And when the levee breaks, spend it on pork barrel Homeland Security

[texastoast]

More levee repair spending info and yet another nail in the shrubito coffin of incompetence.

. . .


In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

Full Story
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313

[Zuni]

1. Salon had an article about this yesterday

it was shocking to me, and I already knew Bush had cut key programs to finance upper-class tax cuts and the war in Iraq

[texastoast]

2. Visualize impeachment

For complete and utter incompetence and betrayal.