How to Destroy an African-American City in 33 Steps

Refuse to talk about or look seriously at race. Condemn anyone who dares to challenge the racism of what is going on – accuse them of "playing the race card" or say they are paranoid.

By Bill Quigley
Guest Blogger

Step One. Delay. If there is one word that sums up the way to destroy an African-American city after a disaster, that word is DELAY. If you are in doubt about any of the following steps – just remember to delay and you will probably be doing the right thing.

Step Two. When a disaster is coming, do not arrange a public evacuation. Rely only on individual resources. People with cars and money for hotels will leave. The elderly, the disabled and the poor will not be able to leave. Most of those without cars – 25% of households of New Orleans, overwhelmingly African-Americans – will not be able to leave. Most of the working poor, overwhelmingly African-American, will not be able to leave. Many will then permanently accuse the victims who were left behind of creating their own human disaster because of their own poor planning. It is critical to start by having people blame the victims for their own problems.

Step Three. When the disaster hits make certain the national response is overseen by someone who has no experience at all handling anything on a large scale, particularly disasters. In fact, you can even inject some humor into the response – have the disaster coordinator be someone whose last job was the head of a dancing horse association.

Step Four. Make sure that the President and national leaders remain aloof and only slightly concerned. This sends an important message to the rest of the country.

Step Five. Make certain the local, state, and national governments do not respond in a coordinated effective way. This will create more chaos on the ground.

Step Six. Do not bring in food or water or communications right away. This will make everyone left behind more frantic and create incredible scenes for the media.

Step Seven. Make certain that the media focus of the disaster is not on the heroic community work of thousands of women, men and young people helping the elderly, the sick and the trapped survive, but mainly on acts of people looting. Also spread and repeat the rumors that people trapped on rooftops are shooting guns not to attract attention and get help, but AT the helicopters. This will reinforce the message that "those people" left behind are different from the rest of us and are beyond help.

Step Eight. Refuse help from other countries. If we accept help, it looks like we cannot or choose not to handle this problem ourselves. This cannot be the message. The message we want to put out over and over is that we have plenty of resources and there is plenty of help. Then if people are not receiving help, it is their own fault. This should be done quietly.

Step Nine. Once the evacuation of those left behind actually starts, make sure people do not know where they are going or have any way to know where the rest of their family has gone. In fact, make sure that African-Americans end up much farther away from home than others.

Step Ten. Make sure that when government assistance finally has to be given out, it is given out in a totally arbitrary way. People will have lost their homes, jobs, churches, doctors, schools, neighbors and friends. Give them a little bit of money, but not too much. Make people dependent. Then cut off the money. Then give it to some and not others. Refuse to assist more than one person in every household. This will create conflicts where more than one generation lived together. Make it impossible for people to get consistent answers to their questions. Long lines and busy phones will discourage people from looking for help.

Step Eleven. Insist the President suspend federal laws requiring living wages and affirmative action for contractors working on the disaster. While local workers are still displaced, import white workers from outside the city for the high-paying jobs like crane operators and bulldozers. Import Latino workers from outside the city for the low-paying dangerous jobs. Make sure to have elected officials, black and white, blame job problems on the lowest wage immigrant workers. This will create divisions between black and brown workers that can be exploited by those at the top. Because many of the brown workers do not have legal papers, those at the top will not have to worry about paying decent wages, providing health insurance, following safety laws, unemployment compensation, workers compensation, or union organizing. They become essentially disposable workers – use them, then lose them.

Step Twelve. Whatever you do, keep people away from their city for as long as possible. This is the key to long-term success in destroying the African-American city. Do not permit people to come home. Keep people guessing about what is going to happen and when it is going to happen. Set numerous deadlines and then break them. This will discourage people and make it increasingly difficult for people to return.

Step Thirteen. When you finally have to reopen the city, make sure to reopen the African-American sections last. This will aggravate racial tensions in the city and create conflicts between those who are able to make it home and those who are not.

Step Fourteen. When the big money is given out, make sure it is all directed to homeowners and not to renters. This is particularly helpful in a town like New Orleans that was majority African-American and majority renter. Then, after you have excluded renters, mess the program for the homeowners up so that they must wait for years to get money to fix their homes.

Step Fifteen. Close down all the public schools for months. This will prevent families in the public school system, overwhelmingly African-Americans, from coming home.

Step Sixteen. Fire all the public school teachers, teacher aides, cafeteria workers and bus drivers and de-certify the teachers union – the largest in the state. This will primarily hurt middle class African Americans and make them look for jobs elsewhere.

Step Seventeen. Even better, take this opportunity to flip the public school system into a charter system and push foundations and the government to give extra money to the new charter schools. Give the schools with the best test scores away first. Then give the least flooded schools away next. Turn 70% of schools into charters so that the kids with good test scores or solid parental involvement will go to the charters. That way the kids with average scores, or learning disabilities, or single parent families who are still displaced are kept segregated away from the "good" kids. You will have to set up a few schools for those other kids, but make sure those schools do not get any extra money, do not have libraries, nor doors on the toilets, nor enough teachers. In fact, because of this, you better make certain there are more security guards than teachers.

Step Eighteen. Let the market do what it does best. When rent goes up 70%, say there is nothing we can do about it. This will have two great results. It will keep many former residents away from the city and it will make landlords happy. If wages go up, immediately import more outside workers and wages will settle down.

Step Nineteen. Make sure all the predominately white suburbs surrounding the African-American city make it very difficult for the people displaced from the city to return to the metro area. Have one suburb refuse to allow any new subsidized housing at all. Have the Sheriff of another threaten to stop and investigate anyone wearing dreadlocks. Throw in a little humor and have one nearly all-white suburb pass a law which makes it illegal for homeowners to rent to people other than their blood relatives! The courts may strike these down, but it will take time and the message will be clear – do not think about returning to the suburbs.

