cover photo



blog archive

main site

artwork

bio






Schwarz



View current page
...more recent posts

fleur de lis

"Freedom For The Stallion" (Allen Toussaint) Allen Toussaint, live, 4/9/1976
(LISTEN) "As I mentioned earlier, Allen Toussaint turns 68 this Saturday, the 14th; and I hope he has a great day and fine new year. After having lost his home when the levee broke, he needs them. I’ve picked this live performance of one of his songs for the weekend, since it ties in with the spirit of Martin Luther King Day, as well."
-from home of the groove
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
more from home of the groove : "Don't Bring Me Down" (Allen Toussaint) Labelle, from Nightbirds, Epic, 1974 - and - A Toussaint Two-fer

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Every now and then I like to point you to other posts of New Olreans music I find. Hey, I can't post everything, as you may have noticed. Our hard bloggin' friend, AK, over at Soul Shower has two nice posts up now with tracks by Huey Smith and the Clowns, featuring Gerri Hall, and and by the Barons, about as obscure a New Orleans vocal group as you could want. Check 'em while they're hot. By the way, I enourage all mp3 bloggers to post more New Orleans music. The city needs the attention. The tunes need to be heard. And I need less pressure! Peace.
-from home of the groove

[link] [add a comment]

fleur de lis

A conservative Republican congressman has proposed the federal government create a non-profit, federally-owned corporation, dubbed the Louisiana Recovery Corporation that would be authorized to buy out homeowners in the affected areas and to negotiate with lenders to pay off the balance of those mortgages.

If passed, this House bill, proposed by Rep. Richard H. Baker, would make the federal government the largest landowner in New Orleans for at least a few years. This government corporation would be modeled after the Resolution Trust Corporation that was created by Congress in 1989 to bail out the savings and loans industry in wake of the S & L scandal. Baker's plan has even drawn support from liberal Democrat, Rep. William J. Jefferson who stated explicitly that he believes the bill's passage is important.

Some members of Congress are concerned with the potential cost to taxpayers from Baker's plan. The proposed non-profit corporation would offer to buy out houses from homeowners, at no less than 60 percent of their equity before Hurricane Katrina, while lenders would be offered up to 60 percent of what they are owed, according to the New York Times. The properties would then be sold to developers. The government corporation could end up spending up to $80 billion, according to current estimates. Baker admitted he could not promise that the corporation would break even financially. He added, "We'll pay back as much as possible."

A group of representatives were unsuccessful in mandating that the corporation break even financially by incurring revenues from developers. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R - Texas), stated, "We need to ensure that taxpayers are not asked again two or three years from now to pay for the same disaster."

The passage of the bill is still uncertain. The Senate is expected to begin debate on the bill once Congress reconvenes. The White House has show some signs of support for the bill, with the president's Gulf Coast recovery czar, Donald E. Powell, stating, he "was more comfortable" with the proposal.
from LP Blog The official blog of the Libertarian Party
[link] [add a comment]

fleur de lis

President Bush sounded out of touch as usual this week when he called the still-ravaged city "a heck of a place to bring your family." Rather than conjuring up memories of Michael Brown, the erstwhile head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Mr. Bush could better spend his time increasing the pressure on Congress to act on some version of Representative Richard Baker's federal buyout legislation. Lawmakers in Washington should take up the bill.
nyt editorial
[link] [1 comment]

note: bloglines


[link] [add a comment]

happy friday the thirteenth. i once had a great birthday on a "good friday" the thirteenth.


[link] [add a comment]

Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Renzo Piano, Steven Holl, Herzog & de Meuron, Santiago Calatrava, Rafael Moneo, Glenn Murcutt, Richard Rogers and Norman Foster are among the distinguished international architects who have been commissioned to build new wineries and the results are a fascinating blend of form and function.

[link] [add a comment]

fleur de lis

The problem, asserts Marchand, is that the city is not using consistent methods to assess home damage, and that some of the homes they’ve tagged for removal may, in fact, be salvageable. “I live in the heaviest hit area,” she says, adding that, while she currently sleeps at a temporary residence in Baton Rouge, she has already gutted her Ninth Ward home after she and her neighbors were allowed back in on December 1. When inspectors arrived to assess her neighborhood and place red stickers on houses deemed irreparable, she says, “They didn’t even enter the homes. We have incorrect assessments being done. We can’t arbitrarily assume that a house should be demolished.” Certainly there are homes in the Ninth Ward that are safety risks, she conceded. But even in cases where homes have drifted off their foundations, “we need to give people a chance to see if they can be lifted and put back on their pilings-I have seen this happen.”

