Rove's Mayberry Machiavelli's Spoils System To Rebuild Gulf Coast
As Bush gives his "New Orleans will rise again" speech tonight, there are several key questions that should be kept front and center in the spin:
How are you paying the $200-300 billion reconstruction effort, Mr. Bush?
What companies and who will be doing the work?
What legal and social rollbacks are buried in the "reconstruction" program?
Without an independent study, how does Bush plan to fix the federal mistakes?
Let's all be clear about one thing.
As some have already suggested, and as President Bush has now put us on
notice, the Gulf Coast reconstruction effort is going to be run as a
patronage and political operation. That's not spin or hyperbole. They're saying it themselves.
The president has put Karl Rove in charge of the reconstruction,
with a budget of a couple hundred billion dollars. There's real
news to be reported -- how the president is approaching the
reconstruction, what plans he's putting in place right now. He's put his chief political operative
in charge of running the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast. Shouldn't
that be raising a lot of questions -- a man whose entire professional
experience is in dirty tricks, political arm-twisting, spin message framing and patronage?
Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of
staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the
reconstruction effort, which reaches across many agencies of government
and includes the direct involvement of Alphonso R. Jackson, secretary
of housing and urban development.
Carl Rove runs politic operations and manages coalitions
through patronage. That's what he does. And that's what this is
about. He's also at the center of on-going criminal investigation
and the target of a much-rumored indictment. Everybody realizes that. Don't expect much if any discussion of this
point in the major papers or on the networks. It's shameless. But
that's beside the point.
This is a time when the country needs an opposition party. Every
Democrat should be hitting on this. Take the politics out of the
reconstruction effort. He put his chief spin-doctor in charge of the
biggest reconstruction and refugee crisis the country's probably ever
faced. That tells you all you need to know about his values. Nothing
that happened in the last couple weeks meant anything to him. And
nothing has changed. Same as Iraq. Same shit.
Then there's what Rep. John D. Dingell (D-MI) said in his statement
out this evening. "With a stroke of the pen, in one of his first
Katrina directives, the President cut the wages of the workers who will
undertake our largest reconstruction project since the Civil War."
That cuts right to the heart of the matter. The president's first
major initiatives were deep wage cuts for the people who will do the
reconstruction.
There's plenty of blame to go all around. As Wanda Sykes points outon Jay Leno's show: You can't blame the blind man for wrecking your car when you're the one who gave him the keys."
BATON ROUGE, La. — Brandy Farris is house hunting in New Orleans. The real estate agent has $10 million in the bank, wired by an investor
who has instructed her to scoop up houses — any houses. "Flooding no
problem," Farris' newspaper ads advise. Her backer is a Miami
businessman who specializes in buying storm-ravaged property at a deep
discount, something that has paid dividends in hurricane-prone Florida.
But he may have a harder time finding bargains this time around.
In some ways, Hurricane Katrina seems to have taken a vibrant real
estate market and made it hotter. Large sections of the city are
underwater, but that's only increasing the demand for dry houses. And
in flooded areas, speculators are trying to buy properties on the
cheap, hoping that the redevelopment of New Orleans will start a boom.
This land rush has long-term implications in a city where many of the
poorest residents were flooded out. It raises the question of what sort
of housing — if any — will be available to those without a six-figure
salary. If New Orleans ends up a high-priced enclave, without a mix of
cultures, races and incomes, something vital may be lost.
"There's a public interest question here," said Ann Oliveri, a senior
vice president with the Urban Land Institute, a Washington think tank.
"You don't have to abdicate the city to whoever shows up." For
now, though, it's a seller's market, at least for habitable homes.
Two months ago, Steve Young bought a two-bedroom condo in New Orleans'
Garden District as an investment for $145,000. Last month, he was
transferred by Shell Oil to Houston. Last week, he put the condo on the
market. In a posting on Craigslist, an Internet classified
advertising site, Young asked $220,000. He got a dozen serious
expressions of interest — enough so he's no longer actively pursuing a
buyer. "I'm pretty positive the market's going to move up from here," he said.
So, to their surprise, are many others.
"I thought this storm was the end of the city," said Arthur Sterbcow,
president of New Orleans-based Latter & Blum, one of the biggest
real estate brokerages on the Gulf Coast. "If anyone had told
me two weeks ago that I'd be getting the calls and e-mails I'm getting,
I would have thought he was ready for the psychiatric ward."
Messages from those wanting to buy houses — whether intact or flooded —
and commercial properties are outrunning those who want to sell by a
factor of 20, said Sterbcow, who has set up temporary quarters in his
firm's Baton Rouge office. "We're pressing everyone into service
just to answer the phones," he said.
These eager would-be buyers may be drawing their inspiration from Lower
Manhattan, which proved a bonanza for those smart enough to buy condos
there immediately after the Sept. 11 attack. Of course, in
southern Louisiana, everything is hypothetical for the moment. The
storm destroyed many property records and displaced buyers, sellers,
agents and title firms, so no deals are actually being done. Insurance
companies haven't started to settle claims yet, much less determine
how, or whether, they will insure New Orleans in the future. The city
hasn't even been drained. But people are thinking ahead,
influenced by a single factor: the belief that hundreds of billions of
dollars in government aid is going to create a boomtown. The people
administering that aid will need somewhere to live, as will those doing
the rebuilding. So will employees of companies lured back to the area,
and the service people that attend to them. All this will lead to
what Sterbcow delicately calls a "reorientation" of the city.
"Everyone I talked to has said, 'Let's start with a clean sheet of
paper, fix it and get it right,' " he said. "Some of the homes here
were only held together by the termites." What the owners of
the city's estimated 150,000 flooded houses will get out of
"reorientation" is unclear, especially if the houses were in bad shape
and uninsured.
Some black New Orleans residents say dourly that
they know what's coming. Melvin Gilbert, a maintenance crew chief in
his 60s, stood outside an elegant hotel in the French Quarter this week
and recalled how the neighborhood had been gentrified. He
remembered half a century ago when the French Quarter had a substantial
number of black residents. "Then the Caucasians started offering
them $10,000 for their homes," he
said. "Well, they only bought the places for $2,000, so they took it
and ran." The white residents restored the homes, which rose
quickly in value. Gilbert said he expected the same dynamic when the
floodwaters receded in the heavily black neighborhoods east of downtown.
The question of who should own New Orleans is already sparking tension.
The first posting seeking New Orleans property "in any condition or
location" was placed on Craigslist on Aug. 29, while the storm still
raged. With small variation, it was repeated numerous times over the
next week. Some readers were infuriated. "Do you
read/watch/understand any of the news broadcasts coming from the city?
Or do you just go to 'Cashing in on Desperation, Despondency, and
Depression: How to Make a Zillion Dollars investing in Disaster Area
Real Estate' seminars. Sheeeeeesh!" wrote one.
The process of
tracking down owners of deluged houses is greatly slowed by the absence
of records. It's not going to be easy to find these people, said
Farris, the Baton Rouge real estate agent. What would she pay for
a ruined house? Farris demurred, saying it was too early to tell,
but probably only the
value of the land, if that. Though the French Quarter may be back to
life within months, outlying districts such as North Bywater and the
Lower 9th Ward will take years, if they ever do. Investors might hope
this is the equivalent of buying land on the outskirts of a boomtown,
but it's not a guarantee.
For one thing, there are already
proposals to convert certain flooded areas — including some
water-logged neighborhoods — into parks. Under the Supreme Court's
recent ruling broadening the definition of eminent domain, speculators
could be forced to sell their properties to the government. That
would be a great outcome for many homeowners in the parishes south
and east of New Orleans that bore the brunt of the storm.
Six
months ago, Todd La Valla, a Re/Max real estate agent, bought a
four-unit apartment building for $59,000 in the community of Buras, an
unincorporated hamlet in Plaquemines Parish 55 miles southeast of New
Orleans. The tenants evacuated in the storm, or at least La
Valla hopes they did. He's sure the building is gone too, like just
about everything else in the area. La Valla had no insurance, which
means his $10,000 investment is probably a complete loss. Yet where there's disaster, there's opportunity.
"I've had calls from investors in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York
looking to buy property," La Valla said. "This is going to be hard for
the poor, the elderly, those that didn't have insurance. But it's going
to be great for some people."
At first, Lucia Blacksher thought
she was in the bad news group. In June, she and her boyfriend put their
entire savings, about $35,000, into their dream house — a century-old
shotgun Victorian in the New Orleans neighborhood of Mid-City. When the
storm came, they fled to Blacksher's parents' house in Birmingham,
Ala. The house, which cost $225,000, is partially flooded. Her
boyfriend, a
Virginian who figures he's seen enough of hurricanes to last him the
rest of his life, wants to move. The insurance company won't return
calls. Last week, Blacksher was worried she would lose her
beloved house either to foreclosure or a forced sale. One of those
bottom-feeders would get it. She was more optimistic Wednesday. Somehow, she would get through this.
"Because the house survived the storm, it will be even more valuable,"
she said. "You could offer me $300,000 and I wouldn't take it. No way."
Divine
retribution is happening quickly these days, so I thought it would be
helpful to put together a sequence of God's most recent smitings and
their causes.
50K: The
Price of Freedom in New Orleans
The 73-year-old church
deaconess, never before in trouble with the law, now sleeps among
hardened criminals. Her bail is a stiff $50,000.
