full-time investing; total portfolio up over 130% in 2009; but 2010 sucks!
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By Eric Lipton, Christopher Drew, Scott Shane and David Rohde
New York Times News Service
09-11-2005
The governor of Louisiana was 'blistering mad.' It was the third night after Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans, and Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco needed buses to rescue thousands of people from the fetid Superdome and convention center. But only a fraction of the 500 vehicles promised by federal authorities had arrived.
Blanco burst into the state’s emergency center in Baton Rouge. "Does anybody in this building know anything about buses?" she recalled crying out.
They were an obvious linchpin for evacuating a city where nearly 100,000 people had no cars. Yet the federal, state and local officials who had failed to round up buses in advance were now in a frantic hunt. It would be two more days before they found enough buses to empty the shelters.
An initial examination of the storm’s aftermath demonstrates the extent to which the federal government failed to fulfill the pledge it made after the Sept. 11 attacks to face domestic threats as a unified, seamless force.
Instead, the crisis in New Orleans deepened because of a virtual standoff between hesitant federal officials and besieged local and state authorities, interviews with dozens of officials show.
Federal Emergency Management Agency officials expected the state and city to direct their own efforts and ask for help as needed.
Leaders in Louisiana and New Orleans, though, were so overwhelmed by the scale of the storm that they were not only unable to manage the crisis, but they were not exactly sure what they needed.
FEMA appears to have underestimated the storm, despite a warning from the National Hurricane Center that it would cause "human suffering incredible by modern standards." The agency dispatched only seven of its 28 urban search and rescue teams to the area before the storm hit and sent no workers at all into New Orleans until after Katrina passed on Aug. 29, a Monday.
On Tuesday, a FEMA official who had just flown over the ravaged city by helicopter seemed to have trouble conveying to his bosses the degree of destruction, according to a New Orleans city councilwoman.
"He got on the phone to Washington, and I heard him say, ‘You’ve got to understand how serious this is, and this is not what they’re telling me, this is what I saw myself," Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, recalled.
The Louisiana National Guard, already stretched by the deployment of more than 3,000 troops to Iraq, was hampered when its New Orleans barracks flooded. It lost 20 vehicles that could have carried soldiers through the watery streets and had to abandon its most advanced communications equipment.
Partly because of the shortage of troops, violence raged inside the New Orleans Convention Center, which interviews show was even worse than previously described. Police SWAT team members found themselves plunging into the darkness, guided by the muzzle flashes of thugs’ handguns, said Capt. Jeffrey Winn.
Shortly after the storm hit, by midafternoon on Aug. 29, New Orleans seemed to have been spared the worst of the storm. But when widespread flooding hit, serious weaknesses in the machinery of emergency services were exposed.
Focus on terrorism
Michael D. Brown, FEMA director, whom President Bush had publicly praised a week earlier for doing "a heck of a job," was pushed aside on Friday, replaced by a take-charge admiral.
Questions had been raised about FEMA, which had been swallowed by the Department of Homeland Security, established after 9/11. Its critics complained that it focused too much on terrorism, hurting preparations for natural disasters, and that it had become politicized.
Brown is a lawyer who came to the agency with political connections but little emergency management experience.
The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents FEMA employees, had written to Congress in June 2004, complaining, "Seasoned staff members are being pushed aside to make room for inexperienced novices and contractors."
In 2002, Joe M. Allbaugh, then FEMA director, said: "Catastrophic disasters are best defined in that they totally outstrip local and state resources, which is why the federal government needs to play a role."
Federal officials vowed to work with local authorities to improve the hurricane response, but the plan for Louisiana was not finished when Katrina hit.
State officials said the plan did not yet address transportation or crime control. Terry Ebbert, director of homeland security for New Orleans since 2003, said he never spoke with FEMA about the state disaster blueprint. New Orleans had its own plan, which pointed out that about 100,000 people did not have transportation to evacuate, but few details were offered to shelter them.
As Hurricane Katrina bore down on New Orleans, Mayor C. Ray Nagin largely followed the city plan, eventually ordering the city’s first-ever mandatory evacuation. Although 80 percent left, as many as 100,000 people remained.
