Volunteers for a Better America

DeLay Indictment; Blunt Ascent

Tom DeLay was one of the most powerful men in America until Wednesday, when he was indicted on charges alleging campaign financing violations in Texas.  As Republican Majority Leader in the House, he has used his corporate and political connections to raise huge sums for himself and fellow Republicans, cementing both the Republicans' control of the federal government and of the Texas state government by a brassy redistricting effort that even attempted to use the power of the federal government to herd reluctant Texas Democrats back to town.   He was already ethically challenged before the indictment, called before the House Ethics Committee on three different issues last year and up for another grilling on his golfing outing paid for by lobbyist Jack Abramoff (who is facing his own criminal woes).

At the base of his power are two organizations--Texans for a Republican Majority (Trmpac) and Americans for a Republican Majoirty (Armpac).  With Trmpac, DeLay is described as "[writing] a new chapter, which was exporting the federal power of his office back to his state."  How a Tested Campaign Tool Led to Conspiracy Charges, New York Times, Sept. 29.  The Times goes on to quote Fred Wertheimer, a long-time promoter of improved campaign finance laws, as saying:

"This was a classic example of the DeLay system at work, because you had corporations who really weren't interested in Texas politics giving large sums to Trmpac because they were interested in the power of House Majority leader DeLay."

The enormous political stakes and the coziness of large corporations and powerful Congressional positions suggests that the influence that corporations can gain with their contributions to campaigns is enormous.  It may not be that they are simply buying laws in their favor, but it looks and smells like something awfully close to it.  That is the reason that many are calling for politicians who have received some of the DeLay largesse to turn it back.  See, for example, this blog on Illinois 15th Congressional District Representative Tim Johnson.

The Republicans' pick as DeLay's successor is not much of an improvement.  While stylistically different from DeLay (described as approachable while DeLay is an in-your-face "Hammer"), Blunt has the same ties to the corporate lobbying bankrolls that DeLay exploits and came to his post on Mr. DeLay's coattails. He seems little likely to recognize the need to turn the Congress from their current  agenda for the wealthy to one that pays attention to the needs of ordinary Americans.   A Times editorial notes that the Republicans' talk of having selected a conciliatory personality suggests that Congress thought its challenge was to find "their own intramural peace rather than the nation's fraying commonweal."

Surely at some point the politicians who control the White House and both houses of Congress must realize that they are supposed to be governing for all Americans, and not just serving as lackeys for the wealthy corporations and owners who got them into office.  Governing for us all requires listening to the concerns we are expressing more strongly day by day--our belief that the loss of more lives and more billions in Iraq is meaningless and it is therefore time for an honorable exit so that the Iraqis can determine their own future without the terrorism that followed in the wake of our invasion and occupation; our desire to salvage what we can of this beautiful earth to share with future generations, rather than permit it to be ravaged for cheap, unsustainable profits that will merely line the pockets of the already wealthy; our conviction that we are morally required to care for the least among us as though they were the greatest among us, whether they are gay or lesbian, single mothers or proud families of four, poor and black or wealthy and white.   

Are they listening?  The appointment of Blunt, with everyone tacitly acknowledging that DeLay will retain his influence from the wings, suggests that they are not.

Militarism (2)

This post is a brief addendum to yesterday's post warning of the need for strong, independent investigative journalism to keep a careful watch on the American military.  One journalist is doing just that.  He is William Arkin of the Washington Post, who has started a blog called "Early Warning."   You can see the postings on the blog here. 

Here's what he says in his posting about the mission of the Early Warning blog.

"My basic philosophy is that government is more incompetent than diabolical, that the military gets way too much of a free ride . . ., and that official secrecy is the greatest threat citizens actually face today." 

"[M]y larger objective is a more informed public and to demolish false authority, in government, in the special interests, and in the media."

If you look at his blog, you'll learn the fate of Able Danger and Global Harvest.  I doubt you will be comforted.  Here, too, is the introduction to another post, warning of the growing likelihood that military intelligence may spy on US citizens.

The post-Katrina agitation to repeal the Posse Comitatus Act comes in the wake of another assault on a venerable protection of the rights of Americans, namely the web of Executive Orders and regulations restricting military and civilian intelligence agencies from collecting information on U.S. citizens.

Kudos to Mr. Arkin, because this is the kind of reporting that is necessary if ordinary Americans are to have a chance to know what our military is up to.

Militarism

As the post-Katrina investigations, lobbying, and tax bills go forward, we ordinary Americans must be ever vigilant.  It is clear that the Republican-run investigation, that does not even provide subpoena power to the opposing party, cannot provide an adequate review of the Katrina bungling, especially at the federal level under the supervision of Michael Chertoff's Homeland Security and Michael Brown's FEMA.  Moreover, lobbyists are using Katrina's surge to mount their own takeover of the Capital to demand more relief from pesky regulations that ensure our safety and well-being and more handouts from the government. Even the wealthy casinos are expecting FEMA handouts to help them rebuild, in spite of their national operations and ability to draw on funds from one place to make up for losses in another.  The federal government is talking gleefully about giving Big Oil all the goodies it has been wanting for years--access to the pristine Artic National Wildlife Refuge to stamp the imprint of oil pipelines across the caribous herding grounds; access to the fragile coastal shelf where whales and dolphins and all of earth's wonderful ocean creatures will be at risk from their operations; tax breaks for building more refineries instead of  tax measures that incentivize conservation.  All of these things are worrisome, and the media should keep a watchful eye on them, rather than letting the next big story sweep the detritus of Katrina out to sea and out of memory.

But an even bigger story is the growing presence of the military across the country.  The New York Times reported today that the Pentagon has resisted Congress' effort to oversee the gathering of intelligence.  The Pentagon has begun to conduct various intelligence-related activities in hidden programs, so that Congressional oversight cannot find them.  The Pentagon, in other words, is setting itself up as an empire unto itself not accountable to the people through Congress.  Read the story here.

That is perhaps what we might expect of a war machine that has been fed and nurtured to think of itself as the savior of mankind, even when invading and occupying Iraq to impose democracy by force.  A military that has been successful in avoiding the Geneva Conventions by creating its own country that is no man's country at Guantanamo.  A military that has tortured prisoners around the world and rendered its detainees to countries that are known to torture their prisoners.  A military that has punished the privates taking pictures of the humiliating torture of military prisoners but has not subjected a single top military brass to punishment for letting such rampant wrongdoing occur over and over and over again.  A military that disregarded the complaints about similar behavior in the 82nd Airborne until the captain making them went to Human Rights Watch and they could no longer be ignored.

Yet Mr. Bush says he thinks we should think about putting the military in charge whenever there is a disaster in this country like Katrina or 9/11.  Now that is truly worrisome.  Our freedoms are already eroded through the disgraceful Patriot Act, that someday will be viewed in the same way as the reviled Seditions Acts now are.  Military control whenever there is a natural or man-made disaster smacks too much of nearness to military dictatorship.  That is why we long ago enacted the Posse Commitatus, to prevent military intervention in the civic affairs of the state. 

