Star Wars: Detoured

From the mind of Seth Green. That says it all.

NYPD Officers, Use of Deadly Force, and the Shooting Outside the Empire State Building

Police officers around the nation have among the toughest jobs in the nation. They're entrusted with protecting and saving lives and bringing those who violate the law to justice. There are times when those jobs conflict with each other - such as during car chases or gun battles.

It's very difficult to blame the officers for taking the actions they did, but it is unsettling to see that so many of those injured in today's shooting outside the Empire State Building were hit by stray gunfire from the police officers who were trying to subdue the gunman, Jeffrey Johnson. Some reports are indicating that all of those who were injured were from police gunfire, not the assailant's gun.

The NYPD is the largest police force in the nation, and they've done a remarkable job in reducing crime across the city - the murder and other violent crimes rates are down tremendously from just a decade ago. That doesn't mean that their policies and practices are above reproach.

There are ways to improve their training and procedures so that lives aren't put at risk. Currently, police officers have to rotate through the firing range once a year. That would appear to be insufficient to maintain the skills and proficiency in dealing with situations such as today's shooting.

Increasing the training/proficiency requirements costs money and the Department's financial situation is tight, but doing so is the prudent thing and can save money in the long term - such as avoiding lawsuits and improving tactics and training.

Today's shooting also seems to undermine the argument that allowing more firearms could have saved lives in the Aurora movie massacre or other mass shooting incidents around the nation. When trained police officers inflict injuries on bystanders in the process of taking down a perpetrator, why would anyone think that civilians with firearms would do any better? That ignores the training that police officers have to undergo to be police officers (and the periodic training updates).

Convicted: Norwegian Massacre Suspect Found Sane and Sentenced to 21 Years In Prison

Anders Breivik, the far right terrorist who murdered 77 people in the course of bombing government offices in Oslo and then shooting dozens of teenagers at a youth retreat, was found sane and sentenced to 21 years in prison. Under Norwegian law, that is the maximum sentence, but he can be incarcerated beyond that in seven year increments if he's deemed to be a threat. It's akin to the 20 to life sentences that are routinely issued in the US; parole can be denied by parole boards. In Norway, the convict can be further incarcerated if the convict is deemed a threat to society. I have no doubt that in 21 years time, the court will still find him a threat. Breivik has shown no remorse for his actions and isn't likely to ever show remorse. His manifesto indicated his intentions to commit mass murder, and he would likely try again if ever given the opportunity to do so.

He didn't exactly go quietly. At first he attempted to make a statement before the court that he didn't accept the court's legitimacy, made a Nazi salute, and was admonished by the court for that. Indeed, he said that he wished he could have killed more.


He then said that he wouldn't contest the sentence, because that would legitimize the court.

The New York Times further reports:

Mr. Breivik, 33, who had insisted that he was sane when he carried out the attacks last year as part of what he called a campaign against multiculturalism in Norway, smiled when the verdict was announced. As he arrived in court on Friday, wearing a dark suit and tie, he raised his right arm in a right-wing salute, his fist clenched.

His 10-week trial ended in June. Defense lawyers had sought a prison sentence, arguing that Mr. Breivik was sane when he bombed buildings in downtown Oslo, killing eight people, and then headed to Utoya Island, where he shot dead 69 people at a summer youth camp run by the Labour Party. Prosecutors said that he was mentally ill, was not criminally responsible and should be hospitalized instead. It was not immediately clear whether prosecutors planned an appeal.

Experts said they were not aware of any previous case in Norwegian legal history in which prosecutors had called for an insanity verdict and defense lawyers had advocated conviction.

Judge Wenche Elizabeth Arntzen said on Friday that the decision reached by the five-member panel hearing the case had been unanimous. Reading from a 90-page judgment, she rejected Mr. Breivik’s assertion that he acted as part of a network called the Knights Templar, saying there was no evidence to prove its existence. Mr. Breivik has said he was present when it was founded in London in 2002.

