Katrina Links

There are several articles today regarding the 4 year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Crooksandliars.com leads the way with Greg Palast's story on Ivor van Heerden former professor at LSU who predicted the failing of the levees in New Orleans. Van Heerden was fired from LSU, Palast claims, under pressure from Big Oil interests, and the Army Corps of Engineers. Read it here.




Next, CNN's AC360, has an essay from Harry Shearer, regarding the progress of New Orleans in the last four years. From the article:

While the national media packed up and moved away after the initial orgasm of anger at FEMA, the local media reported something remarkable: The Corps was claiming that the flooding was due to the "overtopping" of its levees and floodwalls, while two teams of pro-bono forensic investigators were finding evidence that no overtopping had occurred.As the Corps started denigrating these investigators, they kept digging, and kept coming up with the real story, available now for all to see (though all too few have) as the ILIT report from the University of California at Berkeley and the Team Louisiana report from Louisiana State University.Their conclusions: The "hurricane protection system" built by the Corps had serious design and construction flaws, baked into the system over 40 years under administrations of both parties, that caused catastrophic failure in more than 50 locations under storm surge conditions markedly less than the system was advertised to withstand. You and I, federal taxpayers, had paid to flood New Orleans.

Read Shearer's essay here.

MSNBC.com has an Associated Press story of a Doctor's admission that he had "hastened the demise" regarding a patient under his care during the Katrina aftermath. From the article:

Dr. Ewing Cook said that as staff at Memorial Medical Center desperately tried to care for and evacuate patients, making spot assessments of which ones might survive, he scribbled “pronounced dead at” on the patient’s chart, intending to fill in time and other details later. “I gave her medicine so I could get rid of her faster, get the nurses off the floor,” Cook told ProPublica, an independent nonprofit investigative organization, in a report to be published Sunday in The New York Times Magazine.

More here.

Finally, bayoubuzz.com has a story of the potential candidacy of Gen. Russel Honore, a man many came to know through his work restoring order to New Orleans in the days following Katrina, in the race for David Vitter's Senate seat. Honore, a Republican, would challenge Vitter in the Republican primary. Democrat Rep. Charlie Melancon announced his candidacy yesterday. From the article:

While polls show Vitter as the clear favorite in both the primary and the general election, one very senior Louisiana Republican predicted that if Honore runs, "He wins." As that GOP party elder further explained to the www.louisianaweekly.com and Bayoubuzz on the promise of confidentiality, "All he has to say is 'Stuck on Stupid', and Vitter is toast."

More here.