This is a time when we especially need a fair and probing media--journalists and editors and reporters who dare to ask the hard questions.  Will they follow up on the Downing Street Memos--that story should not be lost but rather remain in our focus as we demand an accounting of the actions of this Administration leading to the war.  Will they pursue the uses and abuses of the Patriot Act, so that Americans can be better informed about its provisions?  If so, maybe Americans will tell Congress that they must repeal the atrocity.  Will they investigate and report on the way they themselves were bamboozled by being embedded, so that stories that come out of war zones are tailored to the taste of the military?  Will they spend the time and effort necessary to search out what is going on in the Department of Defense?  Where is its money being spent?  What are its organizations doing that replicate the CIA within the military?  Who is in the know and how much does any civilian know?   

One of the most important things that the media should be doing in America today is reporting on the military.  The vastness of the military budget is overwhelming.  The reach of the interconnections between big business, big oil, the military and officials in government is enormous.  These should be discussed and analyzed daily in the news.  Those stories are necessary to keep us informed, and to keep our democracy intact.

Corporate Feeding at the Katrina Trough

It is now a month since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, and evacuees from the Big Easy are scattered all over the country, living off the bounty of friends, family and relief organizations.  Their future is in doubt, and their connections with each other and with their home have been severed.  We cannot forget that people are continuing to suffer terribly as they try to find their way in the post-Katrina world.

It is in that light that the gathering of the corporate lobbyists and greedy contractors in DC is all the more unseemly.  As the Washington Post noted in a September 27 story, the lobbies are lined up for relief riches.

"The oil lobbyists, like so many others, are using the storms as an excuse to win long-sought legislation, even when their plans relate only tangentially to the hurricanes.   Earlier this week groups as diverse as the American Institute of Architects and the American Petroleum Institute were freshening their requests for tax breaks and other favors.  [Airlines] are telling lawmakers that the fuel price hikes in the wake of Katrina have made [relief from their pension obligations' more necessary." 

The Post story notes that the Air Transport Association is lobbying for a cut in the tax on jet fuel--at a cost to the federal fisc of $600 million.  The big (and wealthy) insurers are hoping Katrina can give them cover to get what they've long wanted out of Congress--an agreement for taxpayers to bear the burden of most terrorism losses. For-profit hospitals want taxpayers to pay for their rebuilding whenever there is a natural disaster. 

The list goes on and on, of profit-making companies who want to keep their profits for themselves and have taxpayers pick up the tab for a bundle of their expenses, all using the cover of Katrina to ask for more goodies.  These corporations are the same ones that holler "free market" as a defense every time the government tries to impose a new regulation needed to protect Americans--whether providing better safety, environmental protection or transparency in the markets.  Yet now they want the taxpayers to step up to the plate and dole out more money for them.  The fact that the result will not do anything to help the people who need it most--the poor black people pushed out of New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast by Katrina--seems not to be much on their minds. 

The most sobering part of this is the conclusion of the article--"they will likely get much of what they want." More spending, and more tax cuts, for the corporations and not for the people of New Orleans, because Congress doesn't "want[] to be seen as uncaring." 

Meanwhile, the Republicans are planning bills to let the big oil companies, that are already enjoying some of the biggest profits ever, get more tax cuts for constructing refineries and have access to fragile lands along the coasts and in the Artice National Wildlife Refuge.  Read this story in the Washington Post.   Measures included in these bills, put forward by Joe Barton of Texas and Richard Pombo of California, have been sought by the oil industry for years and resisted for good reason--the little bit of oil isn't worth the harm to the coasts and wilderness areas.  Barton says his bill will remove "cumbersome procedures" for new refineries and make building oil pipelines easier.  This is right after we saw how fragile the current pipelines are--bursting as so many did on the seabed under the onslaught of Katrina, t o release their gobs of tar onto marshlands and birds and homes.  The oil industry will bear none of the cost of the environmental destruction those pipelines caused.  INstead, Congress apparently intends to reward it by allowing it to build even less defensible pipelines!  It is almost as if Katrina unleashed a frenzy of mad feeding animals at the Congressional trough. 

Will there be enough brave souls in Congress to step back and stop Big Oil from bulldozing the whole country to its ugly, polluted ways? 

Anti-War March on DC

The March on DC involved many people from all over the country.   Nick Mann has his photos displayed here. 

One of the most moving stories was Cody's, an eleven-year-old who sat behind me on the bus trip.  Cody had found out about the anti-war march and decided that he had to take action.  He talked his mom into making the trip, and brought along a friend as well.  Here's a photo of Cody Bralt-Kelly and his friend Micaela at the rally.   (You can right click on the pictures to enlarge them.)

Ken Yates shared several of the pictures he took of the rally early on, showing the many different posters and costumes that protestors wore to make their point about the ignominy of war.

                                                                                 

Chuck Minne got a good shot showing the support for the anti-war movement from all across the spectrum.

And Ireka Carney took several photos of the crowd.

The March on Washington--The Media Fail Again

When hundreds of thousands of Americans streamed into DC on Saturday to voice our dissent from the outrageous war and occupation of Iraq, we knew that we were legion.  Already, at rest stops and restaurants along the way, we'd encountered busload after busload of similar pilgrims making the journey to DC to tell the man in the White House and the mostly men in Congress that this arrogant cowboy war has got to end.  A restaurant waiter asked me what was going on--he said they were running out of food because so many people had stopped!  A woman in one of the lines told me proudly about 17 buses coming from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.  Another noted that seven buses were coming from a very small town in the middle of the Heartland--they'd come through our town of Champaign-Urbana, in fact, enroute to DC! 

We, too, were proud.  We'd started out expecting 35 or maybe 50 people to be able to go.  We ended up with two buses loaded with 98 people making the hard 13 hour trip down throughout the night Friday night, standing for hours at the rally and in line to march before the White House Saturday afternoon, and then loading up at 8pm for the hard and tiring ride back to Illinois.  But we were proud.  We represented scores more whose hearts were with us but who could not make the trip.  We sang folk songs and talked and felt the bonds of camaraderie that bring people from different walks of life together to give voice to America's distaste for a needless, preemptive war that denigrates all that is good about our country and wastes the billions of dollars that could be invested in the poor here and around the world.

When we got to DC, we could look around and see the numbers of us sitting, standing and talking.   We carried signs, saying "Bush lied; soldiers died", "Impeach Bush", "Support our troops--bring them home now". "Make peace, not war", and on and on.  We saw mimers dressed as Bush, Cheney, Rove and the rest of the war-hungry White House gang, going in chains and prison robe to their proper reward for violating international law.   

