It’s just delicious watching the GOP meltdown. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch. Suddenly I’m enjoying the campaign.
As Greg Sargent at TPM has it:
On the same day that the Republicans were forced to dramatically cut back their convention activities, the Palin Meltdown unfolded with extraordinary speed. It’s worth pondering the totality of what happened today, in a mere half day…
* The news that Palin once backed the Bridge to Nowhere went national.
* It emerged that Palin has links to the bizarro Alaska Independence Party, which harbors the goal of seceding from the union that McCain and Palin seek to lead.
* The news broke that as governor, Palin relied on an earmark system she now opposes. Taken along with the Bridge to Nowhere stuff, this threatens to undercut her reformist image, something that was key to her selection as McCain’s Veep candidate.
* The news broke that Palin’s 17-year-old daughter became pregnant out of wedlock at a time when the conservative base had finally started rallying behind McCain’s candidacy. . . .
* Barely moments after McCain advisers put out word that McCain had known of Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, the Anchorage Daily News revealed that Palin’s own spokesperson hadn’t known about it only two days ago. . . .
* Palin lawyered up in relation to the trooper-gate probe in Alaska — a move that ensures far more serious attention to the story from the major news orgs.
Oh, that’s fun!
And best of all, the hurricane missed New Orleans with minimal damage, but still managed to essentially cancel or derail most of the Republican convention, while lending marvelously ironic substance to this religious-right douchebag’s invocation of God’s wrath. (Turns out he got what he wanted, but he misunderestimated how much God hates assholes.)
Sometimes, things go the way they should. It’s a good thing.
September 1st, 2008
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General, Politics, Church & State, Religion, Katrina, News & Current Events, Fiasco |
24 comments
What’s surprising about these revelations?
- Bush relied on “propaganda” to sell the [Iraq] war.
- the Iraq war was not necessary.”
- [T]he White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.
- [T]wo top aides held a secret West Wing meeting to get their story straight about the CIA leak case at a time when federal prosecutors were after them
- [A]fter Hurricane Katrina, the White House “spent most of the first week in a state of denial,”
Only their source: Bush loyalist (until now, apparently) Scott McClellan
May 27th, 2008
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Politics, Iraq, Katrina |
4 comments
Cenk Uygur of the Hufington Post comes a bit late to this realization, but he has it exactly right:
Never has there been a public official more unequipped to be President of the United States of America than George W. Bush. The man is simply not up to the job. Even if he really wanted to be or cared to be an effective president, he … could … not … do … it.
He can’t do it on a boat, he can’t do it with a (pet) goat. He can’t do it in the Green Zone, he can’t do it back at home. This man cannot be a good president, Sam-I-Am.
He flat out does not have the intellectual capacity to carry out the requirements of the job.
December 11th, 2006
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General, Politics, Economics, Culture, Iraq, Terrorism, Katrina, News & Current Events, Fiasco |
5 comments
This weekend, I’ll be going down to New Orleans to visit a friend who lives there. It will be my first trip down there post-Katrina. One of the things my friend suggested we do is take a quick drive through some of the hardest-hit areas, so I can see it first-hand, understand it on a better level, get a better feel for the scale of the tragedy, and see just what has and has not been done in the fifteen months since.
My question for the peanut gallery is, at what point does this cross the line from education and understanding into exploitation and voyeurism? What’s appropriate and what’s not? Feel free to comment with your thoughts.
November 15th, 2006
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Privacy, Education, Travel, Katrina |
5 comments
I voted yesterday, early, something I am generally loathe to do. I am afraid that I will find out something between early voting and Election Day that will make me regret my vote. Indeed, Harold Ford did something today that might — though probably not; I will deal with that in a later post — have changed what I did in the voting booth. So why vote early? Because my voting place is split between city and county voters, but the city is only allocated two machines there, despite the split in voters appearing to be even. In 2004, it took almost two hours to vote and I just don’t want to go through that if I don’t have to. Yesterday was convenient so I took the opportunity. Besides, it was raining, and I like to vote in the rain. It seems appropriate.
I won’t bore you with the school board or state senate seat races, other than to say the state senator in my district was running unopposed so I wrote my name in. No one should get elected unanimously. Onto the votes.
First, the state constitutional amendments.
- Amendment One
This is the anti-equality amendment. Since I approve of equality, I voted NO. HELL NO was not an option, unfortunately, but I did press the NO button extra hard.
- Amendment Two
This is an oddly worded amendment that appears to allow the state legislature to force local communities to freeze the property tax rates form people over 65 on their “primary residence”. They don’t define primary residence, however, and I don’t understand why the state legislature should be micro-managing those kinds of decisions for local governments. The whole thing felt like another “all taxes are evil, screw the schools, cops, and firefighters” law so I voted NO.
Next, the federal elections:
- US House, TN-7: I already wrote about my reasons for voting as I did in this race here. The short version is that Marsha Blackburn sucks and Bill Morrison doesn’t, so I voted for Morrison.
