A Critical Look at the Race for Mayor

by: David Coffee
September 19, 2005


After hearing the results of last week’s Mayoral Primary, I couldn’t help but feel frustrated. In the beginning of the race we had over eight candidates, many of whom were political outsiders who were simply interested in helping improve their beloved community. They entered the race simply because they felt an obligation to do their part to help all of Buffalo. After the primary we lost our inspiring candidates, and we found ourselves immersed in the same old political nonsense, complete with name-calling and devoid of issues. We need to free ourselves from ‘politics as usual’ and the way to do it is to change our voting system so that it more accurately reflects the will of the people.

The Buffalo news on Friday described the Brown-Helfer mayoral contest as a battle between “two political heavyweights.” Now I’m not a gambler but I’m willing to bet that nobody in this city would describe their ideal mayor as a ‘political heavyweight’. That says a lot about the trap that we find ourselves in. Our system has lead us down a narrow hallway, and at the end we find two candidates that nobody really wants. The system is not working, so the responsible thing to do is change the system. I’m not talking about getting a candidate elected, I’m talking about changing the rules that we use to elect our public officials.

There are many ways to translate democratic intent into political representation, and statistically our Winner-take-all plurality system is the worst. Elections like ours use a very simple method to select the winner, the candidate with the most votes wins. This is fine when there are only two candidates, but with three or more there is a possibility that the most favored candidate will lose. A candidate who would normally win in a two-way race might have their votes ‘stolen’ by a third candidate and therefore hand the election to a candidate who doesn’t actually have the support of the majority. This is the dilemma that led Steve Calvanesso to drop out of the primary early. He didn’t want to steal votes from Kevin Gaughan thereby helping Byron Brown win the nomination. If we had used a system of Instant Runoff Voting this problem could have been avoided entirely, voters would have three choices, and they could vote for their favorite candidate without fear of helping their least favorite candidate.

It is very possible to deal with this problem. The most efficient and democratic way is through Instant Runoff Voting. It works like this: After the votes are cast, the least favored candidates are eliminated from the ballot until someone achieves a majority of the votes. Voters rank the candidates in order of preference, if their first choice receives the smallest number of votes and is eliminated from the ballot their second choice is used. This process is repeated until one candidate has a majority. If Brown Gaughan and Calvaneso were competing and Gaughan ended up with the least number of votes he would be eliminated and his voters would use their second choice vote instead. The result would truly express the will of the voters, instead of making them frustrated.

Unlike the Runoff election used in the New York City Democratic primary, Instant Runoff Voting is much less costly or time consuming. The New York City Runoff election requires everyone to come back and vote again if nobody receives a majority in the first round of voting. Instant Runoff voting allows voters to rank their candidates so that they only need to vote once. If a voters first choice is eliminated they will use their second choice instead.

Why does it matter? What difference will it make? In this case, Calvaneso wouldn’t have dropped out. And voters would have been able to choose freely between three candidates without worrying about ‘wasting’ their vote or ‘spoiling’ the election by allowing someone to win with less than 50% of the vote.

We could easily use Instant Runoff Voting in our Democratic primary, or in any City or County election. It doesn’t take a federal or state law to change our system of voting, our community decides how we want to elect our own officials.

Think about it, does our current system elect the candidates that people want? What would happen if voters could record their true preference, rather than strategically voting for the lesser of two evils because they were scared of wasting their vote on a third candidate? And what about the candidates, would more people run? With additional candidates, would we talk about other issues and hear more diverse solutions? And what would happen to Buffalo if we had a vibrant public discourse led by the many candidates in each election? And what if our citizens could vote for any of those eight candidates without fear of their vote not counting, would thousands more people turn out to vote? I’m willing to bet that the change would be dramatic.

