had an instant connection and we wanted to reach out and help them like so many helped us. shepard: how did you get a trainload of stuff together? it was an interesting process. we immediately reached out to senator vitter s office and he was able to put us in touch with the right folks at amtrak and they jumped on board quickly and we were able to get it together, mobilized our community to start accepting donations and we were overwhelmed by the generosity of the north shore residents. shepard: how did you get a sense for what it was that people here needed? guest: we were working with officials here because one thing we realized after katrina people were reaching out to us and shipping stuff, but if you don t have someone on the receiving end to orchestrate the delivery and the storage and delivering the supplies it doesn t do you any good. donna reached out to the people up here and dealing with a councilman who was fabulous
pearl river would crest tomorrow at 19 1/2 feet and that could potentially put some other homes at risk. but officials are meeting with hydrologists this afternoon and will make a decision whether to hand out more evacuations. the cleanup from isaac continues here in new orleans. power is back to the downtown area. not everyone is so fortunate. in the state of louisiana about 260,000 people are still without power and many people are frustrated. meanwhile, the army corps of engineers now says that it will check to see whether the upgraded levee system in new orleans may have contributed to more flooding in other parts of the area. o officials in several communities like la feet, laplace and plaquemines parish have said as much. senator vitter has suggested the corps study the issue and the corps has agreed. they will look into it but, however, the army corps does not
friedman s idea is the federal reserve should take action during crises to make sure the supply of money expands as much as the economy needs to grow. friedman served as an adviser to president reagan who considered him a hero of free enterprise, american prosperity and also a hero to ben bernanke whose academic work builds off of friedman s. many people think bernanke privately wants the fed to be more aggressive about putting more money into the economy especially as unemployment remains so stubbornly high. he needs allies on the fed to make that happen. it s one glimmer of hope that someone, anyone, will join him and do something to hurry up with job creation rather than watch the labor market slowly burn. that s the glimmer of hope david vitter wants to stamp out. joining us, a visiting scholar at the federal reserve bank of san francisco and the national bureau of economic research, and former chief economist for the department of labor, i think i
department of the interior. this year, he waited more than a year to be considered as chief scientist of the national oceanic and atmospheric administration. today senator vitter is back in the news with a pair of new holds with positions that are to the general public slightly obscure but are also probably the two single most important, unfilled positions in the entire country. i really mean that. nothing less than economic recovery and the president s election chances rest on that. the two men, jerome powell and jeremy stein are nominated to serve on the federal reserve board of governors and vittere plained his rationale for blocking them this way. i refuse to provide chairman bernanke with two more rubber stamps who approve of the fed s activist policies. this quote is a breathtaking statement for a few reasons. one, vitter is not saying anything about the nominee s qualifications but where their policy preferences might lie.
this is all the more remarkable because one economist is a republican. economist justin wolfer commented on twitter, quote, i don t know a single economist left or right who thinks putting a hold on stein and powell is a good idea. i bet you can t find one. he then followed up, quote, literally every republican economist i ve talked to thinks stein would make a fantastic fed governor. i agree. the second remarkable thing about vitter s quote, he s accusing bernanke, a registered republican and appointed to the fed by w., himself, of being some kind of wild eyed activist liberal. third, vitter is saying though not quite in these words he opposes any effort to grow the economy. he opposes any effort to bring down unemployment. he s saying in that quote and showing in his actions that he wants the economy to grind to a halt. he wants it to die. because there are two strategies basically the federal government