- US Senate: I have hated this race from the beginning. I don’t like family dynasties, so I am temperamentally opposed to Ford from the start. He is much too conservative for me, having voted for the Iraq war, for the Military Commission Act, and for the anti-Gay Marriage Amendment. Corker actually looked interesting to me, despite the fact that he would have voted the same on those issues. He beat two real out there wingnuts in the primary, and he appeared at least reasonably moderate, something that the GOP desperately needs more of. But it turns out that appearance was actually a cover for being an empty-suit hack. He used illegal immigration to lower his business costs, he enriched himself questionably as mayor and, worse, he allowed the city’s 911 system to continue its slide into tragic uselessness. I don’t think a man who cannot manage a 911 system is fit to sit in the Senate and help decide how to manage homeland security and natural disasters. Finally, in the last few weeks his campaign has turned to trying to get out the white sheet and burning cross crowd. Corker doesn’t belong in the Senate.
Not voting for this race, then, was an option. I don’t think the Senate is going to turn over this year — the playing field is just tilted too much to the red states in this Senate cycle. Even if the Democrats do get the six seats they need, Lieberman will almost certainly switch parties and hand control right back. Besides, I would prefer a more progressive Democratic caucus, and Ford is definitively not progressive in a lot of areas. But he is fairly progressive economically, and he is, aside form marriage, pretty good on equal rights.
Voting for Ford came down to two issues, in the end: the war on terrorism and intelligence. Ford, unlike Corker, realizes that “stay the course” is a disaster making things worse. He recognizes the need for change. And he appears bright enough to deal with the hard question of what that change should be. The one overwhelming impression I have gotten form the debates and from Ford’s position papers and appearances is one of strong, above average intelligence. To be charitable, you cannot say that about Corker. Ford seems to be a very bright man, and we are going to need that in the years ahead. The country is in for some rough times, and we are going to need smart people in place to help handle it. Since the choice is between an intellect like Ford, who is good on some issues, and an empty suit hack like Corker, I will take Ford every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
So, perhaps a bit reluctantly, I voted for Ford.
And, finally, the one statewide office on my ballot:
- Tennessee Governor: I did not vote. I hardly ever do that, unless it’s a race I know nothing about. But if you are going to vote, I think, you should make a decision. It is very rare for two candidates to be so close on issues as to not matter. So I stood in front of the machine for a long time before I moved on. Maybe things would be different if the polls didn’t show this race to be a blowout, but as things stand now, I just could not bring myself to vote for Bredesen or Bryson. Bryson is a bit of a joke. He says interesting things, like reforming TennCare enough to bring the terminally back online or ending the sales tax on food. But he doesn’t seem to have any actual plans or details to chew over, just peppy sounding slogans. And, yes, Bryson is anti-choice and creepily obsessed with illegal immigrants and Bredesen is neither of those things. But abortion is already very much restricted in Tennessee and I doubt that Bredesen will veto more restrictions short of an outright ban, or that he would veto any punitive anti-immigrant measures. I doubt that because when Bredesen has had opportunities to stand up, he has always backed down.
The tax system of Tennessee is a regressive, brittle, third world worthy joke. If the state is ever going to become anything other than an economic backwater, that needs to change. But Bredesen has refused to touch the tax issues so far, and he shows no signs of doing so in the future. He is afraid of the backlash.
Even, worse, though, was how Bredesen killed TennCare. If TennCare had died because all the remedies had been tried but failed, I could have lived with that. If TennCare had died because Bredesen lost his fight with the legislature over needed reforms. But Bredesen didn’t even try. He left options on the table that could very well have saved TennCare and just went straight to gutting it. He took the easy, cowardly way out. And now, because of his political cowardice, people go without life saving medicine, emergency rooms are once against the doctor of first resort for our working poor, and people are almost certainly going to die who would have lived if he had just shown an ounce of political courage.
Maybe I will regret this, but standing in front of the voting machine, knowing that Bredesen was almost certainly going to win in a walk, knowing that he killed TennCare without even the hint of a fight, knowing that he would almost certainly never stand up to the GOP controlled legislature on anything important, I just couldn’t push the button for him. So I left the ballot blank and hoped that in four years, we would have a better class of politician running.
October 26th, 2006
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Politics, Legal Issues, I do too have a life, Economics, Iraq, Katrina, Immigration, Torture |
6 comments
Digby reminds us what happend a year ago today:
Bill O’Reilly is trying with all his might to make this story about “thugs” and bad Democrats but both Fox news reporters on the ground are having none of it. Shepard Smith and Steve Harrigan are both insisting that the story is about people dying and starving on the streets of New Orleans. Smith is particularly upset that the mayor sent buses to the Hyatt today and took tourists over to the Superdome and let them off at the front of the line.
O’Reilly says “you sound so bitter” and said they need a strong leader like Rudy Giuliani. Smith replies that what they needed “on the first day was food and water and what they needed on the second day was food and water and what they needed on the third day was food and water.”
O’Reilly is practically rolling his eyes with impatience at Smith’s pussified outrage about the plight of a bunch of losers who were asking for it. He really, really wants to talk about scary black boogeymen and steppin-fetchit politicans. It doesn’t work out. He looks relieved to move over to the Natalee Holloway story.
[…]
Sean’s up now and he’s equally uncomfortable with Shep’s story about the thousands still stuck on freeways and bridges with no food and water — who have been ignored for days now. He’s been covering one single bridge for days and nobody knows why they haven’t been helped yet. He’s almost shrill.
Now Geraldo comes on and he freaks out, begging the authorities to let people still stuck at the convention center walk out of town. Shep comes back and he says they have checkpoints set up turning people back to the city if they try. (wtf?) They are both on the verge of tears.
