The Great Satan
With its main levee broken, the evacuated city of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature.
Translation: the result is an act of man, of one man - George Bush.
As evidence of Mr.Bush’s culpability, Mr. Blumenthal offers this:
A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans’ levees, but it was too late.
A research project had its funding cut and had to freeze hiring. Suppose instead the project been given an 800% increase in its budget. How would have this well-funded year-old research project have stayed Katrina’s wrath? What would be different today?
We also learn the reason for Bush’s criminal hiring freeze. It seems that “federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war”. Federal dollars are fungible. One could equally well claim that the flood control project money was wasted supporting public radio and the arts. Or building roads, or paying farmers to grow tobacco or not to grow wheat. Shocking but true, government projects compete for funds. That is what it means to have a finite budget.
Mr. Blumenthal is a jackal who exploits tragedy to push his political agenda.
Posted on September 1st, 2005 by pwyll
Filed under: politics
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FEMA warning — 2001 — Dear Editor — check out other, older, more down to earth elements of the “everybody knew this was coming” aspect of the tragic destruction of a great city, and a tragic hardship to it’s great citizens.
First — YOU WERE THERE — IF you weren’t sitting with your Class of 1979 (Loyola NOLA) crew at any one of 30 bars we migrated among — discussing all topics of the day, let me blast you back to your past. Pick a bar, say the tavern on Oak Street with the washing machines in back.
Before leaving for said bar at 11 pm, it was you, Dr. Editor, that coined the sardonic motto for us, “These are the best years of our lives!” Then philosophy and humor seminar ended, and we moved to the pub for cold lagers and current events. Among the topics discussed, and I have witnesses to confirm this, in the early ’80s, by drunk college students, was that “These pumps will never get the job done if a big one gets up on to Lake Ponchatrain and spins it around.”
Second, for a long time Nawlins local’s eloquent discussion of all this with The New York Times, see http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/31/national/nationalspecial/31charm.html
Third: Yo! Mr. President, pity you couldn’t offer your condolences to Ms. Sheehan before the patients dying on the roofs of New Orleans hospitals finally broke your stupor and got you back to work. Who voted for this guy, anyway?
I have no idea why you chose to drag Cindy Sheehan into this, but you are factually incorrect. Bush met with Ms. Sheehan on 24 June 2004, two months after her son’s death, according to the Vacaville Reporter, Ms. Sheehan’s local paper. I was unable to find the original online, but it has been widely quoted.
Here is one quotation:
“THE REPORTER of Vacaville, CA published an account of Cindy Sheehan’s visit with the president at Fort Lewis near Seattle on June 24, 2004:
“‘I now know he’s sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis,’ Cindy said after their meeting. ‘I know he’s sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he’s a man of faith.’
“The meeting didn’t last long, but in their time with Bush, Cindy spoke about Casey and asked the president to make her son’s sacrifice count for something. They also spoke of their faith.
“The trip had one benefit that none of the Sheehans expected.
“For a moment, life returned to the way it was before Casey died. They laughed, joked and bickered playfully as they briefly toured Seattle.
For the first time in 11 weeks, they felt whole again.
“‘That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together,’ Cindy said.”
Seems Ms. Sheehan wanted a second bite at the apple. But hey, why let facts get in the way of a gratuitous jibe at Bush?
Regarding the inevitability of this disaster: it was not only predictable, but predicted. See, for instance, this article in the October 2001 Scientific American .
The spontaneous protest that erupted around Cindy Sheehan’s lone vigil near Crawford was the beginning of soon-to-be massive peaceful resistance to the U.S. imperialist adventure in Iraq. Your “cheap shot” is my “straw that stirs the drink”. Whatever facts or metaphors one chooses to emphasis, it is clear that we:
A.) Agree that this disaster in Nawlins is Mother Nature once again teaching man not to mess with Mother Nature. Or have I gone too far? Reduced, we agree this disaster is man + nature interacting to create potentially avoidable catastrophe.
B.) I like peaceful anti-war protests; you do not. I won’t put words in your mouth, but the first sentiment that comes to mind that might cover your views was a Warren Zevon line, “Bring lawyers, guns, and money….”
Peace, brudda!
Paco Malo