"Interestingly, the survey's most undervalued home -- expressed in dollars as opposed to percentages -- belongs to a politician who has not hesitated to condemn the city's erratic appraisal practices: Mayor Ray Nagin ."

Simple question, is anyone ever happy with the pace of any type of emergency response? After going through the 4 hurricanes last year and checking out news reports of other emergencies and disaster it should be readily apparent to everyone that no matter how fast help arrives, it never arrives quickly enough.

"NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 3 - Reeling from the chaos of this overwhelmed city, at least 200 New Orleans police officers have walked away from their jobs and two have committed suicide, police officials said on Saturday."

"KABUL, Sept 4 (Reuters) - Impoverished Afghanistan will give $100,000 for relief efforts in the United States in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. embassy said."

"BATON ROUGE, La. As hurricane victims are being moved hundreds of miles from home, the president of the New Orleans City Council is demanding to know why Louisiana isn't housing more of them."

"The National Guard was slow to move troops into New Orleans because it did not anticipate the collapse of the city's police force after Hurricane Katrina, the guard's commander said. Lieutenant General Steven Blum said the New Orleans police force was left with only a third of its pre-storm 1,500-person strength."

"Louisiana's marshlands, the only buffer for hurricanes that come out of the Gulf, are slipping into the ocean at an alarming rate. New search indicates that just one major hurricane could put New Orleans under water. The Big Easy is in big trouble. New Orleans is sinking. And fast. But what's the big deal? Local businesses and residents have heard it all before. They've built levees to control the raging Mississippi. They've developed pumping systems to deal with rain and flooding. They'...

If this isn't the time for Blanco to make use of the stockpile, when will it be time? Nine stockpiles of fire-and-rescue equipment strategically placed around the country to be used in the event of a catastrophe still have not been pressed into service in New Orleans, five days after Hurricane Katrina, CNN has learned.

CNN has edited the article to remove the quote, but the interesting thing here is that you have the President of the United States and Max Mayfield having to call and urge/ask LA to start evacuation. Relevant quote: Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said that President Bush had called and urged the state to order the evacuation.

Great NT Times article going over the tensions between State and Fed officials. For our foreign readers, the separation between the State and Federal level of government is a HUGE deal and explains why Bush/the Feds/the Military didn't just swoop in. This article details how the Feds wanted to go in fast and hard, but Blanco resisted the legal conditions for that to happen. It came down to her refusing to give up control to the feds, which was required as a matter of law. Here are som...

The Salvation Army has confirmed that their efforts to get the Convention Center and Superdome resupplied were blocked by the LA Dept Homeland Security as well. For those keeping count, the LHSD prevented both the Red Cross and Salvation Army from coming in and resupplying the Superdome (RC/SA) and the Convention Center (SA).

This is actually good news, based on news reports, I had been afraid there was no food and water at the Superdome. I'm not sure how successful their attempt at getting the poor of NO to be self-sufficient was though. "Mayeaux, who is the deputy director of the state’s Office Of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said that the state began shipping its own stores of food and water from the Pineville staging area down to New Orleans two days after the storm, on August 31st. T...

Here's a great article which goes into how the ACE get's their funding and how it's spent. Specifically, how LA prioritized the funding they did receive (hint: it wasn't levees). Although not highlighted, the article points out that the Bush Administration sided with NO citizens (mostly black and poor) fighting a floodgate project against the City and State. Perhaps this was just a ruse to hide the racist intentions that some people keep claiming the Bush Administration has? ...

On Wednesday, a line queued up in FEMA's registration line at the Astrodome for the $2,000 debit cards that are going to be passed out to victims. Well, after some people stood in line for 4 hours, it turns out the line was for normal FEMA emergency registration (not debit card registration), which most people had already signed up for. Whose fault is that? FEMA? FEMA hadn't announced the start of debit card registration and there was no debit card queue, but as soon as some people s...

"Shortly before Katrina hit, she sent President Bush a request asking for shelter and provisions, but didn't specifically ask for help with evacuations. One aide to the governor told ABC News today Blanco thought city officials were taking care of the evacuation."