Cox & ForkumMark Tapscott asks why we would expect the disaster that was, and still is, Katrina to be anything less than what is has become, then goes on to give some good answers.

New Orleans is a city storied since its founding for corruption. The state government of Louisiana produced Hueg Long and a succession of small-time imitators seemingly bent on robbing the public treasury of every dollar. FEMA is a federal bureaucracy lost in the layer-upon-layer of confused authority and CYA-culture that defines Washington, D.C.

So what else did we expect to see in the aftermath of Katrina but incompetence, confusion, delay and finger-pointing at everybody and anybody but the officials directly responsible for handling the governments’ response to the disaster?

“[A]nybody but the officials directly responsible for handling the governments’ response to the disaster” — there’s the gist of it. Mark then develops the argument that our reliance on the big, federal institutions to do the work that must of necessity be coordinated locally is a pattern doomed to failure. Advancing this idea, here is an excerpt from the quote that Mark picked from Thomas Lipscomb’s piece at Tech Central Station, an article that he highly recommends to anyone commenting on the Katrina disaster.

If we are to learn anything from the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina, we will have to review the more practical expectations of the Framers of our Federal system. Local and state government are the primary responders. [Emph. mine]

In discussing the problems of New Orleans, Lipscomb knows of what he speaks, his family has lived there for over 150 years. I like this literary reference he uses in the piece:

And that is the real problem. E. M. Forster’s THE MACHINE STOPS, published almost a century ago, posits a world in the future in which the human race gives up any individual responsibility to an immense computerized system that meets every need — until it fails.

Our Federal Government is becoming a specter of that all-encompassing, computerized endowment system at an alarming rate. So, one needs to keep these things in mind during the upcoming full-frontal assault by the Democrats for what is being termed, a return to big government. (Like Bush’s government hasn’t grown enough already? Sheesh!) Exemplified by the Rosa Brooks op-ed piece in this AM’s Los Angeles Times is the clarion call that we will be hearing ad nauseum for the next few election cycles. She certainly starts out partisan enough, don’t ya think?

No gain from just blame

FOR THE PRESIDENT and his merry bandits, the message of Hurricane Katrina can be easily summed up: Bedtime, fellas. We’re tired and we don’t want to hear another word out of you.

“THE PRESIDENT and his merry bandits” It’s as if she thinks that she saw ol’ G.W., Rummy and Dick down there in NOLA last week — looting, pillaging, raping and shooting at rescue vehicles. Yeah, that’s what I saw too — give me a break! But she goes on to make her points on the need to expand government.

To be sure, the Republicans are fair game. They promised us safety, security, compassion and prosperity. Instead, they gave us an endless, pointless war, a homeland security bureaucracy that can’t tie its shoelaces, a wholesale abandonment of the vulnerable and the poor, empty public coffers and spiraling costs. And no matter what President Bush says, it’s just too late to “make it right.” The dead are dead.

But the Democratic Party has to stop coasting on the public outrage over the federal response to Katrina. Demands for accountability are appropriate but should be followed — and soon — by an affirmative agenda for change.

I do have to admit, when she chastises the Dems for doing nothing but play the blame game instead of coming up with ideas and solutions, she’s correct. That’s what has cost them the last two presidential elections, plus both the House and the Senate. Of course, just having ideas and coming up with solutions don’t mean spit if they are ill formed and just plain stupid or harmful to the body politic and the American people. But she lays it out there anyway:

Here’s message No. 1 for the Democrats: Having a government comes in handy sometimes. (…) [B]ut the Democratic Party needs to remind people that we’re not better off without government services.
(…)
The Democrats have historically championed the have-nots. It’s time to reclaim that legacy and launch a major initiative to address the problem of poverty.
(…)
(…) Democratic leaders should tell Americans that if we don’t like the prospect of ever-more ferocious hurricanes, or the cost of gassing up, we need to get serious about global warming. (…)
(…)
(…) It’s time for Democrats to insist on reversing the Bush tax cuts for the rich and to acknowledge that with an expensive war and an expensive domestic relief effort, we may need to contemplate higher taxes for a time.The party needs to renew John F. Kennedy’s call to “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
(…) The Bush administration’s foreign policy has left us with an exhausted, overextended army, a war with no end in sight and a global reputation that’s in tatters. (…)

Democrats should not retreat into isolationism but should insist on a foreign policy that is grounded in reality-based thinking. This means expending resources to match the problems we face and acknowledging that military power, though essential, cannot solve every problem. It means coming up with a responsible plan for withdrawal from Iraq. It means recognizing that in this interconnected world no one can go it alone. It means taking seriously the needs of the 6 billion people who don’t have U.S. citizenship. It means re-learning the ancient art of diplomacy.

Uh, I think she got ‘em all in there, let’s see. She called Bush a bandit, encourages more federal spending, a return to more welfare spending, tax increases, rolls out the Kennedy quote even though JFK would be seen as a center-right politician in today’s world, honors the theory of global warming as fact, refuses to acknowledge anything being accomplished in our GWOT, wants to get back in bed with Europe and doesn’t understand the Big Stick Teddy Roosevelt style of diplomacy. As you can see from the quotes above, I left a lot of her piece out, so there is probably even more Democratic ideas in there for the whiner party to promote.

What this shows is that Rosa hasn’t learned a thing from the Katrina aftermath, and if the Democrats follow up on her suggestions, which they no doubt are already in the process of doing, we should all give them the political equivalent of a punch in the mouth when they appear asking us the old Grocho question, “Are you going to believe what we’re telling you, or do you believe your own eyes?”

Can we really entertain the thought of letting them back in power? I think not! (db)

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 10th, 2005 at 9:41 am and is filed under Disasters, When Right is Wrong. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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