Does Sandy Rosenthal have any background or experience in anything that qualifies her to be an expert on anything related to Katrina? She claims, she states, she believes, she alleges, she’s long believed, she opines, ……..

Let’s get with the program ASCE; we would like to advert another embarrassing governmental response here! If these engineers were paid by the job, these reports would have been completed long ago. And John, please do not malign Sandy Rosenthal; she is the best thing to happen to the citizens of NOLA in a long time. Just because you don’t like the message, does not mean that you can shoot the messenger!

Wrong John. Sandy Rosenthal said “‘We’ at levees.org… or “‘We’ feel y’all have been giving delays” or “‘We want the ASCE to know they are being watched.” at every single time and nowhere did either the director of levees.org or their chief engineer Bosworth Ever use the pronouns “I”. Never. Didn’t happen. Wrong John. Why?
OK, #2: “John” you do know what ‘ad hominem’ attack is, right? Of course you do. Attack the person not the arguments. Hominem: person…funny how it rhymes with Mominem, eh? You know as in: “How’s yer Mom an ‘em?”
Bosworth is an engineer, one of many which belong to that organization. Raymond Seed, whose 48 page letter trigger this investigation is an engineers.
ngineers “We” got.
By “we” do you think I only mean levees.org? No, you would be wrong there as well because I refer to “We” the survivors of ASCECORPS past engineering failures.
…”We” the citizens of New Orleans have every right to this information from the ASCECORPS on their collusions and double-dealing.
But to put is as siiiimply as I can, speaking strickly for myself, I would say “We The People Deserve the Truth.”
Listen to The People, John, and you will hear “We” every time.

The Corps made its own “claims” in the aftermath of Katrina that have since been proved false, largely because citizen activists like Sandy did not “believe” what the Corps was saying.

I suppose we should all sit back and let people who are “qualified to be an expert” package and bury the fact that New Orleans’ flood protection system was nowhere close to meeting the standards set in 1965 by Congress.

I wonder, what qualified the citizens of Boston in 1773 “to be an expert on anything related” to tea?

As for a response from ASCECORPS on this gauntlet “We” have laid before them for answers…hold your breath.
They have to first confab with their advertising dept at the Corps…maybe even call in one of their Public Relations contractors to handle this hot potato…as stated in the press conference: ASCECORPS needs time, but not to give us the truth. Hell they’ve had over 9 months and Millions of my tax-dollars so far and cannot seem to provide any answers to these glaring ethics violation. No. ASCORPS needs time to formulate a counter-spinfiltration. Bet your flooded booty ASCECORPS is in confab-mode…working the story–but not the problem.
ASCORPS employs –with our tax dollars– very expensive Public Relations ad marketing firms to Spin their Narratives. That is a fact. What a lot of people do not realize is that ASCORPS very deliberately executes those tactics of PR 101, chiefly: if one cannot tell any of the truth, not even one detail of the truth and answer then don’t.
By the way, this is a ‘deadline to divulge’ –which ASCECORPS is 4 months past obfuscating– ASCORPS Its Own Suspect Self Set –not levees.org. We remember back in the fall when they first tried to get out of even responding to Civil Engineer Seed’s letter. They came up with the April deadline. Not musckrats. Not Katrina the Clown. Not We the People or levees.org. ASCORPS set that deadline and now wants more time. Time and water under the bridge –oh, I mean water running under the 17th Street Canal Levee Breech “Repair”.

“I wonder, what qualified the citizens of Boston in 1773 “to be an expert on anything related” to tea?”
Yes, Stuart! Salient point, that….or experts on Revolution I might add.

Hell, we have all seen how dangerous it is, however, to wait for information about leaking levees and flood water –just ask those tax-payers in Lakeland who were complaining to the ASCECORPS about Leakage at the 17th Street Canal Levee–years before that very spot breeched 4 hours after Katrina passed the city and made landfall 50 miles away.

I remember back then when the ASCECORPS said: “Nothing to worry about, folks. It’s just a little seepage. Happens all the time. Trust us, We’re Experts.”
I remember them saying that again this spring when confronted with pictures of flowing water coming from the ground right in front of this very 17th Street Canal Levee Breech.
I saw it Memorial Day (HA!)and stuck my arms into this flowing leak Up To My Elbows. It is lake water. It tastes salty.
So levees.org investigate the leak 30 days after me and it had quadrupled in size (and had migrating waterfowl roosting in it) –sooo then ASCECORPS sent out PO Cephus, who called it “bubbling”, and again said: “Nothing to worry about.”
And yesterday, just to finish off this concept of “Time”, yesterday nearly a month after that, levees.org again visited the 17th Street Leak and again took pictures and found a Salt Water Marsh growing there on top of the leak. Water Grasses in Salt water!
I mean I’m all for Wetlands Restoration, but I thought “We” were talking about the Louisiana coastline. Not Lakeview Neighborhood?