It’s not that we don’t have honest, qualified people running for office, the problem is that they are squeezed out of the race before the general public gets a chance to vote for them. Or they show up on the ballot as a third party that nobody acknowledges because we don’t want to waste our vote. We are all tired of the political machines, empty promises, and incompetent public officials, but we can’t seem to overcome them. We have good candidates but our system makes them so hard to elect. The most important thing we can do to get ourselves out of this mess is to change the rules of the system.

I put this article on here because it is terrible. It makes a mockery of our election system by launching it into horserace/boxing-match mode only a day after the primary. It's a terrible example of journalism and election coverage, I hope all journalism students read this garbage and vow to save us from such nonsense journalism.


Now, the main event

FOCUS: BUFFALO MAYORAL RACE

With two political heavyweights left standing, the Brown-Helfer contest to control City Hall immediately takes a pointedly personal turn

By ROBERT J. McCARTHY and GENE WARNER
News Staff Reporters
9/15/2005


A new Byron W. Brown hit the campaign trail Wednesday, substituting fiery campaign attacks for the genteel demeanor that marked his successful primary campaign for mayor of Buffalo.

That new development, many campaign observers say, suggests strongly that the Democratic nominee knows that he is in for a tough challenge from Republican Kevin J. Helfer.

The general campaign dawned Wednesday with Brown referring to Helfer's criticisms as lies, and Helfer firing back with accusations that the state senator is tied too closely to special interests.

"You've got one candidate that's lying," Brown said.

"Nothing makes me madder than someone calling me a liar when they don't have the facts to back it up," Helfer replied.

That kicked off a campaign already displaying a new dynamic and accompanying questions, including:

• Nearly 41 percent of Democrats voted against Brown in the primary.

Where will they land Nov. 8?

• Helfer's apparent victory over Brown on the Conservative line, providing momentum and an alternative line for Democrats to cast a Helfer vote.

Will Democrats opt for a line with long ties to Republicans and President Bush?

• Charles J. Flynn apparently winning the Independence line for the November election.

Will he diffuse the anti-Brown vote or make little difference?

• The 22 percent turnout in the primary election, signaling vast indifference.

Will a low turnout in the African-American community cause a problem for Brown in November?

Even before primary day ended, the election took on a harder edge, when the Helfer camp bought an 11 p.m. television ad that targeted Brown's campaign contributions from special interests, including $3,300 that the ad said was donated by Erie County Executive Joel A. Giambra.

Twelve hours later, Brown turned the ad into the first campaign issue.

"Seconds after my Democratic primary win last night, Joel Giambra's former $120,000-a-year commissioner of social services began with a very negative campaign ad linking me with his former boss, Joel Giambra," Brown said. "I think you're going to see a campaign in which Kevin Helfer tries to distort and lie about my record, and I will tell the truth about his."

Helfer fired back during an afternoon news conference in the driveway of his University District home.

"If he says we're lying, tell me what we're lying about," Helfer said, contending that Brown has accepted campaign contributions from every special interest group, from every group that wants to preserve the status quo.

"He wants to run away from the facts. The fact is, he took $3,300 [in campaign contributions] from Joel Giambra."



Focus on Giambra ties

If the first hours of the general election campaign for mayor were any indication, Brown and Helfer seem to be waging a battle to see who can distance himself the furthest from Giambra.

Brown called it laughable that Helfer would try to link him to Giambra.

"Kevin Helfer was a department head in the Giambra administration that created the worst fiscal mess in the history of Erie County," Brown said in a lengthy telephone interview. "The county is still suffering from the Giambra-Helfer mess. I think that speaks volumes about how Kevin Helfer would lead."

Helfer replied that he stepped away from the Giambra administration when he didn't like the direction in which it was heading.

"Not too many people step away from a $120,000 job," he said.

Vowing to be bold and aggressive in his campaign, Helfer said he wanted to talk about Brown's record in the State Senate, citing what he called his 130 votes to raise taxes and his votes to approve $4.7 billion in taxes.

"I don't think that's nasty," he said about such campaigning. "I think that's a campaign talking about the facts. . . . I'm looking forward to making sure everyone knows his record."

