Is the VOO program hiring commercial fisherman, first?

This story from Bayou, Le Batre, Ala. really started the day off.

“At issue, according to those there, is that recreational boat owners are being hired before those who make their livelihoods solely from fishing local waters.”

URL

Evidently, BP’s VOO program is in question, “We are adjusting the vessels of opportunity program to give priority to commercial vessels and fisherman.”

There’s a post in the Louisiana Sportsman forum stating that boat captains could be paid $35/hr just to drive the boat. I wonder what that’s all about.

What is a human text message?

From URL

What is the Louisiana Barrier Island Project?

Read it.
and
shout for joy or weep here.

Why did Gov. Jindal bring up Katrina?

KIRO Talk Radio attempted to make fun of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s speech yesterday evening. That part of the radio show was a success. Here is where KIRO talk radio invited chaos...they discredited Sheriff Harry Lee and they made fun of HURRICANE KATRINA victims and survivors by questioning , “Why did Bobby Jindal bring up Hurricane Katrina, again in his speech? What does Katrina have to do with it?”

I started crying inside. I wish that I had a cell phone handy at the time of the show when they said that they were taking calls and opened a discussion. I was busy at the time and couldn’t. They should be very, very, thankful that I didn’t call.

“As the president made clear this evening, we’re now in a time of challenge. Many of you listening tonight have lost jobs; others have seen your college and your retirement savings dwindle. Many of you are worried about losing your health care and your homes. You’re looking to your elected leaders in Washington for solutions.” –Bobby Jindal

Here is what KIRO didn’t understand. People lost their jobs, their transportation, their homes, their lives, and everything about their lives changed … INSTANTLY during Hurricane Katrina. Many are still fighting insurance companies, even today. Many are still rebuilding. Many cannot rebuild. Many are still not home. Many are still fighting bureaucrats.

When Mt. St. Helens blew, 50 people died. I didn’t hear KIRO making fun of that natural disaster. Hurricane Katrina killed three times that number of people. Some of those were children. No children died when Mt. St. Helens blew.

KIRO Talk Radio discredited Sheriff Harry Lee and laughed about the fact that he has since passed on. “We’re trying to….get….let’s call him.” they said. They actually wanted to call Harry Lee and confirm the conversation that he had had with Jindal during Hurricane Katrina. Then KIRO realized that Harry Lee was dead. KIRO doesn’t understand how well liked and well respected Sheriff Harry Lee was and still is in Louisiana. KIRO Talk Radio screwed up. Maybe if Harry had better health care he would still be here today. Many people in Louisiana didn’t have access to health care prior to Hurricane Katrina as Louisiana was one of those states that was deemed a “healthcare shortage area.” I can’t expect KIRO to understand what that means after Katrina.

“We’re grateful for the support we’ve received from across the nation for our ongoing recovery efforts.” KIRO Talk Radio wasn’t listening. And for those of us who cannot “go home” and are forced to listen to KIRO instead of WWL? It is because people “ignored the bureaucrats” that “There’s a lesson in this experience: The strength of America is not found in our government. It is found in the compassionate hearts and the enterprising spirit of our citizens.”

Making fun of Jindals diction, tone, and meter in his speech was okay with me.

Making fun of Bobby Jinda’s RED WHITE AND BLUE TIE, was even okay with me. (Even though I’d like to wrap it around KIRO TALK RADIO’s NECK.) The fact that Bobby Jindal has ALWAYS worn a RED WHITE AND BLUE TIE, escaped KIRO listeners and KIRO Talk Radio.

Making fun of Hurricane Katrina victims and the travesty that REMAINS WITH US DAILY by KIRO TALK RADIO PERSONALITIES asking, “Why did Bobby Jindal bring up Hurricane Katrina, again?” shows complete and total, utter disregard, disrespect, ignorance, and poor taste in broadcast journalism. I can go on and on. I won’t. KIRO Talk Radio, like many other Americans, unfortunately, have no inkling.

The current so called “financial crisis” that America is facing cannot be compared to anything else but Katrina. The banks closed after Katrina. There was no cash to be had, no credit, NOTHING. KIRO couldn’t put up a radio station from scratch, I’d be willing to bet on it.