Labour Party supporters in court on Friday hugged as the verdict was announced. Mr. Breivik is to be incarcerated in isolation at Ila prison on the outskirts of Oslo, news reports said, in a three-room cell with an exercise area, a television set and a laptop computer that is not connected to the Internet.

Developing: Multiple Casualties From Shooting Outside Empire State Building

Shortly after 9:00 AM local time, multiple reports came in indicating that there was a shooting in the vicinity of the Empire State Building. It appears that there are at least six injuries, and at least one person killed besides the shooter. The NYPD and FDNY are on the scene, which has been secured.

The reports indicate that the shooter may have been recently fired from a business that operates in the building.

Police apparently shot the gunman, but not before the gunman killed at least one person. Several others have been taken to area hospitals. The area around the Empire State Building has been closed to traffic as the investigation continues.

At least four of those injured were shot. There were about 10 injured.

The victims were apparently targeted by the gunman. In one instance, a witness claims to have seen the gunman walk up to one of the victims and shot them point blank in the head.

UPDATE:
More details emerging, including several potential motives:

The investigation into the matter was in its earliest stages, and the official said he was unsure of the details and circumstances that led to the shooting.

Two law enforcement officials said investigators have concluded that the shooting had no connection to terrorism and that it appeared to stem from a domestic dispute of some kind. A third said it may have been sparked by a robbery or dispute in the street.

One woman said that she had just come out of a dentist’s office near the Empire State Building when the shooting happened.

“Suddenly I heard two shots or three shots, boom boom boom, and I saw two guys, they go to the floor,” said the woman, who would only give her first name, Monica. “I was really afraid.”

Andrew Pellenberg, 23, and a friend, both from New Jersey, were thinking about visiting the Empire State Building. “We heard 10 to 15 gunshots, and it was all in a 30-second span,” Mr. Pellenberg said.

Several of the victims were treated at the corner of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. The wounded were taken to Bellevue Hospital and St. Luke’s Roosevelt, with the more seriously injured going to Bellevue, the official said.

NYC and TLC Making Mess of Taxi and Transit Systems

On top of a trial court decision yesterday that claims that the payroll tax used to fund the MTA is invalid, the Taxi and Limousine and New York City are doing their best to screw up the transportation system in the region.

The TLC has been updating the look for the ubiquitous yellow cabs. They've already signed off on a new design that isn't fully ADA compliant - because not every new cab will be required to be accessible.

Now, the TLC has decided to streamline the logos and information provided on the side of the cabs by stripping away all extraneous information.

T is for taxi, and that's good enough for the TLC. The look of the New York City taxi cab is changing again, and no we aren't talking about the Taxi of Tomorrow. Five years after the Taxi & Limousine Commission turned to Smart Design to create a new logo and graphics for NYC cabs they've gone and streamlined their work. We hope you don't like checking the current price of a taxi ride on the door of a cab!

Yup, going forward the fare panel on the side of taxis are no more. After all, we now have Taxi TVs to tell us that information (sigh). Also going away are the last vestiges of the checkered cabs as those black and white checks on the back are going away. Oh, and the word taxi. Yup, now cab doors will simply say NYC T (with the T in a black circle), not NYC Taxi.

"We have no doubt that a yellow car with a roof light with a big T will be understood as a New York City taxicab," TLC chair David Yassky explains. "Even the greenest of greenhorns will know that it’s a taxicab."

The cabs will now have a logo "T" and the cab identifier, but no other information.

They used to have Taxi written out, along with rate information.

Okay, they're trying to play around with branding, and a logo can be branded, but the word taxi can't. If that's part of the plan, then I get that.

But why drop the rate information? At a time when Mayor Mike Bloomberg has been pushing restaurants to include calorie counts on menus, he's allowing a policy that takes relevant information to commuters off the outside of cabs? How is that customer friendly? It's an asinine consideration, and the design team that came up with the plan spent just how much to revise the logos and information? It was a waste of money.