When we got to DC, we could see buses at one Metro stop after another.  We could see the line of marchers, starting out at the appropriate time, with the front line coming back when the end of the line still hadn't started.  We could see streams of marchers packed solid for blocks ahead of us and blocks behind us.  I mean solid--shoulder to shoulder, back to front, with very little room to move.  So many banners and signed held aloft that it looked like a veritable army of peace.  We could see, at the cross streets that looked across to the return route of the march, more marchers already hours ahead of us and marching solid, shoulder to shoulder back down to Constitution Avenue.  We knew the strength of voices chanting "What does the face of democracy look like? This is what democracy looks like!" and "Iraq No, Bush Must Go."  We knew how far ahead of many others we were when our contingent finally began to move forward, long after the march started.  We knew how long it took us to get to the White House and we saw the dour looks of the DC police with their hands on their gun holsters and their baseball-sized nightsticks ready to shoot or hit us if they thought we were a problem.  We knew that the march was still just getting underway at 2 when it had been expected to be over, back when the organizers thought that 100,000 people might come.

How many marchers were there?  Much more than the 100,000 that the organizers had originally anticipated.  Much more than the "estimate of 100,000" being provided on CNN and other networks, with only the most fleeting photographic glimpse from above of the streaming throng of angry Americans demanding a voice.  At least triple that number, 300,000, as even one of the news programs finally said tonight.  But probably even more--as many as 600,000 or more.  This was the voice of America speaking truth to power, and it was many hundreds of thousands strong.

There were helicopters throughout the day, taking aerial scans of the huge crowds.  There must be one that shows the snake of people, a full DC street wide (40-50 people across) packed tightly like sardines moving across the entire parade route without gaps!  Why isn't that picture being shown on the news?  Is it because they are afraid that more Americans back home will see the level of dissent, and understand that this regime has failed? 

But don't they know that each person who was there will return to their homes and share their stories, as I am doing, of the huge numbers of people that marched on Washington?  That we will all look to see our faces--the faces of American democracy--reflected in the television news?  That we all thought CNN and ABC and CBS and NBC and PBS would show picture after picture of the huge throng, noting the candor with which people spoke, the ardor with which they voiced their patriotism, their concern for the needless death of more Americans and Iraqis to preserve the Bush-Feife-Wolfowitz-Cheney cowboy dream of an American band of armed bases all across the Middle East oil region?  The media has tried to make us invisible, as it succeeded in making the underprivileged of New Orleans invisible over so many years.  But we will not let them, because we have pictures and we have stories to tell, and we will show and tell them to our friends and families and countrymen who stayed behind.

If you listened only to CNN or the Lehrer News Hour or ABC or CBS newscasts, you might think nothing momentous happened over the weekend.  On CNN, you hear a very brief (15 or 30 second) description of an anti-war protest, with quick flashes of pictures showing the streams of demonstrators and a narrative voice mentioning 100,000 people protesting the war.  No indication that the 100,000 estimate was the organizers' pre-event number (quoted also by the DC police who no longer make their own estimates of crowds). 

On the front pages of the Sunday New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Post, you'd find nothing at all about the enormous turnout and its message.  In small clippings in back on Monday, you'd see a description of the piddling, 400-person pro-war demonstration on Sunday, but nothing in depth about the gigantic anti-war demonstration.  On Monday night, Gwen Ifill interviewed three persons about both protests, as though they were equally meritorious of information.  A military mom spoke eloquently about the senselessness of losing more lives in a war that was wrong from the outset.  A Vietnam vet and proponent of the Iraqi war accused "those people" who protest the war of "causing" the insurgents to do more harm and putting troops in jeopardy.  A history professor quietly corrected the  pro-war speaker's statement that the anti-war demonstrators do not represent a majority of the American people, noting that dependable non-partisan surveys clearly show a majority of more than 60% opposing the continuance of the Iraq war. As in many previous interviews, Gwen Ifill interrupted the liberal (anti-war) speaker but did not interrupt the conservative (pro-war) speaker.  Little of substance was revealed--not once did the News Hour include snippets from speeches such as Ramsey Clark's call for Bush's impeachment for violation of international and US laws nor snippets from children who brought their families to the march because they wanted to take part in democracy now through civic activism against the war.  No pictures were shown of the huge numbers of anti-war protestors, with the News Hour repeating the pre-event estimate of 100,000, though at least the News Hour did indicate that the pro-war crowd to which it gave equal status in its discussion was a measly 400 or fewer.

What is this all about?  No less than the disenfranchisement of the American people by the corporate media that makes money out of war!

I know, for I was there.  America knows, because we who were there are back home again and telling everyone how it really is.

Hundreds of Thousands Protest Bush Iraqi War and Occupation

by Linda Beale

Last Friday, two buses left Champaign-Urbana, Illinois with 98 people bound for Washington DC.  We took the well wishes of many more from this area who could not attend.

Our goal was simple:  speak truth to power.  The Bush administration started a war of choice in Iraq with misleading information about the potential aggressiveness of a dictator that we helped put in place.  That war itself violated the most fundamental international principles of non-aggression to which this Nation subscribes.  The administration and its corporate cronies in the military-industrial complex then began a bungled occupation that has now lasted for years, providing ever more fodder for terrorism and anti-Americanism all across the Middle East and beyond.

Speakers at the rally were forthright and clear in their call for Bush to end the war now and focus resources on US and world poverty instead of wasting them on military expansion (such as Rumsfeld's revised strategies for strategic preemptive nuclear strikes) and contracts for corporate cronies like Halliburton.  Ramsey Clark, for example, spoke articulately of the international laws to which the US has agreed and that have become therefore a part of US laws, now broken and shattered by this administration.   

The refrain of  all the speeches was a clarion call to the Bush administration to act responsibly.  A call for an end now to the senseless death and maiming of thousands of U.S. troops.  A call for an end to the senseless "targeted" strafing of Iraqi villages where the main victims are innocent old men, women and children.  A call for an end now to militaristic responses to world developments.  A call for a return to the careful and deliberate diplomacy that is the most viable route through which a freedom-loving nation can lead world change.

Hundreds of thousands of ordinary American people streamed into Washington DC and overflowed its streets--from gray-haired women in wheel chairs to small toddlers in strollers, from the generation that protested our insane involvement in Vietnam to the generation that grew up under the two militant Bush regimes, from black to white to red, from Muslim to Christian to agnostic, from disabled to hale, from sick to well, from rich to poor. 

