Our friends at the Center for Responsible Lending have put out an alert about a growing threat to military families: payday lenders who gouge them with exhorbitant rates and fees. Here are the stats from their new report (pdf):*** Active-duty... More...

So reports the Associated Press:The Army is closing the books on one of the leanest recruiting years since it became an all-volunteer service three decades ago, missing its enlistment target by the largest margin since 1979 and raising questions about... More...

Yesterday the House voted to strip down the Endangered Species Act, one of the landmark achievements of the 1970s environmental movement:By a vote of 229-193, lawmakers passed legislation that could greatly expand private-property rights under the environmental law that is... More...

Remember Newt Gingrich? It's been exactly 10 years since the then-Georgia rep. was the poster child for the conservative movement, voted Time's "Man of the Year" for his role in leading the much-heralded Republican Revolution of the mid-1990s.Sadly for Gingrich,... More...

Posted by R. NealCivil rights lawyer Baker Motley dies:She went to law school and found herself fighting racism in landmark segregation cases including Brown v. Board of Education, the Central High School case in Arkansas and the case that let... More...

Over the past few weeks we've seen plenty of evidence that the federal government has in fact not done much post-9/11 in the way of improving Homeland Security other than establish a huge, apparently ineffective bureaucracy run by unqualified, incompetent... More...

Posted by R. NealCheck this out:The Katrina Reconstruction Summit Monday, September 26, 2005Senate Hart Building, Washington, DC The Katrina Reconstruction Summit is hosted by U.S. Senator Mel Martinez and organized by Equity International as a public service.The Summit is designed... More...

The right-wing "porkbusters" are looking for programs to eliminate in order to pay for the Katrina/Rita disaster, i.e. "offsets." Of course, the usual suspects such as funding for PBS, Amtrak, the National Endowment for the Arts, etc. are at the... More...

Posted by R. NealThis guy is so embarrassing for East Tennessee that I was reluctant to mention him but now that he's made the national news wires I guess there's no avoiding it.Betty Bean at the Halls Shopper (don't let... More...

Posted by R. NealThe Mrs. and I ran into an interesting young man at a political rally here in East Tennessee last fall. I found his attitude and enthusiasm refreshing, and it gave me hope for the future. I thought... More...

As disgraced Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) starts pondering why he ever left the bug extermination business, the media is hammering on Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who brought the indictment against DeLay's corporate fundraising machine.The media mantra that Earle... More...

Halliburton and other connected corporations aren't the only ones seeking to profit from the Katrina disaster. The Huffington Post also finds a political opportunist:Lousiana State Senator Craig Romero (R) visited Washington earlier this month under the ausipces of raising money... More...

Posted by R. NealScotty McLellan, just now in a news conference: "Tom DeLay is an ally, a leader, and someone we have worked closely with to get things done for the American people."OK, then.P.S. Apparently, the SEC has opened a... More...

Yesterday's news that the Supreme Court will be hearing DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno -- the landmark case out of Ohio about corporate subsidies -- was big news about one of the biggest issues facing state and local governments today.Every year,... More...

Posted by R. NealThe New Confederacy:President Bush:Allow me to introduce myself: I am Ignatius J. Reilly of New Orleans, Louisiana (sweeping flourish, small bow). I achieved great acclaim back in the 1980s for a published work of mine, a small... More...

No, seriously:WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A congressional panel on Tuesday is expected to scrutinize the decision to keep ousted Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown on the federal payroll.Brown told congressional investigators Monday that he is being paid as a... More...

Posted by R. NealDepartment of Defense briefing, September 9 (five days after Katrina): The security situation in New Orleans continues to improve. The most contentious issues were lawlessness in the streets, and particularly a potentially very dangerous volatile situation in... More...

Posted by R. NealTexas Governor Rick Perry and Houston Mayor Bill White held a press conference to praise each other and President Bush for the magnificent response to the massive traffic jams in Houston. President Bush, who directed I-45 traffic... More...

If you haven't seen it already, today's New York Times story about post-Katrina contracts byEric Lipton and Southern Exposure alumn Ron Nixon is a good one. They've culled through the government's first batch of documents about who's getting the money.... More...

...Best Blog Headline of the Week:Frist Blind Trust Miraculously Regains Eyesight -- Praise the LordOK, then.... More...

Posted by R. NealOn a morning that finds our nation holding its breath, waiting and wondering what new hell will be visited on the Gulf Coast, where there are already millions of homeless and millions more fleeing the next storm,... More...

Posted by R. NealRita Causes New Flooding in New Orleans: "Dozens of blocks in the Ninth Ward were under water as a waterfall at least 30 feet wide poured over and through a dike that had been used to patch... More...

Posted by R. NealThe latest from NOAA: ...EXTREMELY DANGEROUS CATEGORY FOUR HURRICANE RITA CONTINUES TOWARD THE SOUTHWEST LOUISIANA AND UPPER TEXAS COASTS...The good news is that it appears Houston and Galveston will be spared a direct hit. The bad news... More...

Posted by R. NealWILMER, Texas: A bus carrying elderly evacuees from Hurricane Rita caught fire and was rocked by explosions early Friday on a gridlocked highway near Dallas, killing as many as 24 people, authorities said.... More...

Posted by R. NealJesse Fox Mayshark, former editor of the local alternative weekly paper here in Knox Vegas (local-speak for Knoxville, TN) is on a mission. When he's not slaving away somewhere deep in the bowels of the New York... More...

I'm on the road again, this time in San Francisco -- and as you can see, your friend and mine Mr. Neal is hold down the Facing South fort, so it's all good.Since I'm in the Bay Area, spiritual home... More...

Posted by R. NealThe latest from NOAA: ...POTENTIALLY CATASTROPHIC CATEGORY FIVE RITA OVER THE CENTRAL GULF OF MEXICO...I’m not sure how much more folks down there on the Gulf Coast can take. Fortunately, the storm is expected to weaken some... More...

Posted by R. NealSo yesterday I had to drive our old junker that we keep around for utility purposes. Unfortunately it doesn’t have XM Radio, and somebody had left the radio on the local East Tennessee talk station. It’s a... More...

City Pages of Minneapolis/St. Paul has collected a moving series of first-hand accounts of New Orleans residents relocated to Minnesota in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.In CP's estimation, about 1,000 have been transported to Minnesota, and the paper shares 20... More...

Weather.com as of 12:20 pm:Hurricane Rita continues to grow stronger over the Gulf of Mexico. Top winds are estimated to be 140 mph, a Category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale [...]Rita is forecast to continue on a westward track... More...

School is back, and a hot issue in communities nationwide is what students are doing about aggressive tactics used by military recruiters at schools -- especially provisions in the No Child Left Behind Act that give military recruiters full access... More...

Community Labor United -- an excellent group of grassroots activists in Louisiana and Mississippi and their allies -- have released a new dispatch about their work to ensure Gulf reconstruction serves ordinary people, not the developers, contractors and other powerful... More...

In the new round of polls showing the U.S. public turning against the Iraq war, there was one statistic that shows progressives have a big opening for reaching Southerners about the war. For example, in drawing on the the New... More...

Posted by R. NealIf there's no such thing as a Pulitzer Prize for Outstanding Journalism Under Duress, they ought to invent one for the New Orleans Times-Picayune. U.T. journalism teacher and blogger Bob Stepno has an interesting take on it,... More...

Posted by R. NealDelta Airlines is inarguably one of the South's greatest business success stories. Delta started with the purchase of a Macon, Georgia crop dusting service in 1928. Its first passenger flight was in 1929, on a route from... More...

If you haven't seen it already, definitely check out the South Florida Sun-Sentinel's in-depth history of fraud and politics at FEMA. They started this series way before Katrina, and their investigations show that this goes way beyond the incompetence or... More...

Newsweek has the latest on the "Katrina Goldrush" of contractors hoping to cash in on the disaster. It has a few new pieces of information, such as the fact that the Shaw Group, which recieved a $100 million no-bid contract,... More...

This didn't get a lot of press (here's one story), but two days ago Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) sent out a press release about his efforts to set up an oversight committee for Katrina funds. Here's how the release starts:WASHINGTON,... More...

Cindy Sheehan and her travelling Camp Casey came through the North Carolina Triangle yesterday, making a stop in Raleigh. There she met some of Raleigh's best and brightest:Today in Raleigh, NC at the University, there were some Young Republicans who... More...

Our friends at Alabama Watch, a consumer watchdog group, are members of Americans for Insurance Reform, which has set up a toll-free Katrina Insurance Hotline (1-888-450-5545; staffed M-F, 10 am to 6 pm EST). AIR reports they're getting a flood... More...

Now that the immediate shock of the flooding and evacuation are beginning to pass, many victims of Hurricane Katrina are being forced to confront the havoc the storm wreaked on their finances. And for many, this has meant going deeply... More...

From the blog this morning of TV anchor Brian Williams at MSNBC:I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few... More...

The chorus is growing louder and louder against profiteering by politically-connected corporations in the wake of the Katrina catastrophe. And it's not just the liberal pundits: check out this piece today by John Young, editorial page editor of the Waco... More...

Posted by R. NealRight-wing conservatives set them up, Think Progress knocks them down. Some examples:CLAIM: STATE AND LOCAL OFFICIALS WERE MOSTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR FAILURES: "White House Shifts Blame to State and Local Officials" [Washington Post, 9/4/05]FACT: BUSH PUT FEMA IN... More...

Posted by R. NealHere’s an interesting situation playing out in Orlando. A few weeks ago, an Orange County Florida public school teacher allegedly sent a letter to a U.S. Representative complaining about immigrants (illegal and otherwise), saying “we should close... More...

Mark Twain once said "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." As someone frequently known to ignore good advice, it looks like I’ll... More...

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) announced earlier this week that Republican Congress had done so well in cutting spending that he declared an "ongoing victory" in the war on excess spending.If this is victory, I'd hate to see what... More...

Two weeks ago, we were overwhelmed by your great response when we hauled R. Neal, the-blogger-formerly-known-as-South-Knox-Bubba, out of blogosphere retirement to cover Facing South for a week.In fact, it went so well, we're going to make it a mostly-regular gig.... More...

Last Monday, Condoleeza Rice commented that what happened in the Gulf shows that race and poverty can still come together "in a very ugly way" in parts of the "Old South." But if it's still happening, is it really the... More...

This story brings attentiont to a population I haven't heard much about in the wake of Katrina, Native American tribes and nations:"What we are hearing is there has been no contact or minimum contact with most of the tribes," said... More...

I have in front of me a draft letter from the Progressive Caucus in Congress on a subject we've been covering a lot here lately: disaster profiteering in the Gulf. They're now looking for congressional sign-ons, so contact your Reps... More...

The WaPo and Josh Marshall are pointing to an interesting story that appeared in the American of Hattiesburg, MS last Sunday. Here's the lead to the story:Shortly after Hurricane Katrina roared through South Mississippi knocking out electricity and communication systems,... More...

Two excellent pieces today on the corporate interests moving in to benefit from the Katrina disaster. Charlie Cray of Halliburton Watch has a good overview of post-hurricane disaster profiteering, including this item:Since 1989, KBR's Government and Infrastructure Division has made... More...

The NY Times comments on Georgia's new requirement that voters without a diver's license buy a special ID card:In 1966, the Supreme Court held that the poll tax was unconstitutional. Nearly 40 years later, Georgia is still charging people to... More...

Reporter Jason Leopold dhas a good piece summarizing the bill of indictment about FEMA's role in Florida 2004 and what it says about their response to Katrina. FEMA and the Bush Administration's response to hurricanes in Florida last year was... More...

Wade Rathke, a legendary organizer with ACORN (Association of Communities Organized for Reform Now) and SEIU Local 100 based in New Orleans, has been sharing some very interesting thoughts on his personal blog.In a recent post, after discussing what those... More...

The Center for American Progress offers a good run-down on the no-bid contracts going out to administration-connected corporations in the wake of Katrina, making the clear connection to Iraq:It's the same mindset that has governed the reconstruction efforts in Iraq,... More...

As news stories and first-hand accounts grow of people not getting the aid they need in the wake of Katrina, is it time for independent groups to start organizing accountability teams?Institute friend Joan Browning writes from West Virginia with some... More...

The Independent (U.K.) ran an important story yesterday about the growing toxic cesspool that is developing in the lower Gulf. The piece interviews Hugh Kaufman, a toxicology expert at the EPA, and what he has to say about the federal... More...

The title of a Reuters story today tells it all: "Firms with White House ties get Katrina contracts."Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief... More...

One of the reasons the post-hurricane flooding in Louisiana is so dangerous is because of Cancer Alley -- the string of petrochemical operations that line the Mississippi River in largely poor and black communities from New Orleans to Baton Rouge.... More...

Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo of Democracy Now! are in New Orleans, and report on the growing mercenary presence in the city:NEW ORLEANS -- Heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq,... More...

From the Atlanta Journal Constitution:A man who fled Louisiana with his family to escape Hurricane Katrina was arrested for asking motorists for money in this city where banning panhandling has been a hotly debated issue. James Scott says he had... More...

From today's Wall Street Journal (via Talking Points Memo):Ten U.S. Army recruiters are offering volunteer help for Katrina evacuees at Houston's Astrodome. But the recruiters, struggling to keep enlistment up during Iraq war, are also available with options for the... More...

The Miami Herald reports that at a hearing on rising energy prices yesterday in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the prospect was raised of lifting moratoriums on drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico to ease the supply... More...

The media is now stumbling to uncover what went wrong with FEMA's response to Hurricane Katrina. But the fact is that the story of the Bush administration's systematic undermining of the agency has been in plain sight for a while... More...

According to today's Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire, Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA) of Baton Rouge is overheard telling lobbyists:"We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."Baker later said "he didn't intend flippancy... More...