When asked to talk about the choice facing Buffalo voters in November, Brown played up the Democratic-Republican issue, while Helfer framed the election more in terms of the status quo versus change.



"Not a coronation'

"I think the clearest, sharpest difference will be the real difference between Democrats and Republicans and the real negative consequences when a Republican is elected," Brown said. "There's no more glaring example than what Joel Giambra has done to Erie County, and Kevin Helfer was a major part of that."

Asked how he could overcome a 5-1 Democratic edge in registration in the city, Helfer said he has done it three times before as a Republican.

"We're going to overcome it, because I think people want change," he said. "They're sick and tired of the status quo and machine politics. . . . This campaign is an election to be decided by voters, not a coronation to be decided by kingmakers."

Helfer was asked whether the gloves were off in the mayoral campaign.

"We will take the gloves off, but we're going to hit above the belt," he said.

Although Brown scored a decisive victory over Democratic challenger Kevin P. Gaughan on Tuesday, Helfer's apparent historic victory as a write-in candidate on the Conservative line is pumping new life into his campaign. While nobody is predicting that the former Common Council member will beat Brown in the heavily Democratic city, the fact that he wrested the Conservative line from Brown as a write-in candidate gives Democrats an alternative line to vote for Helfer and provides him with important momentum.



Conservative line's value

Top Republican strategists also think the Conservative line will generate the kind of campaign contributions Helfer will need to challenge Brown on the airwaves.

"I think the money will come in," said Ralph J. Vanner, vice chairman of the Erie County Republican Party. "I'll be shocked if it does not."

Indeed, GOP politicians such as former Rep. Jack F. Quinn Jr. point out that Republicans can win in Buffalo, even if it requires a perfect political storm of unprecedented proportions.

"The fact that Byron's numbers were not off the charts, and Kevin has this alternative lever on the ballot, gives Helfer a real opportunity here," said Quinn, who regularly captured Democratic enclaves such as South Buffalo in winning six congressional elections.

The former congressman, now a Washington lobbyist, said many Buffalonians are familiar with the Conservative line and don't mind seeking it as an alternative to voting Republican.

"If I'm Kevin Helfer on the day after primary day, I'd be pretty satisfied," Quinn said.

Still, Helfer acknowledges that he faces daunting odds. The city holds a 5-1 Democratic advantage in enrollment, Republican officeholders are virtually nonexistent, and Buffalo has not chosen a GOP mayor since voting for Chester A. Kowal in 1981.



Big names expected

Joseph F. Crangle, a former Erie County and New York State Democratic chairman, envisions big names such as Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles E. Schumer venturing into Buffalo to preach the Democratic gospel on Brown's behalf. They will try to link Helfer with Bush and his policies and label the election a referendum, Crangle says.

"It's historic to be able to win a write-in vote, but the question is, what's the effect?" Crangle asked.

"I don't think the Republican-Conservative line wins a mayoral race in a Democratic city."


e-mail: rmccarthy@buffnews.com
and gwarner@buffnews.com

Anti-Terror Strategy in Doubt on 9/11 Anniversary
by Jim Lobe
Published on Friday, September 9, 2005 by Inter Press Service


WASHINGTON - If U.S. President George W. Bush was counting on Sunday's "Freedom Walk" and country music festival at the Pentagon to revive the patriotic spirit (and rally his sagging approval ratings) that followed the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on their fourth anniversary, he is likely to be very disappointed.

And it won't be just because of his administration's fatal bungling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, which will certainly overshadow the Pentagon's commemoration; nor even due to the growing popular discontent over the way things have been going in Iraq.

Although both developments pose potentially lethal threats to Bush's continued effectiveness, the president's management of his "global war on terrorism", which he declared in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, is increasingly under siege.

Public approval of his handling of that war, which, in contrast to steadily declining confidence in Iraq policy, had remained remarkably solid over most of the past four years, has fallen sharply in recent months to a razor-thin majority. Recent polls have also shown that U.S. citizens see themselves as increasingly vulnerable to terrorist attack as a result of the administration's actions.