Sean says they need to get some perspective and Shep screams at him “this is the perspective!”
This was some amazing TV. Kudos to Shep Smith and Geraldo for not letting O’Reilly and Hannity spin their GOP “resolve” apologia bullshit. I’m fairly shocked.
September 2nd, 2006
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Katrina |
no comments
Publius has some good thoughts, which I’ll link without further comment, other than to say I mostly agree with him.
August 29th, 2006
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Economics, Katrina |
one comment
I only have time for a few thoughts about Katrina:
- What’s most frustrating is how, even to this day, nobody in power has to my knowledge admitted that they screwed up, or could have done things better. Not Brown, not Nagin, not Cherthoff, not Blanco, not Bush. The finger always points elsewhere.
- The failings of the state and local governments do not in any way excuse the failings of the federal government.
- I can’t think of a better example to prove that federalism can’t work. Whether intentionally or not, it was basically left to the state and local governments to handle Katrina, and those governments failed miserably. Further, the entire nation suffered as a result of those failings, rather than just the affected areas. We saw, crystal clear, what happens when there’s no strong federal government to step in and help with large-scale disasters of this sort.
- I’m frankly sick and tired of people pointing to the worst behavior and holding it up as though it were typical. Yes, there was looting and lawlessless. Yes, there were people who foolishly remained behind when they could have left. Yes, there are some who complain that nobody will help them, yet aren’t doing anything to help themselves. I recognize and acknowledge that all of these things are true, and I ask: So f-ing what? For every person who looted, there are many people who did not. Some people foolishly passed up opportunities to evacuate, but others could not evacuate for various reasons. And for every person who complains that help isn’t coming while they themselves do nothing, there are lots of people who are struggling to clean up, recover, get by, and move on. Rather than obsess about the less-than-exemplary victims, let’s get help to the people who need it and deserve it, and worry about those negative elements after the fact. I don’t see why we should punish an entire region for the failings of a relative few.
- If New Orleans is to rebuild, survive, and thrive, a holistic approach to the whole of South Louisiana is needed. Yes, bigger, stronger levees are needed, but it goes well beyond that. Much of the surrounding area, and especially southern Louisiana, needs to be returned to natural wetlands, which act as a buffer to such storms. Flooding outside of the core city needs to be allowed, so that silt can be redeposited and water tables can be preserved. The area protected by levees needs to be more concentrated around the core of New Orleans, with the surrounding areas either filled to above sea level or allowed to flood periodically. And we need to stop fighting the Mississippi River’s natural push southward. I’m not optimistic that any of this can happen, which means that we’re likely to see much of the Katrina fiasco repeat itself.
- Yes, New Orleans is below sea level. That doesn’t disparage its right to exist, or its important as a port. Especially not when you consider that it didn’t start off that way. The city is sinking, at a rate of roughly 3 feet per century (a rate which can be expected to accelerate if the above fixes aren’t considered). This does indeed introduce special challneges, but I’m tired of people suggesting that the city as a whole should be simply abandoned, or that they somehow “had it coming” because of this. I suppose these same asshats would have told the residents of 1906 San Francisco that they “shouldn’t have built a city on a fault line.”
August 29th, 2006
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Katrina |
22 comments
Then:
11AM CDT — MICHAEL BROWN FINALLY REQUESTS THAT DHS DISPATCH 1,000 EMPLOYEES TO REGION, GIVES THEM TWO DAYS TO ARRIVE: “Brown’s memo to Chertoff described Katrina as ‘this near catastrophic event’ but otherwise lacked any urgent language. The memo politely ended, ‘Thank you for your consideration in helping us to meet our responsibilities.’” [AP]
LATE MORNING – LEVEE BREACHED: “A large section of the vital 17th Street Canal levee, where it connects to the brand new ‘hurricane proof’ Old Hammond Highway bridge, gave way late Monday morning in Bucktown after Katrina’s fiercest winds were well north.” [Times-Picayune]
11AM CDT — BUSH VISITS ARIZONA RESORT TO PROMOTE MEDICARE DRUG BENEFIT: “This new bill I signed says, if you’re a senior and you like the way things are today, you’re in good shape, don’t change. But, by the way, there’s a lot of different options for you. And we’re here to talk about what that means to our seniors.” [White House]
4:30PM CDT — BUSH TRAVELS TO CALIFORNIA SENIOR CENTER TO DISCUSS MEDICARE DRUG BENEFIT: “We’ve got some folks up here who are concerned about their Social Security or Medicare. Joan Geist is with us. … I could tell — she was looking at me when I first walked in the room to meet her, she was wondering whether or not old George W. is going to take away her Social Security check.” [White House]
8PM CDT — RUMSFELD ATTENDS SAN DIEGO PADRES BASEBALL GAME: Rumsfeld “joined Padres President John Moores in the owner’s box…at Petco Park.” [Editor & Publisher]
8PM CDT – GOV. BLANCO AGAIN REQUESTS ASSISTANCE FROM BUSH: “Mr. President, we need your help. We need everything you’ve got.” [Newsweek]
LATE PM – BUSH GOES TO BED WITHOUT ACTING ON BLANCO’S REQUESTS [Newsweek]
Now:
A year after the storm, the federal government has proven slow and unreliable in keeping the president’s promises.
… A June report by the Government Accountability Office concluded that FEMA wasted between $600 million and $1.4 billion on “improper and potentially fraudulent individual assistance payments.”