Meanwhile, back to the payroll tax. Ben Kabab highlights the multitude of problems with the ruling invalidating the tax. It is a huge hit to the MTA, which is funded in part from the tax. If it's upheld by the Appellate Division or State Court of Appeals, then the MTA would see a permanent loss of more than a billion dollars annually. That's money that can't be made up without slugging commuters or spreading out the costs to all taxpayers in the form of a new tax.

At the same time, a separate ruling invalidated the Mayor's plan to bring cab service to the outer boroughs. In that instance, the Mayor sought to make the changes in the state legislature rather than go through the City Council. The big problem is once again money. The Mayor bet a billion dollars on revenue raised from the sale of new medallions, and the court decision throws the city budget out of whack.

Taxi medallion owners have an inordinate amount of power to block any changes to the medallion system. They're vested in maximizing the costs of medallions, where the sale of an existing medallion can reach a million dollars or more. Allowing more medallions would dilute the value of existing medallions. The problem is that the medallion owners have the city council in its collective pocket and they've thwarted prior efforts to expand cab service to the outer boroughs where transit service is more spotty. The Mayor sought to change the status quo by going to the legislature, but this is a home rule issue. So, the Mayor has to go back to the drawing board to figure out how to expand service and close the budget hole of his own creation.

While he's at it, he better get on the TLC to make ADA compliance required across all cabs, not just a small fraction. And he could further assist in the transit policy by allowing disabled persons to use ADA-compliant cabs instead of Access-a-Ride buses that are costing the MTA far more than it ever imagined ($500+ million annually and growing). Since most cab rides are for far less than the cost per passenger for Access-a-Ride, a solution can be found here if the mayor, TLC and MTA can hash out an agreement.

But that means getting the medallion owners to back the changes.

Tropical Storm Isaac On Path Towards Florida and Gulf Coast

Foreign Fighters Flocking To Syria As Civil War Continues

Dozens of people were killed near Damascus when the Syrian military opened fire on apartment complexes in the city. The fighting is particularly intense in Daraya, on the southwest edge of Damascus, and in Hajar al-Aswad. Both are rebel strongholds. At least 10 security forces were killed when rebels attacked a government checkpoint on the Daraa-Damascus highway.

Meanwhile, foreign fighters are flocking to Syria just as they did in fighting in Libya and Iraq. The Russians believe at least 10-15,000 foreign fighters are in Syria, but the Russians don't break down who those foreign fighters are siding with.

The numbers are significant, and it further appears that at least one of those killed was involved in the conflict in Chechnya. The son of a Chechen warlord was among those who died in the Syrian conflict. While some reports indicate that he died while fighting on the side of the rebels, others indicate that he was a bystander in the conflict and that he was trying to leave the country.

Rustam Gelayev was killed in the shelling of a mosque in Aleppo by forces loyal to Assad earlier this month, according to the website chechenews.com.

The report, which cited unidentified sources in Chechnya, said Gelayev, 24, had joined a unit of ethnic Chechen volunteers fighting alongside Syrian insurgents in a 17-month-old uprising against Assad, who has close ties with Moscow.

Another website sympathetic to the insurgents, kavkazcenter.com, said he had been killed when his unit "entered into a battle with superior forces of the Alawite regime ... presumably between August 11 and August 13."

Syria's conflict pits largely Sunni Muslim insurgents against Assad's minority Alawite community that has long dominated the power structure. Chechens are Sunni Muslims.

The Russian newspaper Kommersant, however, cited a relative of Gelayev as saying he had been studying in Syria, had decided to leave because of the violence and was making his way to Turkey when he was killed.

Fighting has continued across the country, from Aleppo to Damascus.

Meanwhile, it should come as no surprise that the Bashar al-Assad's media flacks are blaming the rebels for the death of a Japanese reporter who was killed earlier this week.

Veteran Japanese war correspondent Mika Yamamoto on Monday became the first foreign journalist to die in Aleppo since clashes between rebels and regime forces erupted there almost a month ago.

Rebels have said she was killed by regime forces. Japan's Foreign Ministry said she was hit by gunfire while traveling with rebels from the Free Syrian Army.

Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faysal Mekdad said Thursday that journalists who behave in an "irresponsible" way should expect all kinds of possibilities.

The Syrian government has been trying to stifle any kind of independent journalism in the country, limiting what journalists can say or view. Yamamoto was killed because he was embedded with the rebels when they came under fire.

JPL Releases High Definition Imagery of Curiosity Touching Down on Mars

This is a full-resolution version of the NASA Curiosity rover descent to Mars, taken by the MARDI descent imager. As of August 20, all but a dozen 1600x1200 frames have been uploaded from the rover, and those missing were interpolated using thumbnail data. To arrive at the result, a heavy noise reduction, color balance, and sharpening for best visibility were done.

Todd Akin's Comments Symptomatic of Bigger Problems For GOP

GOP officials are trying their hardest to try and contain the fallout from the reprehensible comments made by Missouri Congressman Todd Akin who is seeking a US Senate seat in a race against Claire McCaskill. Even Presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his vice president nominee Paul Ryan called on Akin to quit the campaign. Akin has refused thus far, and he missed the deadline to withdraw without requiring court approval (or to pay the costs for redoing the ballots).

The problem for the GOP is that his comments weren't merely a misstatement or ill-conceived (as Akin himself put it on his own website - awkwardly at that). They are symptomatic of a much larger problem for the GOP. You've got Republicans who support restricting abortion to only those cases of forcible rape - or restricting federal funding for all abortions, including in cases of rape or incest.

Then, you've got social conservatives claiming that their claims that women can't get pregnant from rape and base it on research carried out by the Nazis during World War II (where they took prisoners and subjected them to gas chambers to see if stress affected ovulation).

The misogyny runs deep with Republicans. It's not just Akin. There's Kansas state Rep. Pete DeGraaf who suggested women should plan ahead for rape the way he keeps a spare tire. Indiana state Rep. Eric Turner said some women might fake being raped in order to get free abortions.

Then, there's the litany of attempts to impose onerous and invasive ultrasound procedures that would have the effect of reducing the number of abortions and abortion providers, including Virginia. Moreover, such requirements might constitute state-imposed rape on such women because the procedure isn't medically required or indicated.

Or the series of personhood amendments being propagated by Republicans across the nation that would give an embryo rights that would necessarily limit the rights of women to control their own bodies. Moreover, those same personhood amendments could seriously restrict access to in-vitro fertilization and other similar techniques, to say nothing of embroyonic stem cell research.

But perhaps the biggest sign that Akin isn't an isolated case is that Akin claims that the fallout from his comments has led to a big increase in campaign contributions although it should be noted that he bested his modest goal of $10,000:

“Donations are pouring in. Thank you for standing up against the liberal elite,” Mr. Akin wrote on Twitter last night.

A counted on Mr. Akin’s website said, as of this writing, Mr. Akin had raised $10,638 since beginning a “still standing” campaign following his remarks. On Twitter last night, Mr. Akin said his goal was hitting “$10k to fight the liberal elite.” He also posted a series of messages blaming the “liberal elite” for driving a “a lot of negativity” his way and for pushing around and otherwise intimidating those in the pro-life movement.

I'm not surprised by that.

The true tragedy is that the race for the Missouri Senate seat is as close as it is even with the furor about Akin's comments. Akin may still win the contest against McCaskill. That's troublesome in its own right and shows just how deep support for the belief system that Akin revealed in last Sunday's interview truly goes.

Nor am I surprised when Kirk Cameron comes out in support of Akin. Cameron went on CNN to defend Akin:

One defender? Kirk Cameron. The child-star-turned-evangelist was on CNN this morning discussing the remarks, and Cameron encouraged people to watch the whole video (which you can here) and then said, “[Akin] is clearly a pro-life advocate and I respect him. He said that he misspoke and that he misphrased something and that he apologized.”

Rep. Akin released a statement after the interview saying he “misspoke,” but hasn’t backed away from his remarks. Despite calls on Akin to get out of the Missouri Senate race, so far he’s staying in.