How many people were there?  (You can't get the answer--or find out anything much at all about the march--from America's corporate media like Rupert's Fox News or even CNN or the New York Times, which at best quote only the organizers' pre-event estimate of 100,000.)  The tightly packed march that began on Constitution Avenue between the White House and just before the Washington Monument had already flowed back to the area just beyond the Washington Monument before tens of thousands even made it to the first left turn onto 15th Street!  I know, because I walked forward to check it out from our place in line way back on Constitution and saw the three streams of people from the parking lot, from Constitution, and from the area around the Washington Monument merging slowly into one packed shoulder to shoulder and front to back from wall to wall (or barricade to barricade where the police had roped off the sidewalk, for themselves and the puny pro-war protesters) at the same time that those who had already walked the route were being directed by police, a block away on Constitution, to walk out towards the Washington Monument to return to the rally itself.  Many sat at the Ellipse throughout, unable to go on the hard walk.  Many others, like most of the AWARE group from Champaign, waited patiently in line for 4 hours before beginning to move in the long march.  (Unaware at that point of the immensity of the crowd of protestors, we thought that the march just hadn't begun yet!)   For us, the march only began at 2 pm when we finally started walking slowly forward, at a time when the organizers had expected the march to be completely over!

The organizers had estimated that 100,000 people would come to participate at the time several months ago when they arranged the DC permits.  At about 11:30,  long before many buses arrived from New York and beyond, the organizers announced that there were at least 250,000 people present.  At about 3 pm, when I was finally marching up 15th Street and could see the packed streams of humanity behind me and in front of me (and, at the cross streets where one could look over to the parallel street on which the marchers were heading back down to Constitution, at the side of me), it was clear that there were not one or two hundred thousand people, but many more than that--at least 300,000 and probably 600,000 or more.

As photographs come in from various participants in the march, we will add them to this post.  For now, to get at least some sense of the march from amateur photographers (who regrettably could not take advantage of the aerial view from the media helicopters that constantly flew overhead), I've provided this link to the Daily Kos posting of a number of excellent photographs and this link to a BBC video of the London demonstration that includes one aerial shot of the Washington rally at the very end.  Check back later for more.

Bush's FDA Head Head Rolls--How the Media Fared

On Friday, Lester M. Crawford, Bush's embattled head of the Food and Drug Administration, resigned.  This resignation comes after a series of controversial situations at FDA.  One of the incidents involved the FDA's receipt of reports from drug makers on approved drugs.  These reports sometimes indicate problems (though perhaps not as conspicuously as one could wish) with approved drugs.  But the FDA, it turns out, does nothing with the information.   It defended its failure to use the report information on already approved drugs to monitor safety by saying that it simply didn't have the staffing to do it!  So America's drug safety agency was setting itself up for a fall, with no attempt to do more than whatever analysis was done on initial approvals. Other controversies during Crawford's tenure included "complaints from consumer advocates and scientists that scientific decisions were being warped by politics," that the FDA had "made a mocfkery of the process of evaluating scientific evidence," failed to "provide[] the public with enough information about the risks of drugs and devices," and, according to Republican Charles Grassley, developed a "too-cozy relationship with the pharmaceutical industry."  Robert Pear & Andrew Pollack, Leader of the F.D.A. Steps Down After a Short, Turbulent Tenure, New York Times, Sept. 24, 2005, at A1.  Crawford's appointment appears to be another instance of the Bush administration's success in placing incompentent people at the head of important positions. It seems entirely appropriate that the Head's head should roll.

Now remember that this is after Karl Rove, Bush's number one operator (in more ways than one), has been implicated in the Valerie Plame affair.  You haven't seen much about that on the news lately, but we learned that Karl Rove had discussed Valerie Plame with newsmen, and that the initial statements made by the White House about his involvement were inaccurate.  Cronyism, misleading statements, partisan ideology given importance above national security--these things are particularly noteworthy in a White House that has claimed that its attention for four plus years has been devoted to remedying the neglect of security issues that showed on 9/11, when it became clear that the Bush White House had not bothered to pay any attention at all to Osama Bin Laden and the intelligence at hand about a gathering storm.

And of course, it is after we have learned, in small dribbles, more about the horrible record of the U.S. military in condoning torture, for which neither Rumsfeld nor any other senior officer has been adequately chastised.  A story in the Times, 3 in 82nd Airborne Say Beating Iraqi Prisoners Was Routine, New York Times, Sept. 24, 2005, at A1, casts an ever more dismal view on the military that Rumsfeld heads.  It notes that members of the elite 82nd Airborne tried to report the allegations of torture to their superiors for 17 months, without success.  An Army spokesman claims the allegations first came to the Army's attention earlier this month.  The allegations "described systematic abuses, including beatings, exposure to extremes of hot and cold, stacking in human pyramids and sleep derpivation at Camp Mercury, a forward operating base near Falluja."  The report goes on to say that these abuses took place every day, justified in part by the desire to satisfy military intelligence personnel "to soften up detainees" and in part "to vent soldiers' frustrations."  The soldiers noted that the abuses continued after the Abu Ghraib scandal was made public.

And of course, it is after Bush's appointee to head FEMA had been revealed to be an incompetent, inexperienced horse show commissioner who had no emergency response training whatsoever.  Not only that, Bush's buddy "Brownie" had falsified his resume, padding it to make it look like he did have some expertise.  He claimed that he was an assistant city manager in charge of emergency preparedness staff, when, it turned out, he was only an "assistant to" clerical staff person with no such responsibility over other personnel.  There were other slips on the resume as well, including an inaccurate claim of professorial status.  Bush praised Brownie ("a heck of a job") even after the disastrous performance of FEMA had shown callous disregard for the lives and wellbeing of hundreds of thousands of New Orleanians.  Brownie's false resume was the last straw, and he said he was going home to walk his dogs, revealing even at the end an unconsciounable insensitivity to the poor people of New Orleans who no longer had home or dogs to go home to. 

(Or at least, that is what we thought until today. CBS News reported tonight--September 26, 2005--that Brownie has been rehired by FEMA as a consultant on the handling of the Katrina disaster!  How the Bush administration could give a sinecure position back to an incompetent bungler who knew nothing to start with about emergency preparedness and then botched what he did do is hard to fathom.  If the Bush administration is afraid they won't get his "expert" testimony without hiring him, then why didn't the administration support a truly independent inquiry into the Katrina bungling, with subpoena power held by both Republicans and Democrats to find out the truth of what went on?  The so-called investigative effort in Congress is a sham, a committee with 10 or so Republicans and only 2 Democrats, without subpoena power for the minority Democrats!  Brownie as a consultant now will have a vested interest, again, in FEMA's PR machine, as well as in making himself look like the fall guy and anybody else, from Governor Blanco of Louisiana to Michael Chertoff of Homeland Security, the real culprits.  As the New York Times said in its "Faking the Katrina Inquiry" editorial today, the "investigation" by the White House and Republican Congress remains a "self-serving, bogus" one.  It smacks of the ultimate corrupt cronyism.)

