[StBernard] who is it

[Westley Annis]

Today's T-P had an article about "the Bush administration" taking a pen to
the COE report that was going to be very specific as to what had to be done
to bring our basin to Cat. 5 protection. As Mary Landrieu expressed it,
everyone is very disappointed that all the hard work and thought that locals
and the COE did to create a blueprint report, was watered down to a
"decision matrix".

I'm tired of decision makers hiding behind their government agencies. 
Things like "FEMA says" or "the Bush administration" says, frustrate me.
Just tell me WHO or which exact office/dept. of government did the hatchet
job. I can't believe George W or Dick Cheney went through the COE's draft
report and sent it back to the New Orleans District COE directing them to
delete specifics and make it a cafeteria plan of choices. That makes this
long-awaited report a report about a report, i.e. no conclusions nor
recommendations.

Can't a good reporter find the source? Any elected official reading this, do
you know the culprit? Any COE employee, can you anonymously leak the source
of this directive?

Transparency, accountability, responsibility- where is it? Isn't that how
democracy is supposed to work? Isn't that what we are fighting for in other
countries?  If some decision maker felt that strongly about giving us a
"decision matrix" instead of real recommendations,  then why hide behind
"the Bush Administration" veil?  Is it because a real plan can be debated,
cost estimated, evaluated for cost/benefits, have public hearings, etc. and
a "decision matrix" is table of "here's what you could do" and it sits
around gathering dust.

Folks, we're beyond the point of "here's what we could do". The local levee
boards, COE New Orleans District, DOTD, and elected officials have told our
congressional leaders since Betsy what we could do to protect this area and
the federal money went elsewhere anyway.  Now billions are spent to clean up
and repair what could have been prevented for many times less money. And
speaking of money, a lot of federal dollars went to the COE to produce this
report, yet it seems the draft report was ditched for this "decison matrix"
report. So we all paid for a blueprint, and are going to get an artist's
rendition. 
Try a build a program on an artist's pretty picture.

Anxious to see the matrix, Deborah Keller