Ugh

It's hard to describe how depressing evacuating is. Again.

With Gustav Approaching

Here's an editorial from today's New York Times about FEMA's revised plan for dealing with hurricanes:

In July — a full year after Congress’s mandated deadline — the Federal Emergency Management Agency produced a skimpy draft proposal. Most of its required topic specialties — including how to house the poor and the disabled, how to house victims close to their jobs and how to manage large camps for evacuees — were left blank. Instead, the proposal called for handing those plans off to a task force of experts. And, oh yes, that task force has yet to be formed.

What it Isn't

I've watched most of the Democratic National Convention on C-Span because the talking heads are simply too frustrating. The glut of still-active and/or still-connected party insiders with dogs in the hunt made everything that came out of anybody's mouth suspect.

One of the primary places where we'd see this is the post-speech analysis, where Republican pundits would criticize the speech for what it wasn't. At Huffington Post, Marty Kaplan wrote about Peggy Noonan's analysis of the speech this morning on MSNBC:

I'm paraphrasing here, writing while she's still on the air, but this is the gist: At least the speech wasn't all about all those miserable unemployed people that Democrats always talk about. It wasn't full of whining about all those unhappy sick people they only seem to see. It wasn't about a woman who had a two-headed child who was used as a bowling ball.

A number of times, critics complained that speeches lacked details, as if all speeches should or could spell out a complete, detailed policy program. As if a foreign affairs speech should also include a complete laundry list of the domestic agenda complete with the details on how things will be paid for, and vice versa. Unfortunately, that sort of criticism - what it isn't - has become a part of the way convention speeches are discussed. Keith Olbermann went off on the AP's Charles Babington for writing:

Mostly, however, he touched on major issues quickly and lightly. It's an approach that may intrigue and satisfy millions of viewers just starting to tune in to the campaign seriously. The crowd at Invesco Field cheered deliriously, but Republicans almost surely will decry the lack of specifics.

For instance, Obama said it's time "to protect Social Security for future generations." But he didn't mention his main proposal, which is to add a new Social Security payroll tax to incomes above $250,000 a year.

He said he would "cut taxes for 95 percent of all working families," but did not say how.

He briefly mentioned abortion, gun rights, gay rights and other hot-button issues without delving into their sticky details. "Passions fly on immigration," Obama said, "but I don't know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers."

Marty Kaplan sees an upside in such coverage, though, at least from pundits:

I hope everyone who watched that speech has a chance to hear her say that. For the right-wing commentariat, it was a Katrina moment. It was a benchmark for how out of it and, well, disgusting, that crowd is. It established a baseline for magisterial condescension, for blindness, for night-is-day, for the gulf between Republican dead-enders and the rest of the country. Even though she's dared criticize George W. Bush, presumably to fashion a life preserver for her credibility, Peggy was more than willing to tell the speech's morning-after audience that they should believe her, and not their lying eyes.

In the Shadow of Gustav

I boiled "The First Rule of Hurricanes," the 20-minute talk on Katrina songs that I presented at this year's EMP Conference, to 800 or so words for this week's Village Voice. You can find it here.

The Meta-Protest

On Monday, I was in Denver's Civic Center Park when a protest march formed in the street, one that turned brutal as numerous videos document. What none of the videos I've seen capture is the way the cop presence and response brought on the violence. Cops in full riot gear traveled in groups of 10, whether through parks or on pedestrian malls. This clip - "A Taste of Pepper Spray" - from The Denver Post shows you that the cops outnumbered the protesters, but you can't see how astronomically they were outnumbered. Between bike cops, horse-mounted police and foot soldiers, there were a few hundred officers to take down 20 or so punks. You can also see the disproportionate response to the threat. The protesters were standing around, often with their hands up or behind their heads, and you can see cops giving a number of them facefuls of pepper spray, and one officer holds a protester so another can spray him.

This footage posted by USA Today shows one of the more disturbing elements of the confrontation - how witnesses became the enemy, and how the cops turned on them. They didn't just back us up; they pushed anyone who stood their ground - though few did - and kept backing them up, getting people who were only watching and filming farther and farther from the tiny center of the conflict. They escalated it by turning on everybody.