And of course, it is after more and more contractors say that contracts are going from FEMA to crony companies in a no-bid process rather than to the local and minority businesses that should get them in the Gulf zone disaster area.  See, for example, "Minorities Say Katrina Work Flows to Others," Wall Street Journal, Sept. 23, 2005, at B1, and "Many Contrqacts for Storm Work Raise Questions: Lack of Bidding is Cited," New York Times, Sept. 26, 2005, at A1.  The latter story notes that "[s]ome industry and government officials questioned the costs of the debris-removal contracts, saying the Army Corps of Engineers had allowed a rate that was too high.  And Congressional investigators are looking into the $568 million awarded to AshBritt, a Pompano Beach, Fla., company that was a client of the former lobbying firm of Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi."  Id. at A12.

And of course, it is after a very important official in the Bush White House budget office was arrested for misuse of his office.  Turns out that the White House Office of Management and Budget Chief of Staff David Safavian is accused of trying to help Republican high-priest-of-lobbyists Jack Abramoff acquire some prime government property for a client, among other things.  (Safavian's wife is chief counsel to the House committee with primary oversight for government procurement and other functions--in fact, the committee that will play a major role in the Republican "investigation" (if you can call such an affair an "investigation") of Katrina mistakes.) 

Paul Krugman noted the ever widening connection between Bush cronyism and corruption in office in today's New York Times OpEds ("Find the Brownie," New York Times, Sept. 26, 2005, at A21).  He quotes Time magazine in noting that

"Bush has gone further than most presidents to put political stalwarts in some of the most important government jobs you've never heard of ... [including] a Wall Street medical-industry newsletter editor who now holds a crucial position at the Food and Drug Administration."   

He goes on to point out that the regional administrator for the Northeast (including New York State) and Caribbean region of the General Services Administration (that oversees federal property and leases) is none other than the daughter of the chairman of the Conservative Party of New York State.  The Southwest's administrator, "appointed in 2002 after a failed bid for his father's Congressional seat, is Scott Armey, the son of Dick Armey, the former House majority leader."

Krugman's second "game" is "two degrees of Jack Abramoff."  He notes the following:

1) Grover Norquist, powerful anti-tax ally of the Bush White House, ran Mr. Abramoff's campaign for chair of the College Republican National Committee.  This group provided a similar stepping stone for Karl Rove and Lee Atwater.

2) Karl Rove's personal assistant--the one who determines access to the powerful man behind Bush--is Susan Ralston, formerly personal assistant to Mr. Abramoff.

3) Tony Rudy, who worked for Tom DeLay in several capacities, quit to work for Mr. Abramoff.

4) David Safavian worked for both Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Norquist.

One has to wonder why these positions haven't been reported on widely in the broadcast and print media, and why they continue to be disregarded even after examples of rampant cronyism have started to turn up.  The veil is being lifted, but too slowly and not very surely, on the corrupt cronyism that inevitably supports a politician who requires personal loyalty as the be-all and end-all test of political advancement. 

And after the FDA Head resigned, we learned today that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is under investigation by fedearl agents and SEC officials regarding Frist's June sale of his stake in HCA, his family's hospital company, "just as the share's hit a new peak and right before the company announced disappointing earnins that caused a sell-off."  See "Blind Trusts Get New Look After Sale by Frist, New York Times, Sept. 26, 2005, at A14.  See also "Frist Sale of Hospital Stock Spurs Inquiries Into Trusts," New York Times, Sept. 26, 2005, at A8. 

Each of these stories is important for something beyond adding to the list of what we know about incompetence and corruption in the Bush administration.  It reveals anew the problem of concentrated corporate ownership of national and local media.  What is particularly striking is the lack of media attention.  Brownie was gone but is now back again, and Rove and Rumsfeld are flying ever higher even though the one is implicated in a major breach of national security requirements and the other is implicated in a major breach of international law and human rights protection.  Incompetence in the Bush administration is as likely to be awarded the medal of freedom as to be kicked out on its a__.  The media note the story with the least attention possible, and then go on to cover hours and hours of some story that has nothing to do with the state of democracy in America.

So why doesn't the media go after these stories?  Can you imagine them letting a day go by without hounding Clinton, if they'd had even a glimmer of the kind of ill winds that blow around this administration? 

Look what the media should be dogging the Bush administration about.  A rapidly deteriorating situation in Iraq that is recruiting terrorists worldwide and creating the image of the US as a military-corporate imperialistic power that imprisons (and sometimes shoots) first and asks questions later.  A human tragedy along the Gulf Coast that is being plastered over with unrequested tax goodies for already thriving national casinos and polluting oil industries.  (The government apparently is going to foot the bill for the terrible pollution attributable to refineries that operate with equipment that cannot meet the predictable devastation of the area in which they are located.  And of course we already gave them huge tax breaks--expensing 50% of the cost of building new refineries, and others--in the energy bill.)  The use of Katrina as an excuse to railroad through anti-worker, pro-big business rules that the Republicans have been wanting to do, but couldn't, for years, like shelving prevailing wage requirements and affirmative action requirements for federal contracts.  The same old crony corporations getting no-bid contracts, with almost no oversight--Halliburton is again making money out of Bush's promises to do good.

Meanwhile, the Democrat's proposal of an integrated work zone along the lines of the Work Products Administration, that could create many new and worthwhile jobs for the people most hurt by Katrina and most in need of help to get beyond the cycle of poverty, is hardly mentioned on the news.

How much time did CNN devote to the new evidence of Bush's incompetent administration?  Only long enough to say that the "embattled Head of the FDA" had resigned after being involved in various controversies.  That was it.  No information about the controversies.  No connecting the dots to other failed Bush appointees.  No analysis of the recurring problems in this administration of graft, corruption and uncaring officials who haven't a clue what the true function of their agency is.  No indication that the news company sees a need to ferret out information about Bush appointees to see if they are competent to do their jobs.  Once again, the media are falling into the same pattern that prevailed after 9/11 and after the beginning of the Iraq war and occupation.  Go for the exciting story; forget the details.  Don't make the administration look bad. 

Our word to the media--don't leave these stories behind.  Go back to Rove, back to Chertoff's inability to handle Homeland Security without a military escort, go back to Cheney's connections with Halliburton and Halliburton's continued ability to garner multi-million dollar contracts in no-bid situations.  Look at the network of political connections among Bush appointees to important government posts.  COVER THE NEWS THAT COUNTS!

White House Budget Official Arrested

by Linda Beale
A major scandal breaks in Washington.  A senior White House budget official is arrested on charges of lying to investigators and obstructing a federal inquiry.  The inquiry involves Jack Abramoff, Republican lobbyist and powerful friend of Tom DeLay and other high-placed Republicans.  Abramoff was indicted last month on federal fraud charges.

At least some major national media covered the story.  The New York Times ran it on the front page.  It was not as conspicuous as the story merited, but it was there.  However, in the endless cycles of CNN news and other broadcasts, it has hardly caused a ripple.  Unlike other stories that are repeated every hour on the hour, this story plummeted down and was lost after a brief outing.  In a few hours of scanning the news tonight, the story caused hardly a ripple.  Odds are that most Americans could have missed it entirely, because journalists are simply not paying much attention to the story.

Why not?  Could it be because Mr. Safavian, the White House budget official, was another corrupt appointment by the Bush administration?  He apparently lied about assistance that he gave his friend Abramoff when Safavian was chief of staff at the General Services Administration from 2002 to 2004.  According to the New York Times, Sept. 20, 2005, at A1, Safavian is charged with trying to help Abramoff acquire two pieces of government property around Washington, including the historic Post Office on Pennsylvania Avenue.  (Abramoff was ultimately unsuccessful in acquiring the properties for his clients.) 

Safavian was also along on that expensive golfing trip to Scotland that has gotten attention off and on, but apparently lied to ethics officials by saying that Abramoff had no business before the agency at the time.  Abramoff's emails make clear that it was only because of business interests before the GSA that Safavian was invited on the trip.  The Times article quotes Abramoff as emailing a colleague that Safavian was invited because of the "Total business angle.  He is new COS of GSA."  Id.  Safavian's records make clear that he knew his lobbyist friend was funding the trip, though some of the Republican congressmen who went along have claimed they thought it was sponsored by the National Center.  See the discussion of this information here.

Could the lack of media attention to this issue relate to the many interconnections here?  Safavian had "recently been working on developing contracting policies for the multibilliondollar relief effort." New York Times, Sept. 20, 2001, A1.   How better to make sure that corporations get what they want than having someone like Safavian in the procurement office in charge of contracting procedures for the rapid dispersal of billions of dollars?   Could it be that Safavian has too many ties to Republicans on the Hill, so the corporate media are careful not to offend?  Again according to the Times, he is a former Congressional aide and has "extensive ties to prominent Republicans" as well as "throughout the executive branch and among the city's lobbying firms" and is "a close political allly of the Bush administration."  Id.   He even helped form a consulting firm with Bush buddy Grover Norquist, head of the right-wing "Americans for Tax Reform" group.  Id. Like so many Bush appointees, cronyism appears to be the basis for the high appointment.

No discussion of Safavian would be complete without mentioning his views of the role of government procurement offices.  The Times reports that he considered outsourcing government work to private contractors the "primary goal in his job at the Office of Management and Budget."  Id.

In his attempts to help Abramoff and his golfing payoffs, Safavian may have thought he had all bases covered.  His wife is chief counsel for oversight and investigation on the House Governmental Reform Committee that oversees government procurement.   That committee will also conduct the so-called "investigation" of Katrina bungling. 

(Aside:  Clearly this is an inappropriate group to investigate the Bush regime's mishandling of Katrina emergency responses.  The Katrina disaster demands an independent investigation with subpoena power and an adequate budget.  Unlike Clinton's picayune affair on which we spent $70 million of taxpayer money and years of a private investigator's time, this is a colossal mistake with monumental consequences for hundreds of thousands of citizens.  Nothing less than an independent investigation can satisfy the need to know what went wrong and who was responsible and how we can avoid similar mistakes after future disasters.)

The media should pursue the Safavian story and make sure that every American is aware of the cronyism it evidences in the halls of this government. 

Katrina Aftermath

by Linda Beale
In the aftermath of the botched emergency response to Katrina, Republican legislators appear to have decided to use the concern about the conspicuous unmet needs of Katrina victims to spur forward their own agenda of radical economic and social policies in the storm zone and in the rest of the country.   Under their "free market" banner, they intend to remove environmental protections and social protections so that corporations, the true sovereigns under the Republican regime, can have free reign to rebuild New Orleans in their own image.  Casinos and refineries will be lining up for goodies.  It's not so clear that this version of "help" will meet the real unmet needs of the Gulf region.

First on Bush's list was the suspension of rules that require federal contractors to pay prevailing wages.  Long a goal of the anti-union, big-business machine, the suspension of prevailing wages permits businesses to reap a windfall out of the disaster that has befallen so many Americans.  Instead of letting businesses violate wage requirements, those requirements should be enforced, so that people put out of work by the storm are not taken advantage of in the aftermath.

Not content with waiving prevailing wage requirements, Bush also waived affirmative action rules for employers--like Cheney's old company Halliburton--given no-bid contracts in the storm region.  Although the face of the disaster was predominantly African American, Bush seems to think it is okay for these contractors to continue their practice of hiring from outside the black community.  Federal dollars will benefit the businesses, but not the people at the heart of the disaster.

Republicans plan to use the disaster as a spur for even more of their planned abuses of taxpayer dollars.  Instead of giving money to desperate public schools that need an influx of cash to pay teachers, restore buildings, and buy books, they will provide tuition vouchers that will add taxpayer dollars to the coffers of religious schools. 

Instead of requiring the oil companies (that have made a killing out of high energy prices and long periods of tax-subsidized profits) to improve their facilities so that they are less hazardous in the event of a major storm, the Republicans plan a series of further tax breaks for them--creating tax-advantaged enterprise zones.  These ultimately provide more tax subsidies for the wealthy, who reap the benefits through their ownership of most corporate stock.  After witnessing the toxic stew created by pipelines that sit on the ocean floor and burst in cataclysmic storms, the Republicans plan to make it even easier for the oil companies to make money while destroying our environment.  They plan to expedite approval processes so that companies can build refineries without the kind of careful evaluation that we know is necessary to avert environmental disasters.  Going further, they will lift environmental restrictions on new refineries outright so that they can pollute our air and water even more.

Perhaps the most dastardly of the ideas, though, is the Republican proposal to exempt estates from the estate tax in connection with deaths in storm-affected states.  Remember that only the top 2% of taxpayers in this country pay any estate tax at all.  Most estates are already exempt, since $1.5 million is excluded from taxation in 2005 (with the exclusion amount increasing to $3.5 million by 2010, as the provision is currently written).  None of the ordinary folk that suffered so much in the Katrina disaster are affected by the estate tax.  So the Republicans are planning to exempt the truly wealthy from paying tax, while they promise to cut services--like medicare and social security and other benefits that are so needed by the poor--in order to pay for their version of Katrina aid, which seems to be to give out no-bid contracts to connected companies like Halliburton and Shaw.   Instead, they should be using tax monies to aide the most needy, and letting the millionaires' estates pay their fair share of the burden.

Many of the ideas being proposed come from the right wing Heritage Foundation, where "free-market" ideas are being pushed  to recreate New Orleans in the corporate ideal.  See the Wall Street Journal, September 15, 2005, at B1.  One imagines the corporate tycoons reveling in their idea of taking over prime real estate and turning it into their version of heaven on earth--corporate enterprises without any governmental oversight for the protection of the people.  As Rahm Emanuel noted, the right-wing Republicans are "going back to the playbook on issues like tort reform, school vouchers and freeing business from environmental rules to achieve ideological objectives they haven't been able to get in the normal legislative process."  Id. 

