Campaign Blog: News & Updates

Just a note for our mathematically challenged friends on the right ...

AHEM!

Labor Crunch Stalls Katrina Recovery

Interesting:

As people come back to New Orleans, they are finding they need much more than electricians. Those fortunate enough to own homes that were not destroyed by wind or flood need roofers, air-conditioning technicians, plumbers, carpenters, mold-removal specialists, flooring experts and general contractors. The problem is that while plenty of unskilled laborers are piling into town looking for cleanup and demolition work, there is a serious shortage of specially trained laborers.

Wasn't Bush's invoking the Taft-Hartley Act to keep wages low supposed to have the opposite effect? In fact, one of the key arguments (I didn't say good ... just "key") was that doing away with the requirement for federal contracts to pay prevailing wages, there'd be more help hitting the ground faster.

Once more, Republicans and Economics makes for a bad combination. Go figure.

Well imagine my surprise, upon waking up, that of all the projections of where Rita would land, two of them pointed somewhere that wasn't Houston and the other (seemingly) dozen or so pointed right at Houston. Sunnofa ....

In any event, I'm sticking with the advice that REO Speedwagon gives us at the moment. Offers abound for heading elsewhere, but we'll see. If the worst case scenario means my 'hood gets flooded, I wish I could say that affects my social calendar a lot, but it doesn't. Lengthy power outages, tornados, and other assorted whatnot will complicate matters. But we'll see what tomorrow brings.

CBS4 Boston: Romney 'On Short List' To Lead Katrina Recovery

Not sure how much fire there is to this smoke. But it's still rather interesting that W. would have to look to librul Taxachusetts for a spare Governor to oversee the reconstruction of New Orleans when there's a certain Governor who served as Lite Guv under W. and doesn't have to deal with a legislative session anytime soon right nextdoor to Louisiana.

It must speak volumes about what W. (or Karl Rove ... but what's the difference?) thinks of Rick Perry.

A Fix for First Responders

We can only imagine how an improved communications system could have aided rescue workers in their efforts to respond to the needs of citizens after Hurricane Katrina. The federal government has sat by and allowed this problem to remain unresolved for four years following the devastation of Sept. 11, 2001, even as many predicted another disaster. After watching the horrific communications breakdown that occurred during Katrina, will we wait another four years before acting? How many more lives will be lost? What kind of catastrophic disaster is necessary for Congress to give these heroes the tools they need to save lives?

We urge Congress to immediately take up pending legislation that would finally provide emergency first responders with the radio spectrum, equipment and funding necessary to protect themselves as they come to the aid of those they were sworn to protect. When lives are on the line, seconds count. And reliable emergency communications become a matter of life and death.

Someone's waking up, at least. And to think, all it took was a second major disaster to hit us within a 4 year span. Nevertheless, kudos to John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Jane Harman and Curt Weldon for committing the idea to print.

Talking in the Dark - New York Times

Just good reading here ...

Two weeks ago, I tried calling a colleague down in New Orleans - and found myself listening to the annoying honk of a busy signal and the static of a dead phone line. Katrina had disrupted the city's communications grid, and residents and emergency responders were grappling with the chaos that ensued. For a week, just about the only people with communications were those government officials and reporters lucky enough to have two-way radios or satellite phones with adequately charged batteries. Everyone else staggered around in blind ignorance - which helped produce horrifying pandemonium. We saw a similar lesson in 9/11: When communications crumble, so does society.

Is there a way to prevent such breakdowns in the future? In fact, disaster-preparedness experts and high-tech inventors are already developing the idea of blanketing cities with what they call a "WiFi mesh." WiFi, of course, is the technology you may use at home or in a Starbucks to connect a laptop wirelessly to the Internet; a mesh is a vast, self-correcting network of WiFi antennas that could work together to provide crucial backup in a disaster.

...