Sooooo, I have a little trouble “waiting” any longer on so-called “experts” ASCECORPS to get its PR Story straight, when what they really need to do is Real Engineering. But they don’t and won’t…do Real Engineering.

ASCECORPS wants time for more PR Spin. They need Time for their allies, John, to attack these people, engineers, who would dane to take ASCECORPS to task on their own bad engineering.

No. As Stuart so eloquently referred, we can no longer Wait for these liars to Flood us again and must perhaps have our own “New Orleans Tea Party” or hey, a Beach Party at the 17th Street Leak! Yeah! We could all go and pull marsh grass and throw it into the canal and just have a great old Boston Time! We can even dress up like we can even dress up like Patriots so nobody will think our Saints had anything to do with it! HA!
Time…the Revelator.

Sorry, a self-appointed group of “flood control expert” community activists no more speaks for New Orleans than Momma D and her crowd of natural disaster experts.

Your belief that anyone questioning your expertise or motivation is making an ad hominem attack is more arrogant and self-absorbed than the government officials you attack for their supposed mistakes made decades ago, to build systems that were never funded.

Your comparing yourselves to revolutionaries is hilarious.

All anyone needs is common sense - not a degree - to see that something is very wrong with the ASCE/Corps of Engineers “goings on.” For goodness sakes - the water is on the wrong side of the levee!!

Bad move, John. I won’t play this game with you as long as you do not read my statements word for word. You are floundering. We are talking about Engineers here. You are attacking people personally. Please either stick to the topic of this fine blog’s post or…get outta heah, ya’her’ah?
This is not a blogger playground for one-up games but theblogofneworleans and the subject matter serious business.
Read my words, Mon. Be a man.

Dear John,

Let’s see you do all the great things that Sandy Rosenthal has done for this NATION. Then you can MAYBE make comments about her.

Thank you, Linda. All anyone in New Orleans needs to do is go to the 17th Street Leak and stick their hands in the lake water flowing beneath that fine Corps Levee Breech “Repair” job. Then they will see …and smell the brackish water. I’m not kidding around here it is scary scary. And if “We” don’t get On It there…as well as the levee wall crisis along Gentilly Woods (reported this week) …and the Newspaper Levees out east then, what? Do they intend to deliberately flood us again? Can anyone be so incompetent –let alone an Engineer? This is the crux of the biscuit with Ray Seeds 48 page letter to his own ASCE regarding their corruption by the Corps. This brings down the entire engineering profession across the Nation –not just the levees in New Orleans. These misdirecting, obfuscating criminals at ASCECORPS call into doubt the very idea of American Engineering –which sent our citizens to the Moon and brought them Back Home when Houston had a problem. Remember? Those engineers didn’t start attacking each other as ASCECORPS. They didn’t try to form tax-exempt political action committees as ASCE is doing right now. They did not run from the problem. Our American Engineers Worked The Problem. And after that the Fixed The Problem.
Make no mistake as we can all see here today, ASCECORPS refuses to Work The Problem, choosing instead to Work The Story, Spin The Narrative, Blame those who would dare oppose them.
Can “We” only imagine what this slight-of-hand with the IPET report has to do with the Corps liability in the upcoming MRGO lawsuit, which Judge Duvall (I am told gleefully, since he reluctantly had to throw out the 17th Street Canal Lawsuits) has ruled can proceed. And if the ASCECORPS loses that MRGO suit, then plantiff’s attorneys have stated that they will then be open to liability for contracting SWB to dredge work on the 17th Street Canal (against better engineering advise) dredging which along the bottom of that levee wall which may very well have caused its failure…dredging that was beyond the mandate of flood control.
Oh yeah, it would serve ASCECORPS well to delay the release of this IPET report as long as possible because their draft report has been ripped by other Engineers, to wit: Dr. Raymond Seed and Dr. Robert Bea (who is plantiff’s expert engineering witness in the MRGO suit and bane of the ASCECRPS because he has 45 years experience in geotechnics.)
Oh yes, they want us to wait…perhaps even after the elections, so they can have Time to use their ASCEPAC defeat our Senator Mary Landrieu, author of:
S. 2826, The 8/29 Investigation Team Act next comes Melancon who introduced it in the House of Representatives.
There are a lot of dominoes in play here.
However…due to citizen engineer organization levees.org “We” The People beg to differ.
It is Time for “We” The People to set the pace, mark the timing as they have proven duplicitous at best, cynical at 2nd best and downright dangerous at worst.