It now appears that much of the national security elite has made a similar assessment and, in an indication of the shifting political winds, is now more willing to speak out about it.

A growing number of policy experts are arguing that Bush's strategy for conducting the war on terrorism -- particularly his preferences for military action over "soft power" and for working with compliant "coalitions of the willing" over independent allies and multilateral mechanisms -- is in urgent need of redirection.

This was made abundantly clear by the appearance of a who's who of national security and foreign policy experts at a well-attended conference here this week that appeared designed chiefly to assert the existence of alternative frameworks for conducting the war on terrorism on the eve of its fourth anniversary.

"There is an emerging consensus that while a military response to 9/11 was necessary, it was certainly not sufficient for dealing with terrorism over the long term," said Steven Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation (NAF) and the main convener of "Terrorism, Security and America's Purpose: Towards a More Comprehensive Strategy.

"Enlightened diplomacy must be combined with a robust commitment to compete vigorously for 'hearts and minds'," he said.

Capping the conference, which was addressed by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former NATO commander Wesley Clark, and Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, among others political heavyweights, was the publication of a statement by the new Partnership for a Secure America (PSA), a bipartisan group of former veteran lawmakers and top national-security officials, including half a dozen secretaries of state and national security advisers, that implicitly criticized Bush's conduct of the war.

Noting that "terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy", the statement stressed that success in the war will require "strong partnerships with allies based on mutual respect"; living up to traditional U.S. principles, such as the rule of law, in conducting the war, at home as well as overseas; and "breaking our over-dependence on oil".

In contrast to Bush's rhetoric about "evil" and "evil-doers" as the source of Islamist terrorism, the statement also stressed that "terrorism is a political act requiring a political response", which, in addition to promoting democratic institutions in the Muslim world, should also include "addressing legitimate grievances", the existence of which the administration has been loathe to concede over the past four years.

While the statement did not define what those "legitimate grievances" were, a number of speakers -- some of whom are rarely heard in Washington's more exalted and politically sensitive policy circles -- made clear that U.S. policies in the Greater Middle East should be included.

"They do not hate us for what we are, but for what we do," declared NAF fellow Nir Rosen, whose writings in The New Yorker about his experience in insurgent-controlled Falluja, Iraq last year won wide notice. "The American empire will cease to be a target when it ceases directly or indirectly to oppress weaker people or to support those who oppress them."

"The motives for Muslim terrorists directed against America are no secret. They are clearly stated over and over again by the most reliable sources, the perpetrators themselves," he said: "...Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Guantanamo, America's presence on holy Muslim land in the Arabian peninsula, and American support for dictatorial or corrupt regimes."

"An American withdrawal from Iraq and an Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories to the 1967 lines would do more to fight terrorism than any military action ever could. So would American empathy," he said.

Similarly, Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago whose recent book, "Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism", is the most comprehensive profile of successful suicide bombers, asserted that "the war on terrorism is heading south" and will likely continue doing so until Washington recognized that its military presence in the Gulf region is al Qaeda's "best recruitment tool".

Both Pape and Harvard University expert Stephen Walt called for Washington to return to an older regional strategy of "off-shore balancing" in the Gulf region, in which the U.S. would intervene directly only when the local balance of power breaks down, and even then as a last resort.

The Bush administration's policy of "going on the offensive" against perceived foes since 9/11, according to Walt, whose own new book, "Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy" has won strong reviews in mainstream publications, has "made us look trigger-happy (and)... made (Osama) bin Laden's accusations that we wanted to dominate the world look correct".

These views were backed up by the findings of task forces, each made up of a dozen or more experts with a wide range of political views, that have worked on recommendations on the war of terror since last spring.

One group, chaired by Louise Richardson, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard, reached unanimity on the necessity for Washington to be more sensitive to the causes of terrorism. "(Members) also reject the view that to address grievances exploited by terrorist leaders is to reward terrorism, quite the contrary, we agree that addressing these grievances is essential to diminishing support for terrorism."