The size of the force begged for a response, and rather than escort the protesters - who gathered under the name"Recreate '68" - they stopped them, criminalizing free speech and prompting the anti-war chant to switch to "Our Streets!" As the video suggests, they were hardly the most robust protesters, nor were they terribly militant. In a speech in the park before the short march started, a speaker advocating revolution preached one that called for us to do what we could, whatever it was. If all we could do is drive other workers to their jobs, that's cool, he said. Hardly firebrand rhetoric.

At some point when things bogged down on 15th Street, the crowd started chanting, "The whole world is watching," and the number of video cameras present says that's possible. You can go to YouTube and search for some combination of "Denver," "protests," "police," "DNC" and "August 25" and you can find plenty of footage. The protesters had cameras. The cops had cameras. They videotaped each other videotaping them. The witnesses had cameras and taped them all. The protest itself was more about creating the photo op and getting the issue of police violence into the public eye.

That gave the whole scene a surreal dimension. It was a four-block lockdown over nothing. It wasn't about Iraq, human rights or reproductive rights. It was a march about the right to march, and cops kept coming. A police truck rolled up and a cop stood on top of it armed with a riot gun. The cops turned on civilians over the exercise of force, showing that they could and would use it on anyone over the slightest provocation.

The crowd wasn't only punks, the unwashed, the diehard and the combatative. The onlookers included people in sport coats, retirees, tourists and people who worked in the neighborhood. The cops didn't just turn on the provocative; they went after anybody who watched such a shameless display of force.

It's easy to find a phrase like "police state" dated or paranoid, but there's nothing like a solid, authoritarian beatdown to remind us that we need some phrase for the concept because it's not just something that happens somewhere else.

Drunk Talk

On the light rail train in Denver, a belligerent, cycling drunk informed me: "I can kill you with my fuckin' eyes."

Katrina Pain Index

This set of numbers was sent out in New Orleans under the name "Katrina Pain Index" in an email newsletter, "The New Orleans Agenda." Statistics don't tell the whole story, but they sure get your attention.

0. Number of renters in Louisiana who have received financial assistance from the $10 billion federal post-Katrina rebuilding program Road Home Community Development Block Grant - compared to 116,708 homeowners.
0. Number of apartments currently being built to replace the 963 public housing apartments formerly occupied and now demolished at the St. Bernard Housing Development.
0. Amount of data available to evaluate performance of publicly financed privately run charter schools in New Orleans in 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 school years.
.008. Percentage of the rental homes that were supposed to be repaired and occupied by August 2008 which were actually completed and occupied - a total of 82 finished out of 10,000 projected.
1. Rank of New Orleans among U.S. cities in percentage of housing vacant or ruined.
1. Rank of New Orleans among U.S. cities in murders per capita for 2006 and 2007.
4. Number of the 13 City of New Orleans Planning Districts that are at the same risk of flooding as they were before Katrina.
10. Number of apartments being rehabbed so far to replace the 896 apartments formerly occupied and now demolished at the Lafitte Housing Development.
11. Percent of families who have returned to live in Lower Ninth Ward.
17. Percentage increase in wages in the hotel and food industry since before Katrina.

20-25. Years that experts estimate it will take to rebuild the City of New Orleans at current pace.
25. Percent fewer hospitals in metro New Orleans than before Katrina.
32. Percent of the city's neighborhoods that have fewer than half as many households as they did before Katrina.
36. Percent fewer tons of cargo that move through Port of New Orleans since Katrina.
38. Percent fewer hospital beds in New Orleans since Katrina.
40. Percentage fewer special education students attending publicly funded privately run charter schools than traditional public schools.
41. Number of publicly funded privately run public charter schools in New Orleans out of total of 79 public schools in the city.
43. Percentage of child care available in New Orleans compared to before Katrina.
46. Percentage increase in rents in New Orleans since Katrina.
56. Percentage fewer inpatient psychiatric beds than before Katrina.

