THE FULCRUM

Two senators on Thursday asked federal officials to explain their decision to sign a $236 million deal with Carnival Cruise Lines for Hurricane Katrina housing, saying Greece was ready to provide two ships for free.

The blue sheeting - a godsend to residents whose homes are threatened by rain - is rapidly becoming the largest roofing project in the nation's history.

It isn't coming cheap.

Knight Ridder has found that a lack of oversight, generous contracting deals and poor planning mean that government agencies are shelling out as much as 10 times what the temporary fix would normally cost.

The government is paying contractors an average of $2,480 for less than two hours of work to cover each damaged roof - even though it's also giving them endless supplies of blue sheeting for free.

In response to reports that FEMA may be paying up to $4-$6 per mile and taking equipment out of the available carrier base, IARW [International Association of Refrigerated Warehouses] conducted a quick survey of members to see just how serious and widespread the problem might be.

One member, who contacted all his major carriers to inquire about the FEMA issue, found that over half of them were called by FEMA and asked to commit resources. As of five days ago, none of that equipment had been diverted to the FEMA program. He reported, however, that brokers with whom he regularly works are having difficulty, as their carrier base, the owner-operators, were accepting FEMA offers.

An East Coast member reported hearing the pay is $4/mile, plus hefty layover pay. They have been finding it difficult to hire owner-operators on a regular basis, especially in the past few weeks, and especially in Florida and the mid-Atlantic. He thinks carriers may have been pulling ice to the hurricane areas and in some cases paid to layover until the ice could be distributed.

After Katrina and just prior to Rita, another member reported that carriers were already at a premium in both the Southeast and Midwest. This member said that over 100 trucks had been sitting at an Air Force base outside of Montgomery, AL waiting for directions. It was said that they were being paid $600 a day to sit and wait.

Another member who is feeling the hurricane impact agrees that FEMA and others are paying considerably more in freight rates to secure trucks, particularly in the South. This member heard that FEMA may be paying up to $1,500 per load, when a normal rate would be $600. He is seeing truck shortages throughout the industry and is unsure when the carrier base will return to normal.

At an earlier point, Bush could have provided political cover for scandals that touched one or another Republican elected official. But with his approval ratings in the low 40s, there is little to prop up the party's image when congressional leaders are under investigation. Already there have been signs that Bush's influence with members of his own party was beginning to wane as House Republicans look to 2006. Without DeLay in power, the prospects of further splintering increase, adding to perceptions of a party in growing disarray.

Are we willing to accept the results of the necessary dehumanization of our "enemies" in order to effect our national policies?

More than 80 percent of the $1.5 billion in contracts signed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to clean up after Hurricane Katrina were awarded without bidding or with limited competition, the New York Times reported Monday.

A branch of the Navy secretly contracted for a 33-plane fleet that included two Gulfstream jets reportedly used to fly terror suspects to countries known to practice torture, according to documents obtained by the Associated Press.

Iraq is heading towards disintegration, raising fears of a wider regional conflict, Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal warned on Thursday.

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister says the Bush administration did not heed some Saudi warnings on occupying Iraq and that he doesn't believe a new constitution and elections will solve the emerging nation's problems.

...the Bush people and the modern Republican Party just don't give a tinker's damn about actually governing. It's not that they're too dumb or that every single one of them is incapable of competence (though there are clearly a lot of complete stumblebums with a lot of power in the party), it's that competence is entirely irrelevant to their practices, either with regard to policy or personnel. They're operating with a completely different set of priorities.

"I'm explaining to my fighters every day the lessons I learned and my experience in Iraq," he tells a NEWSWEEK correspondent. "I want to copy in Afghanistan the tactics and spirit of the glorious Iraqi resistance."

Mohammed Daud, commander of the biggest Taliban force in Ghazni province, roughly 100 miles southwest of Kabul

For all its virtues, the private sector cannot accomplish all this. Wal-Mart and Federal Express cannot devise a national energy policy for the United States. For that and for much else, we need government. We already pay for it. Can somebody help us get our money's worth?

1. How will those displaced by the storm return to New Orleans?

Will FEMA again run convoys of busses to reverse the diaspora? Who will want to return and who will not?

2. What will they return to?

Mini-cities of mobile homes and pre-fab buildings are supposed to spring up all around the Gulf Coast. Will the displaced want to move into these homes or will they demand to return to their old neighborhoods? What services will be available and what will they have to do without - and for how long?

3. What will the EPA have to say on the safety of the areas hardest hit?

How well will these areas be cleaned and what systems will be put in place to monitor the continuing clean up and long-term health effects of residents who return?

