"The disaster relief fund today is completely depleted. The balance is zero,"

Why isn't that a story or headline flying all across American media? The National Guard and Armed Forces are also stretched to depletion. The Iraq war is being fought more by private contractors than soldiers, and there's absolutely no accountability. It's become apparent that the weird weather will seem normal in about a year, but as long as my IPod is working, I'll just shrug my shoulders and moove on. Moooooooo!
Red Cross Disaster Fund Is Depleted
By Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writer, June 17, 2008
The American Red Cross said yesterday that it has depleted its national disaster relief fund and is taking out loans to pay for shelters, food and other relief services across seven Midwestern states battered by floods.

Officials at the charity estimated that efforts in the Midwest will cost more than $15 million and warned that the total could surpass $40 million if the Mississippi River creates floods in St. Louis later this week.
On the cusp of hurricane season, Red Cross executives said the charity has raised just $3.2 million for the Midwest floods and painted a dire picture of its overall disaster relief finances. They said many donors are giving less because of rising gasoline and food prices and the collapse of the housing market. [my bold] Also, the absence of a major U.S. catastrophe since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 has made it difficult to galvanize donors.
"The disaster relief fund today is completely depleted. The balance is zero," Jeffrey Towers, chief development officer, said in a conference call with reporters. [my bold]
Towers added that the Red Cross "needs immediate funds to deploy in a variety of ways to provide the scale of services that this disaster demands."
The Red Cross is congressionally chartered to provide disaster relief but operates largely on private donations. The depleted fund is a general reserve that is tapped whenever disasters strike. The financial situation does not affect employee salaries or the charity's blood-collecting operations but could inhibit its ability to assist in disasters. [my bold] [Does that mean ALL employees or just the ones that count? I doubt Elizabeth Dole will lose any benefits.]
Red Cross officials did not say how much debt they are accumulating for the Midwest floods or disclose the fund's overall debt. Spokeswoman Laura Howe said only that "this is probably one of the more severe disaster relief fund situations that we've found ourselves in since Katrina."
After Katrina, with the relief fund depleted, the Red Cross borrowed about $430 million to cover costs -- the first time in its history it sought a loan for disaster relief, Howe said. She added that the charity repaid the debt with the $2.1 billion raised in the months after the hurricane.
Over the past two months, the Red Cross has responded to 30 mid-size disasters -- including the April tornado that struck southwest Virginia and the May tornadoes that sped from Oklahoma to Georgia, which has drained its funds, officials said.
"It's a continuous series of storms and disasters that have led us to where we are today," [my bold] said Joe Becker, senior vice president for disaster services.
He added, "We're not going to stop serving people because we don't have the money. We'll have to redouble our fundraising efforts and present the need to America and ask them to respond."
Peter Dobkin Hall, a Red Cross critic and professor at Harvard University, said the charity has a "credibility problem" that is hurting its fundraising.
"You can't go through so many CEOs in how many years and have an assortment of other problems with the blood business and with the handling of charitable contributions and maintain a sterling reputation with donors," Dobkin Hall said.
Towers said people can donate to the Red Cross national disaster relief fund by calling 800-HELPNOW or going to http://ww.redcross.org.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/16/AR2008061601734.html?referrer=emailarticle

News Buried, Like WTC Truth

Yet another story which won't be on the front page (or anywhere except the Internet[s]). 9/11 truthers, take heart because facts will surface, eventually. Of course, if those MILLION$ in grant funds went to unbiased organizations... [my bold, throughout]
Engineer Society Accused of Cover-Ups
By CAIN BURDEAU – 4 days ago
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The professional organization for engineers who build the nation's roads, dams and bridges has been accused by fellow engineers of covering up catastrophic design flaws while investigating national disasters.
After the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and the levee failures caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the federal government paid the American Society of Civil Engineers to investigate what went wrong.
Critics now accuse the group of covering up engineering mistakes, downplaying the need to alter building standards, and using the investigations to protect engineers and government agencies from lawsuits.
[...] "They want to make sure that they do things the right way and that they learn lessons from the studies they do," said Sherwood Boelhert, a retired Republican congressman from New York who heads the panel. He led the House Science Committee for six years.
The panel is expected to issue a report by the end of April and may recommend that the society stop taking money from government agencies for disaster investigations.
[...] In the World Trade Center case, critics contend the engineering society wrongly concluded skyscrapers cannot withstand getting hit by airplanes. In the hurricane investigation, it was accused of suggesting that the power of the storm was as big a problem as the poorly designed levees.
[...] The society got a $1.1 million grant from the Army Corps of Engineers to study the levee failures. Similarly, the Federal Emergency Management Agency paid the group about $257,000 to investigate the World Trade Center collapse.
The engineers were not involved in investigating last year's bridge collapse in Minneapolis.
[...] Raymond Seed, a levee expert at the University of California, Berkeley, was among the first to question the society's involvement. He was on a team funded by the National Science Foundation to study the New Orleans flood.
Seed accused the engineering society and the Army Corps of collusion, writing an Oct. 20 letter alleging that the two organizations worked together "to promulgate misleading studies and statements, to subvert appropriate independent investigations ... to literally attempt to change some of the critical apparent answers regarding lessons to be learned."
[...] In 2002, the society's report on the World Trade Center praised the buildings for remaining standing long enough to allow tens thousands of people to flee.
But, the report said, skyscrapers are not typically designed to withstand airplane impacts. Instead of hardening buildings against such impacts, it recommended improving aviation security and fire protection.
Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, a structural engineer and forensics expert, contends his computer simulations disprove the society's findings that skyscrapers could not be designed to withstand the impact of a jetliner.
Astaneh-Asl, who received money from the National Science Foundation to investigate the collapse, insisted most New York skyscrapers built with traditional designs would survive such an impact and prevent the kind of fires that brought down the twin towers.
He also questioned the makeup of the society's investigation team. On the team were the wife of the trade center's structural engineer and a representative of the buildings' original design team.
"I call this moral corruption," said Astaneh-Asl, who is on the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley.[…]
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hzg4otojhA781hp18wMHpy2WUPqQD8VKKNMO0
For more intrigue on a sleepy Sunday, check out fellow blogger, Steven Warran’s post which raises the still unanswered question…
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
When Did the Pentagon Get Attacked Exactly? http://stevenwarran.blogspot.com/2007/10/asce-pentagon-report-illustrations.html
You could get a migrane looking this stuff up, but the "professionals" won't do it. (BTW--My definition of a "professional" is someone who will do anything to keep their job. Here's 1/2 hour of my life, down the search drain: CNN: 9:43 a.m. 9/11 Commission: 9:37 am National Transportation Safety Board: 9:37 The must-support site, History Commons has tons of data:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/searchResults.jsp?searchtext=time+pentagon+hit&events=on&entities=on&articles=on&topics=on&timelines=on&projects=on&titles=on&descriptions=on&dosearch=on&search=Go

Stop Controlled Chaos in New Orleans

CALL TO ACTION:

STOP THE DEMOLITION OF PUBLIC HOUSING IN NEW ORLEANS!

VIDEO: 12/20 New Orleans: Protester Against City Hall Hearing for Demolishing 5000 Affordable Homes! (at http://www.activistvideo.org/)

Protesters trying to enter city hall to attend meeting are met with a closed gate, pepper spray and tasers.
PLEA FOR SUPPORT http://www.defendneworleanspublichousing.org/

12/20/07 13:30p.m. -New Orleans Public Housing residents, and affordable housing advocates are being locked out of the New Orleans City Council (public meeting) proceedings and being harassed by multiple 'law enforcement' agencies as they attempt to conduct a peaceful show of support for a halt to the immoral and untimely demolition of the 4 largest housing developments during an unprecedented housing crisis in this city.

Approximately 500 participants who attended an opening press conference preceding City Council's regularly scheduled session this morning were met with a show of force from several law enforcement agencies. Since 10:00a.m. this morning people have been peppered sprayed, locked out of the proceedings and 24 have been arrested.

Organizers on the ground in New Orleans are asking for supporters in the struggle for affordable decent housing and the right for all those displaced by Hurricane Katrina and the policies which hold blatant disregard for low-income and poor people to send out a call to:

1. Get on the Phone-Call your congressional and senate representatives urging them to support the passage of SB 1668- the New Orleans Housing Recovery Act, currently awaiting a vote in the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee

2. Send out Mail and Make Calls -Send word to New Orleans elected officials that their way of working with recovery issues is inhumane and until the broad constituency they were elected to represent are treated with the respect they deserve and represented in the process of redeveloping their city their plans are hinged on the backs of the very people that make this city the unique and special place that it is.

3. Spread the Word via, e-mail -Get the word out to your network of family, friends and co-workers. The attack on low-income and poor families is not limited to New Orleans, If we allow affordable housing to disappear during a critical time in it's recovery, there will be less chance for it's survival throughout the US.

How Low Can FEMA Go?

A good question since they keep lowering the bar of responsibility, even just basic "getting A job (any job) done before too many people die, lose their homes and belongings, .... It's time to put on the happy helmet, people!
FEMA Meets the Press, Which Happens to Be . . . FEMA
By Al Kamen
Washington Post, Friday, October 26, 2007
FEMA has truly learned the lessons of Katrina. Even its handling of the media has improved dramatically. For example, as the California wildfires raged Tuesday, Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson, the deputy administrator, had a 1 p.m. news briefing.
Reporters were given only 15 minutes' notice of the briefing, making it unlikely many could show up at FEMA's Southwest D.C. offices.

"Are you happy with FEMA's response so far?" a reporter asked. Another asked about "lessons learned from Katrina."
"I'm very happy with FEMA's response so far," Johnson said, hailing "a very smoothly, very efficiently performing team."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/25/AR2007102502488.html

New Orleans Marks Katrina Anniversary

Can you imagine how powerful it could be if some of us NYC 9/11 survivors found a way to connect and unite with our brothers and sisters in NOLA, and to Minneapolis, and to Huntington, Utah…

Did you know ALL public school employees in New Orleans were fired and therefore lost their benefits after the levees broke? We've got Deutsch Bank, the miners' families have Rob Moore, but we either lose our dignity, our sanity, our civil rights one by one or we all stand together and get the power back from the murderers in the White House.

Thursday, August 30th, 2007
New Orleans Hit By Another "Hurricane of Racism, Greed and Corruption" - Community Activist Malik Rahim

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/30/145210

and this:

New Orleans Marks Katrina Anniversary

By MARY FOSTER, Associated Press, Wed, 29 Aug 2007