Isn't it just like Republicans to turn their incompetent bungling of a major rescue operation into an opportunity for more corporate largesse and more misrepresentation to the American people? 

New Orleans Before Katrina: A Media Failure

by Linda Beale
          Katrina is a natural disaster turned into a man-made one because of the failure of officials at all levels, but particularly because of the failure of the federal government to provide the essential coordinating and preparedness function.  The vengeful storm has done immeasurable harm to our society, as the failure of the federal government to marshall resources before the storm revealed how little this Congress and this President have learned about disaster preparedness needs after 9/11.

          The little bit of good that comes from this tragic storm may be its washing away the media's rosy glasses, provided in bulk by the Bush Administration and Republican Congress.  Embedded journalists allowed to see only what the military condoned tended to mimic the White House propaganda machine with barely concealed excitement about "smart" weapons and exulting America-First statements when Bush appeared against his "Mission Accomplished" banner at the start of the second, bloody stage of this war and occupation.  Media generally asked few tough questions about the uniformly scripted presidential appearances with "ordinary Americans" who are always--even in Mr. Bush's first visit to the Katrina-ravaged areas-- pre-selected and pre-trained to provide Mr. Bush with laudatory responses.  The media fell right in with making sure that the American people generally got no chance to see the depth of reasonable dissent from Mr. Bush's "I-say-so I'm Doing Good" policies of tax cuts for the wealthy and benefit cuts (or long term debt, amounting to the same) for the rest of us.

          On one issue in particular the media has generally given this regime a free ride--repeating its claims of attention to national security and emergency protection preparedness like a mantra without inspecting further.  Joe Albaugh, with no expertise other than being a crony and campaign manager for Mr. Bush, replaced James Witt, the head of FEMA who was acknowledged as an experienced and able manager.  Good ol' Joe brought in his college roommate Michael Brown, a commissioner for a horseowners association with absolutely no emergency preparedness qualifications, as his deputy.   When Joe Albaugh quit to turn his FEMA resume line into a lucrative consulting business, crony politics continued with the elevation of Michael Brown to head of FEMA.  Did the media do their work on either of these appointments?  Apparently not.  Now that Katrina has hit and the incompetence of Michael Brown's leadership has become apparent to all, the media finally delved into his resume.  That job as "assistant city manager" with responsibility for emergency preparedness?  Not quite--the city says it was really an "assistant to" position that was not much more than an internship, a job taken by recent college graduates as a line on their resume with no authority over any personnel.  That job as a faculty member at Central State?  Not quite--the college has no record of him as a faculty member, though it says it is possible he may have taught some kind of course as an adjunct.   Brown has been taken off the Katrina disaster, but he has not been removed from his lucrative sinecure as head of FEMA.  False resume, incompetence, focus on PR rather than rescue--Mr. Bush clearly doesn't think these flaws are sufficient to remove a buddy from office.  And Mr. Brown doesn't appear to have any ethical qualms about remaining on the federal payroll without having to do the job that is the most important one that the payroll position exists to accomplish!  He should resign immediately, with a full apology to the American people for the lives lost on his watch.  Instead, he claims "I'm not the story" and says he is going home to walk his dog.  The irony of that comment seems also to have escaped him.  The Katrina victims have no home to go to, and most of them don't have their dogs any more either, as the rescue effort's inadequate preparedness required them to abandon beloved companions to the mercy of the streets, which has turned out to be the guns of the military.  So the question remains--WHY did the media give Bush appointees like Brown a pass when it really counted two years ago when he was appointed to the position?

          And WHY hasn't the media done a better job of looking behind the neat PR covers of this regime's most favored person status for resource extractive industries and their owners and related groups, from Exxon to Halliburton?  We give the oil and gas extracive industries tax incentives galore, and we open precious national wildlands to their environmental degradation--even, if this Congress has its wayward way, the pristine Artic National Wildlife Refuge.  One of the Bush White House's first moves after Katrina was to waive an environmental regulation intended to prevent use of especially harmful oil products--even though this release has nothing to do with getting products through the refinery system, which is the bottleneck on distribution.  (Of course, the White House also waived federal prevailing wage requirements for companies like Halliburty and Shaw, both linked to Bush cronies, that got no-bid contracts in the rush for corporate spoils of the disaster in the Gulf.)  The media should have been critically assessing those energy policies of depending on carbon products, and giving huge breaks at enormous federal cost to energy companies, rather than developing sustainable energy resources and conservationist energy policies.  Just think what it would have meant if we had developed superior public transit in New Orleans so that rich and poor primarily depended on an interlocking city, county, and state network of fast rail lines.  With appropriate planning, those rail lines could have been built to ensure the greatest ability to evacuate residents from New Orleans when flooding threatened.

          Katrina has been "the perfect storm" in other ways, washing away the layers obscuring much about America's seamy underside.   It has revealed the result of the decades of neglect and artificial focus on "free markets" as the solution to all ills--the mostly black, mostly poor, inadequately educated, inadequately jobbed and inadequately cared for ordinary Americans living in New Orleans without the safety nets that many Americans take for granted.  To this, too, the angy journalists witnessing the American tragedy on the Gulf Coast are finally awakening.  News reports actually reported, although sparingly, on the underlying racism of rescue and evacuation decisions, such as the priority given evacuating mostly white, mostly wealthy tourists from the Hyatt Hotel over evacuating the mostly black, mostly poor (and already worse off from the ravages of the storm) residents of the Convention Center in New Orleans.  And in the September 11, 2005 edition of The New York Times, the public editor, Byron Calame, finally says it plainly in his op ed:  in spite of the importance of poverty and the link of poverty to race in New Orleans, The Times simply didn't cover that story.

"As a national newspaper with high aspirations, the New York Times assumes a responsibility to alert its readers to significant problems as they emerge in major cities such as New Orleans.  Poverty so pervasive that it hampered evacuation would seem to have been worthy of The Time's attention before it emerged as a pivotal challenge two weeks ago.  ...[Yet] A search of substantive Times new articles about New Orleans since September 1994 ... found none that focused on the city's poor and the racial dimension of poverty.  And there were only two articles about the city--both feature stories--that contained a few paragraphs on poverty and race."

          Similarly, studies of the levees have long shown that they were inadequate to withstand a category 4 hurricane and that even less powerful hurricanes might well cause a breach because of long term neglect of needed maintenance.  Scientists have been warning FEMA and all of the relevant federal agencies for years that the flood control projects on the Mississippi have been short-sighted and that costly but doable projects could release silt-laden waters to help restore the life-giving, hurricane protecting marshes in the lower Mississippi delta.  The Bush White House has been cutting back on the few projects actually protecting the delta when it should have been calling for necessary construction as well as sustained discussion and action on the polycentric question of a city's survival in the midst of dying wetlands. That project should have included a national discussion about regulating development of homes on valuable wetlands and coastal beaches, leading to predictable need for federal assistance when storms' winds and waters wipe them out.  But The Times, along with most other media in the country, didn't cover that story well at all.

