Katrina Aid Goes Toward Football Condos

Source: AP

Katrina Aid Goes Toward Football Condos
By JAY REEVES | Associated Press Writer
2:28 PM EDT, August 13, 2007

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. - With large swaths of the Gulf Coast still in ruins from Hurricane Katrina, rich federal tax breaks designed to spur rebuilding are flowing hundreds of miles inland to investors who are buying up luxury condos near the University of Alabama's football stadium.

About 10 condominium projects are going up in and around Tuscaloosa, and builders are asking up to $1 million for units with granite countertops, king-size bathtubs and 'Bama decor, including crimson couches and Bear Bryant wall art.

While many of the buyers are Crimson Tide alumni or ardent football fans not entitled to any special Katrina-related tax breaks, many others are real estate investors who are purchasing the condos with plans to rent them out.

And they intend to take full advantage of the generous tax benefits available to investors under the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act of 2005, or GO Zone, according to Associated Press interviews with buyers and real estate officials.



Read more: http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-katrina-luxury-condos,0,1213580.story

The rich and ruling class are completely beyond the reach of the law. We are so desperately in need of a general strike it's hard to believe, but there won't be one as long as American Idol and RushBillSeanLauraAndyGordonHughMikeWeinerOllie are on the air.

Somebody will be along with it. It'll be unfortunate that the stupid working class doesn't know how to file the correct paperwork, or some other lame excuse. Oh, and my new favorite, 'life's a game'.

Jheeesh.

Otherwise, they're just taking advantage of tax breaks--the Bush admin's policies aren't their fault.

Geaux Tigers!!:) There's something to make most of us in South Louisiana smile...

Hope you enjoy DU.

I've been a lurker for years, but so far I have enojoyed getting in the conveersations even more!:toast:

I love Lafayette, even thought of moving there from BR several times.

Geaux Tigers!

Brunet's restaurant. :hi:

I'm so glad I finally got the nerve to start posting.

Rudy, I am also from BR. I just moved to Lafayette three years ago. Besides being too far from LSU sports, it was totally worth the move!

and their fault for being Southern, and ... whatever.
That kind of fingerpointing doesn't help anyone.
The whole mess makes me sick.

Those people in New Orleans need help and they deserve it.

of them by first making them poor and then hitting them with a hurricane. The people with the condos, on the other hand, are wealthy and therefore the favored of God. It is only fitting that they get these further signs of His grace.

Like, don't you know anything?

unfortunately people only read the headline, which appears to be written by an editor either without a conscience or too busy to read the actual article

it clearly says:

The condo deals are perfectly legal, and the tax breaks do not take money away from Katrina victims closer to the coast because the depreciation is wide open, with no limits per state.

no money donated to katrina victims went to these condo projects

they are a tax subsidy and, as such, they are the usual case of the middle class taxpayer providing welfare to the rich real estate developer but it is NOT a case of katrina aid going to tuscaloosa instead of gulfport

think about when you take a deduction on YOUR taxes, it doesn't stop your neighbor from taking the same deduction

that was ready for "occupancy" just before I left, definitely pre-Katrina. The only Katrina damage I know first hand was my good friend's neighbor's house being damaged by a tree that blew down during the tornados that followed land fall.

On 12th ST, just a few steps from the Brian Dennehey Stadium, a complete apt. complex that was popular with working class adults, students with families, etc. was demolished to make way for a condo. Every house on the other side of the street was bought and demolished, supposedly for a church's parking, but I would not be surprised to find out condos go in.
An entire row of 1930s-ish bungalows. . . fairly priced, with 3 brs, and 2 baths for Tuscaloosa that is a rarity.

The people who flock into town for home games are among the most rabid fans I have ever seen! They park in the street, on one's lawn, and run generators for their RVs all night long all over town. One is advised to put one's car on the street, pointed away from the stadium on game days, as your drive will be blocked if you have one by 8a.m., sometimes the night before.

The amount of money these people spend, the sad state of cleanliness they leave Gorgas Library (one of the few blds. on campus not locked down on Friday evenings on game days) is atrocious. It does not surprise me in the least. These people will use them maybe 6 or 7 times a year, and may or may not rent them out when they are not using them.

They will also be over $200,000 == for a place to pee and sleep off a long drunk, displacing working people, students, and raising the COL for all in town. And the ethical concerns of using a Katrina Recovery provision is not even worth addressing due to its prima facie repugnance.

There's way too much money in college football to begin with and not enough help for those displaced by Katrina. This is pathetic!

I really pity the Dem who wins the White House next year. What an unimaginably tough job it's going to be cleaning up after all the Republican's messes: the graft and stupidity that followed Katrina will be the least of it.

That's the invisible hand of the market at work.:wtf:

Football and baseball venues in Minnesota instead of bridges.

New Yankee and Met stadiums instead of taking proper care of 9-11 responders.


Time to support the separation of sport and state.