Task force members, according to Richardson, also called "for undermining radicals and strengthening moderates (in the Islamic world) by re-evaluating our policies (and) addressing their grievances ...that serve to mobilize resentment," including resolving the Israeli/Palestinian issue that "would not satisfy the absolutists but ...would undermine their support by reducing the reservoir of bitterness among their potential recruits".

A second task force on grand strategy, headed by Charles Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations, agreed that Bush administration "had overreacted" to the 9/11 attacks by "turning its back" on many of Washington's traditional foreign policy objectives, including the strengthening of international institutions and alliances built up during the Cold War and making the struggle against terrorism the defining mission of U.S. grand strategy.

"The challenge is to get our priorities back in sync," he said.

© Copyright 2005 IPS - Inter Press Service

Osama and Katrina
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
September 7, 2005

On the day after 9/11, I was in Jerusalem and was interviewed by Israeli TV. The reporter asked me, "Do you think the Bush administration is up to responding to this attack?" As best I can recall, I answered: "Absolutely. One thing I can assure you about these guys is that they know how to pull the trigger."

It was just a gut reaction that George Bush and Dick Cheney were the right guys to deal with Osama. I was not alone in that feeling, and as a result, Mr. Bush got a mandate, almost a blank check, to rule from 9/11 that he never really earned at the polls. Unfortunately, he used that mandate not simply to confront the terrorists but to take a radically uncompassionate conservative agenda - on taxes, stem cells, the environment and foreign treaties - that was going nowhere before 9/11, and drive it into a post-9/11 world. In that sense, 9/11 distorted our politics and society.

Well, if 9/11 is one bookend of the Bush administration, Katrina may be the other. If 9/11 put the wind at President Bush's back, Katrina's put the wind in his face. If the Bush-Cheney team seemed to be the right guys to deal with Osama, they seem exactly the wrong guys to deal with Katrina - and all the rot and misplaced priorities it's exposed here at home.

These are people so much better at inflicting pain than feeling it, so much better at taking things apart than putting them together, so much better at defending "intelligent design" as a theology than practicing it as a policy.

For instance, it's unavoidably obvious that we need a real policy of energy conservation. But President Bush can barely choke out the word "conservation." And can you imagine Mr. Cheney, who has already denounced conservation as a "personal virtue" irrelevant to national policy, now leading such a campaign or confronting oil companies for price gouging?

And then there are the president's standard lines: "It's not the government's money; it's your money," and, "One of the last things that we need to do to this economy is to take money out of your pocket and fuel government." Maybe Mr. Bush will now also tell us: "It's not the government's hurricane - it's your hurricane."

An administration whose tax policy has been dominated by the toweringly selfish Grover Norquist - who has been quoted as saying: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub" - doesn't have the instincts for this moment. Mr. Norquist is the only person about whom I would say this: I hope he owns property around the New Orleans levee that was never properly finished because of a lack of tax dollars. I hope his basement got flooded. And I hope that he was busy drowning government in his bathtub when the levee broke and that he had to wait for a U.S. Army helicopter to get out of town.

The Bush team has engaged in a tax giveaway since 9/11 that has had one underlying assumption: There will never be another rainy day. Just spend money. You knew that sooner or later there would be a rainy day, but Karl Rove has assumed it wouldn't happen on Mr. Bush's watch - that someone else would have to clean it up. Well, it did happen on his watch.

Besides ripping away the roofs of New Orleans, Katrina ripped away the argument that we can cut taxes, properly educate our kids, compete with India and China, succeed in Iraq, keep improving the U.S. infrastructure, and take care of a catastrophic emergency - without putting ourselves totally into the debt of Beijing.

So many of the things the Bush team has ignored or distorted under the guise of fighting Osama were exposed by Katrina: its refusal to impose a gasoline tax after 9/11, which would have begun to shift our economy much sooner to more fuel-efficient cars, helped raise money for a rainy day and eased our dependence on the world's worst regimes for energy; its refusal to develop some form of national health care to cover the 40 million uninsured; and its insistence on cutting more taxes, even when that has contributed to incomplete levees and too small an Army to deal with Katrina, Osama and Saddam at the same time.

As my Democratic entrepreneur friend Joel Hyatt once remarked, the Bush team's philosophy since 9/11 has been: "We're at war. Let's party."

Well, the party is over. If Mr. Bush learns the lessons of Katrina, he has a chance to replace his 9/11 mandate with something new and relevant. If that happens, Katrina will have destroyed New Orleans, but helped to restore America. If Mr. Bush goes back to his politics as usual, he'll be thwarted at every turn. Katrina will have destroyed a city and a presidency.

Waiting for a Leader

September 1, 2005
NY Times

George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end.
We will, of course, endure, and the city of New Orleans must come back. But looking at the pictures on television yesterday of a place abandoned to the forces of flood, fire and looting, it was hard not to wonder exactly how that is going to come to pass. Right now, hundreds of thousands of American refugees need our national concern and care. Thousands of people still need to be rescued from imminent peril. Public health threats must be controlled in New Orleans and throughout southern Mississippi. Drivers must be given confidence that gasoline will be available, and profiteering must be brought under control at a moment when television has been showing long lines at some pumps and spot prices approaching $4 a gallon have been reported.
Sacrifices may be necessary to make sure that all these things happen in an orderly, efficient way. But this administration has never been one to counsel sacrifice. And nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis.
While our attention must now be on the Gulf Coast's most immediate needs, the nation will soon ask why New Orleans's levees remained so inadequate. Publications from the local newspaper to National Geographic have fulminated about the bad state of flood protection in this beloved city, which is below sea level. Why were developers permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held back the hurricane's surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the area's flood protection?
It would be some comfort to think that, as Mr. Bush cheerily announced, America "will be a stronger place" for enduring this crisis. Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of future hurricanes. But since this administration won't acknowledge that global warming exists, the chances of leadership seem minimal.