Step Twenty. Reduce public transportation by more than 80%. The people without cars will understand the message.

Step Twenty One. Keep affordable housing to a minimum. Use money instead to reopen the Superdome and create tourism campaigns. Refuse to boldly create massive homeownership opportunities for former renters. Delay re-opening apartment complexes in African American neighborhoods. As long as less than half the renters can return to affordable housing, they will not return.

Step Twenty Two. Keep all public housing closed. Since it is 100% African-American, this is a no-brainer. Make sure to have African-Americans be the people who deliver the message. This step will also help by putting more pressure on the rental market as 5000 more families will then have to compete for rental housing with low-income workers. This will provide another opportunity for hundreds of millions of government funds to be funneled to corporations when these buildings are torn down and developers can build up other less-secure buildings in their place. Make sure to tell the 5000 families evicted from public housing that you are not letting them back for their own good. Tell them you are trying to save them from living in a segregated neighborhood. This will also send a good signal – if the government can refuse to allow people back, private concerns are free to do the same or worse.

Step Twenty Three. Shut down as much public health as possible. Sick and elderly people and moms with little kids need access to public healthcare. Keep the public hospital, which hosted about 350,000 visits a year before the disaster, closed. Keep the neighborhood clinics closed. Put all the pressure on the private healthcare facilities and provoke economic and racial tensions there between the insured and uninsured.

Step Twenty Four. Close as many public mental healthcare providers as possible. The trauma of the disaster will seriously increase stress on everyone. Left untreated, medical experts tell us this will dramatically increase domestic violence, self-medication and drug and alcohol abuse, and of course crime.

Step Twenty Five. Keep the city environment unfriendly to women. Women were already widely discriminated against before the storm. Make sure that you do not reopen day care centers. This, combined with the lack of healthcare, lack of affordable housing, and lack of transportation, will keep moms with kids away. If you can keep women with kids away, the city will destroy itself.

Step Twenty Six. Create and maintain an environment where black on black crime will flourish. As long as you can keep parents out of town, keep the schools hostile to kids without parents, keep public healthcare closed, make only low-paying jobs available, not fund social workers or prosecutors or public defenders or police, and keep chaos the norm, young black men will certainly kill other young black men. To increase the visibility of the crime problem, bring in the National Guard in fatigues to patrol the streets in their camouflage hummers.

Step Twenty Seven. Strip the local elected predominately African American government of its powers. Make certain the money that is coming in to fix up the region is not under their control. Privatize as much as you can as quickly as you can – housing, healthcare, and education for starters. When in doubt, privatize. Create an appointed commission of people who have no experience in government to make all the decisions. In fact, it is better to create several such commissions, that way no one will really be sure who is in charge and there will be much more delay and conflict. Treat the local people like they are stupid, you know what is best for them much better than they do.

Step Twenty Eight. Create lots of planning processes but give them no authority. Overlap them where possible. Give people conflicting signals whether their neighborhood will be allowed to rebuild or be turned into green space. This will create confusion, conflict and aggravation. People will blame the officials closest to them – the local African-American officials, even though they do not have any authority to do anything about these plans since they do not control the rebuilding money.

Step Twenty Nine. Hold an election but make it very difficult for displaced voters to participate. In fact, do not allow any voting in any place outside the state even we do it for other countries and even though hundreds of thousands of people are still displaced. This is very important because when people are not able to vote, those who have been able to return can say "Well, they didn't even vote, so I guess they are not interested in returning."

Step Thirty. Get the elected officials out of the way and make room for corporations to make a profit. There are billions to be made in this process for well-connected national and international corporations. There is so much chaos that no one will be able to figure out exactly where the money went for a long time. There is no real attempt to make sure that local businesses, especially African-American businesses, get contracts – at best they get modest subcontracts from the corporations which got the big money. Make sure the authorities prosecute a couple of little people who ripped off $2000 – that will temporarily satisfy people who know they are being ripped off and divert attention from the big money rip-offs. This will also provide another opportunity to blame the victims – as critics can say "Well, we gave them lots of money, they must have wasted it, how much more can they expect from us?"

Step Thirty One. Keep people's attention diverted from the African-American city. Pour money into Iraq instead of the Gulf Coast. Corporations have figured out how to make big bucks whether we are winning or losing the war. It is easier to convince the country to support war – support for cities is much, much tougher. When the war goes badly, you can change the focus of the message to supporting the troops. Everyone loves the troops. No one can say we all love African-Americans. Focus on terrorists – that always seems to work.

Step Thirty Two. Refuse to talk about or look seriously at race. Condemn anyone who dares to challenge the racism of what is going on – accuse them of "playing the race card" or say they are paranoid. Criticize people who challenge the exclusion of African-Americans as people who "just want to go back to the bad old days." Repeat the message that you want something better for everyone. Use African American spokespersons where possible.

Step Thirty-Three. Repeat these steps.

Note to readers. Every fact in this list actually happened and continues to happen in New Orleans after Katrina.

Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. You can reach Bill at Quigley@loyno.edu.

Hearing spotlights workplace injustice in post-Katrina New Orleans

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) held a hearing yesterday on the adequacy of labor law enforcement in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina. Among those testifying was Jennifer Rosenbaum with the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, which helped bring several successful lawsuits against employers who stole wages from workers in the wake of the storm.