… The job still isn’t done. More than 100 million cubic yards of debris have been cleared from the region affected by Katrina. So far the government has spent $3.6 billion, a figure that might have been considerably smaller had the contracts for debris removal been subject to competitive bidding.
Working through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA gave each of four companies contracts worth up to $500 million to clear hurricane debris. This spring government inspectors reported that the companies — AshBritt Inc. of Pompano Beach, Fla., Phillips and Jordan Inc. of Knoxville, Tenn., Ceres Environmental Services Inc. of Brooklyn Park, Minn. and ECC Operating Services Inc. of Burlingame, Calif. — charged the government as much as four to six times what they paid their subcontractors who actually did the work.
… Despite Bush’s Jackson Square promise to “undertake a close partnership with the states of Louisiana and Mississippi, the city of New Orleans and other Gulf Coast cities,” state and local officials had a hard time reaching a deal for federal aid to help residents rebuild their ruined homes.
In January the administration rejected a $30 billion plan for Louisiana as too expensive. The White House also balked at subsidizing the reconstruction of homes in flood plains, a policy that would have excluded all but a small fraction of Louisiana homeowners whose houses were significantly damaged.
The state finally won funding in July for the $9 billion ‘Road Home’ program, which pays homeowners up to $150,000 either to repair their damaged property or rebuild elsewhere in the state. People who leave the state are eligible for a 60% buyout. The money, which is being distributed through escrow accounts to prevent fraud, is just becoming available a year after the hurricane.
… A preliminary draft of the study released in July was widely criticized because it omitted five projects that state officials say should be started right away. At the same time, it focused on a massive levee that would stretch hundreds of miles along the Louisiana coast while paying only lip service to the critical task of shoring up the state’s vanishing wetlands, which provide a natural barrier to hurricane flooding.
… The first goal was to bring the levee system back to “pre-Katrina” levels by the beginning of the 2006 hurricane season on June 1. That goal was largely achieved. The next step will be to make improvements that will bring the system up to what is variously called Category 3 or 100-year protection by 2010.
But planners and state and local officials say that the levees need to be brought up to Category 5 protection, a level that would cost up to $30 billion, if people are to have confidence moving back to areas destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
We are supposed to be the greatest, strongest, most advanced nation the earth has ever seen, the City on the Hill, the example. And we couldn’t prevent a major city from dying and we have been unable to help it recover, unless you define recover as “line the pockets of politically connected companies”. Tell me, please, why I should believe that when the next terror attack or natural disaster strikes a major American city it, too, will not die?
Shakes has a great Katrina round up here.
August 29th, 2006
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Politics, Katrina |
11 comments
It’s hard to believe, I know, but the Bush administration has been issuing no-bid contracts like candy to hand-picked government contractors - some of whom were allowed to write their own contract performance requirements - who then, in a move that would certainly astonish anyone familiar with the history of such companies or this administration, have been systematically inflating costs, embezzling funds, and manipulating the contracting process to guarantee themselves a permanent advantage.
Based on a comprehensive survey of hundreds of government audits, 32 Homeland Security Department contracts worth a total of $34 billion have “experienced significant overcharges, wasteful spending, or mismanagement,” according to the report, which is slated for release today and was obtained in advance by The Washington Post.
The value of contracts awarded without full competition increased 739 percent from 2003 to 2005, to $5.5 billion, more than half the $10 billion awarded by the department that year. . . .
The report warns that the department is on the verge of making more mistakes by giving contractors too much latitude. It points to a planned multibillion-dollar contract for border security that has only the vaguest of requirements. “We’re asking you to come back and tell us how to do our business,” Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Michael P. Jackson told industry leaders in January. . . .
As contracting surged by 189 percent from 2003 to 2005, the department’s acquisition staff did not to keep pace, increasing by less than 20 percent. The average staffer is overseeing twice as much money now as in 2003. As the burden grew, contracting officers increasingly turned to sole-source contracts or contracts for which only a limited number of firms were allowed to compete. . . .
Paul C. Light, professor of public service at New York University, said industry consolidation in defense and homeland security increasingly enables firms to present themselves as sole-source bidders, at the same time that government expertise and contract management staffs have been hollowed out.
“They’d like to boll-weevil themselves down to the agencies and create dependencies that will last for years, if not decades,” Light said.
Who could ever have predicted such a thing?
July 27th, 2006
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General, Politics, Iraq, Katrina, News & Current Events |
9 comments
Ummm ….
In one of the most amazing turnabouts in recent times, officials in Katrina-ravaged St. Bernard Parish in Louisiana are looking to hire the man most vilified in the aftermath of the disaster: former FEMA Director Michael Brown.
The consulting firm formed by Brown after losing his job at FEMA, has been approached by St. Bernard Parish to help businesses and communities negotiate the maze of federal bureaucracy.
But an editorial in the Times-Picayune of New Orleans on Tuesday called this idea a “mistake.” It said that local officials “need to remember Mr. Brown’s abysmal performance during and after the hurricane.”
Despite recent revelations that show that he was at least somewhat more on top of the situation than believed, “nothing in Mr. Brown’s performance suggests that he’s the person who can make things happen for St. Bernard Parish,” the editorial warned. “If he couldn’t get FEMA to work right when he was on the inside, before his forced resignation, how can he do so now, from the outside?”
April 11th, 2006
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Politics, Katrina |
no comments
A Democratic representative was about to force a floor vote on a bill to repeal the President’s executive order allowing below market wages in the Gulf during Katrina construction. Almost the entire Democratic caucus was going to be joined by several moderate Republicans. Faced with a high profile loss, the White House rescinded the order. Thanks to the Democrats, workers in the Gulf will get decent wages, and more federal rebuilding money will stay in the Gulf to help restore the economy.
October 27th, 2005
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Politics, Economics, Katrina |
no comments
Facing South catches an unbelievable display of Bush sycophancy among a large collection of supposedly independent newspaper editors across the country. At least 5 newspapers ran an editorial praising Bush for gutting worker protection laws on hurricane-cleanup projects, using exactly the same language, as the newspaper’s official editorial position (i.e., the voice of its own editorial staff). The piece was authored by a former Republican staffer in several administrations and campaigns, who now edits one of the papers; the others ran all or portions of it verbatim. Most - but not all - of the papers are members of some sort of conservative newspaper corporation, but all ran the piece as their own, individual position - while in fact mouthing Bush propaganda fed to them by a former Republican White House press aide.
It gets better: the same hack - Sean Paige - recently editorialized against MoveOn.org members sending, on their own initiative, letters to newspaper editors that used language supplied by MoveOn. He himself, however, has no qualms about dictating entire editorials to other papers to run secretly under their own names.
It’s almost not worth getting upset about. It hardly lowers the bar on Republican hacktivism (Jeff Gannon?, pre-screened rally crowds?, military “meet the troops” press conferences in which the troops are actually PR staff?, “Mission Accomplished”? . . .). For so long now it’s been clear that you simply cannot believe any word spoken by a Republican or by most conservatives generally, and cannot take anything they say at face value. This administration, and their supporters, have taken lying beyond an art form - it’s simply ingrained. Deceit is the default position on even the most meaningless issues. Couldn’t those papers simply have written 4 or 5 paragraphs of their own on the issue? Was there any point to printing unacknowledged propaganda? But propaganda and deceitfulness is what they do - it is communication, to them. Writing an honest editorial is unthinkable, because sincere and direct communication is to today’s Republicans what lying was to a former generation - something you only do if you have no other choice.
As for the actual issue, it betrays a far greater perversity than the lying itself. The content of the lie-itorials was the “Davis-Bacon Act” - a federal law that requires that workers on federal projects be paid the prevailing local wage (not a union wage) and given the same worker protections as available under state law. Naturally, Republicans hate anything that makes life better for the working class, and have been trying to kill it since forever - Bush got a head start by gutting worker protection in the USA PATRIOT Act, in the name of “national security”, and has now taken the excuse of his own budget overruns to hammer workers in the hurricane cleanup in the name of “cost-cutting”. The editorials, however, recommend ending all federal worker protections under all circumstances.
This is as much as you need to know about the GOP.
Of course higher wages drive up labor costs - it costs more to pay workers better. Similarly with unemployment benefits, health insurance, and seniority protections. It would be a lot cheaper to pay them starvation wages, let them get sick, and fire them at whim. So we have a choice to make: treat the people who do our work for us decently, or save money by screwing it out of the workers to their detriment. (Note that no proposal to roll back worker benefits was accompanied by a proposal to reduce the incentive fees, “cost-plus” margin, or other guaranteed profit clauses in federal contracts to the companies that employ these workers.) Of course costs are an issue - especially under the most fiscally irresponsible administration in the history of any nation in the world. But it is a question of values - of basic human decency - whether we meet our financial burdens by taking a basic, decent living wage from hourly-wage workers, or look to sources that can afford that cost without sacrificing basic needs.
Democractic Congressmember George Miller made the point as starkly as it can be in a letter addressing Bush’s assault on workers. He gives a table showing prevailing wages for ordinary hourly-wage workers in the hurricane region, ranging from barelu $6/hr for truck drivers in Mississippi to a munificent $13.75 for carpenters in Louisiana (carpenters in Mississippi earn 2/3 of that). He notes:
[T]hese prevailing wages are modest by anyone’s standards. If you do a back-of-the-envelope calculation, a carpenter in Louisiana working 40 hours a week for 50 weeks a year at the prevailing wage of $13.75 would earn $27,500 annually.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, a single parent raising a single child in New Orleans needs $27,192 in annual income just to pay for basic needs like food, housing, and transportation to school and work. EPI notes that this “basic family budget” is not enough to pay for lots of items many Americans take for granted – including renters’ insurance to guard against flood or fire. (See http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/datazone_fambud_budget for the calculation).
The President’s proclamation raises the question of just how low of a wage he believes hard working Americans should earn . . . .
Recall that’s the highest-paid job in the chart - it pays barely a poverty wage, and that only for one parent with one child - the rest all pay less - and Bush wants to cut those wages further! The answer to Miller’s question about how low Bush wants wages to go is, unmistakeably: below the level at which it is possible to get by at all.
Why would we do this? Why would any decent nation, any decent person, do this? Is it so strange to expect people who do the work that makes our society run could have even a basic living standard, let alone a decent, comfortable life? There was a time when hourly-wage, blue-collar employment was a ticket to the modest middle class - you could live a comfortable, unostentatious lifestyle, own a decent house, take a modest vacation, send your kids to a decent college, and eventually retire - usually with a pension - from doing an ordinary medium-skill job. It was unions that made that possible, but it hardly seems like too much for them to have asked for. Today, full-time blue-collar employment provides a below-poverty-level standard of living in most jobs, and the Republicans think that’s too much! Why would we want to deny any full-time-employed worker a living wage? When did we become so selfish and so resentful that even a poverty-level standard of living would be prohibited by Presidential directive? When did we become a country in which a President would ever consider - or be allowed to impose - a policy of making workers worse off?
They’re not just congenital liars - they’re evil people. They simply suck as human beings.
October 21st, 2005
|
General, Politics, Economics, Culture, Katrina |
3 comments
FEMA was worse than we could ever have imagined:
In the midst of the chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina, a
Federal Emergency Management Agency official in New Orleans sent a dire e-mail to Director Michael Brown saying victims had no food and were dying. No response came from Brown.
Instead, less than three hours later, an aide to Brown sent an e-mail saying her boss wanted to go on a television program that night — after needing at least an hour to eat dinner at a Baton Rouge, La., restaurant.
(snip)
“There was a systematic failure at all levels of government to understand the magnitude of the situation,” Bahamonde testified. “The leadership from top down in our agency is unprepared and out of touch.”
The 19 pages of internal FEMA e-mails show Bahamonde gave regular updates to people in contact with Brown as early as Aug. 28, the day before Katrina made landfall. They appear to contradict Brown, who has said he was not fully aware of the conditions until days after the storm hit. Brown quit after being recalled from New Orleans amid criticism of his work.
Brown had sent Bahamonde, FEMA’s regional director in New England, to New Orleans to help coordinate the agency’s response. Bahamonde arrived on Aug. 27 and was the only FEMA official at the scene until FEMA disaster teams arrived on Aug. 30.
As Katrina’s outer bands began drenching the city Aug. 28, Bahamonde sent an e-mail to Deborah Wing, a FEMA response specialist. He wrote: “Everyone is soaked. This is going to get ugly real fast.”
Subsequent e-mails told of an increasingly desperate situation at the New Orleans Superdome, where tens of thousands of evacuees were staying. Bahamonde spent two nights there with the evacuees.
On Aug. 31, Bahamonde e-mailed Brown to tell him that thousands of evacuees were gathering in the streets with no food or water and that “estimates are many will die within hours.”
“Sir, I know that you know the situation is past critical,” Bahamonde wrote. “The sooner we can get the medical patients out, the sooner we can get them out.”
There own man was begging them for help, and they did nothing. No, I am sorry — they worked diligently to make sure that Mike Brown would not have to rush his meals. One can never be too careful with one’s digestion, after all.
October 21st, 2005
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Katrina |
one comment
Americans United points out that FEMA is prepared to hand out money to religious organizations who were as concerned with evangelizing as helping the victims of Katrina:
According to Baptist Press news service, Southern Baptist aid workers distributed 11,000 evangelistic tracts and 1,200 Bibles in the hurricane-ravaged areas and saw “45 new professions of faith in Christ.”
In a Sept. 20 report, Bobby Welch, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, urged church members to proselytize while providing aid. “When you go and you give the cup of cold water, you be sure you give a witness of Jesus Christ,” Welch said. “Don’t just smile and say, ‘I go to church.’ You give a witness of Jesus Christ to those people because the water, the beanie weenies and the food will run out, but whoever drinks of this water will never thirst again.”
Welch noted that the denomination had launched an evangelism campaign at its 2005 annual meeting, adding, “Do you think that could be providential? Out of the sovereignty of God, that He’d take the largest denomination in the world and all of a sudden begin to focus them on being prepared for a great opportunity to win and witness and baptize like never before? I think so.”
Evangelist Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse has been distributing gift bags to displaced children. The bag includes evangelistic tracts and a stuffed lamb that plays “Jesus Loves Me.” Graham urged churches participating in the relief efforts to include evangelism. “[I]n everything you do,” he said, “I encourage you to remember that your primary purpose is to share the redeeming love of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
TV preacher Pat Robertson’s “700 Club” reported that church-based evangelism even extends to government relief workers. According to a Sept. 6 report, Zion Bethany Church is providing housing for emergency workers, and the workers find a tract on their pillows each night. Tonja Miles, a faith-based charity CEO working with the church, told an interviewer, “[Emergency workers are] going out, and they’re seeing devastation, so we wanted to start something that when they can come in, it’s comfortable. We have a great meal; we have the word of God just all over the place.”
No one has any evidence that anyone has been denied help if they refused to listen to the pleadings of the ones hading out help, these people are the But this is a country of many people with many faiths and many beliefs. The government should not be rewarding people who take advantage of another person’s need for help to press them to abandon their beliefs. It is insulting, demeaning, and places the beliefs of one group ahead of the values of another. It is un-American, and it should be opposed.
September 28th, 2005
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Church & State, Katrina |
18 comments
David Sirota has a nice piece in In These Times that highlights the effect Bush’s choices had on worsening the problems of Katrina:
Consider just a few of the specific examples: In the same budget that provided more than a trillion dollars in tax cuts, Bush proposed providing only half of what his own administration officials said was necessary to sustain the critical Southeast Louisiana Flood Control Project (SELA)—a project started after a 1995 rainstorm flooded 25,000 homes and caused a half billion dollars in damage. This 2001 budget proposal came in the same year that, according to the Houston Chronicle, federal officials publicly ranked the potential damage to New Orleans by a major hurricane “among the three likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country.”
Similarly, less than two weeks after Bush signed his tax cut on June 7, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that “despite warnings that it could slow emergency response to future flood and hurricane victims, House Republicans stripped $389 million in disaster relief money from the budget.”
By the beginning of the 2002 congressional session, Parker had enough of sitting in silence while these tax and budget decisions were being made. In a meeting with White House budget director Mitch Daniels, Parker demanded the Bush administration restore the critical money for flood and hurricane protection.
“I took two pieces of steel into Mitch Daniels’ office,” Parker recalled. “They were exactly the same pieces of steel, except one had been under water in a Mississippi lock for 30 years, and the other was new. The first piece was completely corroded and falling apart because of a lack of funding. I said, ‘Mitch, it doesn’t matter if a terrorist blows the lock up or if it falls down because it disintegrates—either way it’s the same effect, and if we let it fall down, we have only ourselves to blame.’ “
But as Parker noted, “It made no impact on [the White House] whatsoever.” In February 2002, the president unveiled his new budget, this one with a $390 million cut to the Army Corps. The cuts came during the same year the richest 5 percent (those who make an average of $300,000 or more) were slated to receive $24 billion in new tax cuts.
(snip)
When Parker headed to Capitol Hill for annual budget hearings in February 2002, he couldn’t hide the truth. Under questioning, he admitted that “there will be a negative impact” if the President’s budget cuts were allowed to go forward. The White House fired Parker within a matter of days.
Some Republicans came to Parker’s defense after he was removed. Then-Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said, “Mike Parker told the truth that the Corps of Engineers budget, as proposed, is insufficient.” Rep. David Vitter (R-La.) said the administration was “in denial” about the cuts. “There’s no two ways about it that [the corps] are very underfunded,” he said, noting that “southeast Louisiana flood control [is] our most obvious example.”
Vitter was right—but he was also “in denial” about his own culpability: Just weeks before, he and his Republican colleagues voted for a brand new business tax cut package, costing the federal government $43 billion in revenues that could have gone to fill the budget gaps Parker identified. And those tax cuts were targeted specifically to the GOP’s biggest financial backers. According to the Houston Chronicle, the White House-backed legislation was a windfall for Big Business, “reducing total corporate tax collections by 21 percent.”
Sirota’s article is a depressing look at how Bush’s desire to give tax cuts to his campaign contributors overrode the need to protect the country’s infrastructure. Would the money have helped? The experts seem to think so:
For instance, take Joseph Suhayda, an emeritus engineering professor at Louisiana State University who has worked for the Army Corps of Engineers. He told the Chicago Tribune that the reason levees weren’t as high as they were designed to be “was a result of lack of funding.”
“I think they could have significantly reduced the impact [of Katrina] if they had those projects funded,” Suhayda told the Tribune. “If you need to spend $20 million and you spend $4 or $5 million, something’s got to give.”
Similarly, Mike Parker told the Washington Post, “You have watched during a period of 72 hours a modern city of New Orleans [become] a Third World country, and it is all because of the disintegration of infrastructure.” He told the Tribune that “had [the infrastructure] been totally funded, there would be less flooding than you have.”
Sour grapes from a disgruntled ex-employee? It is echoed by the president’s current Army Corps chief. The Associated Press reported that Lt. Gen. Carl Strock “acknowledge[s] that more funding for the Southeast Louisiana Flood Control Project would allow the Corps to more quickly pump out the floodwaters inundating New Orleans.”
Politics is about who gets to set policy, and setting policy is about deciding what the government does and who it decides to help first. Policy has consequences. Bush’s policies put tax cuts above basic infrastructure, and, at a minimum, helped make a bad situation worse.
September 28th, 2005
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Politics, Katrina |
one comment
This is kind of amazing. Certain members of the right wing are now taking reports that the violence that was reported in new Orleans was exaggerated as “evidence” that things weren’t as bad in New Orleans as was reported. They pretend that the violence was somehow what horrified Americans. So let me explain this to them again. Hopefully this time they will pay attention.
When people in a major American metropolitan area are left without food, water, medicine, power, and hope of rescue for days after a natural disaster, that is an unacceptable failure. When that the government has spent the previous four years building an organization designed to provide relief in similar situations, then people are justifiably angry. The problem is not the media –the problem is that lack of food, water, medicine and rescue killed people who should not have died.
September 28th, 2005
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Politics, Media, Katrina |
4 comments
This is unbelievable. Apparently, Bush is determined to make sure that no political hack is left behind:
And, that’s when it was revealed that FEMA had apparently rehired a former employee as a consultant. You might recognize his name, too — Mike Brown.
At a meeting with staff of the special House committee looking into Katrina preparations today, the disgraced and displaced former FEMA director said he had rejoined the agency as a consultant to “provide a review” of how the agency functioned before, during, and after the storm. This according to two congressional sources.
A congressional aide told NBC News nobody’s sure — but it is assumed Brown is being paid by FEMA. He is to testify tomorrow before that House committee, prompting our colleague Howard Fineman to joke that only in Washington would a man on his way to the electric chair be paid to belt himself in.
You know, these people haven’t just killed irony. They cut off its head, drove a stake through its heart, burned it, and buried its ashes under a crossroad at midnight during a full moon.