New Orleans in Anarchy With Fights, Rapes

By ALLEN G. BREED, Associated Press Writer
September 1, 2005

New Orleans descended into anarchy Thursday as corpses lay abandoned in street medians, fights and fires broke out, cops turned in their badges and the governor declared war on looters who have made the city a menacing landscape of disorder and fear.
"They have M-16s and they're locked and loaded," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said of 300 National Guard troops who landed in New Orleans fresh from duty in Iraq. "These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so, and I expect they will."
Four days after Hurricane Katrina roared in with a devastating blow that inflicted potentially thousands of deaths, the fear, anger and violence mounted Thursday.
"I'm not sure I'm going to get out of here alive," said Canadian tourist Larry Mitzel, who handed a reporter his business card in case he goes missing. "I'm scared of riots. I'm scared of the locals. We might get caught in the crossfire."
The chaos deepened despite the promise of 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to stop the looting, plans for a $10 billion recovery bill in Congress and a government relief effort President Bush called the biggest in U.S. history.
New Orleans' top emergency management official called that effort a "national disgrace" and questioned when reinforcements would actually reach the increasingly lawless city.
About 15,000 to 20,000 people who had taken shelter at New Orleans convention center grew ever more hostile after waiting for buses for days amid the filth and the dead. Police Chief Eddie Compass said there was such a crush around a squad of 88 officers that they retreated when they went in to check out reports of assaults.
"We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten," Compass said. "Tourists are walking in that direction and they are getting preyed upon."
Col. Henry Whitehorn, chief of the Louisiana State Police, said he heard of numerous instances of New Orleans police officers — many of whom from flooded areas — turning in their badges.
"They indicated that they had lost everything and didn't feel that it was worth them going back to take fire from looters and losing their lives," Whitehorn said.
A military helicopter tried to land at the convention center several times to drop off food and water. But the rushing crowd forced the choppers to back off. Troopers then tossed the supplies to the crowd from 10 feet off the ground and flew away.
In hopes of defusing the situation at the convention center, Mayor Ray Nagin gave the refugees permission to march across a bridge to the city's unflooded west bank for whatever relief they could find. But the bedlam made that difficult.
"This is a desperate SOS," Nagin said in a statement. "Right now we are out of resources at the convention center and don't anticipate enough buses."
At least seven bodies were scattered outside the convention center, a makeshift staging area for those rescued from rooftops, attics and highways. The sidewalks were packed with people without food, water or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement.
An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.
"I don't treat my dog like that," 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair.
"You can do everything for other countries, but you can't do nothing for your own people," he added. "You can go overseas with the military, but you can't get them down here."
The street outside the center, above the floodwaters, smelled of urine and feces, and was choked with dirty diapers, old bottles and garbage.
"They've been teasing us with buses for four days," Edwards said. "They're telling us they're going to come get us one day, and then they don't show up."
Every so often, an armored state police vehicle cruised in front of the convention center with four or five officers in riot gear with automatic weapons. But there was no sign of help from the National Guard.
At one point the crowd began to chant "We want help! We want help!" Later, a woman, screaming, went on the front steps of the convention center and led the crowd in reciting the 23rd Psalm, "The Lord is my shepherd ..."
"We are out here like pure animals," the Issac Clark said.
"We've got people dying out here — two babies have died, a woman died, a man died," said Helen Cheek. "We haven't had no food, we haven't had no water, we haven't had nothing. They just brought us here and dropped us."
Tourist Debbie Durso of Washington, Mich., said she asked a police officer for assistance and his response was, "'Go to hell — it's every man for himself.'"
"This is just insanity," she said. "We have no food, no water ... all these trucks and buses go by and they do nothing but wave."
FEMA director Michael Brown said the agency just learned about the situation at the convention center Thursday and quickly scrambled to provide food, water and medical care and remove the corpses.
Speaking on CNN's "Larry King Live," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the evacuation of New Orleans should be completed by the end of the weekend.
At the hot and stinking Superdome, where 30,000 were being evacuated by bus to the Houston Astrodome, fistfights and fires erupted amid a seething sea of tense, suffering people who waited in a lines that stretched a half-mile to board yellow school buses.
After a traffic jam kept buses from arriving for nearly four hours, a near-riot broke out in the scramble to get on the buses that finally did show up, with a group of refugees breaking through a line of heavily armed National Guardsmen.
One military policeman was shot in the leg as he and a man scuffled for the MP's rifle, police Capt. Ernie Demmo said. The man was arrested.
Some of those among the mostly poor crowd had been in the dome for four days without air conditioning, working toilets or a place to bathe. An ambulance service airlifting the sick and injured out of the Superdome suspended flights as too dangerous after it was reported that a bullet was fired at a military helicopter.
"If they're just taking us anywhere, just anywhere, I say praise God," said refugee John Phillip. "Nothing could be worse than what we've been through."
By Thursday evening, 11 hours after the military began evacuating the Superdome, the arena held 10,000 more people than it did at dawn. National Guard Capt. John Pollard said evacuees from around the city poured into the Superdome and swelled the crowd to about 30,000 because they believed the arena was the best place to get a ride out of town.
As he watched a line snaking for blocks through ankle-deep waters, New Orleans' emergency operations chief Terry Ebbert blamed the inadequate response on the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
"This is not a FEMA operation. I haven't seen a single FEMA guy," he said. He added: "We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."
FEMA officials said some operations had to be suspended in areas where gunfire has broken out, but are working overtime to feed people and restore order.
A day after Nagin took 1,500 police officers off search-and-rescue duty to try to restore order in the streets, there were continued reports of looting, shootings, gunfire and carjackings — and not all the crimes were driven by greed.
When some hospitals try to airlift patients, Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesan said, "there are people just taking potshots at police and at helicopters, telling them, `You better come get my family.'"
Outside a looted Rite-Aid drugstore, some people were anxious to show they needed what they were taking. A gray-haired man who would not give his name pulled up his T-shirt to show a surgery scar and explained that he needs pads for incontinence.
"I'm a Christian. I feel bad going in there," he said.
Earl Baker carried toothpaste, toothbrushes and deodorant. "Look, I'm only getting necessities," he said. "All of this is personal hygiene. I ain't getting nothing to get drunk or high with."
Several thousand storm victims had arrived in Houston by Thursday night, and they quickly got hot meals, showers and some much-needed rest.
Audree Lee, 37, was thrilled after getting a shower and hearing her teenage daughter's voice on the telephone for the first time since the storm. Lee had relatives take her daughter to Alabama so she would be safe.
"I just cried. She cried. We cried together," Lee said. "She asked me about her dog. They wouldn't let me take her dog with me. ... I know the dog is gone now."
While floodwaters in the city appeared to stabilize, efforts continued to plug three breaches that had opened up in the levee system that protects this below-sea-level city.
Helicopters dropped sandbags into the breach and pilings were being pounded into the mouth of the canal Thursday to close its connection to Lake Pontchartrain, state Transportation Secretary Johnny Bradberry said. The next step called for using about 250 concrete road barriers to seal the gap.
In Washington, the White House said Bush will tour the devastated Gulf Coast region on Friday and has asked his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and former President Clinton to lead a private fund-raising campaign for victims.
The president urged a crackdown on the lawlessness.
"I think there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this — whether it be looting, or price gouging at the gasoline pump, or taking advantage of charitable giving or insurance fraud," Bush said. "And I've made that clear to our attorney general. The citizens ought to be working together."
Donald Dudley, a 55-year-old New Orleans seafood merchant, complained that when he and other hungry refugees broke into the kitchen of the convention center and tried to prepare food, the National Guard chased them away.
"They pulled guns and told us we had to leave that kitchen or they would blow our damn brains out," he said. "We don't want their help. Give us some vehicles and we'll get ourselves out of here!"
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Associated Press reporters Adam Nossiter, Brett Martel, Robert Tanner and Mary Foster contributed to this report.

