided that a recall election requires a petition with hand-written signatures of a THIRD of registered voters, with a separate petition filed in each of Louisiana’s 64 parishes (counties) within 180 days of the filing of the original petition of recall.

I don't know if the statute has been refined by court decisions, but it could use some clarification. At first, it doesn't appear that a petition must be filed in each parish, as the "voting area" for governor is the entire state. Then again, it later says that "The signed and dated petition shall be submitted to the registrar of voters for each parish within the voting area..." Does this mean a third of voters in each parish must sign or that if a third statewide sign, that at least one signature in each parish is required?

The least the legislators could do is clear up what they mean.

The applicable code is here: Louisiana Revised Statutes Title 18. Louisiana Election Code, Chapter 6-C. Recall Elections, § 1300.2. Petition for recall election; campaign finance disclosure.

UPDATE III: There's now another website devoted to the recall of Gov. Blanco - R.E.C.A.L.L.

Instapundit links to this article, Katrina, What Went Right. The author, Lou Dolinar, sums up the rescue successes of at least four different organizations with helicopters saying:

Individual federal and state units were not coordinating their efforts overall. There was no central clearing house for information on rescue efforts. What looked like a hurricane relief breakdown was in fact a press release breakdown.

And then he notes:

Local rescue efforts by boat were surprisingly robust, contrary to conventional wisdom. The much maligned New Orleans police and fire departments, which began operations Monday afternoon, were able to field 100 to 200 boats in the first 24 hours after the breach, according to local officials quoted in the Times Picayune. However, with the City's communications system broken down, the 500 to 1000 rescue workers had to organize themselves and so were operating without central command and control, thus also below the media radar.

Isn't that an example of the Pack, Not a Herd idea, even if the packs are police and military units?

I suggest that an attempt to "coordinate" these groups would have slowed the response by some of them by at least 24 hours and, additionally, could have made each individual rescue use more resources and take longer.

Hopefully, whatever commission investigates the various government responses, will consider that possibility.

Devastation extends to Pensacola FL. The entire Gulf Coast was hit hard.

One thing that anyone from anywhere can do is donate to the Red Cross.

In Shreveport alone, the Red Cross is providing shelter for 800 people, most of them from New Orleans.

There are hundreds of communities across the south where the Red Cross is doing the same. Governor Blanco just said it may be weeks before these people will even be able to survey the damage to their homes. They are not going home any time soon.

In addition, the thousands of people that are currently in the Superdome are going to be moved to other shelters.

In southeast Louisiana alone, there is likely over a half million people who are now homeless. I don't know how many to add to that number from Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida panhandle.

The Red Cross is essential. Donate now.