Mayor Nagin proclaims the Chocolate City.

Ball now in Louisiana's court says George Bush on January 26'th according to the TP. Well that's almost right, here's what he actually said at a White house Press Conference on Thursday January 26, 2006:

Q The administration has rejected a local plan to rebuild New Orleans, and your administrator down there, Don Powell, said that the focus for federal money should be to rebuild for those 20,000 homeowners who were outside the flood plain. Critics, local officials say that that ignores so many people in New Orleans, the poorest of the poor, the hardest hit areas, people who didn't have flood insurance or didn't expect the levees to break. And they feel, sir, that this is a certain betrayal of your promise that New Orleans would rise again. So why did you reject it? And do you think that the people of New Orleans have to expect that there is a limit for the extent to which the city can be rebuilt?

THE PRESIDENT: The Congress has appropriated $85 billion to help rebuild the Gulf Coast. And that is a good start; it's a strong start; it's a significant commitment to the people whose lives were turned upside down by that -- by those -- by that hurricane.

Secondly, we have said that we look forward to the time when each state develops its recovery plan. I, early on in the process, said it's important for the folks in Mississippi to come forward with a recovery plan. And it's important for New Orleans and the state of Louisiana to work together to develop a state recovery plan. And the reason I said that is because I was aware that folks in Congress will want to spend money based upon a specific strategy. We've got to get comfortable with how to proceed. Those plans haven't -- the plan for Louisiana hasn't come forward yet, and I urge the officials, both state and city, to work together so we can get a sense for how they're going to proceed.

Now, having said that, I recognize there were some early things we needed to do to instill confidence. One of them was to say that we will make the levees stronger and better than before, and study further strengthening of the levees. In other words, I recognize that people needed to be able to say, well, gosh, we can't even get started until we got a commitment from the federal government on the levees.

A lot of the money we're spending is prescribed by law, but we also went a step further and proposed to Congress, and they accepted, the CDGB money so that monies can actually go directly to individual families that need help. We'll continue to work with the folks down there. But I want to remind the people in that part of the world, $85 billion is a lot, and secondly, we were concerned about creating additional federal bureaucracies, which might make it harder to get money to the people.

Gov. Blanco disagreed angrily with the President. She said:

"Louisiana has a well-defined bipartisan plan for reconstruction  that the White House just doesn't want to accept" She said the Baker plan was a linchpin in the plan that would provide money for housing and free the CDBG money for vital infrastructure and economic development.

Where is that plan? Is she referring to the BNOB report rejected by the City Council and being supported piecemeal by the Mayor. Or is she talking about some LRA working papers? It almost sounds to me like we are arguing about posse comitatus again or maybe looking for those buses. The LRA plan is progressing according to its own timetable. Calthorpe, Duane Plater-Zybek and Urban Design Associates are pursuing a planning process with workshops scheduled for February. Certainly that's not what Gov. Blanco is referring to.

And what about that $85 billion. When I can figure it out I'll detail it. It looks like there may be some double counting and some money that has not been released or spent and some other stuff. For example:

Congress in the meantime is wondering what is going on? A subcommittee was reportedly stunned to learn that $400 million they allocated for storm related health care services had not been released by FEMA (oops, please forgive my use of that four letter word again). One hospital administrator commented that "All I keep doing is filling out applications." You see Congress had passed legislation to streamline the process. DHHS (thats Health and Human Services) said "I don't know that there is a problem with the process."

Oh and Congress is in another snit with the President over what they claim is a gag order he's placed on senior administration staff to discuss Katrina. He claims that forcing them to testify will inhibit his ability to get good advice in the future. He also seems to be claiming that he has sent plenty of requested documents although Congress says not. He is so concered that he has appointed his own investigation to concentrate on lessons learned. In his words:

Q I know. Mr. President, as you're saying Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath is one of your top priorities.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

Q Why is it that this administration is not allowing the senior -- your senior staff that you conversated [sic] with prior to Hurricane Katrina, during and after, to testify, to interview or talk with congressional leaders? And why not push Michael Brown, who is now a private citizen, to go before them, as he is what many are calling a linchpin to the whole issue?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, let me make sure you have the facts. We have given 15,000 pages of White House documents to the investigators, congressional investigators; some -- I think it's 600,000 pages, administrative documents. We have sent a fellow named Rapuano to talk about -- he's a White House staffer -- to talk to the committee. There have been a lot of interviews. There have been public testimony.

As a matter of fact, we are so concerned about this that we've started our own investigation to make sure that lessons -- that we understand the lessons learned from this. This is a problem we want to investigate thoroughly so we know how to better respond on behalf of the American people.

And so we're fully cooperative with the members of the House in -- of the Senate, and we'll do so without giving away my ability to get sound advice from people on my staff. You see, April, here's -- and this is an issue that comes up all the time, and you might -- we've had several discussions like this since I've been the President. If people give me advice and they're forced to disclose that advice, it means the next time an issue comes up I might not be able to get unvarnished advice from my advisors. And that's just the way it works. But we've given thousands of pages of documents over for people to analyze.

Q Does that include Michael Brown?

THE PRESIDENT: Pardon me?

Q Does that include Michael Brown?

THE PRESIDENT: People who give me advice, it will have a chilling effect on future advisors if the precedent is such that when they give me advice that it's going to be subject to scrutiny.

Now, we've analyzed -- we've given out all kinds of pages of documents for people, and we're cooperating with the investigators. And that's important for the American people to know. What's also important is we want to know how we can do a better job. And so we're having a lessons-learned investigation, led by Fran Townsend. And -- anyway, we need to know.