4. What areas will be subject to eminent domain?

Refinery capacity is badly needed in the country and other industrial areas have long needed room to expand along the Gulf Coast. Will government, at all levels, be able to resist allowing such expansion at the expense of poorer neighborhoods? Should they resist?

5. How quickly and how diligently will FEMA and other agencies work to get people out of the "FEMAvilles" they'll be moved to?

Will these people be conveniently "forgotten" in their new ghettos, with no means to return home? If so, how long will the sharks wait before moving into their old neighborhoods claiming that they've been abandoned?

“We got to maintain economic growth, and therefore we should not raise taxes,” Bush said, noting Americans were already paying “a tax in essence” because of higher gasoline prices. “And we don’t need to be taking more money out of their pocket.

The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It's enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it... jump to certain conclusions.

The former FEMA director who became a lightning rod for the sluggish federal response to Hurricane Katrina put the blame on state officials in an interview with the New York Times newspaper.

Two suicide car bombers struck within a minute of each other just a half mile apart in south Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least seven policemen and raising the day's bombing death toll in the capital to at least 31, police said.

Earlier Thursday, a suicide car bombing killed 16 policemen and five civilians in the same neighborhood, signaling a new round of violence one day after residents suffered through Baghdad's bloodiest day of the war.

At least 160 were killed and 570 wounded Wednesday in more than a dozen bombings, for which the terror group Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility. Many of the victims were day laborers lured by a suicide attacker posing as an employer. There was no immediate claim for the Thursday bombings.

The U.S. military and Iraqi police drove through Baghdad's Dora neighborhood, where the bombings were concentrated Thursday, warning residents to stay indoors because of a report that five more car bombers were ready to attack, police Capt. Ali Abdul Hamza said. Streets in the southern neighborhood were empty.

Hell hath no fury like journalists with a compelling TV story where they get to be the heroes and the government the fools.

Somebody's gotta do it, so I'll connect the dots: FEMA is slow-walking delivery of the debit cards to reduce the number of displaced families that actually get them. It's the latest instance in a long tradition by the Bush administration of making a big public splash about providing money approved by Congress for use in a catastrophe, but never actually delivering it. Think of New York City after 9/11/2001... much of the promised federal money was never spent. Think of the FEMA money authorized for relief from several hurricanes in Florida over the last few years... many people approved to receive it never got it. And right here in Houston, think of Tropical Storm Allison, back in 2001. FEMA promised to reimburse the city for many of its expenditures that legally should have been covered by the agency. According to a segment by Wayne Dolcefino on the ABC 13 evening news earlier this week, most of that money has still not been reimbursed, 4-1/2 years later; FEMA is allegedly still investigating whether the city's claim is legitimate.

Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

FEMA's top three leaders -- Director Michael D. Brown, Chief of Staff Patrick J. Rhode and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler -- arrived with ties to President Bush's 2000 campaign or to the White House advance operation, according to the agency. Two other senior operational jobs are filled by a former Republican lieutenant governor of Nebraska and a U.S. Chamber of Commerce official who was once a political operative.

Offers of foreign aid worth tens of millions of dollars -- including a Swedish water purification system, a German cellular telephone network and two Canadian rescue ships -- have been delayed for days awaiting review by backlogged federal agencies, according to European diplomats and information collected by the State Department.
Since Hurricane Katrina, more than 90 countries and international organizations offered to assist in recovery efforts, but nearly all endeavors remained mired Tuesday in bureaucratic entanglements, in most cases at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

So how will Congress pay for the new spending needs due to Katrina? Part of Clinton’s answer was to raise taxes. “We should be prepared to ask for sacrifice particularly from the richest people in America,” she argued.

But DeLay rejected any such notion. “The worst thing we could do in response to a recovery like this is to attack the economy,” he told reporters. “The worst thing we could do… is a windfall profits tax on the oil corporations, so that they won’t have the money to reinvest in developing more oil and more gas. The worst thing we could do is to increase taxes on the economy, an economy that now has to be a major part of the recovery.”

Some congressional Republicans indicated the hurricane recovery may point to an “era of smaller government” — requiring a suspension of regulations that slow down re-building of highways and more urgently needed gasoline refineries.

When Pelley suggests that bureaucracy might be the cause of the confusion, Nagin replies bluntly, "Bull-crap. When people are dying, bureaucracy should be thrown out of the water."

Asked if he thought people died because of the delays, Nagin says, "There is no doubt about it. I watched a guy jump from the Superdome yesterday, just couldn't take it anymore. We have two police officers that have committed suicide. They couldn't take it anymore. This is, this is hell. And to have this happen in the United States of America in the state of Louisiana, and to not have immediate, immediate response regardless of the laws, is tragic."

Red Cross: 1-800-HELP-NOW