It's due time to pay attention.
Love ya NOLA, love your people, your heart, your resilience and dear folk like Bruce who put themselves out there for you.
I had received this content in an August 4, 2008 email from Bruce, editor in chief of the New Orleans News Ladder. He consistently steps up and out for New Orleans, and I was moved to post it here. He knows it, feels it, says it. I so appreciate that about him.
Tim Ruppert,
regarding your propaganda piece in today's Times Picayune: 100-year protection level? Not enough
Your dog just won't hunt. We are sick of your spin.
Please cease and desist your Public Relations Spin 101 of Your employer's flood control policy.
It is unethical at best to have not stated that you work for the Corps of Engineers, but rather led readers to believe you are an esteemed leader of Civil Engineers at large. Many many civil engineers across the country would beg to differ with such presumptuous hubris.
ASCE, as plainly exemplified by Ray Seeds letter to Your group as well as the vociferousness of your ad campaign does not represent the consensus on Civil Engineering in the United States. That issue is very much up in the air, despite your misinformation campaign today in the Times Picayune, and despite your groups plans to form a tax-exempt political action committee.
Not On My Tax Dollar.
You have no right to publish such misdirecting tripe in a paper of record without reveling your employment with the Army Corps of Engineers. Your faux article smacks of charlatan fuckmookery.
"But our leaders must be honest and open about the risks of living here and work to properly describe those risks.
The hurricane protection system should not be designed simply to satisfy the requirements of an insurance program. It must be designed, built and maintained with full realization that it protects lives -- thousands and thousands of lives."
That is a lie and blatant misdirection "Our leaders" have Nothing to do with this 100 Year figure. That is totally a fiction to divert the public view away from your employers engineering failures Today --not a century from now. It is not the Insurance Industry who came up with this Misnomer either. It is Your Leaders at the Corps who came up with the Hundreds Year Score --as is plainly stated in several studies from the Corps with your name at the bottom.
This lying misdirection will Stop. You have been found out and will not succeed in framing the Corps Narrative in advance of their Liability Trial if We the People have anything to say about it. You and your ilk at ASCECORPS must release the IPET report finally. Your delay and obfuscation on that extremely expensive, tax payer funded study is heinous at best, cynical at second best and down right sinister at its worst. This paltry missive today will not protect you from true peer review.
Piece,
Bruce Biles
Editilla~New Orleans Ladder
On August 8, I was hooked up with this. Of course it's taken me forever to post it, but you know, timing worked to give me a block on the 3rd Anniversary of Katrina.
OpEdNews
Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=8531
August 8, 2008
ASCECORPS~Everywhere you want to be.
By Bruce Biles
My response in the New Orleans Ladder to the ongoing crisis in our still failing, Leaking Levee System in New Orleans, 3 years after Katrina missed the city.
:::::::: ASCECORPS Ethics report's results will remain secret~Mark Schleifstein Oh! But wait! There more. Here is yet another answer. We must remove these dominoes from the game. They cheat. Not only has the State of Louisiana joined this tea party, but also City of New Orleans ($77B), Entergy ($655M) and Serwage and Water ($460M). Editilla O'rilla d'Aphasia~ New Orleans Ladder UpDate: It would appear that the President of the ASCECORPS reads OpEd News! THANK YOU OP'ED NEWS!!!
Happy Anniversary Y'all!
Posted under the pseudonym: Editilla O'rilla d'Aphasia.
Galette l'infamie!
~Editilla laments the line~ Don't think so Creepo.
That fraggle'bark may work for the Exquixotic Corps of Engineers, under the 'Flood Control Act' Sand Bag--but not in The City That da'Corps Forgot.
Thanks to Ace Reporter Schleifstein here, we see that ASCECORPS all but admits conspiracy in investigating itself. Hence badge of dishonor: ASCECORPS.
Brownie'nose was already taken.
It is unfortunate that our dogged gumshoes at the Picayune can only find this much to print given the Gravity of the Threat at hand. And, the situation is Indeed at hand as Gravity pulls Water at an increasing rate Beneath the 17th St Canal Levee Breach "Repair". But as we have said before, in PR 101: If one cannot respond with even a smidgen of the Truth regarding one's role in this crisis of man-made disaster, then say nothing. Offer The People no rope'dope on which to hope one hangs.
That tactic may work in ASCECORPS' tilted CandyMan World of Public Relations. But in the real world, this Real World of Flooded City's and Croplands, where We The American Taxpayers have footed the bill to the tune of $35,250,000 (at least) for answers since that storm missed our city and our levees failed...
~In Our World We Deserve Answers.
And We Will Have Our Answers!
Composted from blogofneworleans.com
That Dog Will Not Hunt! No!
WHERE IS THE GODDAMNED MONEY, ASCECORPS!?!?!
Did they spend it here? How about here? Orrrr maybe here
to fund the ASCE Task Force on Political Involvement?
Here's one answer I find interesting because the President of ASCE says he cannot provide updates on the Dr. Seed inquiry nearly a year after they were filed, but of course, he has member updates back in January, and even offers refutations.
Sooo, if the ASCE inquiry is still in process today where did this Bozo get his conclusions way back in January? Editilla jus'axin.