Not surprisingly, Rosenbaum concluded that enforcement was not adequate:

In my view, the [Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division] failed to provide a reasonable level of resources to the region, given the enormous scale of the disaster. Because of this failure, the DOL-WHD, through its New Orleans and Gulf Coast offices, had a limited ability to intervene and address the well-reported, epic wage theft that accompanied the reconstruction. The DOL-WHD thus allowed chains of subcontracted corporations to profit on the backs of the underpaid workers, particularly vulnerable migrant workers. In addition, the DOL-WHD failed to competently record and investigate many of the complaints that it did receive. In the resulting lawlessness, DOL-WHD utterly failed to protect migrant workers from minimum wage and overtime violations and from retaliation.

Other workers' advocates who testified at the hearing were Saket Soni and Jacob Horowitz with the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice, Tracie Washington of the Louisiana Justice Institute, Catherine Ruckelshaus with the National Employment Law Project and Ted Smukler of Interfaith Worker Justice.

IWJ recently released a report titled "Working on Faith: A Faithful Response to Worker Abuse in New Orleans." Based on interviews with 218 workers -- domestic and migrant -- in New Orleans last summer, the report reveals that:

* 47 percent reported not receiving all the pay they were entitled to while working in the region since Katrina;

* 55 percent said they received no overtime pay for hours worked beyond 40 per week;

* 58 percent said they were exposed at work to dangerous substances including mold, contaminated water and asbestos; and

* workers were unaware that the U.S. Department of Labor was an agency charged with protecting their rights.

Congressional watchdog faults EPA's Katrina response

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has come under fire for falsely assuring New York City residents that the air was safe to breathe after the destruction of the three World Trade Center buildings on 9/11. In fact the demolition of those structures released to the environment numerous toxic chemicals including benzene, PCBs, dioxin and lead, and as a consequence many nearby residents, first responders and recovery workers are suffering health problems related to their exposure.

It turns out that the EPA also made false assurances to victims of another disaster: Gulf Coast residents after Hurricane Katrina.

That's the finding of a new report from the Government Accountability Office, the watchdog arm of Congress. For example, the GAO found that while EPA told Gulf Coast residents that their health was protected from the risks associated with asbestos inhalation, it failed to deploy air monitors in and around New Orleans neighborhoods -- including predominantly African-American communities -- where demolition and renovation activities have been concentrated:

While EPA took steps to monitor asbestos after the hurricane -- for example, more than doubling the number of ambient (outdoor) monitors and monitoring emissions at debris reduction sites -- monitors were not placed in areas undergoing substantial demolition and renovation, such as the Ninth Ward. This is problematic because monitors effectively detect releases of asbestos from demolition activities only if they are located immediately adjacent to demolition sites. Further, many thousands of homes being demolished and renovated by or for individual homeowners are generally not subject to EPA's asbestos emissions standards aimed at limiting releases of fibers into the air.

The GAO also criticized information the EPA offered on post-Katrina environmental health risks, noting that it was at times unclear and inconsistent on how to protect against exposure to some contaminants, particularly asbestos and mold. Furthermore, three key reports on EPA's environmental sampling in New Orleans were marred by a lack of timeliness and insufficient disclosures:

For example, EPA did not state until August 2006 that its December 2005 report -- which said that the great majority of the data showed that adverse health effects would not be expected from exposure to sediments from previously flooded areas -- applied to short-term visits, such as to view damage to homes. In addition, the summaries do not disclose an important EPA assumption -- that the results of sediment samples from streets and other outdoor public access areas can be extrapolated to private properties, such as yards and the inside of homes. This is important because, for example, environmental contamination levels inside buildings can be significantly higher than and different from the contamination outside, potentially causing more adverse health effects.

And that's not all: The EPA also failed to promptly remove clearly visible chemical drums from several national wildlife refuges in Louisiana, leading to a costlier and more complicated cleanup, which is not yet completed. The agency also lacked an effective role in emergency debris disposal decisions that could lead to pollution, the report found. Finally, the lack of clarity in federal debris management plans impeded the safe disposal of some appliances and electronic waste.

The GAO has called on the EPA to implement an asbestos monitoring plan in New Orleans, improve its future communications to the public on disaster-related environmental risks, and take action to minimize those risks. It also recommended that EPA work with the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Coast Guard and federal land management agencies to address environmental contamination of federal lands in future disasters.

(Photo of EPA contractors entering a polluted building after Hurricane Katrina by Wim Henderson for FEMA)

Investigation details reliance on cost-plus contracts for post-hurricane work

Federal agencies responding to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita doled out more than $2.4 billion in contracts that guaranteed profits for big companies, according to an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based investigative journalism nonprofit:

Unlike a fixed-price contract, which generally pays contractors a set amount -- thus pressuring them to keep costs down because they are responsible for any overruns -- cost-plus-fixed-fee contracts allow contractors to bill the government for all of their costs, plus an extra profit based upon a guaranteed amount.

Critics argue that cost-plus contracts often offer companies no incentive to save money or keep costs from ballooning. Industry officials counter that companies often have no idea what the costs will be in a disaster and that sometimes cost-plus is the most sensible choice for the government and taxpayers.

FEMA was responsible for nearly 94 percent of all of the hurricane-related cost-plus contracts, the Center's analysis found. Most of those contracts were for installing and arranging for emergency temporary trailers for evacuees. Those contracts were awarded to four large corporations: Bechtel National Inc., Fluor Enterprises Inc., Shaw Environmental & Infrastructure Inc. and CH2M Hill Inc.

Of the $3.3 billion awarded for those contracts, about $1.97 billion was cost-plus, according to the Center's analysis of figures from the Federal Procurement Data System. The agencies responsible for issuing the bulk of the remainder of the cost-plus contracts were the U.S. Air Force and the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Center found that 27 percent of the $8.4 billion in Katrina and Rita contracts awarded by FEMA through Jan. 31, 2007 were cost-plus, as were almost 21 percent of the EPA's $212 million in contracts and 36 percent of the Air Force's $167 million in contracts.

