[Mb-civic] Estate tax alert + New Orleans

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Astounding as it may seem, with sky-high deficits, the war in Iraq and, 
most important, the snowballing catastrophe in New Orleans and the 
Gulf states wrought by Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. Senate’s first 
planned order of business when it returns on Sept. 6 is 
 a repeal of 
the estate tax!
 
Click here 
http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?key=34625956&url_
num=1&url=http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/publicciti
 to take action against this unconscionable giveaway to the richest 
Americans!
 
The estate tax, cunningly and misleadingly called the “death tax” by 
Republicans, affects fewer than 2% of Americans, i.e. – the very 
wealthiest. Yet repeal of it would cost our treasury up to $100 billion 
a year – which means higher deficits, cuts in social services, and/or 
higher taxes for you. And even some Democrats are working on 
“compromises” that would still cost the rest of us billions a year.
 
Many Senators are pushing for this because they have been 
extensively lobbied by heirs to the Wal-Mart and Campbell soup 
fortunes among other super-wealthy Americans. These families have 
spent tens of millions of dollars to kill the tax over the past five years. 
(This is yet another reason Public Citizen has initiated our “Clean Up 
Washington” campaign, to break this shrouded, self-reinforcing loop 
between Congress, lobbyists and wealthy special interests).
 
Please use this alert to send a clear message to your Senators’ offices 
immediately: NO repeal of the estate tax and NO compromises. Let 
the wealthiest American families help pay for the priorities and 
burdens that the rest of us must shoulder! They can afford it.

(note from Mha Atma--cut and paste this sample message or write 
your own)
:
NOW MORE THAN EVER, WITH THE GREAT DEVASTATION IN 
THE SOUTH, WE SHOULD NOT HAVE MORE TAX BREAKS FOR 
SUPER RICH WHILE THE NATION SUFFERS!  DO NOT ALLOW 
THE ESTATE TAX TO BE REPEALED OR "REFORMED" INTO 
OBLIVION!
-------------------------------------


http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content
_id=1001051313

Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 
'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal 
Spending Issues


By Will Bunch

Published: August 31, 2005 9:00 PM ET

PHILADELPHIA Even though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north 
of the city, the waters may still keep rising in New Orleans. That's 
because Lake Pontchartrain continues to pour through a two-block-
long break in the main levee, near the city's 17th Street Canal. With 
much of the Crescent City some 10 feet below sea level, the rising tide 
may not stop until it's level with the massive lake.

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a 
direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been 
working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s 
on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a 
massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized 
the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with 
carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and 
building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least 
$250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in 
the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding 
New Orleans continued to subside.
    
Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a 
trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending 
pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at 
the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At 
least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 
specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- 
and flood-control dollars.

Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at 
The Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't 
see it coming. ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, 
serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

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:

"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is 
sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then 
we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we 
have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up 
so that we can't raise them."

The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony 
up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in 
Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with 
higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the 
feds were also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to 
better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.

The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, 
the federal government came back this spring with the steepest 
reduction in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in 
history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed 
a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project 
-- $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to start any 
new jobs.

There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research 
was needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a 
Category 4 or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. 
As the Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:

"That second study would take about four years to complete and would 
cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager 
Al Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 
2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that 
amount. But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to 
order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and 
the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said."

The Senate was seeking to restore some of the SELA funding cuts for 
2006. But now it's too late.

One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer: a 
bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main 
breach on Monday.

The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night 
observed, "The Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress 
earlier this year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's 
coast, only to be opposed by the White House. ... In its budget, the 
Bush administration proposed a significant reduction in funding for 
southeast Louisiana's chief hurricane protection project. Bush 
proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local officials say they need."

Local officials are now saying, the article reported, that had 
Washington heeded their warnings about the dire need for hurricane 
protection, including building up levees and repairing barrier islands, 
"the damage might not have been nearly as bad as it turned out to be."

Will Bunch (letters at editorandpublisher.com) is senior writer at the 
Philadelphia Daily News. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 when he 
reported for Newsday. Much of this article also appears on his blog, 
Attytood, at the Daily News.
-- 
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"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
   ---   George Orwell


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