KENNER, La. (AP) Merlene Maten undoubtedly stands out in the prison
where she has been held since Hurricane Katrina. Her offense? Police say the grandmother from New Orleans took $63.50 in goods from a looted deli the day after Katrina struck.
Family and eyewitnesses have a different story. They say Maten is an
innocent woman who had gone to her car to get some sausage to eat but
was wrongly handcuffed by tired, frustrated officers who couldn't catch
younger looters at a nearby store.
Not even the deli owner wants her charged.
"There were people looting, but she wasn't one of them. Instead of
chasing after people who were running, they grabbed the old lady was
who walking," said Elois Short, Maten's daughter, who works in traffic
enforcement for neighboring New Orleans police.Short has enlisted the help of the AARP, the senior citizens lobby,
the Federal Emergency Management Agency legal assistance office, made
up of volunteer lawyers, and a private attorney to get her mother
freed. But the task has been complicated.
Maten has been moved from a parish jail to a state prison an hour
away. And the judge who set $50,000 bail by phone 100 times the
maximum $500 fine under state law for minor thefts has not returned a
week's worth of calls, her lawyer said.
"She has slipped through the cracks and the wheels of justice have
stopped turning for Mrs. Maten," attorney Daniel Beckett Becnel III
said.The family has not been able to visit her during her two weeks of
confinement and was allowed to talk to her by phone for only a few
minutes. The state prison declined to let The Associated Press
interview Maten by phone, demanding a written request. Becnel, family members and witnesses said police snared Maten, a
diabetic, in the parking lot of a hotel where she had fled the
floodwaters that swamped her New Orleans home. She had paid for her
room with a credit card and dutifully followed authorities'
instructions to pack extra food, they said.She was retrieving a piece of sausage from the cooler in her car and
planned to grill it so she and her frail 80-year-old husband, Alfred,
could eat, according to her defenders. The parking lot was almost a
block from the looted store, they said.
"That woman was never, never in that store," said Naisha Williams,
23, a New Orleans bank security guard who said she witnessed the
episode and is distantly related to Maten. "If they want to take it to
court, I'm willing to get on the stand and tell them the police is
wrong. She is totally innocent." Police Capt. Steve Carraway said Wednesday that Maten was arrested
in the checkout area of a small store next to police headquarters. The arrest report is short and assigns the value of goods Maten is
alleged to have taken at $63.50. The items are not identified.
"When officers arrived, the arrestee was observed leaving the scene
with items from the store. The store window doors were observed smashed
out, where entry to the store was made," police reported.
Williams, one of the witnesses, said Maten was physically unable to get inside the store � even if she had wanted to.
"She is not capable of even looting it the way the store was at the
time. You had to jump over a counter, and she is a diabetic and
weak-muscled and wouldn't be able to get herself over it. And she
couldn't afford to step on broken glass," Williams said.
Williams said she tried to explain that to police but was brushed off.
"They didn't want to hear it. They put handcuffs on her. They just
said we were emotional. It was basically, `Just shut up,'" she said.
Maten's husband was left abandoned at the hotel, until family
members picked him up. He is too upset to be interviewed, the family
said.
Christine Bishop, the owner of the Check In Check Out deli, said
that she was angry that looters had damaged her store, but that she
would not want anyone charged with a crime if the person had simply
tried to get food to survive. "Especially not a 70-year-old woman,"
Bishop said.
Short, Maten's daughter, did not witness the incident. She said her
mother has led a law-abiding life. She is a deaconess at the
Resurrection Mission Baptist Church and won an award for her decades of
service at a hospital, Short said.
"Why would someone loot when they had a car with a refrigerator and
had paid with a credit card at the hotel? The circumstances defy the
theory of looting," said Becnel, Maten's lawyer.
Robin Peak, a legal analyst from AARP who assisted Maten's family,
declined to discuss the case. She wrote colleagues an e-mail earlier
this week about the elderly woman's plight. It was titled, "50K: The
Price of Freedom in New Orleans."
09/18/05 UPDATE:Then, hours after her plight was featured in an Associated Press story,
a local judge on Thursday ordered Maten freed on her own recognizance,
setting up a sweet reunion with her daughter, grandchildren and
80-year-old husband. It was unclear whether she would released Thursday
evening or Friday.
Maten must still face the looting charge at a court hearing in October.
But the family, armed with several witnesses, intends to prove she was
wrongly arrested outside the hotel in this New Orlean's suburb where
she had fled Katrina's floodwaters.
BATON ROUGE, La. — Brandy Farris is house hunting in New Orleans. 
KENNER, La. (AP) Merlene Maten undoubtedly stands out in the prison
where she has been held since Hurricane Katrina. Her offense? 
Maten has been moved from a parish jail to a state prison an hour
away. And the judge who set $50,000 bail by phone 100 times the
maximum $500 fine under state law for minor thefts has not returned a
week's worth of calls, her lawyer said.
