News Briefs

Pregnant (Again) and Poor

This op-ed by Nicholas Kristof is about a woman in Haiti who, at 30, has ten children that she cannot afford to take care of. I'll admit, my first reaction upon reading the description of the article was "she needs to stop fucking". It always saddens me to hear about children who are unwanted and poorly cared for, which is why I'm devoutly pro-choice. But after reading the article, I can see how she ended up in the situation that she's in, and find it depressing that despite the US and Haiti both being countries that oppress women, at least here she would have had a better chance finding contraception that agreed with her.


FEMA Won't Pay for Charity

FEMA will not pay the $492 million needed to replace Charity Hospital. They believe that Katrina was only responsible for $150 million worth of damage. I haven't really kept up with this fight over Charity Hospital. I think FEMA sucks in general, but from what I've heard only the first few floors of Charity were flooded. This leads me to believe that, aside from blown out windows and the typical hurricane damage, much of what needs to be repaired now is because the city left the building to sit for almost four years without doing any work on it. Doing something like that will increase the cost of repair, just like it has with the homes here that have been left to rot.



Tracie Washington Can Post City Council's Emails Online

I'm curious to see what's in them. I know Tracie Washington. The Louisiana Justice Institute did a lot of legal work with the organization that I used to work with, most notably for the fight to keep public housing open. I haven't worked closely with her, but I know enough not to trust her. I always got the feeling that the poor people who we worked with were distasteful to her. She's claiming that this is about transparency, but I think that this is more about projecting the image of "change" and "honesty" so she can capitalize on Obama's mantra and run for mayor, city council, or some other political position. Also, it's about making the white people on the council (at least one of whom may be running for mayor) look bad.

ETA: Spoke too soon, the state Supreme Court has now blocked her attempts to release City Council emails.

ETA 2.0: Uh oh, they released some of Stacy Head's emails anyway. Since I can't stand that bitch, here they are.

ETA 3.0 This keeps getting better. 3 local stations have received discs containing various emails. I've got to admire the fight in Tracie; I thought she would have backed down by now.