I first read this article on Democratic Underground I hope they don't mind if I bring it over here. Below it are also a few of my own comments.
For Want of a Nail
September 3, 2005
By punpirate
With every seemingly simple calamity, there is a complex chain of events leading up to it. In the case of Katrina, the hurricane which has ruined much of the Gulf Coast, left many of its inhabitants homeless and taken the lives of many others, it will be a long time before that chain of events will be known.
There will be calls for investigations, by Congress, by the legislatures of the affected Southern states; perhaps, grudgingly, there even will be a Presidential commission to recommend ways to prevent such a disaster in the future.
Make no mistake - this is a disaster of near-incalculable proportions. What will these investigations and commissions find? That it was a disaster, and maybe little more than that.
more, more, more
The obvious reasons have already been discussed in the media, even as bodies drift aimlessly through the waterlogged streets of New Orleans - cuts in the budget for levee improvements in New Orleans, National Guard troops stationed half a world away instead of waiting in readiness to respond to emergencies in their own states, scientific studies on hurricane defenses abandoned for lack of money, budget cuts to the agencies responsible for preparedness and first response, shortages of personnel and the means to move them effectively to where they are needed.
All these things and more will be discussed in minutae, dissected into their component parts, voluminous reports will be written and then those reports will be discussed and dissected, without ever getting to the fundamentals of the problem. One of those fundamentals is prized by the Bush administration as a major policy, though it is carefully hidden from public view.
Its roots go back to the days when stevedores unloaded ships on Mississippi docks by hand and mule-drawn wagons carried those goods away, the so-called Gilded Age, when robber barons believed it was their due to have government work for them, and all the taxes they were willing to pay for the privilege were the bribes they paid to the likes of Mark Hanna.
Eventually, Franklin Roosevelt brought about the New Deal, and the robber barons were, if not forced into penury, at least brought under control. Then, Ronald Reagan found his way to the Presidency, and opened the doors of government to a new generation of robber barons. Reagan's only maxim was that "government can't solve problems - it is the problem." By that, he meant that it cost too much and it interfered with what they call "bidness" in Texas. He wanted big tax cuts for the wealthy and a reduction in not only regulation of business, but government oversight of business as well.
In return, Reagan left us with his White House running secret, illegal armies overseas, a near-tripling of the national debt in eight years, the blossoming savings and loan debacle, along with the largest defense procurement scandal in the country's history.
Reagan also left the country with the belief that old-fashioned self-reliance was a virtue (unless one was a corporation in need of government relief). By the time Reagan left office, a huge cottage industry of right-wing think tanks and media pundits were in place, extolling Saint Ronnie's virtues and furthering the aims of the very wealthy, corporate and individual, in this country, all the while using the government to promote their ideas and policies.
The Bush administration, advised by these same Rasputins, has taken this attitude to a new level of disdain for government. It has been making a determined effort, through funding cuts, through mismanagement and cronyism, to actually make the government incapable of functioning as intended.
Let's look at Bush's record in this regard. On the morning of September 11th, 2001, the most extensive, sophisticated and most expensive air defense system in the world - funded and operated entirely by taxpayer support - failed utterly. It did not just work imperfectly. It failed to operate at all.
When, in the days following those attacks on New York City, the EPA discovered that the health hazards were enormous, it was not allowed to operate as intended. Its findings were suppressed and its actions to protect public health were effectively halted.
In the run-up to Bush's desired war against Iraq, the country's combined intelligence services were thwarted in their attempt to provide accurate information to the White House and Congress. These services, including the CIA, the NSA and the DIA, were completely undone by a few civilians deep inside those agencies determined to publicize the false information provided by someone with the horrendously accurate codename, "Curveball." Every justification for the war was false and misleading, and through the efforts of a few Bush people, the intelligence services were rendered impotent, inoperative and bereft of public trust. Yet another essential of government now does not function as intended.
Now, in the past week, FEMA is bound inside the bureaucratic tangle of the Department of Homeland Security and is being administered by a political appointee, Michael Brown. Of Brown, Paul Begala said on Crossfire on Aug. 16, 2004:
Speaking about the president, the head of the federal emergency management agency today said that it could take weeks to search through all the debris and find all the victims of Hurricane Charley in Florida. Of course, one of President Bush's first moves as president was to fire James Lee Witt, the disaster relief professional who had turned FEMA from a basket case to showcase.
Mr. Witt was replaced by George W. Bush's campaign manager, Joe Allbaugh, who was in turn replaced by another political hack, Michael Brown, whose prior experience with disasters consisted of serving as a Republican staffer in the disaster of the Oklahoma legislature.
FEMA is not operating as it might because it, like other parts of government under Bush, is designed not to work properly. The intent is to make the government not work on behalf of the public.
This seeming incompetence is designed into the government Bush built. It is an intrinsic part of a plan to alienate the public from the government, to set the public against its government and justify further cuts in all budgets of government except defense spending, and to shovel the country's collective misery into the too-small hands of private charities - as was the case in the Gilded Age.
When it comes time to rebuild the Gulf Coast, and to restore the birthplace of America's only native musical genre, there will be national relief for insurance companies. There will be national relief (in the country's interest, of course) for the oil companies' losses in production and refining capacity. There will be money appropriated or loaned to real estate developers. There will be a little money sent to Bush's favored "faith-based" charities.
But, the poor will still be poor - and homeless and jobless. There will be no national call to raise the minimum wage. There will be no national outcry for a government effort to train the most disadvantaged in the region for work doing the tasks of clean-up, environmental hazard mitigation and the reconstruction of destroyed cities and towns. That would be too much like FDR's WPA and CCC programs. That would be too much like the government helping the citizens it represents.
What George W. Bush might consider now is that nail. Before Hurricane Katrina, the nail was the few millions required for levee protection, disaster planning, etc. Now, that nail is the way in which his government deals with the people most in need.
For want of a nail, the shoe was lost, the horse was lost, the battle was lost and the king was lost, as well. One would think the imperially-inclined George Bush, the Yale history major with the low-C average, might still be mindful of that deceptively insignificant nail.
punpirate is a New Mexico writer with a pocket full of nails
My thoughts
I've been told not to make this a political debate.
We should band together and get the job done. (Agreed, btw.)
I've been told that I've blamed Bush for the hurricane itself. I've been told that things would have been
worse if that other candidate had won the 2000 or 2004 election.
I ask, how? How could things be worse?
The DIRECT cause for the major disaster in New Orleans was NOT the hurricane itself. It was the direct result of budget cuts. Budget cuts deliberately made so the uber rich pay less taxes, so Bush's oil company friends could have oil from Iraq.
Anyone who understands the amount of debt we're in, and will be in, should be horrified.
Where is this money coming from to help the Gulf Coast? Sure, the President signed the bill, but the money itself will be borrowed from other countries,
as it has been borrowed to support the war effort. You better pray that neither China or Saudi Arabia doesn't decide to call in their markers, because we couldn't pay. You can't get a mortgage if your credit score is below a certain number. I wonder what that number would be for the US if all our debt is taken into account.
The people of this country are NOT the #1 priority of this government.
If you had any doubt, think of the dead, the homeless, the sick, the children. The people who were suffering before this tragedy, the newly added millions after. The people who were called looters as they went to find insulin in a drugstore.
They're poor, they're infirm, they couldn't get out. A few went for tv's (the dumb ones); most went for diapers, food, water.
Offers of help from other US cities are being denied. National Guard troops and emergency workers from OK have been turned away. These are the people with experience after the OK city bombings. The city of Chicago offered FEMA assistance which was turned down. All FEMA accepted was one truck of fuel.
Little minds prevail. We need the big ones in a big disaster. People have been afraid to show any initiative, if they have any. After all, that's been a negative personality quirk in this Administration. It's gotten many demoted, many dismissed from their jobs.
And you ask why I'm horrified, why I'm angry, why I would have this uncaring President (who needed to get in that last golf game, that last fund-raiser, that last night at the Crawford home he calls a ranch) made responsible for the finagling, for the spin, for the utter lies his Administration has coated this country with for the past 5 years. Yes, this compassionate man KNEW that he had to sign papers to get the military involved, yet it took him days to make it to the White House to sign those papers. This compassionate man who took a tourist ride over NO, but didn't spend any time on the ground, talking to those who could have used any words of comfort from their President, even if those words were empty platitudes and empty promises.
Is this the kind of country you're happy living in?
It's the country I've seen since 2001. It's the moral values that are not very moral nor full of good old fashioned values. Well, let me rephrase that. It does have some good old-fashioned values, shared by Commodore Vanderbilt, William Randolph Hearst, the Astors, etc.
i can only hope that some more eyes have been opened to this travesty by our 'leaders'.
To see that it took outright shaming Condi for her to leave her vacation of buying Ferragamo shoes (one woman in that store had the temerity to ask her why she was shoe shopping while there was a major crisis - that woman was impolitely ushered out of the store, under Condi's direction). Ah, but then she had to grab a show - was seeing Spamalot more important than saving human beings on the verge of dying? 95% of the White House staff are still on vacation. That makes sense, because there's still not much going on there anyway.
Ah, but the state and local officials continue to be blamed. Yes, they deserve some of the blame, but only as much as they truly deserve. The governor of NO sent a letter to the Pres before or directly after the hurricane strike. Somewhere I have that memo, but I can't find it right now. Apparently, no one bothered to read it. Blaming the victims is a hallmark of this group.
Unfortunately, under their Leadership, we are all victims. Prepare for the blame and punishment.