Last month, I announced my New Bill of Rights. This Declaration is my way of expanding upon the Rights listed in FDR's 1944 State of the Union message to Congress, which I have touched upon in some of my more recent DailyKos Diaries. I know that the way forward for the Democratic Party is to stand with the people against President Bush and the Rubberstamp Republicans, who taken the side of Corporatists rather than the American family. Together, I know we can make this world a better place.
This is the fifth in a ten part series where we will discuss some of the most important issues facing the American people today. I want to hear your opinions and thoughts on each and every one of these topics. Normally, I hold a weekly liveblog right here from 3-6 pm Eastern Time, however today I am at a barbecue with a number of my supporters. Please do leave me your thoughts and questions, I will return to answer them as soon as possible.
#5 The People have the right to a government capable of emergency response...
In the years of the Bush White House, we have seen two of the most destructive catastrophes in the history of humanity unfold on American soil. When the Towers were struck and the Pentagon burned on September 11th, 2001, and when Katrina leveled a city on August 29th, 2005, our Nation came together as one big family. Everyone from the U.S.A. and all across the world sympathized with victims in New York City, Washington D.C., New Orleans, the Gulf Coast, and everywhere else. On those days, America was united with the entire world as it had never been before.
As we look back on these horrific days, one can't help but wonder what we might have done to better prepare for events like these. We as a Nation must grow and learn from our mistakes. Catastrophes have been happening from the dawn of time, and we need to be smarter if we are going to deploy resources that both prevent where possible and recover from such crises.
September 11th, 2001
On September 11th, the world changed in ways we probably won't fully understand for generations. Nine months into the Bush Administration, terrorists from the Middle East (primarily Saudi Arabia) took control of four commercial airliners and committed an act of war upon us. As a former Navy Commander, I understand a thing about defending the country, and we all know that the resources required to defend against this type of attack simply weren't in place. So many things went wrong, it's almost impossible to put it all together. I won't delve too deep into some of the details, because all of us are already too aware of what happened, but there are some overarching questions that have yet to be fully addressed. However, one of the main reasons that I find myself no longer able to trust this Administration is that President fought, at every turn, to allow a full and bipartisan investigation of the events of 9/11. Since his Administration will not answer these questions I think that there is value in asking them here.
First question: How did 19 terrorists manage to get into our country?
This is a huge issue which reaches from National Security, to Student Visas, to Immigration reform. One of the tricks they used was to get student visas for terrorists who never even went to class:
Hani Hasan Hanjour, got a visa to study English at ELS Language Centers, a Berlitz-owned school that leases space at a local college in Oakland, Calif. He did not attend a single class. Instead, he became one of the terrorists in the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on September 11. And two other terrorists were waiting for the official approval of their student visas to attend flight school -- an approval that the Immigration and Naturalization Service dutifully mailed out six months after the attacks.
...
The program is now so large, so riddled with corruption, and so ineptly run that the INS simply does not know how many foreign students are in the country or where they are enrolled.
Since then, there have been a number of reforms enacted, but the fact of the matter is that our system is still far too overburdened to be even close to good enough. In 2005, it was estimated that there were nearly 36,000 student visa violations and almost none of them were investigated. Former Director of the CIA George Tenet recently stated that he suspects "a second wave or a third wave" of al Qaeda operatives have already made it into the United States since 9/11. With 36,000 student visa violations per year, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that we need to provide an exponential level of resources to this department immediately.
Second Question: The Terrorists used Box Cutters to take control of the planes... how did those ever get them onboard?
FAA (not governmental) regulations prior to 9/11 forbid the carrying of box cutters on commercial flights amongst a number of other potentially dangerous items. Why the Government never got around to formally banning such items until after 9/11 demonstrates how asleep at the wheel we really were. Under those conditions, the terrorists were permitted to board the flights with their weapons. The 9/11 Commission Report found that the airport screen process was "marginal at best" ... unacceptable is how I would put it. We needed well educated, and well paid employees checking bags and screening passengers, however this was not the case in 2001.