I mean, such an open letter, even from da'Ace of ASCE amongst general "members" rather contradicts this statement today by ASCECORPS regarding the confidentiality this Inquiry: "Because of the confidential nature of the inquiries the Committee reports its actions and findings only to the Executive Committee of the Board at the conclusion of any case, No report will be released to anyone else."~ASCE Committee on Professional Conduct spokesman Rich Hovey
Damn! This freak's got answers all over da'place.
But no report, eh? Da'Prez backs the "report" on the Report?
What Report? Who's on First? No. Who's on 2nd. What is on First.
Still nothing for We The People. No Soup fo'da People!
Got any Answers on Flood Safety? GO FISH!
We need to stop this game in its tracks right now.
ASCECORPS is Not our boss. Not even our Straw Boss.
No. This dog will not hunt.
We regret that ASCECORPS has a problem with citizen engineering groups like levees.org attempting to stay on top of and follow the trail of leaks in their failing levee system repairs, but it is when one of their own, Dr. Raymond Seed, comes to our rescue that this sort of feces hits the fan, eh?
But stalling for time to form a PAC on our tax dime to pay their lawyers to defend ASCECORPS from Ethics Violations Questions would be cynical at best, sinister at 2nd best and downright evil at its worst. Must we get their fingerprints when ASCECORPS issues a statement about Anything? Must we require signatures on hard copy to verify that they said what they said?
No. We The People will have our redress.
Our Lady of New Orleans looks great in Red.
Where Is The Money?
Are they paying Attorneys to defend themselves from
Dr. Raymond Seed's 42 pages of Ethics Complaints?
Are they using this money to lobby Congress?
Oh yes, they want us to wait…perhaps even after the elections, so they can have Time to use their ASCEPAC's tax-exempt donations to work for the defeat of our Senator Mary Landrieu, who authored: S. 2826, The 8/29 Investigation Team Act.
Next would come our Congressman Melancon, who introduced it in the House of Representatives.
Oh yes, it would also serve ASCECORPS well to delay the release of this IPET report as long as possible because their draft report has been ripped like kitty litter by other Member Engineers, to wit: Dr. Raymond Seed as well as Dr. Robert Bea <--who is plantiff’s expert engineering witness in the imminent, unprecedented MRGO liability lawsuit.
Editilla gotta toll'yaz~ and it shan't be told'nuff.
If the Exquixotic Corps loses this MRGO lawsuit then plaintiffs attorneys have stated that the Corps is then liable for damages at the 17th Street Leak for permitting SWB to dredge the 17th Street Canal--thereby weakening the levee to the point of failure. New Orleans attorney Joe Bruno, the plaintiffs' representative on a committee helping plan for trial of all Katrina-related case on Duval's docket, said the MR-GO case ruling will be useful for court challenges to more than 100 corps-built levees around the nation that a recent study deemed unsafe.
But in the near term, Bruno said, Friday's ruling in the MR-GO case could buttress his plans for a new federal lawsuit aimed at holding the corps responsible for the 17th Street Canal floodwall break that left 80 percent of New Orleans flooded after Katrina.
Bruno said the suit will claim that the corps gave the city Sewerage & Water Board a permit to dredge the 17th Street canal, work that allowed water to undermine soil beneath the floodwall, ultimately causing the wall to break.
Yes, we have a lot of dominoes in play here, eh?
And Yes, they gonna fall...oh yeah.
They gonna'fall one piece at a time.
Ethics Matter Here.
Ethics can be stolen and spin’filtrated into whatever meaningless flim’flam that ASCECOPRS would have it to become or it can be the Foundation of our American Psyche that Real Engineers Made It and to which those Engineers will have it returned.
One of the last things my father, a Ramblin Wreck from Georgia Tech Civil/Electrical Engineer/Lt. Col Air Force Ret, said to me after Katrina about the Greatest Civil Engineering Failure In History is this: “Son, Nothing is more Dangerous than a Lying Engineer, because that means then we are no longer dealing with an Engineer.
Then we are just dealing with a Liar.”
Thanks, Pop. I took that to heart.
Or the Times Picayune. Or the New Orleans Ladder...HA!
And yer oh'so humble Editilla ain't'sayin this has aaanyt'ing to do with Levees.org biting ASCE on Its Bovine Ass like Our Beloved Catahoulah,
--Not Letting Go until The Bull Comes to Heel? Naaaaah~HA!!!
But Oh Our Dog Sho'nuff Hunts, eh?
Ace Reporters Schleifstein and Grissett deserve Editillero Awards too, fo'doggin these bastads, makin'em cry Uncle'Daddy to'da Corps!
Authors Website: http://noladder.blogspot.com/
Authors Bio: I've learned, written & performed my own impressionistic southern folk blues for over 20 years with care to look and listen and practice practice. I write literate songs. I sing play harmonica & guitar percussively, no picks. I believe that Goddess takes care of fools & errant troubadours. Funk Organica. I live for fiction, particularly that written by scientists but also in the vein of Dick, Stephenson, Gibson & Sterling, though I cut my teeth on Faulkner & Pynchon. And not so ironically, I don't enjoy fantasy. If you could put me in a church before you nailed the doors shut and burned it down the altar would hold the tao te ching inside a building built of dharma surrounded by sprawling grounds of Secular EcoHumanism and ringed by a 4 dimensional wave-like seething perimiter of gorrilla cyberpunk rail-tail futurist hyper-level social view. nolafugee on the back hand path... om mani padme hum