post-Katrina blog

Transition.

This blog has been very useful over time, and I like the TypePad set-up, more or less.  BUT. 

As this semester winds down, I find I am using other web resources more often than this particular blog, and that I probably don't need the extended services that TypePad offers.  Also, I am very interested in promoting free and, to the extent possible, non-commercial use of computer-mediated communications.  Therefore, I am considering (strongly atm) moving class notes and whatnot that I might post to this blog to a free weblog service:  Wordpress.

See over there.  Or perhaps over here.

I will likely be experimenting through August to see how well this works.  For now, continue to check here.

The Road Home, the SBA, and all that.

Yesterday, Ronnie Collins, who identified himself as a loan officer from the SBA, called.

Ronnie said that, despite information we received on December 11 from Kathy Valentina [Valentinsic?] at the SBA, that we could not use the LA Road Home grant to reduce our SBA loan monthly payments.  Well, actually, Ronnie said, we could reduce that payment to some degree, but the amount of that reduction would be capped based on our 2004 income, according to SBA policy as relayed to us by Ronnie.

This being news to me, I asked Ronnie if this SBA policy was written down somewhere.  Ronnie said yes.  I asked Ronnie where I could access this policy, and Ronnie said I could not.  I asked Ronnie where he had accessed this policy, and he said it was an SBA policy.  And so we went around like that for a while.

Of course, having talked to lots of people like Ronnie on the phone during the past two and a half years since Katrina, I realized where this conversation was going very quickly even if, initially, Ronnie did not.  The conversation would go to and the conversation would end with Ronnie saying this is the way things are done, and that the people who these things are being done to have no assurance that these things are being done consistently or fairly or even legally, but nevertheless this is the way these things are being done and blah blah blah and boo hoo hoo and tick tock says the clock on the wall.

So that's the way the conversation ended.

So blah blah blah and boo hoo hoo and tick tock says the clock on the wall.

Classes cancelled today.

No class today, I am sick.  You are not (I hope), so you still have to do stuff.

What you have to do is Quiz #1.

CMMNA100 students will find Quiz #1 here -->

http://www.loyno.edu/~dmyers/S08_classes/08S_CMMNA100/08S_CMMNA100_quiz1.htm

CMMNA400 students will find Quiz #1 here -->

http://www.loyno.edu/~dmyers/S08_classes/08S_CMMNA400/08S_CMMNA400_quiz1.htm

Follow instructions.  Print the quiz.  Answer the questions.  Be sure to type your answer to #3.

This quiz is due at the beginning of class, Thursday, Jan 24.

from Vernor Vinge, A Deepness in the Sky

There were so many ways that an intelligent race could make itself extinct.  Deadlocks and runaways, plagues, atmosphere catastrophes, impact events -- those were the simplest dangers... even with the greatest care, a technological civilization carried the seeds of its own destruction.  Sooner or later, it ossified and politics carried it into the fall. (p. 310)

Spring 08 CMMNA400 readings

I understand there is some delay in accessing the readings at the library.  I am aware of the problem.  The readings below should be on 2-hour reserve at the library soon.

• DeFleur, M. L. & Ball-Rokeach, S. (1982). Theories of mass communication (4th ed.). New York: Longman. (Chapters 1 & 7)
• Schramm, W. (1985). The beginnings of communication study in the United States. In E. M. Rogers & F. Balle (Eds.), The media revolution in America and in western Europe (pp. 200-211). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Keeping count.

Our scheduled closing date for our (taxable) Road Home grant was cancelled and rescheduled twice by the Road Home folks during the past six months and  prior to our most recent closing date of December 10.

We then rescheduled our December 10 Road home grant closing date in order to speak to the SBA about the necessities involved in paying taxes on our (taxable) Road Home grant.  We were then given December 17 as a new closing date for closing on our (taxable) Road Home grant.

Subsequently, that date was cancelled by the Road Home folks and rescheduled for December 20 at 1 pm.

And then, subsequently after that, we cancelled that date and rescheduled for December 20 at 9 am.

In between one or more of these, the Road Home folks called and tried to cancel our closing date because of some reason I didn't listen to fully because I was saying no, please don't do that.

