Editorial 7.9, September 2005, by Deirdre Helfferich The Stink from Katrina's Corpses Tickles High and Mighty Noses Don Young, give that money back. The South needs it a lot more than the North. The money now allocated to Don Young’s Way on the Knik Arm and “The Bridge to Nowhere”, as the Ketchikan-Gravina Island bridge is popularly known in the Lower 48, could pay for a lot of transportation infrastructure repair in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. But the sad thing is, that even if we did give the $260 million to the South for hurricane Katrina clean-up, it isn’t going to make much difference in the long run, particularly to those displaced by the hurricane. Why? Well, there’s a lot of other things that the Republican-controlled Congress has done—and plans to do—that will make sure that what Katrina didn’t hit, and the federal administration’s failures didn’t screw up, our highest legislative body will. Here’s a couple of pertinent examples: 1. Bankruptcy bill. Remember this little gem? A classic example of pandering to corporate greed. If the victims of the hurricane don’t get it together to file by October 17 (when the bill goes into effect), they’ll still have to pay all their debts. Never mind whether their credit cards, along with their TV, couch, and oh, yes, their house and grandparents, have all been swept out to sea. Natural disasters don’t count in our new, compassionate world. And remember, catastrophic health costs don’t count, either, so anybody injured or poisoned or infected with something from the sewage floating in the streets of New Orleans can’t weasel out of paying that way. Can’t have all those deadbeats disrupting the mighty wheels of capitalism, can we? Some companies are working to make it a little easier for the victims of this hurricane, and a bill has been introduced (by a Democrat) to delay the effective start date by two years, but Katrina is a one-time thing, isn’t it? I mean, hurricanes don’t happen every year, do they? So a few people might get a little leniency this time, but what happens next time? Well, we don’t have to worry about it, because there won’t be a next time, will there? (Voted yea: Murkowski, Stevens, Young) 2. Tax cuts. The Republicans in the House aren’t giving up on this idea. No, we’ve got to help that top one percent of the nation in their time of need. Trent Lott’s got to rebuild his porch on that third house of his. And the estate tax, well, we can’t have a greedy federal government getting all that money from dead people in order to pay for emergency supplies for the living, can we? No, when you’re rich, you CAN take it with you. Too bad this isn’t going to do any good for the estates of all those people floating around the streets of New Orleans. And guess what? Those “welfare parasites” who might have need of soon-to-be slashed health-care programs for the poor, or food stamps, well, they’re out of luck now, folks. The Republicans in Congress aren’t budging. Why, it’s those programs that caused this disaster in the first place! (see the article by “compassionate” conservative Robert Tracinski of RealClearPolitics.com, or Bill O’Reilly’s rants) 3. Transportation bill. See above. (Three guesses as to how your Congressperson voted: yep, yep, and yep—and Don Young was the House sponsor!) 4. Energy bill. Pork and more pork, that’s where our money went. Not much on conservation, especially when gas is so cheap. Keep driving those Hummers, America! And again, three huzzahs from our congressional delegation! Meanwhile, George Bush is screwing it to the people who’ll be doing the actual repair work: he’s suspended the law requiring that employers pay construction workers the locally prevailing wage on federally financed projects in—you guessed it—Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi, where Katrina hit. So the workers from the states most affected, who likely need the money the most right now, are going to get paid at substandard wages. How generous. How compassionate. How productivity-inspiring. At least ol’ “Heck of a job” Brownie was suspended from the relief effort, and although he wasn’t fired he did have the grace to resign (or else). Too bad that five of the eight top FEMA people were cronies with little or no emergency management experience: Director Michael Brown (horse show association lawyer), Chief of Staff Patrick Rhode (deputy director of advance operations for the Bush campaign), Deputy Chief of Staff Scott Morris (media strategist for Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign), David Maurstad (the most experienced of the bunch—he was the lieutenant governor of Nebraska). And we mustn’t forget the former director of FEMA, Joseph Allbaugh (national campaign manager for Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign), who brought in the oh-so-qualified Brown (former roomie at college) and viewed the agency as a glorified entitlement program that needed to be trimmed down. Now he’s a lobbyist for the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root, which—surprise!—has a $29.8 million contract to rebuild navy bases in Louisiana and Mississippi. But with someone like Michael Chertoff (criminal lawyer and appeals court judge) in charge of Homeland Security, one can expect this level of skill and discernment in dealing with emergency response. If the top people had had any experience with disasters, perhaps they would have realized that one should be prepared, as in, BEFORE the hurricane hits, with emergency supplies, transport, and medical teams, and, oh, right, that firefighters are best utilized fighting fires and rescuing people, not as public relations flunkies hundreds of miles away from the emergency. But preparedness is not this administration’s watchword: earlier this year, FEMA was officially relieved by the Bush administration of its disaster preparedness function. And, as Paul Krugman of the New York Times pointed out, the administration is following this pattern in other agencies: the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food & Drug Administration, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Treasury Department, and, of course, the rest of Homeland Security. No sense listening to Boy Scouts and being prepared with knowledge before you need it, nosiree. But hey, army recruiters are now helping out at the Houston Astrodome, providing refugees with information about job opportunities in Iraq: poor, mostly black people with few other choices make prime recruiting material, apparently. That’ll help with another little planning problem this administration has. This is the face of “compassionate conservatism.” Republicans like George Bush, Don Young, Lisa Murkowski, and Ted Stevens have let their party stray very far from its founding ideals. This is the true face of the Republican Party these days (and, unfortunately, of much of the Democratic Party, too—they couldn’t have gotten away with this kind of crap without the cooperation of Democrats too chicken to stand up to it, or worse, who think the Republicans are doing the right thing). But perhaps I am too harsh on the Republican Party. After all, it is the party of Lincoln, the party that freed the slaves, even guaranteeing forty acres and a mule to every freedman. Of course, they reneged on that promise, too. ooo note: a hurricane Katrina animal relief fundraiser is being held at the Annex September 30. All proceeds will be sent to the Louisiana Humane Society and the Louisiana SPCA | ||
 | | |