“Let’s see you do all the great things that Sandy Rosenthal has done for this NATION. Then you can MAYBE make comments about her.”

What are you all running a cult?

And, yes John,
“We” are Goddamned Patriots.
Patriots are always damned by those who would Assume The Position of the usurpers.
Real American Patriots, right up there with my father, also an American Engineer, who not only battled the Exquixotic Corps to a standstill over their failed flood control policies in the MS delta, but also single-handedly defeated the Nazis in WW2–just like every other American Patriot then and before…just like the ones who died defeating the British in the other Battle of New Orleans.

Now we are in the midst of, the very front line of the New Battle of New Orleans.

écrasez l’infâme!

Hey everyone, we have a hysterical cartoon sent in by a Gentle’rilla regarding one prominent ASCECORPS punk’lackey, Wee Little Timmy!
Come see the latest from
The Masqued E’vinga!
http://noladder.blogspot.com/

It really makes me proud to know the different people who come to defend New Orleans from all over the country. Really.
Thank you, blogofneworleans!

Geaux Gambit!
Geaux Saints!
Viva La Pucelle d’Orléans!

My Dad and his brother fought and killed other men in the south Pacific during WW II. My Dad’s health was severely impacted by Katrina and then Rita. He could not beleive people were not willing to fight to save New Orleans and coastal Louisiana.

On October 1, 2005 my Dad told me he could do more from Heaven on coastal issues but asked me not to stop until the federal government gave Louisiana the money not only for hurricane protection but for coastal restoration.

For nearly 3 years I have been on the phone with New Orleans and Vicksberg Districts. I have gone to so many scoping meetings and I have witnessed employees of the Corp like Greg Miller who were stunned in June 2006 when Corp admitted New Orleans levees failed. They were not breached.

The Corp changes out district leadership every 3 years. Every person who works for the Corp that I have gotten to know has urged me to get people from other states to write to their delegation.

I am concerned to see that people in New Orleans understand less about this crisis than people from 31 other states who have tried to help us.

United we stand.

I just returned from Houston. My cousins asked me if Texas had this problem do you think the people and the governor and Texas mayors would be standing around argueing about what has to be done?

Texas would go to war to save its state!

Sandy is a real leader. Her facts come from people like Dr. Ray Seed and Dr. Bob Bea and Team Louisiana.

I hope the message of New Orleans and coastal Louisiana is on the platforms at both presidential conventions.

Also has Givernor Jindal signed on to the 8/29 Investigation?

By the way, the 8/29 investigation is not only for New Orleans but for every community that depends on a federal levee.

This is a national imperative. Two million people lived below I-10 and I-12 before the storms of 2005. We will never really know how many people died like my Dad when there was amonth with no phone service, no way to work with Home Health Care and even get routine presciptions. But the number is far greater than the number who died in the flooding and the evacuation. I know this because I have spent three years attending funerals of my Dad’s friends.

OK, so ASCECORPS responded with lightning speed and completely reneged on the things I heard them say last fall.
Remember PR 101 above?
PR 101 2b: I one cannot tell even a smidgen of the truth in responding to damning evidence and public clamor for redress then Say Nothing At All. Nothing. Give not the people more rope with which to hang.
Don’t believe me? Here is a cross post of their statement to levees.org and please read it and weep and tell me these people don’t have a levees worth of sh*t to hide:
——————-
“The Committee on Professional Conduct conducts confidential investigation into complaints of ethical misconduct by ASCE members. The Committee establishes its own timeline for its efforts. No timeline has been provided to anyone other than the Committee and none will be.”

“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.”
———–
Ya’know, I need to know at this point where is our forking money?!?!? Where is one dime of that #35,000,000 We The People paid ASCECORPS and the $250,000 which ASCECORPS further paid itself for this stillborn undead IPET report that they have not provided in the 3 (THREE) years since their wrongly built levees failed and killed 1000s of our citizens.
WHERE IS THE GODDAMN MONEY ASCECORPS?!?!