September 27th, 2005
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Politics, Katrina |
4 comments
You know the stories of horrific violence in New Orleans? The ones that got people all riled up and touched off the discussion of whether or not those people — those overwhelmingly African American people — deserved to be helped? The stories that the almost entirely white press repeated in breathless tones and with almost no corroboration?
All crap:
Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the handoff of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice.
State health department officials in charge of body recovery put the official death count at the Dome at 10, but Beron said the other four bodies were found in the street near the Dome, not inside it. Both sources said no one had been murdered inside the stadium.
At the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, just four bodies have been recovered, despite reports of heaps of dead piled inside the building. Only one of the dead appeared to have been murdered, said health and law-enforcement officials.
That the nation’s frontline emergency-management officials believed the body count would resemble that of a bloody battle in a war is but one of scores of examples of myths about the Dome and the Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the news media and even some of the city’s top officials, including the mayor and police superintendent.
The vast majority of reported atrocities committed by evacuees — mass murders, rapes and beatings — have turned out to be false, or at least unsupported by any evidence, according to key military, law-enforcement, medical and civilian officials in positions to know.
“I think 99 percent of it is [expletive],” said Sgt. 1st Class Jason Lachney, who played a key role in security and humanitarian work inside the Dome. “Don’t get me wrong — bad things happened. But I didn’t see any killing and raping and cutting of throats or anything … 99 percent of the people in the Dome were very well-behaved.”
What has this to do with race? A lot. In this country, the fear of the back mob and the slave uprising runs deep. Lynchings happened in the South well into the 1960s, and they happened often when a black person was accused of violence towards a white. In some situations, such as Tulsa, the rumor of black on white violence was enough to get entire black neighborhoods destroyed. One of the effects of centuries of slave revolt and Jim Crow have created the myth of the Black Mob and ingrained a fear of groups of blacks outside the tight control of police. It is part of the dark side of our culture, and it rears its head at times like this.
That fear, that belief in the myth, makes it easier for people to accept and pass along stories that reinforce the myth. Almost every news reporter had wild tales of violence and shooting, but almost none of them had actual footage of it or the aftermath, despite being on the ground at the locations where the violence supposedly took place. An email is circulating that tells the same wild false stories about black evacuees. Ad the attitude that allows people to believe the outlandish tales in the email allowed the police chief and mayor of New Orleans to overreact to stories of horrific violence:
The picture that emerged was one of the impoverished, overwhelmingly African-American masses of flood victims resorting to utter depravity, randomly attacking each other, as well as the police trying to protect them and the rescue workers trying to save them. The mayor told Winfrey the crowd has descended to an “almost animalistic state.”
Four weeks after the storm, few of the widely reported atrocities have been backed with evidence. The piles of murdered bodies never materialized, and soldiers, police officers and rescue personnel on the front lines assert that, while anarchy reigned at times and people suffered indignities, most of the worst crimes reported at the time never happened.
“The information I had at the time, I thought it was credible,” Compass said, admitting his earlier statements were false. Asked the source of the information, Compass said he didn’t remember.
September 27th, 2005
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Culture, Katrina |
21 comments
The response to Rita has been better than Katrina. FEMA is pre-positioning supplies and the National Guard and Coast Guard are getting units staged and communication equipment ready. But we obviously haven’t learned enough. The Texas Highway Department didn’t reverse the highways until Thursday — several hours after evacuation orders had been given. As a result, the traffic was at a complete standstill and people are finding themselves stranded after their cars ran out of gas because a three hour trip turned into a 20 hour trip. There are apparently no provisions for moving people or for re-supplying them with fuel. And now we find out that the state and FEMA have no plan to evacuate everyone in the affected areas:
“I done called for a shelter, I done called for help. There ain’t none. No one answers,” she said, standing in blistering heat outside a check-cashing store that had just run out of its main commodity. “Everyone just says, ‘Get out, get out.’ I’ve got no way of getting out. And now I’ve got no money.”
With Hurricane Rita breathing down Houston’s neck, those with cars were stuck in gridlock trying to get out. Those like Skinner poor, and with a broken-down car were simply stuck, and fuming at being abandoned, they say.
“All the banks are closed and I just got off work,” said Thomas Visor, holding his sweaty paycheck as he, too, tried to get inside the store, where more than 100 people, all of them black or Hispanic, fretted in line. “This is crazy. How are you supposed to evacuate a hurricane if you don’t have money? Answer me that?”
Some of those who did have money, and did try to get out, didn’t get very far.
Judie Anderson of La Porte, Texas, covered just 45 miles in 12 hours. She had been on the road since 10 p.m. Wednesday, headed toward Oklahoma, which by Thursday was still very far away.
“This is the worst planning I’ve ever seen,” she said. “They say, ‘We’ve learned a lot from Hurricane Katrina.’ Well, you couldn’t prove it by me.”
On Bellaire Boulevard in southwest Houston, a weeping woman and her young daughter stood on the sidewalk, surrounded by plastic bags full of clothes and blankets. “I’d like to go, but nobody come get me,” the woman said in broken English. When asked her name, she looked frightened. “No se, no se,” she said: Spanish for “I don’t know.”
It’s pretty obvious that Texas and FEMA have not learned nearly enough from the failures of Katrina
September 23rd, 2005
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Katrina |
4 comments
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