[....]

“I don’t think that it’s one of the neighborhoods most at risk. Seven or eight flood wall and levee breaks caused the problem there.” He notes that, if executed, the levee bill President Bush signed in late December would mitigate the environmental problems in the Ninth Ward.

In the meantime, with no cohesive redevelopment strategy yet in practice, various groups on the ground are acting on their own. Grassroots housing advocacy organization ACORN, for example, is running a program to gut homes in low-income neighborhoods, including the Ninth Ward. ACORN’s New Orleans head organizer Steve Bradbury says that they hope to have gutted 1,000 to 2,000 homes by the end of March.

But the biggest problem in New Orleans right now, Bradbury told The Slatin Report, is that “the local and federal government should be taking greater responsibility for people receiving the clearest and most factual information possible-and they’re not.”

Marchand agrees: “The city needs to first find out who’s coming back before tearing anything down.”
lots of interesting pictures here also
[link] [add a comment]

wtc

A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit charging that the city's Office of Emergency Management helped cause the collapse of Seven World Trade Center on 9-11 by storing diesel fuel for its emergency generators in the 47-story building.

The Port Authority and developer Larry Silverstein are still on the hook in the suit, which was filed by insurers for Con Edison, which had a substation under WTC7 that was severely damaged.

The city Law Department hailed the ruling, which it says is the last property damage claim against the city related to 9-11. A statement from the department says the move by District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein "allows New York City to better plan for events like September 11th without being subject to liability based on hindsight."

WTC7 was the last building to fall on 9-11. No one was killed there. Compared to the twin towers it was a relative nobody among New York skyscrapers, but it has enjoyed posthumous notoriety because of the mystery of why exactly it fell. Thanks to the neat and sudden collapse of the building, WTC7 is central to alternative theories about what happened on 9-11—and particularly to the notion that the buildings in lower Manhattan were brought down by planned demolitions.

Mainstream inquiries also find puzzlement on WTC 7. The national investigation of Ground Zero building collapses has yet to issue its final report on building seven. An earlier study by the Federal Emergency Management Agency punted on trying to explain the collapse definitively. Not struck by planes, WTC7 appears to have collapsed solely because of fire—apparently a first for a steel-framed skyscraper. The diesel fuel was the most likely culprit, even though FEMA said this "best hypothesis has only a low probability of occurrence." The city's OEM command center used a 6,000-gallon diesel tank; this was one of several in the building. Hellestein's ruling doesn't delve into whether the diesel fuel caused the collapse, or if it was a particularly bright idea to have it there, but finds that the city is immune under a state law, the New York Defense Emergency Act:

[link] [1 comment]

fleur de lismore bush double speak on new orleans :



"It's a heck of a place to bring your family."

[....]

A buyout program proposed by Baker, R-Baton Rouge, is widely seen as a critical part of the city's rebuilding plan. The measure failed to pass Congress last month, but it enjoys near uniform support among Louisiana politicians here and in Washington.

But after Thursday's meeting, Nagin, who attended the powwow and sat on the president's left, said Bush remains skeptical about the bill in its current form. Nagin said the president's doubts center on the legislation's ultimate price tag, and on the unprecedented federal involvement in a local matter Baker's plan may represent.

Baker, who also was one of the meeting's dozen participants, said his plan did not arise as a topic of conversation. What's more, Baker said, Bush has never voiced those concerns to him in one-on-one meetings.

"Whenever I see him, he says, 'How's the grand plan going?' " Baker said.

[....]

But on what most city leaders consider the paramount issue for rebuilding -- the construction of a levee system that could withstand a hit from a Category 5 storm -- Bush remained coy. In fact, neither he nor Powell, who flew down on Air Force One with Bush and attended the meeting, have ever voiced support for Category 5 storm protection, which carries an uncertain price tag and could take years to complete. Asked directly about it on several occasions, both men carefully sidestepped the matter, and Bush did so again Thursday.

"The mayor has made it clear to me we need a strong federal policy on levees in order to encourage investors and investment," Bush said. He then promised a web of storm protection, "stronger and better than the previous system," but did not mention Category 5.

Nagin, it turned out, was not alone in reminding Bush about where the levee system stands in the local consciousness. As the president's motorcade made its way down Prytania Street, a resident held a cardboard sign aloft that said, "We Want Levey."

As he has from the outset, Bush insisted the recovery plan must be designed locally. Although he said the federal government "has a major role to play," Bush reiterated his stance that role would be supportive to the city's lead.

"We all share the same goal, and that is to have this city rise again and be a shining star of the South," he said.

[link] [add a comment]