Hurricane Katrina Second Anniversary: Rebuilding the Gulf Coast

From: The White House and PBS


On the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the Federal government continues to provide assistance and guidance so that the people of the Gulf Coast and their elected leaders may drive the effort to rebuild their lives and their communities. So far, the Federal government has spent $127 billion (including tax relief) on post-Katrina New Orleans, although the entire gross domestic product (GDP) of the state of Louisiana is only $141 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Track the latest developments in the Gulf Coast region's long struggle to rebuild its cities and citizens' lives in a series of broadcast and Web original reports from PBS on the lasting economic impact and environmental effects, as well as efforts in reconstructing the region's infrastructure.(http://www.pbs.org/newshour/local/gulfcoast/)

From: Vanderbilt University Library:

This is a directory of links to popular Federal government documents on the Internet. The links are organized by topics including major government indexes, business, crime, census, Congress, consumer information, copyright, education, foreign countries, health, impeachment, natural resources, law, scientific reports, transportation, and tax forms. Information on the situation in Iraq is highlighted. http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/romans/fdtf/index.shtml

From: University of California at Santa Cruz

MetaVid (http://metavid@ucsc.edu) is an open source project from the University of California at Santa Cruz that allows users to keyword search EVERY word spoken (aka transcript search) on the floors of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate and then listen to the audio and/or watch the video. The text transcript comes from the closed captioning associated with each file, and the index dates back to January, 2006. Files can be viewed online and downloaded if desired. Search terms can be set-up on an RSS feed, and an advanced search interface is also available

Minnesota Bridge Collapse

From: Minnesota Department of Transportation

The State of Minnesota has posted on the Internet its government documents concerning the August 2007 collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River bridge in Minneapolis. They provide news and updates, inspection expenditures (2004-2007), recent inspection reports (including fatigue evaluation), an inventory of deficient trunk highway bridges in Minneapolis (released August 2007), and related material.
http://www.dot.state.mn.us/i35wbridge/
http://fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/nbis.htm (National Bridge Inspection Standards)

SCHIP

From: National Center for Policy Analysis



The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which covers 6.7 million children and adults, will expire in September. SCHIP consists of 50 different federal-state health plans for children (and in some states adults) in families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid. Typically, families with incomes above the poverty level, but no more than 200 percent of poverty, are eligible.
The Senate Finance Committee recently voted to reauthorize the program. The Senate bill would expand eligibility to children in families with incomes up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level, or $62,000 for a family of four. House Democrats would raise income limits even higher — to 400 percent of the poverty level ($83,000 for a family of four) — well above the median income.…SCHIP expansion would be costly. The Senate bill would increase spending by $35 billion over five years and the House Democrats would increase spending by more than $50 billion. However, the additional money would mainly buy insurance for children who are already insured. In fact, the families of millions of children currently in SCHIP would have otherwise had private coverage, and most of the children that would be newly eligible already have private coverage. Furthermore, the cost of expansion would be borne by poor families and seniors.

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba589