When you read how Bush cut coastal funds for Louisiana in the recent Energy Bill, you have to wonder if making idiotic decisions that put a major American city underwater leaving a million plus people homeless and which damage critical oil-industry infrastructure for the country can't qualify under 'other high crimes and misdemeanors.'
And that's without even including the equally idiotic Iraq military adventure intimately connected with the Louisiana disaster in it's wasteful use of vital National Guard man-power and equipment, a sleazy rumsfeld tactic to avoid having to institute a draft.
Read a sample of the paper trail of tears of Governor of Louisiana, Gov. Kathleen Blanco's efforts to get Bush to ante up the money needed to avoid this disaster:
http://www.gov.state.la.us/New_Stories_detail.asp?id=50
read more below
EDITORIAL: President Bush, Save Our Coast
Money for restoration should stay in energy bill
Good luck, governor. President George W. Bush appears to have made up his mind on Louisiana's coastal crisis: Let it sink. So Kathleen Blanco probably shouldn't hold her breath waiting for the president to take her up on her offer of an aerial tour.
After the state's congressional delegation finally got some bipartisan legislative consensus on giving coastal states a larger share of offshore oil and gas revenues, the president has decided the nation can't afford it. This from the man who took the lead on turning a federal surplus into mounting record deficits.
Time is critical. House and Senate conferees are now hashing out competing versions of a federal energy bill, both of which contain money for coastal restoration. The Senate bill had $540 million over four years and the House version contained $350 million over the next 10 years, jumping to a potential $1 billion annual appropriation after 2016. But the president, through his energy secretary, Samuel Bodman, sent word to delete the money because it is too costly with the current deficits.
Louisiana's congressional delegation was shut out of negotiations. So the state has to count on those on the conference committee to recognize the coastal erosion that costs the state 24 square miles a year also threatens the infrastructure that supplies the nation much of its energy supply.
An estimated $5 billion in federal revenues comes from the oil and gas -- 80 percent of the nation's offshore energy supply -- brought ashore on Louisiana's coast.
In her written invitation to Bush to take a pelican eye view of the fragile, disappearing coastal wetlands, Blanco asks them to "please consider the far greater costs of not addressing the catastrophic coastal land loss occurring in Louisiana, land loss that puts our nation's energy security and economic future at risk." Makes sense. And that's not even mentioning the breeding grounds that support much of the nation's domestic seafood industry.
Coincidentally, the tug match between the White House and Louisiana was occurring during a scientific conference in which new elevation numbers were being rolled out to help emergency planners, builders and scientists accommodate the steadily sinking coast. A May National Geodetic Study showed coastal areas were sinking as much as 20 inches in a decade. The loss may or may not continue at that rate as scientists debate the causes.
Until Bush's intervention, the congressional delegation was sounding relatively confident about the state's chances. It was a fight that served as a unifying point, despite some occasional one-upmanship, between U.S. Sens. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, and David Vitter, a freshman Republican. During a recent editorial board meeting with The Times, U.S. Rep. Jim McCrery had no cautionary notes about the bill as he also mentioned federal assistance for wind turbine technology that affects local manufacturer BeairdCo.
Those on the conference committee should resist the White House and do the right thing and give the same sort of financial consideration that saved both the Everglades and Chesapeake Bay. Sidney Coffee, who head's the state's coastal policy office, perhaps puts it best: "This is a matter of survival for us. This is real.'
----
All the might of the great Republican Oz was directed and impeaching an intelligent and compasionate President for a blow job. And not a word uttered about this incompetent man who every day proves he will leave this country as completely trashed as he left the house he lived in back in Montgomery Alabama in his 'National Guard' days; furniture broken, walls damaged, chandelier destroyed, P.S. A bill sent to Bush for repairs was never paid.