WiFi meshes elegantly dodge our phone system's central problems. They're low-power and ultracheap - and decentralized like the Internet itself, which was initially conceived to withstand a nuclear attack. You can use WiFi to build a do-it-yourself phone system that is highly resistant to disaster.

...

So why don't cities build their own WiFi meshes to help cope with the next disaster? Scatter enough nodes on rooftops citywide, and then if the phone system collapses, there will probably be a surviving mesh strong enough to serve as a rudimentary backup. Connect even a single satellite uplink to the mesh, and the entire town remains linked to the outside world. Best of all, each WiFi node uses extremely little power - about 10 watts, barely a sixth of the average light bulb. Even if a city's power grid fails, a car battery or solar panel could keep a node running for days or weeks, filling the gap while the phone companies rebuild their land-line and mobile-phone structures.

These disaster experiments are already under way. When Katrina hit, Smith and other volunteer communications enthusiasts rushed down to Louisiana. In Rayville, his team of techies clambered up a local tower to blast WiFi signals 50 miles through the countryside; their signals reached refugees clustered in church basements with computers but no Internet connections. "We're trying to make sure families can contact each other, and get online to register with FEMA's Web site," Smith told me.

The cost is laughably small. City engineers could build a mesh using parts on sale at any Circuit City. (Smith's neighborhood mesh in Chicago cost $350 per node, and he figures it could take only $650 apiece to equip every node with an emergency battery.) Alternatively, a city could simply hire a mesh-networking company like Tropos Networks, which estimates a cost of $70,000 to cover a square mile with DSL-speed connections. These numbers are so low that they are virtually rounding errors in any city's budget.

Perhaps the few lingering holdouts on this issue will wake up and realize that we're not just talking about creating more and cooler places to park with a wifi laptop, but that this also affects critical matters of public safety.

Saw this last night and thought to self: "Not a bad speech ... not great, but appropriate and unifying."

Then ran across this. As if I needed a reminder of why our enormously unpopular President shouldn't be trusted.

After Days of Criticism, Emergency Director Resigns

Three days after being stripped of his duties overseeing the post-hurricane relief effort, Michael D. Brown resigned on Monday as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, saying that he wanted to avoid distracting the agency at a time when it faces a major challenge.

The White House quickly named R. David Paulison to succeed Mr. Brown on an acting basis. Mr. Paulison, a former firefighter, has been director of the agency's preparedness division for the past two years.

Sheesh, is George Bush genetically capable of firing anyone for screwing up as badly as Brown has? Suddenly that last question posed to Bush at the first debate with Kerry is taking on a surreal feel to it.

Since it's as good a day as any to reflect on lessons learned from major catastrophic events, here's a short rundown on some good ones as they pertain to Katrina:

I know it's still a bit of a live issue to really draw too many lessons from the aftermath of Katrina, but there are a few that the world of conventional wisdom seems settled on. The biggest, of course, is that Mike Brown's time as the head of FEMA ought to be concluded. Another, albeit smaller one, is that Congressman Ron Paul of Texas has cast the single most irresponsible vote in recent memory of the House of Representatives.

To the uninitiated, I think a simple, straightforward map of Paul's district offers most of the explanation:

Notice all that blue stuff to the southeast? Yep, that's the Gulf of Mexico. The same Gulf that brought us Katrina. The same Gulf that levelled Galveston in 1900 (a town that is among the many coastal cities in Paul's district). The same Gulf that offers numerous Texans a majestic beauty in peaceful times, but the neverending risk during hurricane season.

Congress recently passed a bill offering relief for victims of Hurricane Katrina. It was but a portion of what will ultimately be spent on the process. $58 billion for now ... possibly double that when it's all said and done. In the House, 11 members voted against it. Now, out of 435 members, it's not outside the realm of possibility that there will be a few odd ducks in the bunch. Paul certainly fits the bill for that. He's a Republican, but he's run for President on the Liberterian ticket in 1988. He sticks truer to his liberterian roots than his current party designation, which, in a sense, is very admirable. As a result, he wins a few converts to his side for things like opposing the war in Iraq and opposing the war on drugs. Yet, even within Paul's complex worldview, libertarianism is sometimes insufficient in the abstract. So it is that Paul, an obstetrician by trade, is pro-life (a stance that caused quite a rift in lib circles in 1988 as well as the 1992 convention to succeed Paul). He's also quite non-liberterian on matters of immigration policy.

