Fall - 2005A couple of my blogs (italicized and linked here) from Fall of last year continue to be sought out again and again by some readers. Today's post compares and contrasts past and current news about these issues.
The Executive Branch ran roughshod - Libby scandal reactions, Boo! - 10/31/05: The CIA's Valerie Plame outing by the White House was in the news last Halloween, as well as talk about the false pretenses for the invasion of Iraq. Today no one in the executive branch of government has been held accountable for hardly anything.
Holiday Hunger - Some will be hungry this Thanksgiving - 11/23/05: This post seemed to have touched a chord with readers, particularly many living from abroad. The gap between rich and poor widens every year. Today marks the growth of the U.S. population to 300,000,000+, and a number of those families will be hungry again on Thanksgiving, 2006.
2006
This Fall some legislators will lose elections because they dropped the ball - Your Congress at Work - 2/28/06: In February, not long after the Abramoff scandal broke, Republicans talked about lobbying reform. Today new scandals about elected officials are breaking daily, and there has been no reform. The port security issue was red hot, our current president's ratings were slipping badly, and the news about domestic spying was just begginning to make regular news. Today our unitary executive is set to sign away core parts of citizen civil liberties protections with his torture protection law.
Gulf Folly
NOLA has bright and dark sides - I posted regularly about New Orleans last year. On the year anniversary of the hurricanes, in August of 2006, I returned to the subject with this: About what IS in New Orleans - 8/28/06
For today's visitors, searching on "New Orleans" reveals potential fun for tourists: We find lots of conference happenings at a refurbished convention center, cruise ships docking, news about visitor entertainment, music and art events, hotel promotions, environment and energy interest news, Superdome renewed for football, a wedding guide, and opportunities for water experiences.
For former residents, the picture is very different: an article about poverty from Brookings, and a wonderful essay titled, "The Long Road Home" by Naomi Ishisaka in "Colors" Magazine. To quote a bit of her opening,
When we visited the region in the month after Katrina hit Aug. 29 of last year, our focus was on emergency relief and temporary shelter for the tens of thousands displaced due to a faulty levee system and a flawed disaster response. Our assessment: dismal.
A year later, we went to chronicle how the lives of people of color, in the largest migration since the Dust Bowl, had changed or improved in one of the most significant events in modern U.S. history. Our assessment: still dismal.
There were a thousand and one stories waiting to be told and each one was haunting and heartbreaking.
While huge swaths of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast look much the same as last year, ravaged and forlorn, one striking difference is the ubiquitous FEMA trailer parks dotting the landscape. These parks, with their bright white trailers and guarded entryways, are another reminder that the Gulf Coast is unlike nearly every other place in the United States, where getting into a trailer park is seen as a desirable accomplishment.
More NOLA references:
- An earlier post - The Big Easy today - 8/22/06
VOTE - It would be good for voters to remember the responses of elected officials as they go to the polls in November. So far, very few have been held accountable for the aftermath of the hurricane disasters.
Tags: bush history republicans security blogs news and politics travel congress poverty
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