| To make a long story short, Bush caused the flooding of New Orleans back in 2001 when he cut the Army Corps of Engineers' budget so he could afford to pay for tax cuts for the rich. So people in the Lower 9th, Lakeview and the rest of the 80% of New Orleans that were to be wiped out on 8/29 were doomed. Even since the levees failed, Bush has been using all sort of spin to evade his culpability in this horrific manmade disaster. Because, obviously, were the federal government to accept responsibility, it would have to pay compensation to those who'd lost homes and businesses to the flooding. But we are getting ahead of our story.
It is plain that since New Orleans flooded, Bush has had a sinister agenda regarding Louisiana and it is now clear that it matters not whether she is led by a Democrat or a Republican. The "fiscal responsiblity" alluded to in the Times-Picayune article is a mere cover story. For Bush ever since Katrina has been waging the moral equivalent of war against Louisiana. Not a clean war, but a "dirty" one involving ethnic cleansing.
Bush's treatment of Louisiana since New Orleans's levees failed can be compared to that of the passive-aggressive, neglectful-abusive husband of his seriously- and painfully-injured wife. Because of her wounds, she's too incapacitated physically and mentally to go after the medical attention she needs herself. So she keeps asking him for the help she needs, but her pleas seem to fall on deaf ears. He'll just make her vague, empty promises and maybe even throw her a few "crumbs" in an attempt to console her. Because he doesn't really care about her--in fact, the last thing he wants is for her to fully recover and be happy and healthy. For he's waiting for her to die.
Actually, when New Orleans flooded, although her population had been before Katrina 70% black, the impact cut across racial, ethnic, and income/class lines. In fact, many of the people who'd lived in hard-hit Lakeview had been white. But Americans who watched news coverage of the unfolding disaster saw mainly blacks. They saw mostly blacks in the Dome and at the Convention Center, and they saw film of blacks described by Rita Cosby and others as "looting" while whites doing the same were said to be taking what they needed.
And this is what the Bush Administration saw, too, and it was this perception that it was mainly poor blacks--who, they believed, were Democratic voters--who were being driven from their homes by the flooding. And the Final Solution for Louisiana started being put into place as a racist Bush Administration saw a golden opportunity in New Orleans' being made unhabitable. So according to Michael Eric Dyson in his book Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster There were poor blacks, mostly from Louisiana, drowning in twenty-five foot floods stranded in their homes or crammed into makeshift shelters, awaiting rescue from a Texas-bred president and an Oklahoma-born head of FEMA. At its core, this was a Southern racial narrative being performed before a national and global audience...
It is safe to say that race played a major role in the failure of the federal government--especially for Bush and Michael Brown--to respond in a timely manner to the poor black folk of Louisiana because black grief and pain have been ignored throughout the nation's history. Bush and Brown simply updated the practice...
Dyson adds that The black poor simply didn't...count as much, as they might have had they been white. If they had been white...that might have boosted considerably their chances of survival because the federal government, including Bush and Brown, would have seen their kind, perhaps their kin, and hence themselves, floating in a flood of death...
The undeniable incompetence of the federal disaster relief infrastructure still might have hampered the chances of even white folk surviving Katrina. but their...higher social and racial standing might have prompted a quicker attempt to respond, and thus to work out the problems. It also might have made Bush and Brown more adventurous, more daring, more willing to suspend rules and more determined to accept help from whatever quarter it came...and more open to deferring procedural correctness in the interest of saving lives...
FEMA blocked truckloads of food, water and other needed supplies from getting into New Orleans. It turned away generators. It told Chicago to send only one truck. FEMA also blocked a 500-boat citizen flotilla from delivering aid. Firefighters enroute to a city in her death throes had to make an extra stop in Atlanta for sexual harassment training. Experienced firefighters were turned away. When New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, at Blanco's request, tried to send into Louisiana New Mexico National Guard troops, the Pentagon blocked him from doing so because of red tape. And aid sent from overseas was either turned away or squandered. These are but a few out of many instances that show that obviously the Bush Administration had cruelly wanted people in Louisiana to die.
One would think that in such an urgent situation, the President would do all in his power to help beleaguered Gov. Blanco, but instead, he began feuding with her. At the heart of the dispute was the fact that Bush had wanted to federalize Louisiana, while Blanco didn't. As Michael Brown had put it in January of this year, according to the Associated Press: Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking,"We had to to federalize Louisiana because she's a white, female Democratic governor and we have a chance to rub her nose in it. We can't do it to Haley because Haley's a white male Republican governor. And we can't do that to him, So we're gonna federalize Louisiana." Then, in spite of the fact that Louisiana is an American state whose citizens pay federal taxes, vote, and send their children off to fight in Bush's wars--hence the absence of much of Louisiana's National Guard in Iraq--she found herself being treated as though she were a foreign adversary, and Gov. Blanco as the pariah leader of a hostile power. Because to a racist Bush Administration, New Orleans' "poor, black" people don't look like "Americans," they thought they could put a low priority on their rescue and get away with carrying out the Final Solution. And the groundwork was also laid for future preferential treatment of Mississippi. Bush knew his lackluster Katrina response would arouse public indignation and his poll standings were already dropping. So he needed a scapegoat, and Louisiana's and New Orleans' leaders were ideal.
So the only quick, efficient response the Bush Administration made to Louisiana's agony was to set the wheels of the spin machine into motion. This was a propaganda machine Georg Goebbels of "Big Lie" fame would have envied. They made sure it became conventional wisdom that all that went wrong during Katrina could be laid on the shoulders of "incompetent" Blanco and Nagin. And immediately they set about trying to eradicate public sympathy for Louisiana and New Orleans. For they knew that were the public greatly supportive of Louisiana and New Orleans, this would lead to calls for substantial aid for Louisiana.
Thus began the Mother of All Blame Games. Michael Brown, on Capitol Hill, said Louisiana was "dysfunctional." This is representative of how they'd blame Louisiana when in fact they'd abdicated their own responsibility and been the most incompetent of all by not doing all in their power to help Louisiana and New Orleans. Whose officials had been overwhelmed by the flooding, downed communications, and power's being off. So Louisiana fell apart.
The perfect example of spin were the often-shown shots of flooded New Orleans school buses. Seen all over the media, their implication was that they could have been used for evacuations and the finger was pointed at Mayor Nagin. This spin was so good, I'd even fallen for it at the time and thought Nagin had bungled.
But actually, the true story is that Louisiana had wanted to use the school buses for evacuations--it had been FEMA that had told her not to. Because the buses weren't air-conditioned. But you won't read that in the mainstream media.
Now for the levees, regarding which there has been beaucoup spin. The Bush Administration made sure it was widely known Louisiana and New Orleans have been responsible for their upkeep--and that levee boards had been and are in charge of those levees and that corruption siphoned money from the levees to local groups' pet projects. This cover story--that Louisiana and New Orleans were responsible for levee maintenance--because so pervasive in the conventional wisdom and would be what you'd hear in the MSM were levees to come up. The fact that Bush caused the flooding of New Orleans by cutting the ACOE's budget to pay for tax cuts for the rich has to be the most censored domestic news story in existence.
(Fast forward to last week when Bush was in the California fire zone, where, per the Associated Press, he complimented Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, saying It makes a significant difference when you have somebody in the statehouse willing to take the lead. Blanco responded that it took federal forces nearly a week to arrive in Louisiana after the storm. "I was the only game in town, leading for nearly a week without the president's help." Bush's dig at Blanco shows how even over two years later Bush still has it in for Louisiana, blaming her and her governor for his Administration's own failures to respond to Katrina. So the Big Lie machine is still in motion. And Bush's comment is further evidence that he has been waging the moral equivalent of war against Louisiana because of his grudge against Blanco, who in his eyes committed the unpardonable sin of making his administration's disaster response look bad.)
Then on Sept. 15, Bush stood in Jackson Square which was floodlit for this special photo-op. He made all sorts of beautiful, vague promises--that America would "do what it takes" and "stay as long as it takes" to bring New Orleans back. He also said he couldn't imagine America without New Orleans and that "great city" will rise again. Once the speech, the photo-op was over, Jackson Square was plunged back into darkness.
Then, two months ago, Bush again visited New Orleans and actually had the chutzpah to bring up his 2-year-old Jackson Square promises which have proven empty. As if New Orleanians and other Americans who care about and love her would have forgotten those promises and the fact that they remain unkept.
Soon Rita tore apart Louisiana's southwestern coast and obliterated to the slabs villages on the "Cajun Riviera," compounding her pain.
It was time for a fragile, exhausted Louisiana struggling to survive to go on Capitol Hill and request aid. Her members of Congress and senators bi-partisanly came up with a $250 billion recovery package that included not only aid for New Orleans but also for levees and for restoring Louisiana's coastal wetlands which have been steadily vanishing.
The Bush spin machine, in concert with the GOP, was on full force. Poor Louisiana found her Capitol Hill delegation accused of attempting a power grab and, worse, being slandered as "Louisiana looters" with the loaded image that conjures up. This by Bush Administration GOP toadies who wouldn't have batted an eyelash had Bush requested the same amount for Iraq. And this disgusting "Louisiana looters" slur was bandied about the airwaves and set her back in her quest for assistance.
At this time, anguished Louisiana needed to be gently nursed back to health and given tender loving care--like that being given by the Bush Administration to Mississippi, which had a powerful congressional delegation and is led by GOP potentate Gov. Haley Barbour. For in spite of the fact that Louisiana suffered 80% of the damage--200,000 houses, 71,000 businesses, and 80% of New Orleans, Mississippi has been getting proportionately more aid while Louisiana has been getting the shaft. (Read "Divide and Conquer: Bush's Gulf Strategy" for more details.)
The last thing Louisiana needed was to be forced to endure the humiliation of having to plead on bended knee for aid only to be kicked while she was down--but that's exactly what happened to her. When Louisiana made her scaled-down request for aid, she was confronted by callous, mean-spirited GOP members like Colorado's anti-undocumented immigration Nazi Rep. Tom Tancredo. And Idaho Sen. Larry Craig of Minnesota bathroom bust fame said in effect that Louisiana shouldn't be trusted with federal monies because she has a culture of corruption as bad as Iraq's. (As if other American states and cities, from New York to Illinois to California to Alaska haven't themselves had issues with corruption.) Their insults rubbed salt in Louisiana's wounds--and of course their hard-hearted treatment delayed, if it didn't block, much-needed relief.
So to make a long, harrowing story short, since Katrina, Rita and the flood, Louisiana has not been able to get the aid she needs, in the amount she needs, in a timely manner. It's as if the Bush Administration would like Louisiana to go away, drag herself into a dark corner, and die.
Take housing. The Bush Administration had in the months after the storm been complaining that Louisiana couldn't seem to get her act together and come up with a housing plan, because her leaders and Capitol Hill delegation had all been pulling in different directions based on partisan politics, etc. But Louisiana's politicians finally settled on a $30-billion housing plan called the Baker Plan, after its originator Rep. Richard Baker, who by the way is Republican. At first, Louisiana had gotten the impression that Bush supported the plan--but he changed his mind because of the cost (a drop in the bucket compared with what's being spent in Iraq.) Ironically, the plan had also been rejected because it would have added a new bureaucracy. By the way, Mississippi got preferential treatment as usual--the Barbour regime's housing was approved a full 6 months before Louisiana's.
This is ironic because of how the program Bush O.K.'d--the Road Home program--turned out. In July, 2006, Louisiana won funding for this $9 billion program, which had been riddled by red tape and assorted snafus from the gitgo. Blanco has been blamed for its failures, but it's actually the Virginia corporation charged with running the program and disbursing the funds that has been screwing up. Homeowners would wait several months to receive letters telling them they could expect a certain amount for their grants, only to months later get a new letter saying they'd be getting less--or even nothing. According to the Washington Post one of many factors behind Louisiana's crushing depression epidemic has been frustration over the Road Home program. And unless more funding can be secured, the program will be out of money be the end of the year.