So, I'm counting three actual (and one attempted but failed) cancellations by the Road Home folks and two cancellations by us.  They are still ahead.

Our grant -- based on the value of our flooded and now demolished home minus our insurance proceedings -- is supposed to be about $130K, of which probably one-third will go back to the folks who are giving it to us as taxes, since we not really receiving a Road Home grant so much as a (taxable) Road Home grant.  And, since the full amount of our (taxable) Road Home grant will immediately be sucked up by the SBA and forceably applied toward paying off the SBA loan we got in order to be able to buy a new house less likely to be flooded and then demolished, the taxable portion of our (taxable) Road Home grant will then come out of the same place our twenty-years worth of insurance premiums came out of:  our pocketbooks.

And, oh yeah, we have to stay in Louisiana for three years after the date of the closing of our (taxable) Road Home grant (not the date of the storm, which was two years ago); if we do not stay in Louisiana for this period, then we owe the Road Home folks about $80K.

So, I'm figuring that if we pay taxes on our (taxable) Road Home grant and then move out of the state prior to the expiration of the three-year residency requirement, then we will have been required to pay all of our Road Home grant back to the folks who gave it to us.

I have no further commment at this time.

It's just a shot away.

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/r/rolling+stones/gimme+shelter_20117862.html

I don't think Mick was referring to posting words on blogs exactly.  But who knows?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/12/04/blog.arrest.ap/index.html

The Road Home Hoho.

For the second time, our scheduled Road Home closing has been cancelled.

This time -- based on what we've been told by the First American Title Company (no word whatsoever from the Road Home or ICF or whatever other shell company is in charge) -- because, as a part of receiving the SBA loan that we used to relocate outside flood-prone New Orleans, we were asked to (and gladly) signed a document confirming that our property in New Orleans (which flooded with 8 feet of water and had to be demolished) is in a flood-prone area and, therefore, ineligible for future federal disaster assistance should anyone ever be stupid enough to build a home there again.

The reasoning now seems to be this:  Although we are eligible by all other criteria for Road Home funds, because of this document -- "Notification of Disqualification for Future Federal Disaster Assistance" -- the Road Home program is uncertain that they will be able to resell our flood-prone property to some poor unsuspecting sucker who might have otherwise, in the absence of this document, not realized that the property is in a flood-prone area.

Assumedly, if the Road Home program buys properties in flood-prone New Orleans that are actually in flood-prone areas but have not been designated as such by an SBA document such as the one we signed, then all is okay and these properties can be sold to as many poor unsuspecting suckers as the Road Home can find.

And, no, I could not make this up.

Justing kidding on the just kidding stuff.

Corps corrects its correction on flooding estimates

Oops. Maps on Old Metairie, Lakeview risks are right after all

Monday, November 19, 2007

***

Like, whatever.

Army Corps of Engineers: "Just kidding."

Remember this post --> http://masscomgrad.blogs.com/mass_com_grad/2007/08/odds-are.html ?

I was fairly negative about the T-P's fairly positive portrayal of how much improvement the Army Corps of Engineers had wrought.  Now, it turns out, when the T-P, doing its professional media thing, spruces up what they are told and wraps it in a pretty graphic ribbon and doesn't know or care or have the time or resources or expertise necessary to find out the information they are reporting on themselves, then they tend to report whatever extraordinarily and shamefully inaccurate bs falls into their laps.

So the T-P in this case -- and probably most media news in most cases -- ultimately rely on conventional wisdom.  And, if you rely on conventional wisdom, then you don't really need to do any reporting whatsoever.  You can just do the talk show thing and talk about what other people said about what other people said.  Which, I guess, is exactly what happens.

In any case, turns out that the Army Corps of Engineers made a boo-boo.  All that hurricane protection stuff that the T-P blew up into a major news story marking the anniversary of Katrina was wrong.  Extraordinarily and shamefully wrong.  So the Army Corps of Engineers made a boo-boo and the T-P made a boo-boo.

http://blog.nola.com/times-picayune/2007/11/flooding_estimates_are_off_by.html

But everything's okay:  No penalty, no foul.