80. Percentage fewer public transportation buses now than pre-Katrina.
81. Percentage of homeowners in New Orleans who received insufficient funds to cover the complete costs to repair their homes.
300. Number of National Guard troops still in City of New Orleans.
1080. Days National Guard troops have remained in City of New Orleans.
1250. Number of publicly financed vouchers for children to attend private schools in New Orleans in program's first year.
6,982. Number of families still living in FEMA trailers in metro New Orleans area.
8,000. Fewer publicly assisted rental apartments planned for New Orleans by federal government.
10,000. Houses demolished in New Orleans since Katrina.
12,000. Number of homeless in New Orleans even after camps of people living under the bridge has been resettled - double the pre-Katrina number.
14,000. Number of displaced families in New Orleans area whose hurricane rental assistance expires March 2009.
32,000. Number of children who have not returned to public school in New Orleans, leaving the public school population less than half what is was pre- Katrina.
39,000. Number of Louisiana homeowners who have applied for federal assistance in repair and rebuilding who have still not received any money.
45,000. Fewer children enrolled in Medicaid public healthcare in New Orleans than pre-Katrina.
46,000. Fewer African American voters in New Orleans in 2007 gubernatorial election than 2003 gubernatorial election.
55,000. Fewer houses receiving mail than before Katrina.
62,000. Fewer people in New Orleans enrolled in Medicaid public healthcare than pre-Katrina.
71,657. Vacant, ruined, unoccupied houses in New Orleans today.
124,000. Fewer people working in metropolitan New Orleans than pre-Katrina.
132,000. Fewer people in New Orleans than before Katrina, according to the City of New Orleans current population estimate of 321,000 in New Orleans.
214,000. Fewer people in New Orleans than before Katrina, according to the U.S. Census Bureau current population estimate of 239,000 in New Orleans.

453,726. Population of New Orleans before Katrina.
320 million. The number trees destroyed in Louisiana and Mississippi by Katrina.
368 million. Dollar losses of five major metro New Orleans hospitals from Katrina through 2007. In 2008, these hospitals expect another $103 million in losses.
1.9 billion. FEMA dollars scheduled to be available to metro New Orleans for Katrina damages that have not yet been delivered.
2.6 billion. FEMA dollars scheduled to be available to State of Louisiana for Katrina damages that have not yet been delivered.

By Bill Quigley. Bill is a human rights lawyer, a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans and author of the forthcoming book, STORMS STILL RAGING: Katrina, New Orleans and Social Justice. A version with all sources included is available. Bill's email is quigley77@gmail.com. For more information see the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center and Policy Link.

Checking the Record

President Bush was in town this week in advance of the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. He trumpeted the government's efforts to aid in the recovery process, evidently in an effort to revise his record of neglect (if not hostility) to New Orleans since the storm. Fortunately, a few writers have checked his speech against his actual accomplishments.

In The Times-Picayune, Lolis Eric Elie wrote:

It's great to know that the federal government is going to allow our state 30 years instead of three to pay back our $1.8 billion share of future levee improvement costs. But unless you know that it took nearly three years for Bush's government to agree to that provision, you'd get the impression that the feds are more willing partners in our recovery than has been the case.

Sen. Mary Landrieu issued a statement after Bush's speech that attempted to point out the holes in Bush's statements.

"The President should also be reminded that in the Emergency Supplemental bill signed into law in June, his administration pressured the House of Representatives to strip $15 million from the restoration of Jackson Barracks -- the backdrop for today's visit," Landrieu wrote in a statement.

And at The Huffington Post, Harry Shearer wrote:

As disturbing as the words he spoke were the words Bush never mentioned: in almost half an hour of remarks citing indications of progress in New Orleans since the disaster and citing the work that still needs to be done, the President never uttered the words “coastal restoration.” When he bragged that he had, after protracted urging by the Governor and the state’s Congressional delegation, allowed Louisiana to repay the federal share of levee rebuilding over thirty years instead of three, he said he didn’t think the state should have to choose between better levees and “other” urgent programs. What is the urgent program the state is free to spend the money on? Coastal restoration, the rebuilding of the wetlands being lost at the rate of a football field every hour or so — but the state’s spending plans fall considerably short of what’s needed to repair the buffer that protects New Orleans from more severe hurricanes, an area that also serves as the source for 40% of the nation’s fresh seafood. If we can’t even utter those words, can we face the task of repairing “the mistakes of the past”?

Post-Post

Recently, a few blogs debated Pitchfork's reference to U2 as a post-punk band in its review of the recent reissue of the first three U2 albums. I understand anyone who wants to thinks of Boy, October and War as something more conventional because U2 doesn't sound like such Rough Trade bands as Gang of Four, Essential Logic, Pop Group or the Raincoats. In its moment, though, the Edge's guitar, Adam Clayton's pounding bass and the space in the arrangements made U2 sound awfully new and inventive.