“I’m the kind of person that believes that I would like to be evaluated by my entire career and my entire life, not two words that I would misspeak and then later apologize for,” Cameron told CNN. “So he’s in a tough spot.”

The problem is that Akin didn't misspeak. He said exactly what he thought. He said precisely what his ultimate intentions are. He didn't misphrase anything. Akin said exactly what he thought. He believes that there is such a thing as legitimate rape - and his prior history about trying to impose restrictions for forcible rape are proof that this is part of what Akin actually believes. It goes to the belief that some women who are victims are rape deserved what they got - it's a combination of slut shaming, treating women as second class citizens who can't be trusted with control over their own bodies, and is misogynistic at its core.

Cameron's comments are echoed by other religious leaders, including Bryan Fischer.

In other words, if we go by what Akin has said and done over his entire political career - these words that Akin claims was a misspeak aren't. Akin meant exactly what he said. He cowrote legislation that would create the nonsensical category of forcible rape along with Ryan (but which didn't get passed because of the furor it created).

Cameron is right in one respect though- Akin is in a tough spot, along with the rest of the GOP that has wholly subsumed the social conservative agenda.

UPDATE:
Lest anyone think that I'm not sourcing my materials, here's links to the following as referenced above:

The link showing Ryan and Akin's attempt to create a category of forcible rape (and there's a new report indicating a separate attempt by Ryan to include forcible rape in a second piece of legislation).

Bryan Fischer said that Akin's comments were right.

And here's where Akin and others got that trope about how rape victims can't get pregnant (Seattle Post going into the history).

Here's where Gawker recorded Akin's awkward website attempts to try and generate campaign contributions from this mess.

Developing: Construction Accident At 2d Avenue Subway Project

Reports are coming in that there was some kind of construction accident a few minutes ago at the 2d Avenue Subway construction site at 72nd Street. There was a large plume of smoke and reports of damage to adjoining sidewalks and buildings.

This would appear to be in the vicinity of where a subway station cavern was being carved out by a combination of excavation and explosive demolitions.

There's no word of injuries, but emergency crews are on the scene.

As more information becomes available, I will update.

UPDATE:
Fox 5 is reporting that an overloaded air compressor was involved in the explosion. However, other news outlets, including CBS News, are saying that it was a controlled demolition blast that went awry.

The Rebuilding of Ground Zero, Part 168

The new Fiterman Hall, which is part of the Borough of Manhattan Community College Campus, is set to reopen next week. The original building was heavily damaged by the collapsing Twin Towers and 7WTC during 9/11. It sat in limbo until 2009 when city and state officials agreed upon a course of action to demolish and rebuild the structure.

The building differs greatly from the design aesthetic of the other towers going up in and around the World Trade Center complex. Rather than glass curtain walls, Fiterman Hall is dominated by concrete panels that mimic the look of brick and mortar. Despite the use of the brick-style panels, there's something cold and antiseptic about the design.

Meanwhile, families groups are still fighting over where and how to retain the remains of the unidentified victims from the attacks. Officials had planned to put the remains in a secured vault/crypt area beneath the Memorial/Museum complex, but some families want them to be located at a ground-level location. The latest fight over the remains has extended to demands to make public the list of all victims' relatives names and addresses so that those fighting for the changes can have the names to poll them.

Memorial developers plan to keep them 70 feet below ground, entombed behind a granite wall emblazoned with the Virgil quote: "No day shall erase you from the memory of time."

Rosemary Cain, whose firefighter son George Cain died on 9/11, said keeping the “sacred remains” in the basement is “not respectful” and “not a tribute to any of the blessed victims.”

“We want them above ground, we want them in a place of respect and dignity,” she said. "They don’t belong in the bowels of a museum, turning that place into a freak show.”

Many relatives, like retired FDNY deputy chief Jim Riches, whose firefighter son, Jim Riches Jr. was killed, want the city to build an aboveground commemorative tomb.

“We want a proper burial for our loved ones,” Riches said. “They’re American heroes, they died heroes that day and they deserve better than to be put in a basement of a memorial museum."

