Comes now the information that the far-sighted compassionate conservatives currently ensconced in Washington repeatedly CUT funding for flood control and levee construction in the lower Mississippi. Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, said in 2004: ?It appears that the money has been moved in the president?s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq...? In addition, the New Orleans Times-Picayune wrote, ?The cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans District Office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the The fact is, in early 2004, President Bush decided to spend less than 20% of what the Army Engineers (who are in charge of Mississippi flood control) said was needed, regardless of how those on the ground and in charge begged. Between 2001 and 2005 the flood control budget was reduced by over 44% in all.
Our "leaders" knew the day was coming when a disaster like Hurricane Katrina would strike. But our gambler President, who has a long history of risk-taking in both business and politics, decided once again to postpone the responsible, adult action. Perhaps he expected Daddy?s big friends to rescue the country as they had rescued him throughout his own life, when his business deals went sour back in Texas? Says Alternet:
The president told us that we needed to fight in Iraq to save lives here at home. Yet?after moving billions of domestic dollars to the Persian Gulf? there are bodies floating through the streets of Louisiana. What does George W. Bush have to say for himself now?
Some have suggested that it would be appropriate to add the death toll in this disaster to the death toll in Iraq as they are both part of Bush?s Folly. Three hundred BILLION dollars wasted in Iraq so far! What if that money had been used domestically on education, on health care, on development of alternate fuels and energy efficiency technologies, on education, on doing something about global warming, on providing for real homeland security and first response capabilities?
Unfortunately, since we have run the war(s) and everything else on the creation of debt, we have no financial reserves either individually or as a government. This means we taxpayers and Greenspan?s trusty printing presses will have to foot Bush's enormous bills. As the Washington Monthly points out:
[FEMA now has] 10 times the proportion of political appointees of most other government agencies. Sam Jones, the mayor of Franklin, La., says he was shocked to find that the damage assessors sent to his town a week after Hurricane Andrew had no disaster experience whatsoever. ?They were political appointees, members of county Republican parties hired on an as-needed basis.?
Gives you a lot of confidence in their expertise, doesn?t it?
Simply stated, Hurricane Katrina is another situation for which Bush has no exit strategy. Bush has the National Guard largely tied down in the Iraq quagmire, while he lets the "homeland" go to Hell. Perhaps that's why Dubya has called on his Daddy again to save him. Now, it's even Bill Clinton to the rescue. Maybe Bill Clinton and "Bush 41" can pump the water out of New Orleans themselves, since all the real pumps are broken.
To me, the lack of resources in this disaster shows better than ever why our prudent Democratic Governor, Mark Warner, warns us not to squander our so-called ?budget surplus.? It also reminds me why I am so deeply suspicious of Jerry Kilgore?s Republican-style of government, with its emphasis on borrowing, living off existing capital. Absurdly, Kilgore is pretending he is more like Warner than Kaine is like Warner, despite the fact Jerry says we didn?t need the Warner-Kaine-Chichester tax and budget reform because he ?knew economic growth would make it unnecessary.?
Watch out for these reckless Republican gamblers who have no exit strategy.