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Reuters reports that President Bush has issued an executive order Thursday allowing federal contractors rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to pay below the prevailing wage:In a notice to Congress, Bush said the hurricane had caused "a national emergency"... More...

Today the WaPo wades into the story we've been following about Joe Allbaugh -- former director of FEMA (who got his old college roomate Michael Brown the current top job), Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign manager, and now uber-lobbyist for corporations trying... More...

Millions of people around the country are crying out, "what can I do for people who suffered from Katrina?" This includes firefighters who travelled across the country to help. And what did our government do with them? Well, here's their... More...

You don't hear much about it, but one of the biggest policy issues at the local level is corporate development subsidies -- the $50 billion state and local governments spend each year to entice business to relocate or expand in... More...

In the wake of the universally-condemned response to Katrina, the New York Times reported last Sunday that the White House was rolling out a carefully-crafted PR campaign "to move the blame for the slow response to Louisiana state officials."There's plenty... More...

In a follow-up to our previous post about the Iraq military contractors now sniffing for disaster money in Louisiana, Josh Marshall points out that Joe Allbaugh -- who left FEMA to cash in on Iraq reconstruction contracts -- has been... More...

These two pictures and their captions -- which really just say it all about the media's coverage last week -- are making the rounds. I have yet to hear a major news outlet apologize for their coverage of the Katrina... More...

New Orleans resident Wade Rathke, who is also chief organizer for the low-income organziation ACORN and SEIU Local 100, has some thoughts about what's needed in New Orleans now.Our first instinct is to send money or visit New Orleans to... More...

News came this weekend that the danger of mass looting in New Orleans is indeed real. The Navy announced that Halliburton -- the scandal-ridden company accused of squandering hundreds of millions of dollars from the $10 billion they've been given... More...

Thanks once again to The Blogger Formerly Known As South Knox Bubba -- aka R. Neal -- for doing a great job covering here at Facing South last week, and showing why he's always been a blogging favorite.Thanks also to... More...

Posted by R. NealWell, that's about it for my week of guest blogging here at Facing South. Thanks again to Chris Kromm for the invitation and to Bill Rehm for getting everything setup. I was happy to help out and... More...

Posted by R. NealFEMA Head: Lawlessness Not Anticipated:The head of the federal disaster relief agency said Friday it's "heartbreaking and very, very frustrating" to witness the virtual anarchy in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans and defended the Bush administration's response. [..]But Brown... More...

Posted by R. NealRandom collection of blogging from around the Gulf Coast...Hattie's Blog, tag team live blogging of the storm from HattiesburgEyes on Katrina, Biloxi Sun Herald staffer blogEye of the Storm, team storm blogging from Gulfport and BiloxiKatrina Aftermath,... More...

Posted by R. NealFrom The Times-Picayune:"Even as people from New Orleans desperately search for their family members and rescue workers patrol the region in boats, hack through roofs and try to pluck survivors out, some people in other parts of... More...

We've all seen the dramatic videos of helicopter rescues. At the latest count, they have saved nearly 3000 people. Apparently, the Coast Guard is the only federal agency that didn't sit around waiting for some politician to get back from... More...

By R. NealWhen asked why they didn't have food and water, FEMA Under Secretary Michael Brown just said in an interview with Paula Zahn on CNN that the federal government did not even know about the people at the NOLA... More...

Director of Homeland "Security" Chertoff said in a press conference this afternoon that the relief effort was going great, supplies were pouring in, FEMA and the National Guard were on the scene, yada yada yada. Except, all afternoon when a... More...

By R. NealAnderson Cooper of CNN is on the scene and interviewing Sen. Mary Landrieu remotely. He asked about the response, etc. She started praising the President and the federal government's response, naming off the list of agencies, etc. He... More...

Chris here, writing from the road in vacation land. Figures that I'd pick a week when the South is hit with one of the most monumental and devastating events in recent history to recharge my mental batteries.First, a belated thank... More...

By R. NealI just saw a report on MSNBC from the convention center in New Orleans. There are thousands of people there, families with children, infants, and elderly. They have no water. They have no food. They have no baby... More...

By R. NealPeople around the South and the rest of America are starting to feel a ripple effect from the Gulf Coast disaster. Increasing gas prices, impending shutdown of commercial air travel for lack of jet fuel, long lines at... More...

By R. NealAlmost exactly one year ago, the Facing South newsletter had this article by Mike Davis.: The evacuation of New Orleans in the face of Hurricane Ivan looked sinisterly like Strom Thurmond's version of the Rapture. Affluent white people... More...

By R. NealThat’s the one-word headline on the Biloxi Sun Herald website this morning. And that seems to pretty much sum up the situation today. The frustration is starting to boil over onto the editorial pages.Here’s a roundup from Editor... More...