The plot thickened today over the bi-partisan Senate legislation that would create a Google-like searchable databse of government contracts. Yesterday, Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska -- infamous advocate of the $231 million "bridge to nowhere" project -- admitted to putting... More...
FACING SOUTH - Online Magazine of the Institute for Southern Studies
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August 2006 Archives
Hot off the presses, The Nation has an excellent special issue about the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.Some of the pieces from the issue can be found over at The Nation website, including Gary Younge's excellent piece on how Katrina... More...
Clayton Homes, headquartered in East Tennessee, is the nation's largest mobile home manufacturer. Clayton is a successful local family owned and operated company - so successful they were recently purchased by Warren Buffet. Apparently they aren't too happy with FEMA:Next... More...
We reported on Monday about a secret Senator that was blocking bi-partisan legislation to shed more light on government contracts, like the $9 billion given in the wake of Hurricane Katrina with little oversight. Think Progress has found out who... More...
Sometimes it's easy to forget the depth of incompetence and neglect people in the Gulf Coast suffered after Katrina -- and the lengths that federal officials went to spin and deny things were going wrong.Bill in Portland Maine, a diarist... More...
I am just about to go on the Thom Hartmann show on Air America to talk about our report, "One Year after Katrina." Listen online or listen on your local station. Would love to hear calls from Facing South readers!UPDATE:... More...
Where were you when Katrina stormed the Southern Gulf? I had the surreal experience of being on a family vacation when the storms blew in; I had asked my now-regular blogging compatriot R. Neal – then "South Knox Bubba" –... More...
One year ago today, Chris Kromm had asked me to guest blog for a week at Facing South while he was away on vacation. August 29th was my first day. I had several topics lined up to discuss, but the... More...
We're doing a bunch of radio interviews for a wide range of stations about our new report, "One Year after Katrina."Here are some shows we've already done; in some cases you can listen to taped versions:KPFK 90.7 Los Angeles --... More...
Over the last year, over $9 billion has been given to corporate contractors for post-Katrina relief and recovery -- and as we and others have revealed, much of that taxpayer money was wasted in fraud and other scandals.To help shed... More...
In our new report, "One Year after Katrina," the Institute concludes that the Gulf Coast recovery has "failed," and that lack of leadership and misplaced priorities at the federal level are to blame.Those findings are based on over 250 statistical... More...
When confronted with evidence that the post-Katrina recovery in the Gulf Coast is failing, one of the most common responses is that "well, the government has spent over $100 billion, what more can it do?"As we've already shown, a lot... More...
One year after Katrina, one of the first questions asked is: where did all the money go? Across the country, people gave billions in dollars to the Red Cross and other relief agencies. The federal government has spent $109 billion... More...
The Washington Post reports:GULFPORT, Miss. -- Four people have been indicted on charges of falsifying records of debris cleanup from Hurricane Katrina and billing the federal government more than $700,000 for work they didn't do.From the description of the complex... More...
(And who is helping them?)There was a story this week in a local community paper about a social club of ex-Louisiana residents called the "Lost Cajuns". A woman who moved to East Tennessee from Louisiana in the 90's started the... More...
We are now less than a week away from the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. After 12 long months, how are people faring in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast?Today, the Institute's Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch project released "One... More...
Here in East Tennessee, every time there's a new major revitalization plan for Knoxville there is mention of light rail. (Along with a "discovery" center, but I digress.) People nod and say "that's nice" and go look at the maps... More...
Hope you got to see parts one and two of Spike Lee's documentary When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts on HBO last night. Parts three and four will air tonight at 9 PM. The entire four-part documentary... More...
With not much action happening at the federal level in terms of global warming, states are taking action -- including distancing themselves from those who deny it's a problem.This weekend, the governor's office in Virginia sent a letter to the... More...
[The following is part of our ongoing coverage of the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2006 -- eds.]One of the biggest reasons that over 200,000 people displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita are still scattered to 50... More...
Blue Heron, keeping cool in the shadeTellico Lake, Tennessee(click image for larger view)... More...
It happens every few years: a rash of politicians decide to let their guard down, get a little too relaxed, and start saying what they really think about race. Call it racial honesty disorder, or RHD.Sometimes there's one grand, train-wreck... More...
Anyone familiar with the history of Andrew Young knows it's the story of a civil rights legend. Born in New Orleans, by the late 1950s Young had joined the freedom movement, registering voters in Atlanta, GA.He joined and later directed... More...
The Tennessee Department of Health's Office of Minority Health has released a 108 page report entitled Populations of Color in Tennessee: Health Status Report (PDF format). From the report's introduction:PurposeThe purpose of this report is to compile data and pertinent... More...
According to this Reuters report, fixes to the New Orleans levee system could actually make matters worse:Flood defenses meant to protect New Orleans from hurricanes could lock rain in the city and put some areas 5 feet under water during... More...
After a judge struck down Georgia's voter ID legislation as the equivalent of a "new poll tax" last year, state Republicans went back to the drawing board to devise a new law that still threatened to disenfranchise thousands of voters.Voting... More...
One of the Gulf institutions ravaged by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita was the region's health care system. One year after the storm, the situation remains dire, in large part due to the glacial piece of rebuilding and recovery in the... More...
An accident nearly two weeks ago involving a barge that collided with the main lock at the Wilson Dam on the Tennessee River near Florence Alabama is wreaking havoc with barge traffic on the waterway:A damaged lock at Wilson Dam... More...
Of the many issues facing state and local governments, one of the most fundamental is privatization: the transfer of public assets and resources to private interests. It raises some of the most basic questions of why we have government, and... More...
There are dozens of events being planned, big and small, for the one-year annivesary of Katrina, coming this August 29. (You can visit our friends at the New Orleans Network for a good list of what's happening in the Big... More...
Yesterday, the Department of Defense issued a report that identifies a major threat to troop morale -- and it's not cramped quarters, bad food, or escalating foreign entanglements. The culprits are predatory financial institutions that operate outside of military bases.As... More...
[This post continues the Institute's ongoing coverage of the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on August 29.]We all remember the stories, heard dozens of times, about the failures and heroism that were part of the Katrina rescue effort. On one... More...
85% of all executions take place in the U.S. South. This fact makes it all the more significant that, last week, North Carolina took a pioneering move to establish a commission that could exonerate those wrongly convicted of capital crimes.... More...
You may recall the heroic efforts of Times-Picayune reporters and photographers who stayed behind to cover the Katrina aftermath. Here's an excerpt from that story:McCusker and I went to Interstate 10, chronicling the plight of a long trail of suffering... More...
One of the bits of conventional wisdom from Election 2004 is that President Bush benefited in many states from conservative ballot initiatives -- especially those opposing gay marriage -- which whipped up passion and turnout among the conservative base.But how... More...
An AP report said yesterday that Gulf Coast residents are still having problems getting temporary housing nearly a year after Katrina:It has been 11 months since Hurricane Katrina hit and Janice Tambrella still does not have a home. She doesn't... More...
It's primary day, and while most eyes seem fixed on a certain Senate race in Connecticut, there are several interesting political stories developing in the South:GEORGIA: The high-profile race here is the run-off primary involving Democratic incumbent Rep. Cynthia McKinney,... More...
Consumer Reports has a new report on the quality of care at nursing homes. Among the findings:Not-for-profit nursing homes are more likely to provide good care than for-profits, based on our analysis of inspection surveys, staffing, and quality indicators.The same... More...
In one of the strongest statements by a major political figure, former Sen. John Edwards (D) of North Carolina has declared that the U.S. should withdraw from Iraq in two stages:The former senator from North Carolina told reporters America should... More...
The following continues our special coverage of the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which will be marked on August 29, 2006.Volumes have been written on "what went wrong" in the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina in August/September 2005.... More...
Three weeks from Tuesday will mark the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Aside from the occasional Anderson Cooper visit, public attention has largely drifted from the Gulf Coast -- but the aftermath of the storms is still deeply felt by... More...
When debate was sizzling last year over the Central American Free Trade Agreement -- passed by a 217-215 vote in the U.S. House a year ago July, with last-minute arm-twisting of North Carolina reps playing a decisive role -- one... More...
TVA is asking customers to conserve:The Tennessee Valley Authority urged consumers in its seven-state territory to conserve electricity Wednesday as a heat wave continued to grip the eastern United States.The nation's largest public utility asked its 8.6 million consumers to... More...
You may recall our profile and interview with college Democrat Alex Youn here at Facing South last year. He's an interesting young man with a lot of energy, and he's pretty smart about politics. Alex, who is Vice President of... More...
As we've noted on this blog before, one issue rarely discussed in major political debates -- but one which has had a huge impact on politics in the South -- is felon disenfranchisement.Vestiges of the Jim Crow era, these laws... More...
With ex-Tropical Storm Chris now gaining steam off the coast of Puerto Rico, we have the first hurricane of the 2006 Atlantic season approaching landfall. It's a long way off, but the current projection puts it straight into the volatile... More...
As pundits and politicos lament the "culture of corruption," North Carolina last week made some small but important steps towards cleaning up politics.True, the headlines in NC today are leading with this story:Former state Rep. Michael Decker admitted in federal... More...
You can argue whether it's man-made global warming or naturally occurring cyclical climate change, but one thing's for sure: it's hotter than a $2 pistol down here in the South. According to the National Weather Service, the killer heat wave... More...