Ebbert decided to make the Superdome the city’s lone shelter, assuming the city would have to shelter people in the arena for only about 48 hours, until the storm passed or the federal government came and rescued people.
As early as Friday, Aug. 26, as Katrina moved across the Gulf of Mexico, officials in the watch center at FEMA headquarters in Washington discussed the need for buses.
Someone said, "We should be getting buses and getting people out of there," recalled Leo V. Bosner, an emergency management specialist with 26 years at FEMA and president of an employees’ union. Others nodded in agreement, he said.
"We could all see it coming, like a guided missile," Bosner said of the storm. "We, as staff members at the agency, felt helpless. We knew that major steps needed to be taken fast, but, for whatever reasons, they were not taken."
When the water rose, the state began scrambling to find buses. Officials pleaded with various parishes across the state for school buses. But by Tuesday, Aug. 30, as news reports of looting and violence appeared, officials began resisting.
But the slow pace and reports of desperation and violence at the Superdome led to the governor’s frustrated appeal in the state emergency center on Wednesday night.
Symbols of despair
The confluence of these planning failures and the levee breaks helped turn the Superdome and the Convention Center into deathtraps and symbols of the city’s despair.
Two-thirds of the 24,000 people huddled inside the Superdome were women, children or elderly, and many were infirm, said Lonnie C. Swain, an assistant police superintendent overseeing the 90 policemen who patrolled the facility with 300 troops from the Louisiana National Guard. And it didn’t take long for the stench of human waste to drive many people outside.
Swain said the Guard supplied water and food — two military rations a day. But despair mounted once people began lining up on Wednesday for buses expected early the next day, only to find them mysteriously delayed.
By Friday, the food and the water had run out. Violence also broke out.
By the time the last buses arrived on Saturday, he said, some children were so dehydrated that Guardsmen had to carry them out, and several adults died while walking to the buses. State officials said Saturday that a total of 10 people died in the Superdome.
At the Convention Center, the violence was much more pervasive.
"The only way I can describe it is as a completely lawless situation," said Winn, head of the police SWAT team.
Those entering the Superdome were searched for weapons. At the Convention Center — which took in a volatile mix of poor residents, well-to-do hotel guests and hospital workers and patients — there was no time for similar precautions. Gunfire became so routine that large SWAT teams had to storm the place nearly every night.
Winn said armed groups of 15 to 25 men terrorized the others, stealing cash and jewelry. He said policemen patrolling the center told him that a number of women had been dragged off by groups of men and gang-raped — and that murders were occurring.
Winn said the armed groups even sealed the police out of two of the center’s six halls, forcing the SWAT team to retake the territory.
One night, Winn said, the police department even came close to abandoning the convention halls — and giving up on the 15,000 there. He said a captain in charge of the regular police was preparing to evacuate the regular police by helicopter when 100 Guardsmen rushed over to help restore order.
Before the last people were evacuated that Saturday, several bodies were dumped near a door, and two or three babies died of dehydration. State officials said that 24 people died either inside or just outside the convention center.
The state officials said they did not have any information about how many of those deaths were homicides. Winn said that when his team made a final sweep of the building last Monday, it found three bodies, including one with stab wounds.
Winn said four of his men quit amid the horror. Other police officials said that nearly 10 regular officers at the Superdome and 15 to 20 at the Convention Center also quit, along with several hundred others across the city.
Winn said, most were "busting their asses" and hung in heroically. Of the terror and lawlessness, he added, "I just didn’t expect for it to explode the way it did."
As the city become paralyzed, so did the response by government. The fractured division of responsibility — Blanco controlled state agencies and the National Guard, Nagin directed city workers and Brown, the head of FEMA, served as the point man for the federal government — meant no one person was in charge.
People watching on television saw the often-haggard governor, the voluble mayor and the usually upbeat FEMA chief appear at competing daily press briefings and interviews.
The power-sharing arrangement was by design, and as the days wore on, it would prove disastrous.
"Our typical role is to work with the state in support of local and state agencies," said David Passey, a FEMA spokesman.
That meant the agency most experienced in dealing with disasters and with access to the greatest resources followed, rather than led.
Stuck in Atlanta
The heart-rending pictures broadcast from the Gulf Coast drew offers of every possible kind of help. But FEMA found itself accused repeatedly of putting bureaucratic niceties ahead of getting aid to those who desperately needed it.
Hundreds of firefighters who responded to a nationwide call for help in the disaster were held by the federal agency in Atlanta for days of training on community relations and sexual harassment before being sent to the devastated areas.
William D. Vines, a former mayor of Fort Smith, Ark., helped deliver food and water to areas hit by the hurricane. But he said FEMA halted two trailer trucks carrying thousands of bottles of water to Camp Beauregard, near Alexandria, La., a staging area for the distribution of supplies.
"FEMA would not let the trucks unload," Vines said in an interview. "The drivers were stuck for several days on the side of the road about 10 miles from Camp Beauregard."
Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., who interceded on behalf of Vines, said, "All our congressional offices have had difficulty contacting FEMA. Governors’ offices have had difficulty contacting FEMA." When Arkansas repeatedly offered to send buses and planes to evacuate people displaced by flooding: "They were told they could not go. I don’t really know why."
On Aug. 31, Sheriff Edmund M. Sexton, Sr., Tuscaloosa County Sheriff and president of the National Sheriffs’ Association, sent out an alert urging members to pitch in.
"Folks were held up two, three days while they were working on the paperwork," he said.
Some sheriffs refused to wait. In Wayne County, Mich., which includes Detroit, Sheriff Warren C. Evans got a call from Sexton on Sept.1.
The next day, he led a convoy of six tractor-trailers, three rental trucks and 33 deputies.
"I could look at CNN and see people dying, and I couldn’t in good conscience wait for a coordinated response," Evans said. He dropped off food, water and medical supplies, and by Sept. 3, the Michigan team was conducting search and rescue missions. "We lost thousands of lives that could have been saved."
NAUG profile data:
Last: 4.50
Bid/Ask: 4.30/4.50
Market Cap 43,686,000
Shares Outstanding 9,708,000
Thoughts about New Orleans:
The obvious: It's a God-awful mess.
Big changes will occur in the area:
Baton Rouge will grow. Only question is how much.
Awhile back, Galveston was a large and thriving city. A hurricane came thru and devastated the city. After that, many companies and people relocated to the Houston area. Similarly NO has been devastated by Katrina, and many companies and people are already relocating to Baton Rouge. Perhaps that's just part of the natural order of things, but it is very possible that NO will not be rebuilt totally like all the optimists assume it will be. It is much more likely (and perhaps more responsible) that some parts of NO, particularly those associated with the port, will be rebuilt. It is also likely that a large portion of the devastated residential areas will be rebuilt inland, that is, away from the areas so far below sea level.
Fixing or replacing the inadequate levee system:
Supposedly the Amsterdam, Netherlands area is surrounded by a double levee system which provides protection in case the outer levee is breached. This approach is very expensive, but if NO is rebuilt, we should expect a double levee system or something much more massive than the Cat3 levee that has been proven to be inadequate.
Oops you did it again... it's like you are claiming to have a monopoly on truth.
Left did this; liberal media did that;
Pure Unadulterated Poppycock!
Save me; throw me in the briarpatch; somebody suggest another survey,,,, anything... help, I'm drowning in swirling rhetorical arguments.
Per communication with NWAU/NAUG, financials should be posted in next couple of weeks. Name and symbol change had to happen first...
NKBS presentation to Roth Capital Partners was pretty positive. I assume the buying over last few days is directly attributable to their presentation and good fundies. Another presentation next week. Should continue higher from here....
(I like NKBS but wish I still owned ASPN though)
You said, "The next time we have a disaster maybe thay can assess the facts instead of running to Reverend Jackson, Carol Mosely Braun, and punk rappers. "
Is it a coincidence that you mention only blacks in your condemnation of whom CNN interviews? ... or is it an indication that you do not trust the views of people who are black?
You said,
"I predicted this emotional attack by the left was coming well before the hurricane hit. The informed know the truth. The uninformed have always been liberal anyway. Always have been. Always will!"
Gee, that seems a little emotional and biased and closed minded, don't you think? I don't read CNN's coverage as just accusing the President; rather I see them asking the questions that many non-media people have been asking. The main question remains, "Why did it take so long for help to arrive?"
We should assume that the Mayor, Governor, President and many others have done many things wrong and many things right. That's the way it is; some decisions are good, some are bad, and some cause more deaths than others. It is not possible to allocate deaths to each of the various decisionmakers based on the degree of poor judgement. We are just witnessing another American tragedy that could have resulted in many fewer deaths, so we want to know why it happened and what needs to be done to avoid this kind of pointless tragedy in future.
Good news breeds good humor. Congrats, and good luck as we look forward to the market's SPIKING our EGG NAUG. Cheers!
www.grifco.org
not www.grifco.com
cws9, Great to get that report from the front lines. Where are you located and what company publishes this info?
Thanks in advance.
The bodies are being collected and taken to a makeshift morgue(s), but the job needs to be done much faster. Everybody talks about the disease and bodies rotting in the muck, but now that the 25,000 body bags have arrived, let's ask these National Guard and Regular Army soldiers to collect the bodies from the water and cremate or bury them as soon as possible.
Nagin said on TV the other nite that when he and the governor and president were on AF One, they were discussing what to do, and Bush supposedly said he could order troops in now, but govornor said something like "give us 24 more hours", so she will probably get some bigtime blame down the road.
Despite my own sentiments, Bush is not the only boob involved in this screw-up. Turf issues and questions over whether to just use National Guard or bring in the Regular Army seem to have cost many lives that could have been saved with a faster response.
It's a true tragedy; we will eventually know what should have been done better, but only too late, that is, when the investigations are complete.
A nice bumper sticker...
and another...
http://costofwar.com/embed.html
So floods suit your beliefs then?
What do you suggest we do with the persons displaced by the floods? Should they all move to George's ranch to become cowboys to better themselves, or might you post other ways that you may deliver them from evil.
The poor are the most rigorous at signing up to join the military, so they are fighting the wars that keep you safe (and squeaky clean).
It is not about WE (privileged who only need tax relief) vs. THEY (those who need government support occasionally), because WE are all individuals with our own trials and tribulations.
You are NO BETTER than any of the people who died or were displaced from their homes by Katrina. You are just more MORE FORTUNATE.
Is it fair to say that your father was a wee bit conservative too? Your argument sounds like what I used to hear (from my father-in-law) a generation ago.
Nevermind... I just found the ignor(amos) button.
OT: Midas, TVIN has had some large trades last two days... one trade yesterday looked like 375000 and today a 55000 trade went thru at the open... drifting lower again today on higher than avg volume...
OT: TradeStation users? Is anyone aware of a TradeStation user's board? Supposedly they think their platform promotes more analytical trading by using various triggers to buy/sell instead of emotions. If anyone has strong opinion on TradeStation platform for charting/trading, please let me know.
stockpeeker@gmail.com
Most of the coverage we see is in the parishes that include or adjoin NO. Further to the south/southeast, there are quite a few other persons still needing assistance.
BTW, persons still stuck in attics probably grabbed some tools on the way to the attic so they could cut holes for ventilation (and escape if the waters kept coming).
NKBS is looking very undervalued at this price. Closing at $2.29 today, it is now within 8% of its 52wk low. Trailing 12mo PE of 6.7? Geepers, I am incredulous. Did they recently buy some oil wells at the mouth of the Mississippi or something? Well, I know that ain't so, but the slow slide has got me befuddled.
Does anybody have any insight as to why NKBS price has been sliding lately? If so, please advise.
OT: Please move off topic discussion to VMC Survey Board. XOM is certainly not a VMC.
LOL
Lentinman, I would contend that this board has digressed from conducting and discussing interesting surveys to becoming just another run-of-the-mill rant board. Too bad.
Might you consider limiting the scope of this board to VMC SURVEY BOARD in future to reduce the conflict and dissention that the inflammatory rants promote? Perhaps you would consider opening a new survey to allow voting on whether this board should be used for political rant vs. surveys and discussions thereof.
IMHO: It's just not necessary to use this VMC SURVEY BOARD for rants when so many others exist for that purpose. One reason I suggest the above is that good investing is best accomplished without the complication of extreme emotions, so removing the forum for emotional outbursts here might promote better portfolio performance and community spirit within our little VMC community.
Your assertions are steep with exaggeration.
OTC,
1. Where do you get off with "CNN is AL Jazeeera."???
2. Didn't you promise to disappear last week........?
Bobwins, the author of that article, its presumptions and conclusions is even more out of touch with reality in America than George Bush. The author was exposing his own arrogance and intellectual elitism. It was abominable for him to assert that all those who are suffering and dying in New Orleans are responsible and to blame for their own plight just because they are poor, uneducated and without means to escape.
I used to live in Bay Saint Louis, MS 20 years ago. Here is an interesting article about some survivors in Bay Saint Louis, which was hit directly by Katrina. I am trying to find Jay Egloff, an old friend of mine mentioned in the article as having survived by floating on a slab of roof for seven hours.
http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050831/NEWS0110/508310387/1260
Make no mistake about this ... I am biased as I am personally attached to the area as I used to live there. In fact I was living there thru a hurricane about a week after I got married.
Best Regards... to all survivors!
Keep in mind, too, that fewer US refineries operating has resulted in fewer bidders for the crude, thus the price of crude has drifted lower due (seemingly, but not really) to less demand. This is an artificial effect. As the refined product is made available by other countries for auction to US companies next week, prices for crude and refined product will probably begin to surge higher again. . .
IMHO, since oil price has dropped over the weekend, Monday and Tuesday may be good days to buy oil companies or oil futures, as I think crude oil and oil producers (with uninterrupted supply) will continue their upward movement in coming weeks.
Some of you may be misunderstanding what is happening. Other countries are not DONATING oil and refined product. They are making the product available FOR SALE to US buyers. Big difference.
Rogue, I did not suggest that you SHOULD be banned. I just made the point that your namecalling could be considered a personal attack, which is specifically prohibited by IHub.
As for your extreme views, I think you are way off the mark on many of the things you post herein, and your use of the term "truth" is not particularly convincing.
Personally I believe that there are many relative truths in the world, but you seem to accept and appreciate only those views that support your own existing ideas of what is absolutely true. Thus your strong opinions may be keeping you from a more realistic understanding of what is really true.
This is just my honest opinion, and believe me when I say that my view of the US Govt is jaundiced at best. I give Bush full credit for starting an unjust war in Iraq, but I do not give him a large percent of the blame for the loss of lives in Louisiana. That situation is a growing tragedy where the true number of dead (much like in Iraq) will never be known.
Best Regards
Wade, I think you have continued to misinterpret GV's news release. It said they have not received any contract awards for work in MS, AL, or LA yet, but he did say their crews are fully booked currently doing repairs for S. FL.
I took the PR as an indication that there is high probability that GV will receive work in AL and MS as FEMA contracts that work. I tried to buy some GV Friday on the dip, but it bounced back up while I was riding and watching CAV move up.
Yes, CAV EPS should benefit over the next 6-12 months.
I spoke to Mike Murphy (handles CAV IR duties) and he indicated their business is 15% mobile homes (single-wides) and 85% manufactured homes. Their manufactured homes are assembled at their facility then transported to buyer's location. While he expects to receive orders from FEMA for single-wide mobile homes, he also expects larger orders later as people without homes use their insurance payouts to buy CAV's manufactured homes.
One of their big competitors is Colonial.
Regards, and good luck.
Rogue,
1. By calling someone an "ignorant fool Simpleton", you are attacking another member of Ihub, which is unacceptable, so please be careful or someone (not I) may ask that you be banned.
2. As surely as OTC is NeoConLoving, then you are a NeoLibLoving. Accept the fact that you will never change OTC, nor will he ever change you.
3. The president (a right-wing fundamentalist for whom I have no great respect, by the way) certainly did not order Katrina, nor does he deserve a great degree of blame for the deaths that occurred during the aftermath. Should he have cut short his trip to deliver a speech praising the military? Well, yes, probably so. There's nothing new about g. Busch's propensity to exhibit poor judgement. However, his poor judgement in following advice to attack Iraq has nothing to do with the slow response in New Orleans.
4. The local police and national guard were not up to the task of providing law and order in NO. That was their appointed task, but they failed due to lots of factors. The lawlessness that broke out after Katrina contributed directly to the slow response by FEMA in NO. To protect FEMA personnel, FEMA finally requested troops come in to establish law and order, particularly regular Army and other special units of the military. It took longer than everyone wanted for the military to arrive on the scene. When they did, they exhibited their expertise in handling human tragedy (they had plenty of OJT in Iraq for this).
5. The storm covered a greater areal extent than was ever expected, thus the plans that were in place fell well short of the many tasks at hand.
6. Great efforts are now underway, and for that we should all be thankful.
7. As the displaced people (refugees from AL, MS, LA) try to settle into other areas, it is up to our federal, state and local government and and charitable organizations and businesses and individuals to do what we can to help the victims recover and gain new opportunities for success.
8. We should all do what we can when we can to help others that need our help. It's basically time to get back to the Golden Rule.
Perfect. Please kiss Mr. Sheep for me.
Regards...
About Mr. Sheep's performance, does this imaginary creature have a statistical advantage by virtue of 7 picks vs. 6 for all us real creatures?
Assumption: Mr. Sheep has 7 picks because #6 and #7 were selected by the same number of real participants. The worst performing pick has more impact on a total of 6 picks than a total of 7 picks.
Theory: If Mr. Sheep has 7 selections working for him, then he has an advantage. In particular, his worst performing stock is buffered by having 6 others to raise the average. Might it be fairer to weight Mr. Sheep's #6 and #7 at half the weighting of the other 5, thus allowing the first 5 to have the same weighting as other contestants and #s 6 and 7 to have half the weighting as other contestants' picks?
Personally I like the idea that Mr. Sheep represents the concensus of the VMC community, but the potential advantage of the 7th pick may be giving our concensus pick more credit than is statistically deserved. I suppose the answer to this uncertainty may be determined by looking to see whether Mr. Sheep's #6 and #7 picks are doing better than the average of his other 5, which would verify they are providing the statistical advantage over the rest of the field. Just a thought as we are now only a third of the way thru the contest.
Why would I think of condemning Mr. Sheep? Jealousy, I guess, as I was actually at #2 once upon a time, and my performance has now fallen to #40. But perhaps the reason I have fallen so far is that one of my 6 picks was WHAI, and if I'd had 7 picks, I doubt I'd have fallen so far so fast.
In once sense, as everyone on TV is pointing fingers at others for the slow start in New Orleans, I thought it would be a more productive waste of my time to just point the finger at Mr. Sheep instead of watching TV.
Gee, I thought this board was created to conduct a survey and to deflect nonVMCchatter to another place, but I certainly didn't think you were creating it to be a place for heated conflict.
Give the heated rhetoric a rest. We all lose out when investors with stockpicking expertise waste their energy on rants with various rhymes and reasons.
These are emotional times ... worry about the victims rather than worrying about whom to blame. Bottom line is FEMA wasn't ever expecting a catastrophe to be so widespread, so when they spread their resources too thin, NO seems to have suffered the most.
CAV, I bought some today as well, thinking FEMA deliveries will begin very soon.
CAV and other mobile manufacturers (FLE, the biggest one) must be working flat out today, as they will only be able to deliver to FEMA according to inventory on hand.
OT: Maybe crude prices are down (for last 2 days) just because there are fewer refineries to bid up the price of crude. As the refineries get back online and their bids are added to the pot, crude prices will continue their climb. As a longshot, it's possible we will see $90 this fall. At any rate, I believe $90 will be here before $40/bbl.
JMHO, now let's have a bang-up day growing our portfolios.
RGEN under water today. Anybody hear of negative news on RGEN?
SSKILLZ1, very much obliged for your summary of CGNW, and good luck today w/ your portfolio.
CGNW results, as posted in the news release, were fairly sketchy-to-ambiguous.
Note they did not mention quarterly details, just annual results. ALSO, PR did not mention DILUTED eps.
They did refer to Edgar for details. Has anyone had a chance to decipher the 10Q for CGNW yet?