I’d like to see WWL interview these KIRO Talk Radio folks. I’d like to see KIRO get GRILLED.

I’ll show you mine cowboy, if you show me yours. (I think I already know who won this fight.)

KIRO,? You’re FIRED.

Which hoops did you have to jump through?

The New York Times ran this opinion article on page A 34 recently. Not that page A 34 made headlines in the way that Hurricane Katrina did just a few short years ago. It galls me to this day that big shot newspapers like the NYT can have opinions about Katrina without having to experience it first hand. And they don’t even know where to begin pointing the finger, either.

Editorial
Some Sense, at Last, About Katrina

Published: February 11, 2009

The Obama administration seems to have learned the lessons of the Bush team’s disastrous bungling of the resettling of Hurricane Katrina’s tens of thousands of refugees. Under former President Bush, the task of resettling those whose homes were destroyed by the storm and floods in 2005 was initially given to the Federal Emergency Management Agency instead of to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which has a long history of housing poor and displaced people through its voucher program.

That grave mistake led to a plan that turned many survivors into wanderers who moved from place to place, cut off from jobs and schools. Washington will need to be more helpful if New Orleans and the Gulf region in general are to recover, not just from the storm, but from the damage wrought by federal mismanagement. Now plans to build affordable-housing developments have run afoul of the credit crisis. Without those developments, low- and moderate-income workers will be forced to pull up stakes and go elsewhere.

That message seems to be hitting home at President Obama’s HUD. For starters, the department’s new secretary, Shaun Donovan, has overturned a potentially disastrous decision that would have ended badly needed temporary rental assistance to about 31,000 households at the end of this month. The last thing the Gulf region needs at this point is more homelessness.

The point of the new policy is to keep low-income families on temporary assistance until they can complete the complicated process of qualifying for a permanent Section 8 housing voucher, which allows them to seek homes in the private real estate market. The hope is that many people being housed under the temporary program would be able to use the vouchers to remain in their homes. This would be especially helpful since rents in the city have skyrocketed since the storm.

The Bush administration wanted the vouchers primarily limited to the elderly and disabled. But Mr. Donovan has wisely expanded them to include all low-income people who are eligible under federal guidelines. This will require more money from Congress. But the expense would be well worth it if it prevents a new wave of homelessness and sustains the Gulf restoration project through turbulent economic times.

More Articles in Opinion » A version of this article appeared in print on February 12, 2009, on page A34 of the New York edition.

The NYT did not publish that FEMA subcontracted agencies to contact Katrina Victims. It galls me that no one realizes what these subcontracted agencies did with the FEDERAL MONIES they were given by FEMA to HELP Katrina victims. The agencies, of course, did not contact victims in anything that would be considered “timely”. Victims were then required to “fill out the necessary paperwork” to see if they “qualify” for assistance. What? After everything that I have been through already, you people want ME to fill out MORE paperwork so that YOU CAN DETERMINE, whether or NOT I deserve YOUR ASSISTANCE? So these subcontracted agencies go on with their non-profit status collecting the FEDERAL MONIES for their so called “JOBS” thereby sucking and blowing just like Katrina with FEDERAL FERVE.

Gaynell Tipado, your boy is tough

This story broke my heart this morning.  If anyone knows Gaynell Tipado, please contact the Romulus, Michagan PD.  The story indicates that they are looking for relatives.

Mich. police: Boy, 8, spent 10 days with dead mom

By DAVID N. GOODMAN, Associated Press Writer David N. Goodman, Associated Press Writer – Wed Jan 21, 2:11 am ET

AP – Buildings in an apartment complex where an 8-year-old boy who survived Hurricane Katrina spent more than …

ROMULUS, Mich. – An 8-year-old boy lived for more than a week with the body of his dead mother before telling a concerned shopkeeper his mom was “in a better place,” police said. Gaynell Tipado, 41, apparently died Jan. 9 in their apartment in the Detroit suburb of Romulus, and the boy survived in part by eating dried rice, butter and flour, authorities said.

The family moved to Michigan from Louisiana after surviving Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Foul play was not suspected in Tipado’s death, and an autopsy was pending.

Lee Saco told The Associated Press that the boy and his mother came into Romulus Liquor regularly for about a year and a half. But four times during the past week the boy uncharacteristically walked about a block to the store by himself — sometimes through Arctic cold and other times wearing pajama bottoms.

“I questioned him, ‘Where is your mom?'” Saco said when the boy first came into the store by himself to buy milk, chips, candy and bread with cash. During the next two visits, he said the boy bought a number of items, including bread.

Saco, who co-owns the store with his brother Sam, said he was curious from the beginning but his concern heightened on Monday when the boy tried to buy $34.80 worth of grocery items — including nacho cheese dip, a package each of processed ham and turkey, hamburger buns, milk, doughnuts and candy — with his mother’s credit card.

Saco then asked the boy if he could speak to his mother. “Is she alive?” Saco asked the boy.

“She’s in a better place,” the boy replied, who later told Saco he’d tried to revive his mother by pushing on her chest in an apparent attempt at CPR.

“I sat him down, gave him chocolate milk. Then I called Romulus PD,” Saco said.

Police arrived and took the boy home. They called Saco about 10 minutes later to tell him the boy’s mother was dead.

The boy was home-schooled, has no siblings and his father died several years ago, authorities said. The child is in foster care while police try to locate his other relatives, Romulus police Lt. John Leacher said.

“It’s sad. It’s very hard. It’s very unfortunate for him,” said Lee Saco, 36, a father of three young children. “I just feel bad. What he had to see for 11 days.

“He came from a good home,” Saco said.

___

Associated Press Writer Ben Leubsdorf in Detroit contributed to this report.

 

Do you believe in Robin Hood?

She said Green “has done everything he possibly could to make right his wrong.” While it is not a question I can truely ask or answer . . . I still believe.

Bill Quigley on the Reverse Robin Hood Effect

Robin Hood organization – New York

“Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen.”

Guthrie at Wikipedia -“This land is your land…this land is my land..”

Chorus:
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

As I was walking a ribbon of highway
I saw above me an endless skyway
I saw below me a golden valley
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

The sun comes shining as I was strolling
The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
The fog was lifting a voice come chanting
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

As I was walkin'  -  I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side  .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

Chorus

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

Lyrics as recorded by Woody Guthrie, RCA Studios, Camden, NJ, 26 Apr 1940 From: URL

If you’ll gather ’round me, children,
A story I will tell
‘Bout Pretty Boy Floyd, an outlaw,
Oklahoma knew him well.

It was in the town of Shawnee,
A Saturday afternoon,
His wife beside him in his wagon
As into town they rode.

There a deputy sheriff approached him
In a manner rather rude,
Vulgar words of anger,
An’ his wife she overheard.

Pretty Boy grabbed a log chain,
And the deputy grabbed his gun;
In the fight that followed
He laid that deputy down.

Then he took to the trees and timber
To live a life of shame;
Every crime in Oklahoma
Was added to his name.

But a many a starving farmer
The same old story told
How the outlaw paid their mortgage
And saved their little homes.

Others tell you ’bout a stranger
That come to beg a meal,
Underneath his napkin
Left a thousand dollar bill.

It was in Oklahoma City,
It was on a Christmas Day,
There was a whole car load of groceries
Come with a note to say:

Well, you say that I’m an outlaw,
You say that I’m a thief.
Here’s a Christmas dinner
For the families on relief.

Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered
I’ve seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.

And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won’t never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.

From wikipedia: “…In the oldest legends the outlaw’s enemy is the sheriff due simply to his profession,^[8] but in later versions the sheriff is despotic and gravely abuses his position, appropriating land, levying excessive taxation, and persecuting the poor….”

“…Robin Hood has become shorthand for a good-hearted bandit who steals from the rich to give to the poor. It is also a proverbial expression for somebody who takes other people’s giveaways and gives them to people he or she knows who could use them. This can be called “Robin Hood giving.” Many countries and situations boast their own Robin Hood characters; the Category:Robin Hood page tracks them.

“…The BBC has recently released the second series of Robin Hood starring Jonas Armstrong (Robin), Lucy Griffiths (Marion), Richard Armitage (Guy of Gisborne), and Keith Allen (The Sheriff). The third series will be aired in 2008.” See the BBC webpage on Robin Hood