Life in the Bottom 80 Percent
September 1, 2005
NY Times

Economic growth isn't what it used to be. In 2004, the economy grew a solid 3.8 percent. But for the fifth straight year, median household income was basically flat, at $44,389 in 2004, the Census Bureau said Tuesday. That's the longest stretch of income stagnation on record.

Economic growth was also no elixir for the 800,000 additional workers who found themselves without health insurance in 2004. Were it not for increased coverage by military insurance and Medicaid, the ranks of the uninsured - now 45.8 million - would be even larger. And 1.1 million more people fell into poverty in 2004, bringing the ranks of poor Americans to 37 million.

When President Bush talks about the economy, he invariably boasts about good economic growth. But he doesn't acknowledge what is apparent from the census figures: as the very rich get even richer, their gains can mask the stagnation and deterioration at less lofty income levels.

This week's census report showed that income inequality was near all-time highs in 2004, with 50.1 percent of income going to the top 20 percent of households. And additional census data obtained by the Economic Policy Institute show that only the top 5 percent of households experienced real income gains in 2004. Incomes for the other 95 percent of households were flat or falling.

Income inequality is an economic and social ill, but the administration and the Congressional majority don't seem to recognize that. When Congress returns from its monthlong summer vacation next week, two of the leadership's top priorities include renewing the push to repeal the estate tax, which affects only the wealthiest of families, and extending the tax cuts for investment income, which flow largely to the richest Americans. At the other end of the spectrum, lawmakers have stubbornly refused to raise the minimum wage: $5.15 an hour since 1997. They will also be taking up proposals for deep budget cuts in programs that ameliorate income inequality, like Medicaid, food stamps and federal student loans.

They should be ashamed of themselves.