This is really hard to believe...

http://www.orangebeach-gulfshores.com/IHgozone.htm

What counties qualify? - Alabama has 11 counties (Baldwin, Choctaw, Clarke, Greene, Hale, Marengo, Mobile, Pickens, Sumter, Tuscaloosa and Washington. Also included are certain counties in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Louisiana has parishes, not counties, but I digress... How did a county nearly 200 miles inland end up in the GO Zone, which is supposed to represent the hurricane-affected areas? Something smells fishy here, and I don't mean catfish. :tinfoilhat:

edit: italics, spelling

Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby

Now Hattiesburg was a shambles, as a friend who is teaching at MSU had to evacuate to her family's house in Huntsville.

I have no earthly idea why Tusc. or Hale were counted in the damage area. I do know that Bayou la Batre's shrimp fleet is destroyed and the docks gone, but that is in Mobile County.

But in Hurricane Ivan in 2004, I was teaching at ASU in Montgomery and my neighborhood had very major damage and no power for 2 weeks, and several trees down on lines, destroyed houses from the wind and the trees and debris striking, but we were under hurricane conditions for 8 hours there, and only 150 miles from Mobile.

By the way, Shelby owns a slum rat-infested apt. complex in Tuscaloosa city.

senator shelby graduated from alabama and is on the appropriations committee

in any case, while it is disgusting always when rich developers get tax subsidies to develop, it does not take any money away from katrina victims.

The condo deals are perfectly legal, and the tax breaks do not take money away from Katrina victims closer to the coast because the depreciation is wide open, with no limits per state

the headline of the article is intended to be deliberately misleading

i hate real estate developers too, but let's hate them for real reasons -- this isn't taking money out of our pockets any more than if i take a tax deduction then it takes money out of my neighbor's pocket

is redirect investment away from the hardest-hit areas of SE LA and southern MS, the ones the GO Zone was designed for, to less-damaged, less risky fringe areas like Tuscaloosa.

So who is the Fed gov. spending time to help? Real estate developers not actually affected at Shelby's alma mater. Meantime, the least wealthy remain the most screwed, still.

Oh and how about those trailers....



"Says one resident, laying it down in one vivid image: “We just in storage.”

http://bagnewsnotes.typepad.com/bagnews/2007/07/your-turn-gwend.html

As far as rebuilding, and fixing the threat of a new flood, howabout this Time cover?



Maybe if the appropriation committee wasn't so busy with pork and corruption it wouldn't be so "pathetic." Par for the course.

(Time cover from Bagnewsnotes.com too. Cool site for us visual ppl).

So yeah, tax break designed to help people via encouraging developers to help people. Instead used to rip off tax payers in the context of a tragedy. Typical.

Air quality tests of 44 FEMA trailers conducted by the Sierra Club since April have found formaldehyde concentrations as high as 0.34 parts per million – a level nearly equal to what a professional embalmer would be exposed to on the job, according to one study of the chemical’s workplace effects.

And all but four of the trailers have tested higher than the 0.1 parts per million that the EPA considers to be an “elevated level” capable of causing watery eyes, burning in the eyes and throat, nausea, and respiratory distress in some people.

Becky Gillette, co-chair of the Mississippi chapter of the environmental group, said that representatives also have heard from numerous trailer inhabitants who say they began experiencing health problems ranging from headaches and runny noses to chronic respiratory problems and nosebleeds as soon as they moved in.

As a result of its testing and such accounts, the Sierra Club is pushing for a congressional investigation of the potential health hazards posed by the trailers.

“It’s simply wrong that the government would spend billions of dollars to poison people in these toxic tin cans,” Gillette said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14011193/

Doesn't it? It should?! How about now?

I wonder at what point it's ok to break Gowin's law. Sure as hell seems to be some intent by the powers-that-be in NOLA redevelopment, regional redevelopment and especially Fed efforts in general. I clicked into Time to try to find a copy of what they had in print, there was one geo-chart I thought significant. but not online. They only have the after, so no context. Guess where houses haven't been rebuilt and people haven't returned? Well no big guess, is it? And don't get me wrong, Time printed some craptacular blame it one bureaucracy apologia; not my point.

People died. THEN, people around the world got to see dead black Americans floating in the street in real-time. All due to the US gov. again not responding to disaster under Bush. (It's the second part that bugged this admin of course.) It made a world-wide media blip. Then what happened? Did we the people or our reps hold the gov to account for this? No, they never did make things right in any significant sense, and with this crowd, of course, they managed to have found myriad ways to profit instead. Those with no media voice have been fucked to the point of being housed in far off fields in toxic campers for 2 years, cut off from the world. Yada yada Paris Hilton yada yada yada. Football condo's! Party on!

One day you have to admit that incompetence turns into a plan.

tax breaks. They do not take money away from Katrina victims. They could of course give some of the money they save on taxes to those in need, but...

This looks like unintended consequences, but then again, maybe there was some undue lobbying when the Act was being written.

Oh my dear Vishnu, what in the world is going on in Alabama and Louisiana? First, the states of Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida totally ignored the warnings about Hurricane Katrina, then they tried to put all the blame on the centralized, Federal Government! We soon learned that the feds had sent more than 40 Billion dollars to Louisiana and Alabama over the last 20 years to re-build the levy's, yet the totally corrupt politicians just scooped up that money for themselves! After all, for more than 150 years, Louisana has been the most corrupt state place in the U.S. DUH!

For events like Cruisin' the Coast. :grr: