The Blame Game
Exhibit 1: the fishing expedition:
The Justice Department is seeking information about whether lawsuits by environmental groups hindered efforts to improve New Orleans levees...
Exhibit 2: crass opportunism!:
"[Arizona Sen.] Jon Kyl and I were talking about the estate tax. If we knew anybody that owned a business that lost life in the storm, that would be something we could push back with."
And finally: Nobody really wants to get to the bottom of this, do they?
Senate Republicans on Wednesday scuttled an attempt by Sen. Hillary Clinton to establish an independent, bipartisan panel patterned after the 9/11 Commission to investigate what went wrong with federal, state and local governments' response to Hurricane Katrina.
Meanwhile, a recent poll indicates that 81% of Americans want an independent panel to investigate Katrina, while only 18% trust Congress to do the job. "John in DC' calls these 'Terry Schiavo numbers'.
The Justice Department is seeking information about whether lawsuits by environmental groups hindered efforts to improve New Orleans levees...
Exhibit 2: crass opportunism!:
"[Arizona Sen.] Jon Kyl and I were talking about the estate tax. If we knew anybody that owned a business that lost life in the storm, that would be something we could push back with."
And finally: Nobody really wants to get to the bottom of this, do they?
Senate Republicans on Wednesday scuttled an attempt by Sen. Hillary Clinton to establish an independent, bipartisan panel patterned after the 9/11 Commission to investigate what went wrong with federal, state and local governments' response to Hurricane Katrina.
Meanwhile, a recent poll indicates that 81% of Americans want an independent panel to investigate Katrina, while only 18% trust Congress to do the job. "John in DC' calls these 'Terry Schiavo numbers'.
posted by Management at 9:11 PM
3 Comments:
Justice Department asks whether lawsuits hindered levee upgrades
Monday, September 19, 2005; Posted: 8:47 a.m. EDT (12:47 GMT)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department is seeking information about whether lawsuits by environmental groups hindered efforts to improve New Orleans levees, an effort the Sierra Club and Democratic lawmakers say is aimed at shifting blame for the massive flooding.
The request to federal prosecutors, sent in an e-mail earlier this week, followed harsh criticism of the Bush administration for its initial response to Hurricane Katrina and the breach in New Orleans' levees that sent floodwaters from Lake Pontchartrain pouring into the city.
"Has your district defended any cases on behalf of the Army Corps of Engineers against claims brought by environmental groups seeking to block or otherwise impede the Corps work on the levees protecting New Orleans? If so, please describe the case and the outcome of the litigation," said the communication, which was read to The Associated Press on Friday by Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse.
David Bookbinder, Sierra Club senior attorney, said the administration "is more interested in building a case to deflect blame than actually underscore what went wrong before, during and after the crisis."
Roehrkasse said the Justice Department is not seeking to deflect criticism of the administration. Rather, he said, the e-mail, which was first disclosed Friday in a story by the Jackson, Mississippi, Clarion-Ledger, was a response to a question from a committee in the Republican-controlled Senate.
The request came from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, committee spokesman Bill Holbrook said. The panel, led by Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, "wants to know what happened to prevent modernization of the levees," Holbrook said.
Some conservatives have complained that environmental groups have escaped blame for their opposition to levee projects. The Competitive Enterprise Institute posted on its Web site an article noting that "the opposition of environmental activist groups to building levees in the first place" has drawn little attention in the hurricane's aftermath.
It cited two groups, American Rivers and the Sierra Club, for their federal suit in 1996 to block an upgrade of 303 miles of levees in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Most of those levees are on the Mississippi River and did not fail during Katrina.
Separately, an environmental lawsuit in 1977 stopped an Army Corps project designed after Hurricane Betsy in 1965 to protect New Orleans from storm surges.
New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat on the Senate panel that asked about the lawsuits, said he believes the information sought by the Justice Department is part of a concerted effort by the administration to deflect criticism.
"The administration is obviously desperate to divert attention from their failure of leadership that followed this tragedy," Lautenberg said.
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Looking for a Corpse to Make a Case
Senators look for a wealthy casualty of Katrina as evidence against the estate tax
By MASSIMO CALABRESI
Federal troops aren't the only ones looking for bodies on the Gulf Coast. On Sept. 9, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions called his old law professor Harold Apolinsky, co-author of Sessions' legislation repealing the federal estate tax, which was encountering sudden resistance on the Hill. Sessions had an idea to revitalize their cause, which he left on Apolinsky's voice mail: "[Arizona Sen.] Jon Kyl and I were talking about the estate tax. If we knew anybody that owned a business that lost life in the storm, that would be something we could push back with."
If legislative ambulance chasing looks like a desperate measure, for the backers of repealing the estate tax, these are desperate times. Just three weeks ago, their long-sought goal of repeal seemed within reach, but Katrina dashed their hopes when Republican leaders put off an expected vote. After hearing from Sessions, Apolinsky, an estate tax lawyer who says his firm includes three multi-billionaires among its clients, mobilized the American Family Business Institute, a Washington-based group devoted to estate tax repeal. They reached out to members along the Gulf Coast to hunt for the dead.
It's been hard. Only a tiny percentage of people are affected by the estate tax—in 2001 only 534 Alabamans were subject to it. And for Hill backers of repeal, that's only part of the problem. Last year, the tax brought in $24.8 billion to the federal government. With Katrina's cost soaring, estate tax opponents need to find a way to make up the potential lost income. For now, getting repeal back on the agenda may depend on Apolinsky and his team of estate-sniffing sleuths, who are searching Internet obituaries among other places. Has he found any victims of both the hurricane and the estate tax? "Not yet," Apolinsky says. "But I'm still looking."—with reporting by Amanda Ripley/Washington
Senate kills Democratic attempt to establish independent Katrina commission
LARA JAKES JORDAN
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans on Wednesday scuttled an attempt by Sen. Hillary Clinton to establish an independent, bipartisan panel patterned after the 9/11 Commission to investigate what went wrong with federal, state and local governments' response to Hurricane Katrina.
The New York Democrat's bid to establish the panel - which would have also made recommendations on how to improve the government's disaster response apparatus - failed to win the two-thirds majority vote needed to overcome procedural hurdles.
"Just as with 9/11, we did not get to the point where we believed we understood what happened until an independent investigation was conducted," Clinton said.
The Senate vote is hardly likely to be the last word on whether to create an independent commission or as an alternative a special congressional committee to investigate Katrina. The 9/11 Commission was established in 2002 after resistance from Republicans and the White House, and opinion polls show the public strongly supports the idea. In a CNN/USA Today Gallup poll taken Sept. 8-11, 70 percent of those surveyed supported an independent panel to investigate the government's response to Katrin. Only 29 percent were opposed.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has rebuffed a bid by House and Senate GOP leaders to create a committee patterned after the 1987 Iran-Contra panel that would have a GOP majority - reflecting their dominance of Congress.
Reid has instead vowed that any bid by Republican leaders to establish a special bipartisan committee involving lawmakers from both House and Senate will go forward only if Democrats have equal represention.
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