Useless Carcass of Steel

The NYT has a full on awesome account of the Deepwater Horizon disaster that digs into the industry's belief in the Blow Out Preventer.

Needless to say, the article demonstrates this faith was misplaced.

BP's Do-over

The WSJ has a solid graphic about the latest tactic BP is trying on the Deepwater Horizon blowout:

Oh, and the MMS exempted all drilling in the western and central Gulf of Mexico from having to make environmental assessments.

Yes, you heard that right.

(H/t Propublica)

Rudyard Griffiths on BP: What about all the wells that didn't have a blowout?

You have to love this guy. Rudyard Griffiths interviews Felix Salmon on the BP mess. When faced with a total catastrophe where BP is unquestionably to blame, Griffiths bravely stands up for the oppressed oil industry:

Felix Salmon: ...it doesn't make sense to blame the government for the oil spill unless you're blaming government for not regulating enough.

Rudyard Griffiths: But, Felix c'mon. I mean, let's be a little bit fairer to what has been a fairly good record of corporate stewardship up to this point in the Gulf. I mean we're talking 32,000 wells operating in that area. Yes, a tragic, a horrific accident that we're dealing with now, but y'know is there a sense of overreach here where the media, y'know just feeds on those images of the oil pumping out into the sea and suddenly, y'know the heavy hand of government y'know clasps around the throat of a not unimportant part of an American industry that's crucial to their energy security?

Felix Salmon: I don't know what throat you're talking about here. The fact is...the question is how many layers of safeguards do you have on these wells? How certain can you be that they will not fail?

Rudyard Griffiths: Well, 1 out of 32,000 ain't too bad

Felix Salmon: Well, it looks quite bad to me. The fact is that 1 out of 32,000 is one too many, and if there is a 1 out of 32,000 chance of this happening - then you shouldn't have 32,000 wells.

Rudyard Griffiths: Airlines crash, unfortunately airliners crash every month somewhere in the world - hundreds of people die horribly. But we don't ban the airline industry. Y'know, in other words accidents unfortunately happen.

Felix Salmon: I don't think we're banning undersea drilling either.

1 out of 32,000 is clearly one too many, as Mr. Salmon points out. This is the worst oil spill in US history - don't try to act like it is offset by the fact that another well hasn't had a similar catastrophe.

Not only that - but, it's a weak argument to point out all the wells that haven't blown up and sunk when all of these wells are not equal. Wells that operate a mile below the surface clearly pose a greater risk than those who are merely a few dozen yards underwater. The success of simpler procedures isn't a guarantee that more complicated procedures will be safe. Neither do those successful wells offer much in the way of options when a well in deep water blows up.

Take the airline analogy into this logic: Say an airline decides to save money by packing its aircraft to the gills with people and carrying the bare minimum of fuel to arrive at their destination. This ups the consequences of a disaster (more lives per plane) and increases the likelihood of a disaster (less fuel = less options like diverting in case of trouble).

Eventually this policy will result in a catastrophe. In Griffiths' world, we'd ban the airlines - but in the real world, we'd add regulation that set a maximum number of passengers and required planes to carry additional fuel.

Mr. Griffiths? Nice try - but you sound like a total idiot.

WSJ on Deepwater Horizon

The WSJ has a marvelous two parter that's been making the rounds.

• BP Decisions Set Stage for Disaster
• There Was Nobody in Charge
  
  and from the second article...Talk about hubris (emphasis mine):
  
  "In the minutes before the Deepwater Horizon exploded, almost no one on board realized that serious trouble was brewing, other than a few men on the drilling floor—the uppermost of three levels on the massive structure. The sea was as still as glass. A cool wind blew faintly from the north. Capt. Kuchta was hosting two BP executives on board for a ceremony honoring the rig for seven years without a serious accident."

Ow. That stings a little.

(H/t Felix Salmon and CJR)

Haliburton to BP: We Blame You

Click to enlarge

Nola.com and other sources are claiming that BP had invited a testing firm called Schlumberger (SLB) to perform something called a Cement Bond Log (CBL) test in the days before the rig went nova.
In the words of Tim Probert, a Halliburton's executive, the CBL is "the only test that can really determine the actual effectiveness" of the well's seal.

For some reason, the SLB folks left the Deepwater Horizon without performing the CBL test.

The rumor mill is citing a considerably more dramatic version of events.

• SLB shows up to do test
• SLB sees oil rig is "kicking heavily", tells BP to shut down the well.
• BP does not.
• SLB asks to be taken off the rig
• BP tells them to wait for the next flight.
• SLB charters their own helocopter and leaves as soon as possible.
• Hours later the Deepwater Horizon blows up.

However, the rumor mill has a number of things wrong (Nola.com's account says the SLB folks were only on standby to perform the test, were not asked to and then left on a regularly scheduled BP flight). Nor was BP required to perform this test:

According to Probert, government regulators at the Minerals Management Service don't require a well owner like BP to order a cement bond log unless it feels uncertain about any of the earlier tests. It's not clear what the results of the positive and negative pressure tests were.

But the human drama of the rumor mill would seem like a good place to start asking questions, though. Did the SLB folks see a well that was "kicking heavily?" - Did they ask to perform their test? Were they concerned for their safety or that of the rig?

Haliburton is clearly making the case they they were in the right - but their version is more information that can be used to pry more information out into the open.

We'll see what BP's response is - and if the SLB folks are willing to go on the record.

(H/t Felix Salmon)

Spillcam

House and Senate members have posted live camera feeds of the BP oil spill.

Below is footage taken from that feed.

• Sen. Nelson's website
• House committee on global warming

(H/t E and MSNBC)

Shoving Pizzas Under the Door

Amid the latest account of how godawful the BP gulf oil mess is becoming was a great soundbite from the Coast Guard's Admiral Allen:

Thad W. Allen, the Coast Guard admiral in charge of the response to the spill, said Wednesday evening that the government had decided to try to put equipment on the ocean floor to take accurate measurements. A technical team is at work devising a method, he said. “We are shoving pizzas under the door, and they are not coming out until they give us the answer,” he said. 

 I feel better already.

Oh, and (from the same NYT article)

• The big scientific question now is what is happening in deeper water. While it is clear that water samples have been taken, the results have not been made public.
• On May 6, NOAA called attention to its role in financing the work of a small research ship called the Pelican, owned by a university consortium in Louisiana. But when scientists aboard that vessel reported over the weekend that they had discovered large plumes undersea that appeared to be made of oil droplets, NOAA criticized the results as premature and requiring further analysis.
• Under scrutiny from NOAA, the researchers have retreated to their laboratories to finish their analysis.

Deepwater in Big Pictures

Boston.com's The Big Picture does the Gulf oil disaster:

Blobs of oil from the massive spill float on the surface of the water on May 5, 2010
in Breton and Chandeleur sounds off the coast of Louisiana. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Gulf Oil Spill: Say it With Pictures

NOLA.com has some great visuals on the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Case in point:

(H/t MissPriss)

1,000,000 Gallons a Day

The WSJ is quoting two experts who put the leak rate for the Deepwater Horizon at between four and five times the current estimate of 5,000 barrels a day:

John Amos, a geologist who has worked as a consultant with companies such as BP, ExxonMobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC on tracking and measuring oil spills from satellite data, said NOAA raised its estimates to 5,000 barrels a day after he and his colleagues published calculations that showed the original figures were far too low based on the NOAA data. Amos has also previously participated in a joint industry-NASA study using satellite imagines to detect and track oil slicks.

Mr. Amos said the 5,000 barrels a day is the "extremely low end" of their estimates. He said, based on NOAA maps, a more realistic figure is 20,000 barrels a day.

The same article puts that in perspective thusly:

Ian MacDonald, professor of oceanography at Florida State University who specializes in tracking ocean oil seeps from satellite imagery, said there may already be more than 9 million gallons of oil floating in the Gulf [as of April 30], based on his estimate of a 25,000 barrel-a-day leak rate. That's compared to 12 million gallons spilled in the Valdez accident.

Interior Department officials said it may take 90 days to cap the leaking well. If the 25,000 barrels a day is accurate and it leaks for 90 days, that's 2.25 million barrels or 94.5 million gallons.

25,000 Barrels/day
x 42 gallons/barrel
1,050,000 gallons per day

Exxon Valdez was 12,000,000 gallons

Deepwater Horizon beats Exxon Valdez in 12 days - that'd be tomorrow.

I have to believe they'll beat six weeks to cap this thing. The NYT is posting some details on what is going to be attempted.

(H/t trainreq)

More on the Horizon

Check out Grist's slideshow on the gulf oil disaster.

Not only are the pictures impressive, but you learn things like:

1) They've been trying to use robots to switch on safety measures underwater (as in, take robot to control panel, use robot arm to pull lever, hope it works).

So far, it hasn't worked.

2) They're currently building a "recovery system chamber" - a massive metal dome - to drop over the wellhead and stop the leak. They've never used a dome this big, nor have they used one at this depth. Cross your fingers.

3) The oil slick is currently 16 miles away from Lousiana's Delta National Wildlife Refuge.

(H/t Good blog)

Flames on the Horizon

The oil rig Deepwater Horizon

While it's far too early to know exactly what events led to the explosion, fire and sinking of the oil rig, Deepwater Horizon - you'd be hard pressed to come up with a bigger black eye for offshore drilling.

Consider:

• Eleven people are missing and presumed dead
• This occurred less than 50 miles from shore.
• The oil rig is state of the art, with a replacement cost of well over a half a billion dollars.
• The wellhead is continuously leaking thousands of barrels of oil a day.
• The preferred method for sealing the leak could take months.
• The resulting oil slick is headed into the delta of the most significant river in the country
• The oil slick will be set on fire - to reduce it by 3%.
• Offshore drilling is regulated by the (utterly disgraced) D of I Minerals Management Service.

Check out The Big Picture's post on this They have some commentary and some photos of the rig and the fire that help you appreciate the size of this mess.

That's not to presume corruption or ineptitude played a role. What happened may very well have been unavoidable.

-But the visuals are just unbelievably bad.

Danziger Bridge: Blown Wide Open

(Via TPM)

Looks like the Danziger Bridge scandal was as bad as alleged. Here's a cop admitting as much:

As Lance Madison ran toward the Friendly Inn, a motel at the bottom of the bridge, Ronald Madison trailed approximately 20 to 30 feet behind him. The [Lousiana State Police] car moved to cut off Lance Madison and, in so doing, briefly pulled slightly ahead of Ronald Madison, who continued to run after his brother. As Ronald Madison then ran past the slowing LSP car, heading toward the motel, he passed by defendant HUNTER and defendant HUNTER had a clear view of him. Defendant HUNTER saw blood on Ronald Madison's shirt, and thought he might have been shot. Ronald Madison, who was running with his hands in view, had no weapon and posed no threat. Ronald Madison did not change his direction, turn around, or stop running as he passed the LSP car. Instead, Madison continued to run away, following his brother, who was a short distance ahead of him. At no time as Ronald Madison ran, did defendant HUNTER see him turn toward the officers, reach into his waistband, or make any threatening gestures.

As the unmarked LSP car pulled to a stop, Officer A, without warning, fired a shotgun at Ronald Madison's back as Madison ran away in the direction of the motel. Defendant HUNTER immediately got out of the car and went to where Ronald Madison was lying on the ground. Ronald Madison was alive, but appeared to be dying. He was lying on his side, with two officers standing nearby. Neither defendant HUNTER nor either of the other officers searched Ronald Madison for a weapon.

As Ronald Madison lay dying on the pavement, Sergeant A ran down the bridge toward Ronald and asked an officer if Ronald was "one of them." When the officer replied in the affirmative, Sergeant A began kicking or stomping Ronald Madison repeatedly with his foot. Sergeant A appeared to be striking Madison's torso with as much force as he could muster. Defendant HUNTER charged toward Sergeant A, who backed off from Madison. As defendant HUNTER walked away, an officer standing nearby appeared shocked that HUNTER had confronted Sergeant A.

Daylight on Danziger Bridge

"Ace them at the grand jury tomorrow, son. Wear the smart-looking suit and ace them."

(Via Nola.com)

Admitting a cover-up of shocking breadth, a former New Orleans police supervisor pleaded guilty to a federal obstruction charge on Wednesday, confessing that he participated in a conspiracy to justify the shooting of six unarmed people after Hurricane Katrina that was hatched not long after police stopped firing their weapons.

...

It's unclear when Lohman's cooperation with federal authorities began, but he presumably is prepared to testify against the officers he says helped him lie about the circumstances of a shooting he immediately deemed a "bad shoot."

Lohman, who pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy to obstruct justice, admits he failed to order the collection of evidence or canvassing of witnesses, helped craft police reports riddled with false information, participated in a plan to plant a gun under the bridge and lied to investigators who questioned police actions.

That'd be police officers committing assault, murder, false arrest, conspiracy, lying to federal investigators and planting evidence.

Blame it on free money

We find each $100 of FEMA-provided disaster relief increases the average state's corruption by nearly 102 percent. Our findings suggest that notoriously corrupt regions of the United States, such as the Gulf Coast, are in part notoriously corrupt because natural disasters frequently strike them. They attract more disaster relief, which makes them more corrupt.
-Peter Leeson (George Mason) and Russell Sobel (West Virginia U.)
Weathering Corruption (2008)

E passed along this little nugget from the Clarion Ledger

Gulfport mayor, wife indicted in Katrina fraud

A federal grand jury Wednesday indicted the Gulfport mayor and his wife on 16 counts of Hurricane Katrina-related fraud involving more than $222,000 in government grants they received to repair damage to a beachfront house.

Mayor Brent Warr and Laura Jean Warr potentially could face decades in prison and up to $4 million in fines if convicted on all counts.

[snip]

The Warrs are charged with filing fraudulent paperwork and making false statements to get federal grants to repair damage caused by the 2005 storm. According to the indictment, both the mayor and his wife at various times from September 2005 through January 2007 signed various documents claiming the aid for the house, although the home was not their primary residence.

It's a bit of a step down, as corrupt Gulf Coast mayors go, but it's still good old home-grown corruption.
I can't imagine the Warrs will get the maximum sentence [210 years each in prison and fines of up to $4 million each] but this will probably torpedo Mr. Warr's higher political aspirations.

Then again, this is Mississippi we're talking about.

mbar 958

 

Pre-landfall projections, via the NHC

The only positive is the barometer reading (at least as of this writing) is at 958.

It's not much of a upside, but it was 942 a few hours ago. Katrina got down to 902.

Mississippi's knight falls on his sword

If Elliot Spitzer was a white knight - his foil would look a lot like Richard "Dickie" Scruggs.

Scruggs, a self styled champion of the victims of hurricane Katrina, has now pled guilty to bribing a judge over a dispute with his fellow litigators. Scruggs created the Scruggs Katrina Group (SKG), which apparently tag teamed with the Mississippi AG's office to win money from insurers over their scant payouts for storm damage.

Scruggs nabbed millions upon millions in the tobacco civil suits and (I'm guessing) smelled a similar windfall if he went after State Farm's deep pockets.

Insurance turned out to be a better fighter than tobacco, and SKG started crossing lines and butting heads with his own - all in pursuit of the big payoff.

I'm no fan of State Farm, but the claims were always rather thin - and those who suffered from the storm deserved a better champion than this man.

He might get five years, which would be nice.

Not nearly as interesting as a high-priced call girl, but just as stupid.

Fighting the good fight

I forget where I first heard about New Orleans reporter, Chris Rose – but it must have been NPR. Rose was a columnist working the gossip/celebrity shift at the Times Picayune until Katrina hit.

Then he became the voice of the city, raging against what nature and incompetence had done to New Orleans.

Then he went nuts.

CJR has a great article about the man. Worth a look.

The Redemption of Chris Rose
By Barry Yeoman

Rose’s writing was as urgent as anyone’s. “I saw a dead guy on the front porch of a shotgun double on a working-class street and the only sound was wind chimes,” he wrote in his September 7 column, the first after his return. From then on, three times a week, he brought readers into a world where intimacy and darkness often commingled.

He wrote about the friends and strangers who gathered on his stoop every night, including a couple who returned home only to make a drunken suicide pact a few weeks later—they couldn’t stand living in “the smoking ruins of Pompeii.” The man killed himself; the woman didn’t. Rose wondered aloud, “Where are we now in our descent through Dante’s nine circles of hell?”

Only in Mississippi

This is old news, but it is starting to freshen up a bit. The most recent developments involve ex-Senator Trent Lott, so perhaps this story is worth another look.

Emptywheel got me started on this one, so here's the best summary I can come up with:

In the months following hurricane Katrina, homeowners insurance claims were being denied en masse. Insurance companies justified this on the basis that the destruction of their homes had been attributed to flooding, which is not covered by homeowners insurance.

Incensed homeowners argued that their houses had been destroyed by wind as well as water. Surely, they argued, their insurance covered the portion of damage caused by things other than rising water?

What happened next is highly contentious – but the allegation is that insurers (most notably State Farm) pressured inspectors to rule water in and rule wind out in their damage assessments.

The result is that angry homeowners who had lost their homes became angrier still.
And then things get interesting.

I'll let the New Orleans Times Picayune do the talking here:

Mississippi suffered its greatest damage from Katrina in well-heeled sections of coastal communities where residents were most equipped to fight back. Sen. Trent Lott and Rep. Gene Taylor were among the plaintiffs in Mississippi, pushing Congress to repeal insurers' federal anti-trust exemption and investigate their post-storm claims practices before a national audience. Mississippi's legal system also allowed high-profile tobacco lawyer Dickie Scruggs, Sen. Trent Lott's brother-in-law, to threaten punitive damages, and allowed the state's attorney general, Jim Hood, to hire extra lawyers on contingency to press his criminal investigation.

So, now we have Dickie Scruggs, civil litigator extraordinaire, suing State Farm. Scruggs forms the Scruggs Katrina Group (SKG), a consortium of litigators to bring a massive suit against the insurers – to bring money back to aggrieved homeowners.

At this point, most of us are still cheering. "Yea! Get those no good insurance bums! Stick it to them!"

There's more:

Two whistleblowers enter the picture. (also via nola)

Hood's efforts were aided by Cori and Kerri Rigsby, two sisters from Ocean Springs, Miss., who worked for a State Farm contractor that managed teams of adjusters. The whistleblowers bolted with 150,000 pages of documents that they say shows that State Farm defrauded policyholders by manipulating engineering reports to deny claims. The Rigsbys turned them over to Scruggs, Hood and Dunn Lampton, the U.S. attorney in Mississippi.

So, the Rigby sisters claim to be appalled at what they are seeing, and flat out steal their employer's documents and hand them over to a litigator. Standard whistleblower M.O.

The Atty. Gen of Mississippi is investigating insurers in the state, and is also using these documents to bolster his case.

In January of 2007, State Farm agrees to settle. Checks are sent out to the homeowners.
In April, Nationwide Insurance agrees to settle.

Score one for the little guys!

Except… this is Mississippi.

A dispute between members of SKG over legal fees gets ugly and (gasp!) it ends up in court. Struggs is accused of bribing the judge to to rule in his favor.

The bribe was reportedly offered via an intermediary – an attorney named Timothy Balducci. Apparently, the judge reported the bribery attempt to authorities (genuine gasp!) and played along so that authorities could get their man.

They did. Balducci appears to have rolled over big time – as authorities have released transcripts of his comments (via the WSJ):

…it ain’t but three people in the world that know anything about this … and two of them are sitting here and the other one … the other one, uh, being Scruggs … he and I, um, how shall I say, for over the last five or six years there, there are bodies buried that, that you know, that he and I know where…

Transcripts that include words like "um" and "uh" indicate that the conversation was recorded. We know Balducci's not talking about literal bodies, but it can't be good news for Scruggs.

Neither can this (via Insurance Coverage Blog's David Rosmiller):

One thing that shocked me was one of the entries in the notes of Brian Ford, an engineer [whose engineering report has been advanced as evidence of State Farm's dismissal of reports that supported claim payments]

…Now I have seen some of Brian Ford's redacted notes before. ...But Judge Robert Walker on December 12 required Ford to turn over the unredacted notes, and wow, there was a lot of stuff missing from the redacted version.

[in the unreduced version] Ford's notes recount an apparent conversation between Special Assistant Attorney General Courtney Schloemer and an SKG attorney: "they agreed that a criminal conviction could help civil cases." If you don't believe me, you go read it for yourself, that's what it says!

An assistant to [Mississippi Atty. General] Jim Hood discussing with a private litigant the potential indictment and conviction of the other party and how that might aid that litigant. If the Ford notes accurately reflect what happened, that is outrageous.

So, you have SKG attorneys meeting with assistants to the state attorney general coordinating criminal prosecutions to benefit SKG.

As in "Hey, you threaten the insurance industry with jail if they don't settle. We'll hold the line on a deal so we get millions of dollars."

Hood's office even went so far as to claim Scruggs was a confidential informant for the AG in order to stop contempt charges against him (related to not turning over the Rigby documents).

Scruggs is in hot water, Atty. Gen. Hood is in the mix; isn't there anyone just doing the right thing?

Those principled Rigby sisters, perhaps?

Perhaps not. Via Rosmiller's blog

-they went to work immediately after leaving [the State Farm Adjuster firm] in June 2006 as "consultants" to Scruggs, with no specific duties, at annual salaries of $150,000 paid from SKG funds

We finally arrive at Trent Lott, brother in law to Dickie Scruggs.

Remember how he just sort of resigned from his job? No real reason. He just felt like one year into his six year term was the perfect time to do something else.

Looks like Trent was lighting up the phones about how mad he was at State Farm. This by itself is understandable. But when powerful people get angry, they are afforded options that you and I simply don't have.

I haven't seen enough information to know for certain that Mr. Lott was pulling strings for his now-indicted brother in law –but he was talking to Brian Ford. So much so, that Ford took down these notes (via folo):

9/25/06 TRENT LOTT CALLED
- CALLED TO THANK ME FOR MY HELP
- TRENT WANTED TO PUT A TEMPORARY PERSONAL TRAILER ON HIS LOT. CITY SAID - “RAISE 9′, PUT UP A RETAINING WALL, GET INSPECTIONS. VERY FRUSTRATING & RUNNING PEOPLE OFF. … SO THEY WILL JUST STAY IN DR. THOMPSON PLACE AFTER IT IS FIX UP. ONLY PROBLEM IS, DICKIE SCRUGGS STAYS THERE TOO.
- TRENT HAD JUST TALKED TO CARY [sic — Kerri?] RIGSBY - STATE FARM WHISTLE BLOWER …
- FEDERAL LAW EXEMPTS INS. CARRIERS FROM ANTI TRUST LAWS (THEY CAN COLLUDE). THEY GET TAX BREAKS. AS CHAIR OF THE SENATE INSURANCE COMMITTEE, I AM GOING TO CHANGE THAT.
. . .
- TRENT WOULD FORGO HIS $ TO GET S.F.

This by itself, is nothing. But Mr. Lott is talking to the Rigbys, talking to a key witness in the early litigation, is living with Scruggs – and he hates State Farm with a passion.

Ya s'pose he might have acted on those impulses?

Ya s'pose he might have left fingerprints when he did so?

I dunno either. But I gotta tell ya, I feel like getting some munchies and sitting down to watch what happens.

Moment of silence

Anyone who knows me knows that I have never had much love for the south. Aside from the food - there's hardly anything about the place that agrees with me.

The climate, the culture, you name it - it rubs me the wrong way.

But I swear, seeing how the region is today just makes me cry.

This is a video taken of the lower 9th ward in New Orleans. It was taken two months ago.



There are other videos like this. Videos that without a caption could easily be sold as having been filmed months after Katrina.

But you know they weren't.

I am sure there are areas of the city that are vibrant and alive - areas where brave and determined people are fighting back from having lost everything.

Yet here is this film. A car still in a tree, rubble and ruin all around - and the storm is two years gone.

The 9th ward is just one part of a city, and New Orleans is just part of a larger disaster.

One of the sore points in my mother's part of the coast is that New Orleans garnered the lion's share of attention - despite the fact that the coastline east of the city was arguably much harder hit. The random fact that fewer people lived on that coastline is the only reason the death toll along Mississippi's I-90 wasn't many times higher.

My point is, those who dismiss this video as just a highlight reel should really look at the current state of communities like Waveland or Long Beach. ABC news had aerial shots of the coastline and those were no less astonishing.

Sure people live there, and new construction abounds - but there are still entire neighborhoods with empty slabs where houses used to be.

This is America. As a little kid I was raised on the limitless industry and power of this country. We could do anything. Obviously, as an adult - I know there are limits. But it still just breaks my heart.

The Christmas of 2005 there were still tent cities out by Pass Christian and Gulfport. There were shrimp boats laying all over the shores of Back Bay, because there just hadn't been time to get to them yet.

This was four months later. It was shocking, but you could almost accept it given the scope of the whole thing. There were still highways shut down because there were casinos straddling the lanes.

But it's been two years. Two years of "makin' progress" and "workin' hard," and we still have an American city with an entire district rotting in the sun.

And that's just one damn video of one damn neighborhood of one city that was on the weak side of the storm.