In March, the House voted 347-73 to pass the Accountability in Contracting Act, which would limit the use of cost-plus and no-bid contracts and require that overcharges of more than $10 million be disclosed to Congress. The bill's sponsor is Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and a longtime critic of such contracts.

The measure is currently awaiting action in the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, which is chaired by Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent Democrat from Connecticut.

Complaint charges Halliburton with shady accounting practices

A former accounting executive with Halliburton Inc. says the company engaged in illegal accounting practices, ignored his warnings about them, and then retaliated against him when he took his concerns to federal authorities.

Anthony Menendez -- former director of accounting research and training for Halliburton -- made the allegations in a complaint filed with a U.S. Department of Labor administrative law judge in Covington, La. and recently made public in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Menendez claims Halliburton was booking product sales before they occurred, distorting its revenue numbers.

The company has denied the allegations.

Menendez also charges that Halliburton improperly accounted for income taxes, off-balance-sheet entities, and foreign-currency adjustments. He first made his allegations to the Securities and Exchange Commission in November 2005, and three months later alerted the company's audit committee, reports Bloomberg News columnist Jonathan Weil:

In a Jan. 3 court filing, Halliburton said the SEC had closed its inquiry into the company's accounting practices.

Menendez told me, though, that he met with SEC investigators at the agency's Fort Worth, Texas, office as recently as March 28. He also shared a March 14 letter from an enforcement-division attorney there, which shows the travel itinerary the SEC arranged for him to attend that meeting. Mann, the Halliburton spokeswoman, declined to comment on whether the company has been notified of further SEC inquiries into Menendez's allegations.

A Houston-based company that recently announced it was moving its corporate headquarters to Dubai, Halliburton holds multimillion federal reconstruction contracts in Iraq as well as the post-Katrina U.S. Gulf Coast.

The company is already under investigation in the U.S. for bribery, bid rigging, defrauding the military and illegal business ties with Iran. It's currently divesting ownership in its KBR subsidiary, which among other things has come under fire for serving contaminated food and water to U.S.troops in Iraq. It was also criticized after one of its subcontractors hired illegal immigrants to perform Katrina-related work.

Before being elected vice president, Dick Cheney was Halliburton's CEO and chairman, a position he took after serving as defense secretary under President George H.W. Bush. Cheney remains a major stockholder in the company, holding 100,000 shares of unexercised stock options worth some $3 million.

In La., levee 'protection' coincides with slow recovery

A U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development analysis currently making the rounds among policy-makers shows what might seem like a puzzling phenomenon in the wake of Hurricane Katrina: Among homeowners applying for assistance through Louisiana's Road Home rebuilding program, those who lived in areas purportedly protected by the federal levee system aren't returning to their homes at as high a rate as those who live outside the levee system.

In fact, the average Road Home applicant living in a levee-protected area is finding 53 percent of his neighbor's houses empty, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports. In flooded areas without levee protection, the vacancy rate is only 15 percent.

HUD offers no explanations for the disparity. But others do, the paper reports:

…Walter Leger, head of the Louisiana Recovery Authority's housing committee, said the reason should be obvious to anyone -- like him -- who lost their home in a levee-protected zone: The floodwaters remained for weeks behind the levees, while floodwaters quickly receded elsewhere. Meanwhile, New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish residents were not allowed quickly enough to return and mitigate damages, allowing mold to grow and exacerbating the problems.

The study "bears out what we know in this area," said the former Arabi resident whose home was inundated with 14 feet of water. "When the water came in, it stayed. The same levees that were supposed to protect us acted as a wall to keep it in. …Anybody familiar with what went on in people's homes would understand that."

This would not be the first time that federally built levees have actually exacerbated the damage caused by flooding they were supposed to prevent. Several years ago I wrote an article for the Institute's Southern Exposure magazine reporting on the aftermath of the flood that devastated the historic African-American community of Princeville, N.C. in the wake of Hurricane Floyd in 2000. In 1967, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built a levee there in hopes of protecting the town from the flood-prone Tar River. But, as with many of the agency's undertakings, there were flaws in the structure that resulted in its failure after Floyd. And once the town flooded, the levee actually held the water in, resulting in much greater damage than had the water been able to drain out naturally.

As biologist and Environmental Defense attorney Doug Rader told me at the time:

"I think the lesson of Princeville is that there should be fewer of these structural solutions, not more of them," says Rader. "We need to be looking at making flows more natural and less subject to human intervention."

That appears to be a lesson repeated by Katrina.

Grassroots activists to visit NOLA on way to U.S. Social Forum

The U.S. Social Forum that opens next week in Atlanta is expected to draw 20,000 activists together from across the country to build movement for change. But even before that event begins, some of the attendees will be stopping in New Orleans to build solidarity with grassroots groups there and to draw attention to government actions that deny hurricane survivors the right to return home with dignity and justice.

Beginning on June 25, more than 200 participants in the People's Freedom Caravan -- a regional campaign traveling from New Mexico to Atlanta -- will arrive in the city that's still struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina. They'll be joined by other activists to clean up the grounds of public housing developments where former residents seeking to return have been locked out, visit a day laborer gathering site, tour still-devastated neighborhoods, and participate in story circles and a press conference in historic Congo Square.

"The People's Freedom Caravan is our opportunity to find the wisdom in a united struggle for justice," says Monique Harden, co-director of New Orleans-based Advocates for Environmental Human Rights. "Post-Katrina life in New Orleans has shown that there is no real recovery of the Gulf Coast, but only a massive privatization scheme that takes away our homes, communities, and human rights. Any hope for hurricane survivors to return to our homes with dignity and justice relies on a mass movement that begins with the People's Freedom Caravan to the U.S. Social Forum."

For more details about the Social Forum, click here.

Outspoken hurricane official reprimanded again

We reported here last month about concerns expressed by the new National Hurricane Center director that higher-ups were wasting millions on questionable public-relations efforts while shortchanging front-line storm forecasters.

For that Bill Proenza has received an official scolding -- and now he's worried he may get the boot.

Mary Glackin, acting director of the National Weather Service, visited Proenza's Florida office on Friday and delivered a three-page letter of reprimand, the Miami Herald reports:

''I don't think they can pull the rug out from under me right now,'' Proenza said, "but there is no question they are trying to muzzle me.''

Besides criticizing National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration leaders for spending money on P.R. efforts while hurricane forecasters face budget shortfalls, he's also issued warnings about QuikScat, a satellite used to predict hurricanes that's aging and beginning to experience glitches as a result.

According to a copy of the reprimand letter obtained by the Miami Herald, Glackin told Proenza

that his actions had been "requiring me to spend a disproportionate amount of time to correct any confusion; causing undue concern and misunderstanding among your staff; and taking valuable time away from your public role . . .''

This isn't the first time Proenza's been in trouble for his outspoken ways since taking the NHC's helm in January, having previously served as the National Weather Services' Southern region director. Back in April, Proenza says, Louis Uccellini, a high-ranking weather service official, warned him:

"You better stop these QuikScat [and other] complaints. I'm warning you. You have NOAA, DOC [the U.S. Department of Commerce] and the White House pissed off.''

Proenza, however, says he refuses to be silenced.

Unfair FEMA

The Federal Emergency Management Agency might have allowed -- even encouraged -- big insurance corporations to rip off taxpayers after Hurricane Katrina. But it certainly won't let John and Jane Q. Storm Victim get any more than they're due.

And sometimes, maybe not even that.

According to a report in USA TODAY, FEMA overpaid victims of the Gulf Coast hurricanes by at least $485 million, and the agency is now trying to reclaim money from tens of thousands of people.

However, a federal judge in New Orleans earlier this week ruled that the agency would have to provide better explanations to those it says owe. U.S. District Judge Helen "Ginger" Berrigan also blocked FEMA from cutting off rental assistance to storm victims before they have a chance to appeal the decision.

In issuing her ruling, Berrigan criticized FEMA for what she characterized as its "cavalier" attitude toward storm victims, according to the Associated Press:

Berrigan criticized FEMA's procedures, noting that letters announcing a halt in aid are replete with "incomprehensible hieroglyphic abbreviations."

The judge questioned the agency's handling of the housing crisis.

"The plaintiffs have provided a litany of 'horror stories' of individuals who have already suffered grievous loss and trauma, trying to navigate through a bureaucracy that responds, at best, erratically and often in cross purposes with itself," she said.

"Instead of confronting these allegations," Berrigan wrote, "the defendants suggest, in a cavalier fashion, that if the plaintiffs do not understand FEMA's codes and procedures, they can appeal."

Advocates for storm victims praised the judge's decision.

"This ruling will affect thousands of families who were devastated by the disaster and who are still in desperate need of assistance," said Adam Strochak of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, a law firm that represents the plaintiffs along with lawyers from the Public Interest Law Project, the National Center For Law And Economic Justice, the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, Texas Appleseed, the Mississippi Center for Justice, the Legal Clinic at the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, and Steptoe & Johnson LLP. "We are gratified that Judge Berrigan acted swiftly and decisively to bring some order to FEMA's chaotic continuing rental assistance and repayment procedures."

FEMA OK'd insurers' cost-shifting to public flood fund

We've been reporting on allegations that private insurance companies may have defrauded the National Flood Insurance Program out of potentially billions of dollars by misattributing property damage caused by Hurricane Katrina's winds to flooding.

Turns out the Federal Emergency Management Agency actually encouraged such cost-shifting.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that the agency -- in close consultation with private insurance companies -- developed expedited flood adjustment procedures that essentially told insurers it was OK to shift damages to the taxpayer-funded NFIP while shorting customers on wind damage payments:

In the now controversial Sept. 21, 2005 memo explaining the expedited flood adjustment procedures that were developed in consultation with private insurance companies, flood program director David Maurstad said:

"FEMA will not seek reimbursement from the company when a subsequent review identifies overpayments resulting from the company's proper use of FEMA depth data and a reasonable method of developing square foot value in concluding claims."

The insurance industry has acknowledged its involvement in crafting the policy, the paper reports:

On Thursday, the American Insurance Association took credit for developing the procedures with FEMA.

"We came up with the idea of doing it," said Eric Goldberg, assistant general counsel at the trade group. "We thought there ought to be some sort of policy in place that would enable the (insurance) companies to get money into the hands of consumers when it was absolutely clear that there was damage caused by flooding."

The American Insurance Association came up with the idea "immediately after Katrina," Goldberg said, because it was clear there was going to be a huge volume of claims, problems finding enough adjusters, and problems gaining access to damaged homes.

Bob Hunter, who formerly held Maurstad's job and now directs the insurance program at the Consumer Federation of America, called the policy a "blank check":

"Even if you want to err on the side of helping people, you shouldn't be lenient to a point of having no recourse. You don't say, 'We'll never go after the money if you abuse case after case.'"

"I don't think a bureaucrat has the authority to give away the legal rights of the U.S. government," Hunter added.

Coincidentally, both the Bush administration and Maurstad have cozy relationships with the insurance industry.

In his 2004 re-election run, President Bush raised more money from the finance, insurance and real estate sector than from any other industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And Maurstad, a former lieutenant governor and state legislator from Nebraska, worked for more than 20 years as an insurance agent, according to a FEMA press release.

National Flood Insurance Program drowning in conflicts of interest

We reported last week on the unsealing of a federal whistle-blower lawsuit filed in Louisiana by former insurance adjusters alleging that eight insurance companies defrauded the National Flood Insurance Program out of potentially billions of dollars by misattributing property damage caused by Hurricane Katrina's winds to flooding.

As it turns out, the NFIP has no system in place to coordinate its publicly financed benefits with private policies and generally allows insurance companies to determine whether damage was caused by wind or water, creating obvious conflicts of interest.

That was the topic of discussion at a hearing held yesterday by the House Financial Services and the Homeland Security committees. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports:

…[N]either Matt Jadacki, deputy inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, or Orice Williams, director of financial markets and community investment for the U.S. Government Accountability Office, could say whether insurance companies improperly shifted Katrina claims to the federal flood insurance program, in part, because they said federal administrators don't keep wind damage data in their files.

Jadacki said his agency has had trouble getting information from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which oversees the flood insurance program, and from private insurers, and is now subpoenaing the documents.

In their lawsuit, the former adjusters say the average overpayment from the NFIP was 66 percent, according to the Times-Picayune.

Meanwhile, some insurers have been less than forthcoming with details on how they attributed damage, the paper reports:

Rep. Mel Watt, chairman of the [Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations], said the panel has asked for data from private insurance companies about their determinations on damage to homes from the 2005 hurricanes. The information is due this week, but Watt said there's some indication some of the companies might not comply. That would force the panel to determine what steps to take to ensure the information is provided, he said.

Elsewhere on the post-Katrina insurance front, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood this week filed a lawsuit against State Farm, one of the companies also named in the federal whistle-blower suit. Hood sued for breach of contract, claiming that while the company agreed in January to create a process to re-evaluate Katrina claims and get approval for it from a federal judge, it has failed to honor the deal. In Mississippi, State Farm has been accused of systematically burying or changing damage reports that attributed Katrina-related wreckage to wind rather than water. Said Hood in a statement (PDF):

"We filed this lawsuit in an effort to help the more than 30,000 Gulf Coast policyholders who have suffered for nearly two years because of State Farm's inaction. The State Farm reevaluation procedure through the Department of Insurance has only resulted in a little more than 300 new offers. That does not comply with the terms we have with them in black and white. We have a state court order that they signed and then backed out on. If they will breach a clear agreement with a State, then this is further evidence that they have breached their own policy provisions with their insured on the Coast."

State Farm responded with a statement of its own that accused Hood of playing politics:

"Sadly, it appears that Mississippi's attorney general is more interested in making headlines in an election year than in making headway for the people of Mississippi," said Mike Fernandez, State Farm vice president of public affairs … .

Why won't DOJ take action on insurance company fraud suit?

A recently unsealed whistle-blower lawsuit filed in Louisiana by a group of former insurance adjusters charges that eight insurance companies defrauded the taxpayer-funded National Flood Insurance Program out of potentially billions of dollars by intentionally misattributing damage caused by Hurricane Katrina's winds to flooding.

The insurers named in the False Claims Act suit filed last August are Allstate, American National Property & Casualty, Fidelity National Insurance Co. and Fidelity National Property and Casualty Insurance Co., Liberty Mutual, Scottsdale, State Farm and Travelers. The suit also names several subcontractors that provided adjusters, including Crawford & Co., NCA Group, Pilot Catastrophe Services and Simsol.

A federal judge unsealed the suit last week. He also filed an unusual motion calling for federal prosecutors to get involved in the case -- or at least explain why they won't, the Associated Press reports:

U.S. District Judge Peter Beer filed a one-sentence motion this week: "The Court, on its own motion, respectfully requests the United States Department of Justice enter this case by July 9, 2007, or show cause on July 11, 2007, at 9:30 a.m., why they are not intervening in this civil action."

U.S. Attorney David Dugas with the USA's Baton Rouge office said he would monitor the case but not intervene. The suit is being brought on behalf of the United States by a private attorney in New Orleans who represents the whistle-blowers.

Dugas' stance surprised Beer, the AP reports:

"What about the good old general public? Who better to look after the interests of the public than the U.S. attorneys?" Beer said. "This is a case the government should be involved with. The United States should be right in there, and not just monitoring it, given as far-reaching and serious as this case is."

While Dugas may be disinterested in pursuing allegations of massive fraud by insurance companies, he has proven willing to devote his office's resources to uncovering and prosecuting Katrina-related fraud by individuals through his involvement with a special Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force. Most of the cases pursued by the task force involve thousands of dollars rather than the millions involved in the alleged insurance scam.

Nominated for his post by President Bush on Oct. 4, 2001, Dugas was confirmed by the Senate the following month and sworn in on Dec. 7, 2001. Prior to his appointment, Dugas was a partner with the Lafayette, La. firm of Caffery, Oubre, Campbell & Garrison (formerly Caffery, Oubre, Dugas & Campbell). The firm specializes in insurance defense-related cases and represents several large insurers; however, none listed on the firm's client list are those named in the suit.

Dugas also formerly served as treasurer of the state Republican Party, having been elected to the post in 1996. Earlier this year, President Bush nominated him for a vacant federal judgeship in Baton Rouge.

Jefferson says freezer cash came from FBI

U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, the nine-term Louisiana Democrat indicted this week for questionable business dealings with African companies, today pleaded not guilty to charges of racketeering, money-laundering and soliciting more than a half-million dollars in bribes. He was released on $100,000 bond and required to surrender his passport as well as the hunting rifles he kept at his Louisiana home.

Jefferson released a statement defending himself from the charges. Not surprisingly, the statement makes much of the accomplishments of him and his family, some of whom the FBI has implicated in the indictment. And while Jefferson admits to making "mistakes in judgment," he denies trading any official acts for money.