But when it comes to an issue that any coastal resident can clearly look at the television and say "There, but for the grace of God go I," Paul cannot dare depart from a liberterian position that stands athwart aid, comfort, and rebuilding in the aftermath of natural disaster and says "I'll have none of that." So it is that Paul joined the other 10 in voting down relief for Katrina victims. Had a hurricane of that magnitude once more hit Galveston, or Freeport, or Matagorda, one suspects that Paul would similarly take a disinterested view of the role of the federal government in times of distress.

The congressman gave a rationale in the Galveston County Daily News (via Rob) that, sadly, doesn't help him any:

Congress allocated $58.1 billion for hurricane relief efforts Thursday. Paul was one of 11 House members who voted against it.

?That?s more than 100 percent of the total budget of the three states combined,? he said. ?And they don?t know how they?re going to spend it.?

Paul also objected to provisions of the measure granting additional authority to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

?There have been a lot of complaints in the past about FEMA excluding the Red Cross,? Paul said. ?That doesn?t appear to be the case here, but if you don?t watch the power of FEMA, it can get out of hand.?

Paul said he did not reject the idea of federal aid entirely.

?There were several pieces of legislation I did support,? he said.

He also signed a letter calling for the federal government to reimburse states such as Texas for the additional costs produced by the storm.

?Even as generous as people have been, they shouldn?t have to bear the entire cost,? he said.

Paul also contended that the federal government had its priorities out of line when it sent billions overseas and failed to spend the money it should have spent for projects at home.

To fully demonstrate why this vote is as appalling as it is, let's go back to a similar vote in regards to Iraq ... the infamous $87 billion that Kerry "voted for before he voted against." In that vote, there's a bit of history that gets overlooked: the fact that a few Dems offered an alternative to the GOP plan that was fully paid for. Since a good part of that act of fiscal responsibility involved undoing a tax cut on the wealthiest of Americans, you can guess how much love the bill got from the GOP. But the point is that, at least there was an alternative.

In Ron Paul's case, there was no alternative. Just an 11 person philosophy department intent to make a sad, mistaken point about a bill they couldn't understand. Had there been an alternative (to date, I've seen nothing on the Congressional Record to indicate such), I might be less harsh on a Congressman who represents on of the biggest coastal districts of the entire House voting against a bill that, again - but for the grace of God, could have helped thousands of Texans instead of Louisianans.

Paul says he's not against federal aid in general ... just this bill. With that said, there ought to be a record to point to that indicates how Paul sees federal aid helping those in need, as there certainly are now. But since there's no alternative for those 11 other than to carp and vote no, it serves as an act of trite irresponsibility. Remember, if Dems don't vote for the GOP plan (even if there is a Dem alternative), they're taken to task ("I don't know how you lead a nation ..." anyone?). If they offer no less than a dozen alternative ideas on Social Security reform, they're taken to task as not having a plan (to the point where even the MSM accepts it as gospel). But here we are with what appears to be a crystal clear case of irresponsibility with a Congressional vote. And it must be known. It must be a point for voters in Paul's 14th Congressional district to reflect on. And ultimately, it must be another dangerous idea that deserves defeat.

Sometimes, it's easy to fade into the woodwork of the back benches in a House of 435. But it would seem to me, that if you were as intent to make as many purely philosophical points as Paul desires to make in Washington, you'd have an alternative response to the biggest natural disaster (we hope) in our lifetimes. Voters in Galveston, Victoria, Clute, and Port Aransas (and elsewhere) deserve better.

Fortunately, on the matter of who to vote for in 2006 ... there is an alternative.