A spokeswoman for the 9/11 Memorial declined to comment on the appeal Monday and referred questions to the city. The memorial is not a party in Siegel’s lawsuit.

In the past, representatives of the museum said that the remains would not be on display and that the space would be managed by the Medical Examiner's office.

In addition, the museum also plans a private family room adjacent to the repository where relatives can reflect in privacy.

The remains will be periodically tested by the Medical Examiner to continue attempts to identify them.

In the past, several 9/11 family members wrote a letter of support for the plan, saying it "treats the remains with the utmost care, respect and reverence."

A spokesman for the National September 11 Memorial & Museum has said rebuilding officials have repeatedly consulted with families, through many mailings, forums and hearings over the past 10 years.

"[The families] have repeatedly stated it is essential the remains return to the sacred bedrock of the site," the spokesman has said.

A fight is continuing over plans to restore the Ground Zero cross to the Museum. Atheists have fought the plan, claiming that that would be state-sanctioned support of religion, but that ignores that it was an artifact revealed in the decimated remains of the World Trade Center complex, and that it came to be a source of hope and support for those working to find victims and remains of those murdered in the attacks.

Tappan Zee Bridge Replacement Gains Key Approval

Despite concerns that the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council was violating state law, or at least stretching the notice requirements so as to allow a vote on the Tappan Zee replacement project without giving proper notice, the Council did hold its emergency meeting today.

Backed by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, the Council unanimously approved the project, even though there's still no concrete design and the final costs are still not known.

The 9:30 meeting was streamed from the state Department of Transportation website, but had no audio during the 40-minute program, which included public comments from Riverkeeper and Tri-State Transportation Campaign and a presentation by the board.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a steadfast advocate of a new Tappan Zee, is expected to comment on the milestone vote at a news conference in Piermont at 1 p.m., his office said.

The unanimous vote in favor of the $5.2 billion project was expected, after the county executives from Westchester, Rockland, and Punam announced last week they supported the governor’s plan to replace the Tappan Zee. To ensure the state could compete for federal funds for the project, today’s meeting was quickly organized on Friday afternoon.

That drew sharp criticism from major interest groups which argued that a last-minute notice prevented the public from getting involved.

Veronica Vanterpool, executive director of Tri-State Transportation Campaign, attended Monday’s vote and questioned whether the project will be able to secure federal funds. Last week, a state comptroller report blasted the Thruway Authority for poorly managed finances. The Thruway Authority owns and operates the Tappan Zee.

“In order for this to be a competitive project, there are a lot of red flags raised, by the comptroller and by the credit agencies,” Vanterpool said. “That needs to be addressed. You want it to be the best project so it will receive federal funds. How can it be the best project if the finances are so shaky?”

Even the county officials in Rockland and Westchester are left with only assurances that mass transit (whether bus rapid transit or commuter rail) will eventually be included in an I-87/I-287 corridor project to come after the bridge is built with capacity to handle eventual construction.

We'll probably get our first crack at viewing the bridge designs once the winning bids are announced next month.

Still, the biggest question is how the bridge construction will be funded. Approximately $2 billion will be paid for via a federal loan. The remainder will be funded from user tolls. The last couple of weeks have seen the Governor's office release a toll structure that would nearly triple tolls, but then Governor Cuomo admitted that the tolls seem to be high.

He's trying to play the tolls both ways. On the one hand, his office put out those numbers knowing what it would take to cover the construction and debt costs. By their reckoning, those tolls are needed to fund the construction if the state is incapable or unwilling to pony up the money directly so as to cover the debt costs and construction costs directly. On the other hand, the Governor can claim that he's now concerned that the numbers would produce such high tolls and he'd look into it.

However, that could mean that the transit options get shelved indefinitely, even though they have the potential to take the largest number of vehicles off the road and reduce congestion throughout the I-87/I-287 corridor. That, however, is a direct competitor to the Thruway Authority's need to stimulate tolls that generate revenues for the Authority to fund both capital projects and operating expenses.

One of the rationales for hiking the tolls to their stratospheric levels is that it would match the George Washington Bridge's new tolling. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense since the Port Authority's come under fire itself for hiking tolls when the perception that the money isn't going to fund transportation infrastructure but rather World Trade Center work. Mind you that the gap in the Port Authority's budget is due almost entirely to the cost overruns associated with the PATH transit hub at the WTC - $1.2 billion in overruns nearly matches the money expected to be realized from the toll hikes.

What gets lost in all this is why infrastructure projects costs as much as they do when compared to European or Japanese projects of similar scope. There's no reason they should cost as much, and yet project after project has seen overruns and cost estimates that boggle the mind.

Drought Continuing to Cause Major Disruptions on Mississippi River

The ongoing drought, which is one of the most severe in the last 100 years, is causing significant problems up and down the Mississippi River. The river's watershed is heavily affected by the drought, which has caused water levels to fall to close to historic lows. That means that boat traffic has slowed down, costs have gone up, and perhaps most dangerously, the salty waters from the Gulf of Mexico are pushing up the river towards New Orleans.

The Army Corps of Engineers is doing what it can to stave off a complete shutdown of river traffic and protecting the New Orleans water supply. They're busy dredging stretches of the river to keep it passable, and they're building a sill below New Orleans to try and keep the salt water from flowing up the river. Normally, the Mississippi's water flows are sufficient to keep the heavier salt water from coming upstream, but the drought conditions have lowered the flow rates.

The Army Corps of Engineers has more than a dozen dredging vessels working the Mississippi this summer. Despite being fed by water flowing in from more than 40 percent of the United States, the river is feeling the ruinous drought affecting so much of the Midwest. Some stretches are nearing the record low-water levels experienced in 1988, when river traffic was suspended in several spots.

That is unlikely this year, because of careful engineering work to keep the largest inland marine system in the world passable. But tow operators are dealing with the shallower channel by hauling fewer barges, loading them lighter and running them more slowly, raising their costs. Since May, about 60 vessels have run aground in the lower Mississippi.

The low water is not just affecting the 500 million tons of cargo like coal, grain and fertilizer that move up and down the river each year. The owners of the American Queen, a paddle-wheel steamboat that takes passengers on tours along the inland waterways, decided not to send the boat below Memphis on a trip to Vicksburg, Miss., this month. The water was deep enough, said Tim Rubacky, a company spokesman, but after conferring with the corps and the Coast Guard, the company decided that the likelihood of a barge accident and ensuing traffic closures would be too great.

“It’s kind of like a truckful of watermelons spilling over on the expressway,” Mr. Rubacky said. “Everything’s going to come to a halt.” The boat tied up at Memphis and sent the passengers on to Vicksburg by bus, he said.

The volume of water coming down the river is so much lower than normal this summer that a wedge of salt water is creeping up the Mississippi toward New Orleans, imperiling local water supplies drawn from the river. The corps is building a sill — basically, a dam of sediment — in the river below New Orleans low enough to block the flow of salt water while letting boats pass.

When the Mississippi is low, the flow slows and sediment settles, causing the river to silt up and obstructions to form, said James T. Pogue, a spokesman for the corps in Memphis. Since 1988, when record low water on the Mississippi caused navigation to shut down, the corps has engineered ways “to help the river keep itself open,” he said, building new features like dikes that stick out into the river and “sort of act like nozzles to speed up the flow of the river” to scour the bed.

Such river training structures help to reduce the amount of dredging necessary by making the river do much of the work. The result, he said, is that even if water reaches the levels that it did before, “we’ll still be in better shape than we were in ’88.”

The river’s problems are the main topic aboard the Motor Vessel Mississippi, a giant towboat fitted by the corps with meeting rooms and used during its annual low-water inspection trip, which included a public hearing in Alton, Ill., on Friday. Some of the speakers complained about the corps’ management of the river during last year’s floods, when water at Vicksburg was nearly 59 feet higher than it has been during this year’s drought. That is the nature of the river — an engineered system, managed but hardly controlled.