But the statement also offered this surprising claim regarding the large quantity of cash the agency found in his freezer during an August 2005 raid on his Washington home:

Did I bribe a foreign official? Absolutely not. The $90,000 was the FBI's money. The FBI gave it to me as part of their plan that I would give it to the Nigerian Vice President. But I did not do that. When all of the facts are understood, I trust I will be vindicated.

N.O. housing rally announcement stirs controversy

New Orleans housing advocates are holding a rally today in support of H.R. 1227, the Gulf Coast Hurricane Housing Recovery Act. The measure, which the House passed back in March, frees up building funds for storm-affected homeowners, protects public housing damaged by the storm and extends Federal Emergency Management Agency rental assistance.

The event was set to begin at 11 a.m. at the intersection of Agriculture Street and Oliver White Avenue.

A press release distributed earlier this week announcing the rally has created controversy with one of the politicians the event is targeting. The release -- which was sent out by The Advancement Project, a democracy and justice action group that's been fighting plans to shutter public housing in New Orleans -- stated that the legislation

...breezed through the House of Representatives in March, but has been stymied in the Senate by Louisiana Senators Mary Landrieu and David Vitter. Both of whom are harming their home-owning constituents by ignoring the wide-sweeping aid the legislation promises and focusing their opposition on the reopening of 3,000 units of public housing in New Orleans.

Landrieu Press Secretary Stephanie Allen says it's "totally false" that the senator has "stymied" the legislation.

"It's not that she's opposed to the bill -- it's just that she has not had a chance to turn her attention to it," Allen says.

Instead, Landrieu has been busy securing passage of a water resources bill that includes funding for the closure of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet and other Gulf Coast projects, as well as an Iraq war supplemental spending bill that struck the 10 percent match requirement for storm-stricken communities seeking federal rebuilding funds. Now that Congress has approved those bills, Landrieu has turned her attention to the housing measure.

"She will be introducing her own legislation to tweak the bill," Allen reports. Congress watchers say this is typically how the legislative process works.

Among the possible tweaks Allen identified was striking the existing requirement that storm survivors who received Small Business Administration loans as well as Road Home money pay the SBA money back immediately. However, she declined to say whether her boss would seek any changes in the proposal's public housing provisions. Among other things, the House bill requires every unit of public housing that's demolished to be replaced.

"The Senator does want to see everybody return home, no matter what house they lived in before the hurricane," Allen says.

The Advancement Project did not return requests for comment.

Jefferson faces ethics probe

U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, the New Orleans Democrat indicted this week on bribery and racketeering charges, yesterday gave up his seat on the chamber's Small Business Committee -- his last remaining committee assignment since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi forced him to surrender his seat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee earlier this year.

But that wasn't enough to assuage congressional colleagues outraged by allegations that Jefferson accepted payments for himself and his family in return for exercising his political clout on behalf of African technology, recycling and oil companies.

Yesterday the House approved a resolution offered by Republican House Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) calling on the ethics committee to investigate whether the charges warrant Jefferson's expulsion from Congress. Members passed that resolution by a vote of 373 to 26. They also overwhelmingly approved a Democratic resolution instructing the ethics panel to probe any member indicted on criminal charges in a state or federal court.

The latter resolution appears to be an effort to counter charges of racism by some members of the Congressional Black Caucus who point out that Rep. Allen Mollohan (D-W.V.) was allowed to keep his seat on the Appropriations Committee despite facing a federal investigation over alleged financial disclosure violations. Mollohan is white; Jefferson, black.

Meanwhile, Jefferson continues to insist he's done nothing wrong, according to a statement released to USA Today by his attorneys Robert Trout, Amy Berman Jackson and Gloria B. Solomon:

We are ordinarily disinclined to make public statements concerning cases pending before the courts. But in this case, our client has been the subject of a torrent of publicity, including articles and editorials across the country that include fleeting references to the presumption of innocence, but deliver devastating judgments about the congressman and the offenses with which he has been charged.

We plan to address the substance of those allegations and the legal sufficiency of the charges in court, but we urge the press and the public to resist the rush to judgment and to acknowledge that an indictment - even a lengthy one - is nothing more than a recitation of unproven allegations.

Congressman Jefferson maintains his innocence. He is determined to fight this indictment and clear his name. It is our privilege to represent him in that effort.

The ethical cloud hovering over Jefferson certainly doesn't help Louisiana's well-deserved reputation as a hotbed of corruption -- but that hasn't stopped at least one pol from coming to Jefferson's defense. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin called the indictment "disappointing" and told the Times-Picayune that he has no regrets about supporting Jefferson's recent re-election bid:

"Over the past several months, he's been instrumental in pushing important legislation," said Nagin, mentioning, among other things, the recent supplemental spending bill that included a waiver of Louisiana's state and local match requirement for certain federal aid. "That probably could not have been accomplished with a freshman congressman."

Nagin added that he hopes federal officials won't use the Jefferson indictment as a reason to withhold recovery financing.

One of the more trenchant comments about the Jefferson case came from Comedy Central's Jon Stewart, who in a segment on last night's program titled "Father of the Bribe" had this to say about the embattled congressman:

"On the down side, Jefferson faces 235 years in prison. On the up side, now we know what it takes for the federal government to pay some attention to a black man from New Orleans."

Louisiana congressman indicted for corruption

U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, a Democrat and the first black elected to represent Louisiana in Congress since Reconstruction, has been indicted for shady business dealings in Africa, the FBI announced today:

The 16-count indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., charges Jefferson with solicitation of bribes, honest services wire fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice, violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, racketeering, and conspiracy. The indictment alleges that from in or about August 2000 through in or about August 2005, Jefferson, while serving as an elected member of the U.S. House of Representatives, used his position and his office to corruptly seek, solicit and direct that things of value be paid to Jefferson and his family members in exchange for his performance of official acts to advance the interests of people and businesses who offered him the bribes.

