Dimanche

T-P/nola.com Hacks Dr. Robert Bea's Editorial Response!
~Editilla Explodellas~This is why it is such a bad thing that Optimal Process Partners works for the Corps, and designs and places their Flash Adverts in this outlet (indeed placed right here on this page with this Letter to the Editor?) and writes and places the articles you read here about the Corps.
This is why it is so dangerous to have such a Subject/Advertiser Financial Conflict of Interest at this news outlet. Rather than employ a Real Editorial Board, they do the cost-saving thing instead, with an Advertising/Sales Editorial Office at the T-P/nola.com facebook glory'hole.
Thus we get this article, not simply ax-hacked from the original letter, not only dumbed-down to pass muster with the nola.com Ad/Sales Dept, but a correspondence which has had its testicles removed, completely castrated of any meaning or salient retort to that Lying Carpet-Bagger Spin to which our inestimable Engineer refers, that this paper published in full Editorial form.
Those non engineer from somewhere else, Corps Mouthpieces, got a whole article, while the Eye Witness and Actual Civil Engineer on the ground in New Orleans immediately after the Levees and Floodwalls failed got 6 small paragraphs... 280 words!

Wow. I mean... dayum. Here is but one statement from Dr. Bea that the interested public might have been denied,
--but for yer'oh'so humble Editilla, talk about Brass Balls:
"The authors suggest a correlation between corps funding and “bad engineering, bad science, and project failure.”
For me (five+decades of engineering practice), there is no excuse for such incompetence.
As a first priority, the engineering code of ethics requires us to protect the safety of the public – to do no harm. Sloppy or shoddy engineering—which caused the flooding of Lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish...
--is simply not acceptable."
I'd say Dr. Robert Bea's got'em, big ones, talkin'Real, Cajones.
(And I say) Who'dat say they gonna flood them Saints?

This behavior by the T-P/nola.com leaves me with the same Reality Hardness which saturated our hearts upon learning that our damnation of 8/29/05 was In Fact Caused By "easily avoided Corps of Engineers mistakes" ILIT. There is nothing colder than the blood running thought my veins right now.
To witness such newspeak "advertorial" placement from this outlet's attempt at such gamesmanship, such pig rendering of the truth, informs a Deeper Reality, a scene of Dirt Corruption much akin to Concrete Debris in our earthen Levees --or Newsprint Debris in our concrete flood walls.
It is far worse to have your sole daily newspaper actually Support the Corps with Public Relations "Newsmedia" than it would be for them to say nothing at all, mum amidst continued malevolence...
--the latter of which they remain Equally Fowl, Guilty As Sin.

I know very old people who learned how to read as a child with the T-P Sunday Comics section, people who have saved issues of this noble press through generations of their family and even after the Corps flooded their City with paper mache levees.
This is not the same paper that covered Hurricane Betsy.
This is Not the same News Paper that I saw submerged during that 1st week of the Federal Flood of 8/29/05, and Jon Donley so bravely kept online in the sky in the aftermath of the disaster.
This glory'hole press wouldn't even rate as spent kitty litter in Pulitzer Prize winning Mark Schleifstein's bathroom.
But, this certainly Is the same "PR Newspeak" Info'tell Tanker from which their real journalists are now jumping ship as if it were a burning, stinking, sinking tabloid rat trawler. Sinn Féin!

~Incredible Update~ We received this email from The Man his very bad ass self, Dr. Robert Bea, with permission to share.
Thanks Editilla.
Great follow up! Thank you for preserving the unacceptable shoddy engineering observation.
This shoddy engineering aspect really bothers me - because I am an engineer. My experience with this mess clearly indicates that the shoddy engineering is not the result of some 'evil empire' plot. It is the result of hubris, arrogance, ignorance, and indolence. Unfortunately, within the USACE, I am still finding the same causative factors at work....but, now 'dampened' in some cases by the external contractors working for the Corps.....if they are able to successfully challenge the Corps without loosing their contract or future contracts.
The Corps has reached and is reaching deep within our profession of Civil Engineering to spin the truth, reward those who helped cause the failures, and punish those who were victims and do not 'toe the Corps line.'
During one of my very early trips to New Orleans after Katrina, I met with a 42 year veteran of the Corps - "Jim".
Jim came from the Corps Vicksburg office. He had joined the Corps in the early 1960s as a young engineer. During our one-on-one discussion, Jim said: "Bob, the Corps is not like it was in the 1950s when you and your father were with us.
We have taken engineering out of the Corps of Engineers."
I will never forget that statement because from all I had learned it was 'right on'. The Corps had become preoccupied with Project Management and divested itself of its world leading engineering. At the same time, the Corps stopped building with its own people and equipment. Thus, it not only surrendered superior engineering (and research), it surrendered superior construction and maintenance.
It could no longer lead the way in either engineering, construction, or maintenance.
~~Please read more here.