We need to stop this game in its tracks right now. Sorry, John, but no group of faux engineers dressed in denial has any place to speak to We The Tax Payer as if we work in their offices. ASCECORPS is Not our boss. Not even our Straw Boss.
No. This dog will not hunt.
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 good in Red.

Where Is The Money?
Are they paying Attorneys with this tax money?
Are they using this money to lobby Congress?
http://www.lasce.org/home.aspx#asce501

Is ASCECORPS using our Tax Money to again pay a Top Dollar Public Relations Firm like this one to help them handle this crisis of trust?
http://www.scpr.com/index.htm

Well? Well?
ASCECORPS? Your non-answer to levees.org will not stand any longer than your than your failing levees –which is right now. They are failing Right Now. Not Seaping. Not Bubbling. Failing, and you have the unmitigated feckless hubris to issue a non-statement such as this? BAH! No Soup For You!

Readers may well ask why I am here laying down this rant, rather than over at my own place, the New Orleans Ladder? Here is why. Because I have already said much of this there and you can find it. The reason I am here, is because Gambit and David Winkler-Schmit is covering this malfeasance extremely well and “We” need that. The Times Picayune is on top of these levees too. And WWL and The New Orleans Levee…”we” all are on top of these failing levees, and they are shaky at best, indeed leaking.
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.

Thank you for your time,
Editilla O’rilla d’Aphasia
http://noladder.blogspot.com/

ASCE responds to levees.org on ethics panels’ excessive delays
http://www.levees.org/blog/sandy

A few more salient links fo’da People’s Money:
http://www.lasce.org/home.aspx#Allegations
http://www.scpr.com/usace_cs.htm
http://www.sonshine.com/overview.asp?show=main

Ms. Lillian, I am so sad for your loss. My father as well had a stroke the following Spring after Katrina. I cannot say they were related, but my family told me that while they were up in the delta, having evac’d there to the homestead, looking for me on the TV news coverage of flooded New Orleans, my father saw the 17th Street Canal Levee Breech. (you remember when they were dropping those Volkswagen-sized sand bags which just dissappeared?) Apparently my father, a Ramblin Wreck from Georgia Tech Civil/Electrical Engineer/Lt. Col Air Force Ret stood up and screamed at the TV set, “That Goddamned Levee Failed! It Failed! It did not over top. It Failed!”
As such a hero thusly described, as a retired Lt Colonel he felt that the leaders of the Corps of Engineers should be shot for dereliction of duty, and as an Engineer (who beat the Nazis) he felt the leaders of the Corps of Engineers should he drawn out into the center of New Orleans, tarred and feathered, ridiculed and then shot for being Bad Engineers, breaking the trust.
The last thing I heard him say before the stroke about this greatest civil engineering catastrophe in history is this: “Son, Nothing is more dangerous than a lying engineer, because that means you are no longer dealing with an engineer –but just a liar.”
While I still cannot say they were connected, my father’s stroke and imminent death is the only thing I have ever faced in my entire life greater than the crucifixion of New Orleans and Death Dance of Katrina from the Gulf.

Please take heart, Ms. Lillian, as obviously your Dad left behind children with the heart strong enough to lead us all through the valley of the shadow of death, to carry it on…as well, I can only hope did mine.

Thank you…
and errrahhh,
We Gonna Fight Fo’You No Lie Don’t You Worry’Bout Dat WHERE’YAT!

Thank you, Editilla.

Actually earlier tonight I read my post and discovered I made a mistake.

For so many months the Corp said the levees in New Orleans were overtopped. They claimed Mother Nature was so powerful that the water washed over.

Greg Miller (no relation to me) had presented 3 CAT 5 Scoping meetings in Lafourche and Terrebonne. I had left a message for him to call me.

The next morning I read the Times-Pic and discovered the Corp was admitting the levees did not overtop. They breached. They failed from below.

A few minutes later Greg returned my call and started the conversation about overtopping. I told him that nola.com had the story about levees failing.
He was stunned.

Last winter when the Corp. started talking about hundred year protection, I began investigating that promise the President made about CAT 5 protection. The Dutch plan for a 10,000 year event.

As I began going up different chains of the command with Corp all the way to DC, I could not find the answer.

A friend in Washington DC called that office and asked who determined Louisiana would only get one hundred year protection.