The things of value allegedly sought and/or received by Jefferson on behalf of his business interests and relatives included hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bribes in the form of payments from monthly fees or retainers, consulting fees, percentage shares of revenues and profits, flat fees for items sold, and stock ownership in the companies seeking his official assistance.

The official acts allegedly undertaken by Jefferson included leading official business delegations to Africa, corresponding with U.S. and foreign government officials, and utilizing congressional staff members to promote businesses and businesspersons. Business ventures that Congressman Jefferson sought to promote included: telecommunications deals in Nigeria, Ghana, and elsewhere; oil concessions in Equatorial Guinea; satellite transmission contracts in Botswana, Equatorial Guinea, and the Republic of Congo; and development of different plants and facilities in Nigeria.

Jefferson has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, though two former aides to the congressman have confessed to involvement in corrupt activity. Rolling Stone magazine last year named Jefferson the fourth-worst member of Congress, dubbing him "The Bribe Taker."

The indictment comes a little more than a year after an FBI raid on his Congressional office and Washington home turned up $90,000 of cash in the freezer, wrapped in aluminum foil in $10,000 increments and stuffed inside frozen-food containers. Despite the discovery, the voters of his district re-elected him last year in a runoff election against Democratic state Rep. Karen Carter, who ran with the backing of the party establishment and was widely expected to win.

But throwing a wrench into that outcome was Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat who in the last week of the campaign launched an effort to defeat Carter over her statements in Spike Lee's Katrina documentary criticizing sheriff's deputies and Gretna police officers for blocking evacuees from leaving New Orleans in the storm's wake. Lee mailed out 25,000 flyers and made public statements against Carter, who had called the officers' actions "inhumane and unacceptable."

(Apparently Lee had no problem with the fact that after Katrina, Jefferson reportedly misused National Guard troops to check on his property and rescue his personal belongings.)

Even before Jefferson's latest re-election, then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi asked the congressman to resign his seat on the powerful House Ways & Means Committee, which he declined to do. House Democrats later voted to strip Jefferson of his committee assignment while the bribery investigation continues, a move upheld by the full House. Pelosi -- now House Speaker -- today issued a statement in response to the indictment:

The charges in the indictment against Congressman Jefferson are extremely serious. While Mr. Jefferson, just as any other citizen, must be considered innocent until proven guilty, if these charges are proven true, they constitute an egregious and unacceptable abuse of public trust and power.

Controversy flares over Katrina's death toll

Hurricane Katrina is still killing people almost two years after it struck.

Or is it?

There's some disagreement in the medical community -- though the closer one gets to local front-line caregivers, the stronger the consensus becomes that the storm continues to claim the lives of those who survived the immediate destruction.

The controversy erupted last week when the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals released a study by State Epidemiologist Dr. Raoult Ratard -- which DHH acknowledged was conducted "[i]n response to concerns about an increased death rate in Louisiana post-Katrina" -- that claimed to show the death rate in the Greater New Orleans area dropped during the first 10 months of 2006 compared to the 44 months prior to the storm. That area includes Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard, Plaquemines, St. James, St. John, St. Charles, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa and Washington parishes.

However, the study found that Orleans Parish actually observed what the author characterized as a "slight increase" in the number of deaths during the first quarter of 2006. But that increase was from 11.3 deaths per 1,000 people to 14.3 deaths per 1,000 -- which is hardly "slight," as New Orleans Health Department Director Dr. Kevin Stephens Sr. explained to the Associated Press:

"Slight, that's more than a 25 percent increase in the mortality rate in Orleans Parish," Stephens said. "That's a tremendous increase, a huge increase. And that's almost twice the national average."

The average mortality rate for the nation as a whole is 8.1 deaths per 1,000, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even before Katrina, Louisiana had one of the poorest health profiles in the nation, and the storm destroyed hospitals and clinics while leaving even more Louisianans impoverished and uninsured, as noted last year in a report (PDF) from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

One big problem with Louisiana's mortality study is it examined only state death certificates and thus failed to account for displaced residents who died elsewhere. Stephens has conducted research based on the number of obituaries since Katrina that indicates a 47 percent increase in the area's death rate. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin cited Stephens' statistics while discussing the health care crisis in his May 30 State of the City address, his first since Katrina. Stephens' study is scheduled to be published later this month in Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, a new journal from the American Medical Association.

Stephens' claims are supported by anecdotal evidence from physicians including Dr. Patrick Breaux, a cardiologist who has cared for residents of Orleans and St. Bernard parishes for 30 years. The AP reported that Breaux "watched with dismay" as his patients' obituaries began popping up in the local newspaper, and he called it "wrong" to say there was no increase in the death rate without examining all the information.

Meanwhile, Orleans Parish coroner Dr. Frank Minyard raised questions about the timing of the state's study:

"I don't know if they released this study with any ulterior motives, but I think it's suspicious that they would release it now," Minyard said. "We have been telling the state that we have people who can't get medical care, can't get psychiatric care. This might even influence the decision on rebuilding Charity Hospital."

In another AP story on the mortality controversy, Dr. Ronald Kessler -- professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School and head of a group that's monitored 3,000 displaced Katrina survivors -- said reconstructing an individual's mental and physical state before death might help in determining exact causes of death.

Indeed, local mental health professionals tell the AP that they're encountering more people with psychological problems, which in turn affect overall health:

"We're seeing triple the number of people with mental health problems as we were before Katrina," said Leah Hedrick, social worker at Ochsner Hospital. "Depression, suicidal, anxiety, abuse of drugs and alcohol, and along with that comes a lot more physical problems."