And regarding renters, there's nothing for them. Many are evacuees stuck in places like Houston and Atlanta. They're homesick, but can't afford to return because of the lack of affordable housing. Or, they're in Louisiana but must live in unhealthy, crime-ridden FEMA trailer parks. Many of these were poor, black and elderly who'd lived in public housing before Katrina. Recall how the Bush Administration saw in the emptying, the ethnic cleansing of much of New Orleans a golden opportunity to turn a majority-Democratic area red. This is why the Bush Administration has been doing all it can to hold up the rebuilding money Louisiana needs. Because it wants to discourage from returning to New Orleans the return of poor blacks. For were they to return and repopulate the city, Bush's Final Solution would have failed.
Not only was Bush's spin machine so successful in convincing people in Louisiana that Blanco's "incompetence" had led to failures during Katrina, she was also being held accountable for the Road Home fiasco. And on top of this she was finding it impossible to get Louisiana her fair share of aid. To put it bluntly, Bush didn't want to do anything that would enhance Blanco's image and boost her popularity. So he was starving Louisiana of the aid she desperately needed because of his feud with Blanco.
A dramatic example of President Bush's neglect/abuse of Louisiana happened in February when she was tortured by tornadoes with winds as high as 135 mph, that cut huge swaths through several New Orleans neighborhoods. One person was killed, several dozen were injured, and there was about $20 million in damage. Several rebuilt or nearly-rebuilt homes were blown apart, as were many FEMA trailers. Schools were closed, highways were shut down, piles of rubble were everywhere. That afternoon, Blanco declared a state of emergency and asked President Bush to do likewise. Bush's response was, in effect, "I'll get back to you later." And nothing was done. (By the way, within 24 hours after a tornado had recently hit Mississippi, Bush declared an emergency.)
And, as if she were an enemy, Bush used aid as a weapon against Louisiana. He'd play cruel games with it. One such game involved the Stafford Act, which requires that communities pay back any rebuilding aid they get to the federal government. This requirement had been waived for New York after 9/11, Florida after Hurricane Andrew, and in many other instances. But Bush, sadistically wanting to see Blanco's Louisiana suffer, mean-spiritedly refused to waive it for her. It was grossly unfair for a Louisiana on her back, which had been before Katrina one of the two poorest states in the nation to have to pay this 10% when better-off New York and Florida hadn't had to.
But fortunately, despite Bush's opposition, a Stafford Act waiver was attached to a bill to provide funding for the Iraq War, which was passed in May of this year and signed by Bush.
Blanco was finding her position untenable, her poll standings very low. So, knowing she would not be able to do so and win, she decided not to seek re-election. So, with the inauguration of Bobby Jindal in January, Bush, by means of his anti-Blanco spin machine, will have accomplished regime change in Louisiana.
But as previously noted, even with a Republican governor, Louisiana still won't be out of the woods because of the Bush Administration's agenda. Bush wants to make sure the federal government is not found culpable in the failure of New Orleans' levees, which had taken place because of his budget cuts in 2001. And Bush, keeping in mind 2008 when not only will a new president be voted in, Sen. Mary Landrieu's Senate seat is up for grabs, also wants to keep New Orleans ethnically cleansed of potential Democratic voters. So even under new Republican management, Louisiana will continue to find herself out in the cold regarding her quest for the aid she needs. And, with Blanco out, Bush will undoubtedly find other ways to use his spin machine against Louisiana.
Louisiana's best hope will be the accession to the White House of a Democrat who cares about her and a majority-Democratic House and Senate which will allow the President to come up with a "Marshall Plan" for her and get it enacted. Unfortunately, if the GOP wins, all bets are off. It would depend on how closely they adhere to Bush Administration policies.
I am cautiously optimistic that if a Democrat wins, he/she will take into account Louisiana's needs and help her, not punish her because she will be GOP-led, the way the Bush Administration has because of Democrat Blanco. I hope a Democratic President and Congress will be able to undo the damage Bush has done to Louisiana and will gently nurse her back to wholeness. Will Louisiana be able to endure another year-plus of Bush Administration neglect/abuse until Jan. 21, 2009? I hope so. |