Third Question: Why couldn't the government, FAA, and Military get in touch with each other during the attacks?
This is one of the most disturbing facts from 9/11. As the attacks began and continued, the government's right hand had absolutely no idea what the left hand was doing until it was way, way too late. Clearly we needed to have a direct line of communication between the Military, the FAA, NORAD and of course the Intelligence community, tragically this simply didn't happen. The Government's answer was to create the Department of Homeland Security to oversee communication between all of these agencies to prevent crises from happening... In the streets of New Orleans four short years later, we would learn how effective another layer of bureaucracy really is.
Fourth Question: Why has the Federal Government not secured our own international borders?
In an immigration bill that was largely seen as a huge step backwards the Administration put the interests of corporate labor above the interests of the Nation. I have never called for the closing of our borders, but we have the ability and the technology to control our borders and the main reason that we do not is that it is not in the interests of the Wal-marts and huge meat processors who live and die by creating a permanent underclass in the country at the expense of the middle class on whose backs this nation was built. It does not take a million dollar study to understand that we will never be safe unless we control our own borders and today we are spending tens of billions to secure the borders of Iraq while ours continue to me wide open.
These questions and thousands of others still go unanswered and unresponded to.
Hurricane Katrina
On August 29th, 2005, tragedy again struck on American soil. Unlike September 11th where we had only limited clues as to what might happen, this disaster was staring us right in the face... in fact it was predicted on a number of occasions. Believe it or not, the Army Corps of Engineers even knew that "failure was imminent" with levee system way back in 1985! Last week, I spoke about the effects of global warming on our world, and the devastation of Katrina was an example of this. As the waters have warmed in the Gulf of Mexico, the risk of hurricane's strength of increasing has grown exponentially.
The bottom line is that government at all levels should have prepared the Levee system for this type of catastrophe decades ago. The system was constructed and maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers, but the Federal Government is and was directly responsible. This is not simply a blame Reagan, blame Clinton, blame Bush issue... this is a long term failure of the entire government, and it is time that we wake up and fix problems such as this before calamity strikes again.
I'll tell you what you can blame Bush for - Hiring an incompetent, unqualified, overpaid crony to run FEMA. Rather than giving the job to somebody with at least a little experience in dealing with crises, the President elected to hire Michael Brown, a man who's hardest task up until Katrina was separating the red ribbons from the blue ones as the Judges and Stewards Commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association... a job which incidentally he was fired from due to his incompetence. Unemployed, Mr. Brown had to turn to a friend for a job, and his pal Joe Allbaugh (Bush's former Campaign Manager and Director of FEMA from the beginning of the Bush Presidency through early 2003) was more than happy to help out. As a career Bush loyalist, Allbaugh understood the ways of cronyism, and rushed to hire Brown as his Deputy at FEMA. When Allbaugh finally resigned from his post, Bush decided to promote Brown to Director of FEMA.
I'm sure Mr. Brown spent many long nights chatting on myspace and designing elaborate paper airplanes, because he definitely didn't spend anytime ensuring the safety of American families.
Now speaking specifically about the days right before Katrina struck, FEMA had ample time to act to prevent at least some of the 1,836 fatalities. On September 1, President Bush told the ABC that "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees" that flooded New Orleans." Well, nobody except the National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center who predicted the storm would directly hit New Orleans and severely damage the Gulf Coast, and who by the way told the White House just that two days before Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. Does George Bush consult Barney the Presidential terrier for national security advice rather than the experts in the field? It's clear that he was getting his advice (or lack thereof) from lapdogs of another sort.
With all the warnings on the table, and some of the resources available (an overextended and over deployed national guard is another issue all together), Michael Brown and George Bush sat and did less than nothing. In fact, President Bush sat in Texas and enjoyed the longest Presidential vacation in decades.
Did FEMA have any plan for the victims? Brownie didn't even know the Superdome was being used as a Hurricane shelter until three days after the storm first hit! How about mobilizing those FEMA trailers which could have been used for victims? They sat in Atlanta for FAR too long because of red tape.