The thing U2 shared with the bands on Rough Trade was the desire to make a more personal, individualized pop music, one that was inspired by punk's "fuck you" to the tyranny of technique and received wisdom. For me, the news is the love of Boy, which periodically grinds to a halt with strummy songs that are hard to imagine today. October may be lyrically slack, but the sleek, spacious, wiry groove that became the band's trademark is in place.

The U2 reissues arrived the same week as the reissue of the Individuals' Fields/Aquamarine and Tom Verlaine's Dreamtime and Words from the Front, and the albums were more or less contemporary, all cut between 1980 and 1983, and though the Individuals and Verlaine albums were NYC acts, they too were trying to imagine a new pop. On Fields/Aquamarine, you can hear the Gang of Four's abrasive, gangly funk adapted to pop purposes - something Lawrence, Kansas' The Embarrassment was perfecting at the same time - and Verlaine's Dreamtime envisioned a pop music that was dense and accepted a host of notions of melody and hooks. Though he certainly gets his space as a guitar player, there are none of the elongated explorations that defined Television. Instead, he wedges all those thoughts into small spaces to make dense pop songs that throw off melodic and lyrical sparks.

Of the lot, only Words from the Front is a bit of a drag, as if Verlaine was spent. The songs are tense, but they don't release or pay off; they just go on. "Postcard from Waterloo" is pretty conventional, but it's also attractive and the one song you can get a grip on.

Text 'O' for Obama

Yesterday, I received an email from the Obama campaign asking people to sign up receive a text message with the name of his vice presidential choice when he selects him. When I followed the link - what the hell? - there was no way to say I wanted to receive the VP text without also agreeing to receive other text messages from the campaign.

It's a good sign that his campaign recognizes the impact of texting and a text number database, but like the Win a Dinner with Obama campaign, it's cheesily bait-and-switch to dangle the prospect of finding out his choice for VP to get your digits.

This is Unfortunate

Recently, I received a press release about a "We Are the World"-like recording for post-Katrina New Orleans, "We Shall Not be Moved." Setting aside questions about the desirability of a post-K "We Are the World," recordings like this one give good intentions a bad name.

What to Do?

Recently, OffBeat was offered the opportunity to review the new B.G. album, but the reviewer was going to have to go to a preview party to hear the album. When I asked for a copy for the reviewer to hear using his or her usual reviewing process, I was told that wasn't an option, but that a private listening session could be set up at the Chopper City offices. That didn't seem like a significant improvement on the party; in either case, someone else controls how the reviewer hears the music, which has to affect the review, if subtly.

When I was told this was a security concern, I pointed out that I didn't appreciate being suspected with no cause. I was told I wasn't personally suspected, but that doesn't make it better. If the label suspects everybody and treats everybody as a potential bootlegger, that doesn't mean they're not being suspicious. I gather other hip-hop labels exercise similar control over advance listenings, but that doesn't make it better.

As of now, the story has ended more or less where I expected it to. OffBeat hasn't paid enough attention to hip-hop and B.G. in the past to have much leverage in this situation. I'm bummed we're not reviewing the CD, and though I know I'm fighting the right fight for reviewing and journalism, I also have the nagging doubt that, like the last people stubbornly using "indices" instead of "indexes," I've put my heels in to fight a lost fight.

Keep on Running

I've been trying to figure out how to talk about A-Trak's Nike-commissioned Running Man:Nike+Original Run. My first instinct is to be skeptical, but the 45-minute mix LCD Soundsystem did for this series was the logical follow-up to Sound of Silver , and A-Trak's an interesting choice as well. But I don't run if I'm not chased by dogs or cops, so I'm not in a position to talk about it in relation to its designated function.

Since I tend to listen to extended mixes when writing, I'll think of the album as Typing Man and evaluate accordingly. The first section is distracting, which from a musical perspective is a good thing, particularly when it settles in "Say Woah." The funk is a little martial, but it's appropriately relentless, and the gradual mutation of the song stays interesting. I never notice when Running Man moves into the second section, but at some point I realize I'm in a futuristic James Brown moment, with a "Get up" command emerging from behind a fat, fuzzy synth bassline punctuated by icy keyboard chords, scratches and pings. I can work pretty well during this section, though I'm entertained when I pay attention. I imagine the first section would get a runner running, but here's when you'd go into the zone.