He called me back. He said it was the commander in chief. I asked if he meant of the Washington, DC Corp. commander. He said no. The Commander in Chief of the US. The Great Uniter! The Decider in Chief!

The Commander in Chief that demanded wetlands be built in Iraq…the very best money could buy.

An engineer can do more harm than a medical doctor. An MD might be responsible for the death of a few people. An engineer is taking responbility for constructing structures to protect thousands of people.

Engineers who do not work for the Corp actually have their name attached to the projects they build.

The Corp hires outside Big East public relation firms. This came out during the flooding in Mid-West.

My Dad did not want me to even have his memorial service until Louisiana got the money for hurricane protection and coastal restoration. He said we would only have the national focus for a brief time so he wanted me to make the most of every day and every hour before Katrina fatigue left our state in the dark. I have not scattered his ashes yet.

I am working with people from other states who want to get New Orleans and Louisiana coast on agenda for both conventions.

It is nice to be able to inspire each other as we share on this blog but we need to mobilize from Cameron to Covington. Do you have any suggestions on how we can unite community and industry and government?

Do you think we could cut out the role the US Army Corp. plays in building levees and swamp and marsh and hire the oil companies to do it.

They have ventured out into the Gulf of Mexico beginning in 1947 taking the oil patch where man had never gone before. The WW II vets came back from the war with new techology, equipment and experience in naval opertaions, diving. They had a sense of certainity as well as adventure and were not afraid to risk their lives taming this new frontier, the oceans, the last earth bound frontier.

I am not talking about making them donate money but actually giving them the jobs and allow them to make money on it.

My Dad helped pioneer the venture out to sea.

Dad could not understand why we would try to destroy and rebuild a country over seas when we could not even repair infrastructure in US.

My out of state relatives do not understand how Louisiana can be in this state 3 years later.
Thank you for inspiring me!

What hurts more than Dad’ death is the ten thousand people in terrebonne parish that have never recovered.

Every day I feel my Dad’s spirit giving me the energy and determination not to let go of this coastal obbession. I go to sleep at night imaging a three tiered 24 hour day operation:

building barrier islands
creating new marsh and swamps with pipeline sediment and filling in pipeline canals while introducing small fresh water deversions.
building sturdy levees.

I dream for that every dollar spent on levees another dollar will go toward marsh and swamp creation.

I pray for wisdom of our political leaders and for the rest of America to see what the situation really is.

I pray the people of Louisiana can come together across all socio-economic lines and take our message to the nation with one mission, one message, one voice.

If not, we are going to drown!

Lillian, the average age of WWII vets is about 85 or so, it is estimated over a 15000 WWII vets die every day. Death of old people is a natural thing. My mother died at 96 before Katrina, you think worrying about the big one we were told about every hurricane season hastened her death?

I pray you get help for your obsession and to handle the losses with which you seem ill equiped to cope.

These WWII analogies could be insulting to those that actually suffered losses and fought Fascism and later Communism.

John

Do you work for the Corp?

Do you live in New Orleans?

Could you explain why you do not want hurricane protection and coastal restoration for a state whose combined ports handle greatest tonnage of goods in US. 30 percent of this nation’s energy is produced in or flows across Louisana shores.

The seafood industry supplies greatest amount of sea food to 48 states on mainland.

check it out:
www.Lacoast.gov
www.americaswetlands.com
www.coalitiontorestorecoatallouisana
www.saveourlakes.org
www.betnep.org
www.usgs.gov

Lillian:

No. I do not work for the Corps or have any connection with them,

Yes, I live in New Orleans.

I can’t even understand how you logically reach the absurd assumption that I oppose flood protection for this region. But I understand why you feel compelled to create a logical fallacy to defend your cult of community activists riding this disaster.

You guys are very quick to allege ill motives and criminal behavior about others but seem to freak out when just your expertise or motives are questioned. Why should your organization not be transparent?

Lillian, you rock. John lives in Tin Can Trailer Trash. Leave him sleep. Let him lie like a dog.

Levees.org certainly seems to include a charming group of people, is the above more of your “adorable satire”?

Southeast Alaska offers a solution for New Orleans.
Southeast Alaska has great amounts of rock available To fill in your lowland residential areas. Many populated areas of Southeast Alaska must remove rock to develop new population centers and loading that rock onto barges is not difficult. The barges could them be towed to New Orleans and off-loaded. Thus much of New Orleans could be raised above the flood. With enough rock they could have a view.