You sure did do a heck of a job Brownie...
The bottom line is that we have not seen any real level of accountability and those responsible have simply walked away leaving an unprecedented for others to clean up.
Randy and the Rubberstamp Republicans
Taking another cue from his master George Bush, my opponent also thought Brownie did a heck of a job. The video below is from a debate I had with Congressman Kuhl during the last election cycle, where he praises the government's reaction to Katrina as a stunning success:
If Randy Kuhl thinks the failure of our government to react during Katrina is an example of how government should function during a crisis, I can't imagine anything could register as a bad example in his head.
The next question is how much have they done to correct our emergency response techniques. Go ask the people of Greensburg Kansas how much better off they are thanks to our lack of National Guard troops and equipment.
How about our airports, are they any safer? Bad news gang... Our airport screeners have failed test, after test, after test. Our skies are still not secure and every day that passes is a day that we could be fixing our broken security system. I would think that as a member of the Transportation Committee, my opponent would make our security his highest priority... I guess all that goes out the window when there's valuable pork to be brought home for wealthy Republican donors.
As I've said before, the root problem to everything in Washington is that Corporate Lobbyists have way too much influence on the Government. They don't want to pay to have better qualified Airport Screeners, so the Republican Rubberstamps don't force the issue. There's no profit to be made by evacuating lower to middle class citizens from a city that's about to be destroyed, so they sit and watch.
We deserve better.
Solution
I believe that first and foremost, we must FULLY implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, a study which the President publicly opposed. This is not a partisan political issue. The findings of this report came about from bi-partisan research, and detailed investigation, not political debate. The President has thumbed through the report and picked a few recommendations, but for the plan to work, you can't cherry pick. We are never going to be 100% safe from all catastrophes, but to ignore this research is suicide. Saving lives starts with preventing 9/11's before they happen.
Following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, on one of my very first Daily Kos posts, I outlined a plan to create a Civilian Recovery Corps. The Civilian Recovery Corp (CRC) would be similar to the National Guard in command structure, but it would only be for recovery, rebuilding, and support tasks in a time of crisis. The CRC could be divided up like a military organization into specific units for engineering, electrical, medical, and other specialties. As we dive deeper into the quagmire that is Iraq, it is clear that we do not currently have the personnel required to take on tasks such as the rebuilding of New Orleans. Here we are, almost two years after Katrina, and vast swaths of the city still look "like a napalm bomb had hit" it. We as a nation have an obligation to rebuild New Orleans... we can accept nothing short of that.
We can not keep cutting corners in our nation. Iraq is completely draining all of our resources, and we must stand up to this White House and Rubberstamp Republican Congressmen to demand security, preparedness and decisive action in times of crisis from our government.
Conclusion:
It is only a matter of time before we as a nation face another potential disaster, be it an act of God or terrorism. We cannot allow our nation to cruise along without proper plans to deal with crises, and we must hold our leaders accountable for their actions or lack thereof.
I promise to stand up and defend this nation against threats, foreign, domestic, and natural, but first I need your help. My determination to be a voice for change puts me a direct odds with corporate interests and those already in Congress who stay there because of the contributions from those groups. Randy Kuhl funded his campaign on corporate cash and there are indications that he will continue to do so. I do not accept Corporate PAC money, and so it is up to all of you to support my grassroots campaign. I am asking for 1000 people to step up and donate $100 to my campaign so we can move this country in the right direction. I need you to join me. We can secure America.
As I mentioned earlier, I am at a Barbecue in Allegany County, in the western part of the District, meeting and discussing the issues of the day with voters in my District. However I do want to hear what you think, so please leave your comments or contact me at my website and I will do my best to get back to this post and respond.
Thank you,
-Eric Massa
#1 The Right to Not be Dragged into an Unnecessary War
#2 The Right to Quality, Affordable Healthcare
#3 The Right to Gainful Employment
#4 The Right to a Sustainable Environment