At some point, things slow down and are defined by a keyboard melody that sounds like the solo in a Richard Marx song. This passage I never notice and type through easily. I'd like to think it's because I'm in the zone, but I suspect the section really just isn't that interesting. For the final five or so minutes, the energy picks up notably for a techno passage that would probably rock a full dance floor though it might not inspire people to rush it. I assume this is designed to motivate the tiring runner to gut out the last few minutes. Me - my attention bounces back and forth between it and my work in a good way.

Short take - if I ran, I'd probably lose my juice during the Richard Marx segment, and I wish this mix made a stronger statement, but since it's designed to be background music, I'm not sure it's fair to complain about the sections that are only that.

You Can't See Me

I'm in a coffee shop with four military police, all dressed in camouflage. They prompt two questions (without thinking hard): 1) Why are MPs wearing camouflage in New Orleans? and 2) Shouldn't urban camouflage look more like bricks or wood that needs a paint job?

A Looting Thought

While doing some research for a Katrina-related piece, I went back to the video for Juvenile's "Get Ya Hustle On." Much was made of the way it depicted three kids in Bush, Cheney and Nagin masks playing in the devastated Lower Ninth Ward, but the image that caught me was that of an SUV with polished rims being pulled by three horses. Juvenile's rapping in front of another SUV, this one rolled on its side, while a limo is incapacitated with its back wheels of the ground as the storm surge blasted it on to a pile of junk.

On one hand, Juvenile brought a dose of realism to the video world, depicting the trashed trappings of the good life as seen in Puffy and Jay-Z videos. The horse-drawn SUV also drew attention to how deeply and successfully Cribs and other lifestyles of the rich and famous shows had taught people - particularly young African-American Males - what they needed to live the good life. SUV? Check, even if it doesn't run, and that's what we saw in the televised post-Katrina looting. Big screen to play Madden on? Check, even if there's no power. Serious basketball shoes? Check, even if you can't wear them when you're ass-deep in water. The water has to go down some time.

All of the finger-wagging at the time seemed incredibly hypocritical - sell the hell of the idea that these are things you should want, then act surprised when people with limited means take advantage of diminished security to get them. MTV's From G's to Gents includes a participant who has a pimped out car, but he has spent so much money on it that he's forced to live in it.

Again, we can tsk-tsk about priorities and values all we want, but that's being dishonest. When consumption has become such a crucial cultural signifier, we can't be surprised that those who are the most vulnerable choose to create the appearance that they're not by acquiring products outside their price range, whether by impoverishing themselves - From G's - or taking advantage of a disaster. At the same time, Juvenile's horse-drawn Escalade (I think) highlights the reality of those acquisitions.

The Value of a Sense of Humor

Andrea Mitchell's sparring match with McCain campaign manager Rick Davis underscores one of the fundamental differences between Barack Obama and the traditional Republican candidate. In the piece, there's footage of Obama contending that McCain camp is trying to scare Americans away from voting for him, but he does so with self-deprecating humor. Contrast that with Davis' relentless, strident dissembling. He's utterly humorless and combatative as he tries to construe Obama as negative and get away from raising the issue of arugula and MT-RX bars, baldfaced lying when he says that McCain's commercials repeatedly spell out his economic plan (in the "Celebrity" ad? Really?).

A sense of humor is a sign of intelligence, and attenuating his responses is obviously deliberate. By treating his own difference and McCain's attempts to scare the voters about it as if it's no big deal, he sends the message that it's not. On the other hand, Davis' fight-hard-then-fight-harder strategy treats everything as a matter of meteor-aimed-at-Manhattan urgency. When it's tied to obvious untruths, it becomes clear Republicans don't trust their candidate and are content to bully and confuse voters to reduce the election to a referendum on who you're more likely to have met at a PTA meeting or neighborhood barbecue. While Obama treats us like we're smart enough to understand the fear tactics, the McCain and Republican strategy assumes we're dumb enough to buy into their bluster or be confused enough by it to throw up our hands in disgust.