New Orleans steps up in Iraq War effort: Army tests new PsyOps tactics on 'Yats'

You know, if we just let President Bush and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco do for Iraq what they've done for South Louisiana -- particularly for New Orleans -- that just might be a workable game plan.

I project the insurgency would crumble in a year, its spirit and will broken. After all, look how well the pilot program is going in finishing off Louisianians, who bear some small, yet not insignificant, similarity (particularly the colorful New Orleans tribe sometimes known as the "Yats," or Howsicus Yo'mamacus An'demensis) to the squabbling hordes of old Mesopotamia.

From the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

The yellow award letter from the state Road Home program -- meant, at long last, to be the final statement of a flood victim's federal rebuilding grant -- started on a celebratory note: "Congratulations!"

With all their savings tied up in their flooded-to-the-ceiling Lakeview house, and desperately needing that money to live, Saul and Mildred Rubin, both in their 90s, had been waiting for their grant award for months. In the meantime, they have been reluctantly living in a West Bank retirement community paid for in part by their children.

So what was the good news?

The government estimated the damage to their uninsured, 2,000-square-foot home -- which took on nearly 9 feet of water from the nearby 17th Street Canal breach -- at $550.

Even if the Rubins wanted to return to the devastated block of slab homes, they couldn't: The damage estimate, combined with a deduction because of a previous FEMA grant, concluded that the Rubins don't qualify for a rebuilding grant at all.

The letter does not make clear how Road Home officials calculated the Rubins' damage, but based on the $130-per-square-foot formula officials use to estimate repair costs for severely damaged homes, the couple's estimated damage would have totaled about $260,000.

In another case, April Allen, 37, a biological research technician living with her husband and two children in a FEMA trailer park, received a Road Home letter that estimated the catastrophic damage to her Vista Park home in New Orleans at just $6,430.

The two families' dilemmas are not unique, as a smattering of letters to the editor, weblogs and phone calls to state offices attest. Melanie Ehrlich, a founder of the New Orleans advocacy group Citizens' Road Home Action Team, said she has seen 15 yellow final award letters and found errors in 11 of them.

Among those errors: insurance proceeds for repairs to fences or outbuildings being counted against homeowners in reducing the amount of their Road Home grants; and FEMA payments for rental assistance -- a separate program that has no bearing on house repairs -- counted in deductions.

"I'm sure that a very large (number) of mistakes have been made because of the rush to get letters out quickly," said Ehrlich, a Tulane University human genetics professor.

Road Home administrators say they cannot publicly discuss the specifics of any applicant's case.

But officials with the state Division of Administration and Louisiana Recovery Authority who monitor the program said that, at this point, they have not noticed a major problem with errors in final Road Home award letters.

Residents who think their final award letter is incorrect can file a formal appeal, but Road Home staffers acknowledge they don't encourage such a step because it could cause delays in resolving problems. Instead, they recommend that homeowners call the Road Home assistance number, then press 6 and a "resolution" expert will respond as soon as they are able.

Road Home spokeswoman Carol Hector-Harris said that if a resident files a formal appeal, it's unknown how long it will take. "We haven't done any yet," she said.

Road Home administrators -- though they recently conceded a 25 percent error rate in so-called "preliminary" award letters -- dispute charges that they are still fumbling on a grand scale in the final letters, which they printed on yellow paper to distinguish them from the earlier, mistake-ridden batch.

Hector-Harris said "mistakes may happen here and there," but she could not estimate what the error rate might be in the final letters. She said Road Home officials have found no systemic pattern of foul-ups.

She suggested that some complaints about inaccuracies stem from simple frustration that proposed grant awards are not higher.

"A lot of times people decide that we don't know what we're talking about because they don't like what they're hearing," said Hector-Harris, who works for the contractor ICF International, based in Virginia. "People send e-mails all the time suggesting all sorts of things."

Whatever the scope of Road Home foul-ups, Alan Rubin, 62, who holds power of attorney for his parents, called the numbers in their award letter sheer foolishness. In addition to the $550 damage estimate, the much-anticipated yellow letter contains other curious figures, he said.

In noting that the Rubins must elevate their home, the letter lists $25,517 as an "elevation allowance." It also lists, without explanation, the same amount in an offer of an "affordable compensation loan," which the program makes available to those earning far less than the city's median income level.

Alan Rubin said the letter has caused considerable stress for his elderly parents.

"They're terrified," he said. "All of their cash in the world was tied up into the value of this house."

The errors, combined with the difficulty Alan Rubin, a retired businessman, has faced in getting a call through to the Road Home switchboard, led the son to believe that such errors -- after such a long wait and a cumbersome application process -- will lead people to abandoned their rebuilding plans.

"My concern is, the people we need in this city are going to say, 'Screw it,' and leave," said Alan Rubin, a Metairie resident who bristled with anger during a recent visit to his parents' ungutted home. "If they don't have time to do this thing right the first time, when are they going to find time to do it?"

JUST BEWARE the Cajun version of the roadside IED.

You think that the old pickup with the plywood extenders on the truck bed is a fisherman selling fresh shrimp on the side of the road. Fool.