"What had The Times's news columns provided over the past decade to help its readers understand the New Orleans levee system?  One major article that focused on levees.  The 2,100 word article on the front of the Science section in 2002 made clear that a Category 4 or 5 hurricane would send water over the top of the levees. ... neither the news article nor the editorial commentary prepared readers for the possibility of breaches in the levees or canal walls."

          The Times's public observer offers a notewothy admission of inadequate media coverage of these important national problems.

"Given the dimensions of poverty in New Orleans and the city's dependence on a levee system, the Times's news coverage of these problems over the past decade falls far short of what its readers have a right to expect of a national newspaper."

          It's important that this lesson not be lost.  The anger journalists feel now at city, state and federal governmental betrayal of the basic responsibility to protect citizens from harm should be turned into a renewed commitment to fair coverage of news events and long term problems of importance to the country.  That commitment won't make up for the past neglect, but it will mean that in the future America will be better prepared to make policy decisions that have direct bearing on the lives of individual citizens in this vast country.  A democracy cannot work when its citizens are not informed about the ugly truths of their society and the predictable future harms that have been swept under the rug.  Tax cuts for the wealthy, at the expense of benefits for the poor, would be harder to pass (one hopes) without an outcry of outrage, when people realize that it means that those without any means to help themselves will receive no help from the government either.

Katrina: the Man-Made Disaster (II)

by Linda Beale
            As we deal with the many situations that arose because of Katrina--our lack of preparedness, our failure to heed warning signs about environmental degradation, the inhumanity of some towards the weak and defenseless, the needless suffering, in these last few days, the inhumane separation of stressed people from their beloved pets by the agencies that are supposedly "rescuing" the people--there are many questions that we must ask.  How did we let poverty go so unheeded in this wealthiest of all countries?  Why do some people have so much--the richest 400 in America earn an average of $174 million a year--when some people have so little?  What could possibly have been thought to justify the outrageous tax policies forwarded by Congress and the Bush Administration over the last five years--giveaways to wealthy industries and owners, paid for off the backs of ordinary working Americans and future generations?   What values that we have developed over the centuries supported these wealthy scions who inherited their millions and lobby for tax breaks and subsidies, yet talk the talk of free markets and individual enterprise when it comes to providing safety nets, health care, old age security and opportunity for the poor?

          Congress must step back and reassess its direction.  Estate tax repeal never was justifiable.  Now it would be an obscene gesture directed against the poor.  The 2001-2004 tax cuts were sold to the public with the same misleading rhetoric as the need for a war in Iraq to save us from Saddam's WMD.  To make those cuts permanent now, when  we face realistic costs of $60 billion a year for our occupation of Iraq and $200 billion or more for the care of the displaced thousands of the Gulf Coast, would be a tragedy.  At the least, the tax cuts benefitting the wealthiest 20% must be allowed to elapse, and the millionaire's estate tax must not be repealed.

          But money matters, while immensely important, are not the only issues that we must consider.  The gross inability of FEMA to cope with a disaster of this dimension must be addressed.  The federal government that has been promising us it is developing emergency plans to protect us must now do more than promise--it must act.  And we can no longer ignore the perils from global warming.  Katrina must at the least be a clarion call to action on energy conservation and environmental protection.  For a thoughtful piece on this issue by a prominent environmentalist, click here. We may not agree with every proposal, but we must set aside the willful blinders and deal with these issues now.

Katrina: the Man-Made Disaster

by Linda Beale

 

          The natural disaster brought on by Hurricane Katrina has been magnified by a manmade disaster of enormous proportions.  All of the local, state and national emergency officials bear some responsibility, but the brunt of the blame lies squarely on the shoulders of three men: George W. Bush, commander in chief and President, Michael Chertoff, head of Homeland Security, and Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.  For his part, Bush claimed that "nobody could foresee that the levees would break." Yet the three worst case disasters predicted by FEMA even before 9/11 were--a terrorist strike in New York, a hurricane with levee breaks in New Orleans, and an earthquake in California.  Chertoff and Brown, the two men Bush appointed to head the agencies most responsible for the federal handling of emergenices, had little relevant background training or experience.  Yet Homeland Security is the agency at the heart of the federal response to emergencies.

          Their response to the Gulf Coast disaster was incompetent--lack of coordination, harmful decisions, blatant discrimination, and more concern with PR than with helping victims.  Five hours after Katrina had struck the Gulf, Brown sent a memo to Chertoff asking for 1000 volunteers to aid in the disaster area.  This story about the memo shows how clueless the head of the emergency response agency was.  It talks of a near catastrophe, but doesn't impart a real sense of urgency--Brown thought the 1000 volunteers could have a day to be trained and then a day to travel to the area.  An additional few thousand would be needed, he thought, in seven days!  This was the first response to the problem--a scattering of teams had been put in place before the storm, but not in any numbers and without the appropriate manpower and supplies to back them up.  (Trent Lott finally got items for MIssissippi by calling Bush and having Bush issue a direct order to have Atlanta supplies moved to Mississippi.)  As the CNN commentators noted in discussing the breaking news of the memo on September 5,  one of the tasks that Brown foresaw for the 1000 volunteers was to make sure that the FEMA image was appropriately positive.

          In New Orleans, FEMA was more of a burden than a help in the first hours and days of the storm.  It should have functioned as the key coordinator of the many different rescue efforts.  It should have been the face of the strong federal presence, necessary in any disaster of this magnitude.  Instead, FEMA officials offered excuses for why they couldn't get into the city and why they had to wait for supplies and for the National Guard (also several days late in being sent).  FEMA officials claimed that  it could not get into New Orleans, yet 13 Wal-Mart trucks loaded with food and water and many media trucks were able to get in and out relatively easily.  Three Wal-Mart trucks loaded with water were turned away, and FEMA cut local communication lines, according to Andre Broussard, President of Jefferson Parish, on Meet the Press.  Apparently, FEMA and Homeland Security also sent some rescuers--the Red Cross and the Salvation Army-- away during the first few days after the storm.   The reason given:  if aid were provided to people still in the city, they might decide to stay there longer.   Read an account at this interesting blog. 

          Another newscast described a Naval hospital ship with 600 beds that happened to be in the area right off New Orleans.  It waited for orders to take patients for several days, but those orders never came through.  Buses came to help evacuate the people stranded in inhumane conditions in the SuperDome and Convention Center in New Orleans, and FEMA turned them away.  Michael Brown, FEMA director, claimed that widespread "unexpected" flooding kept rescuers out of the city.  Washington Post, Sept. 2, 2005, at A01.  Yet three college students, interviewed on Tuesday night on Aaron Brown's CCN news program, talked about the ease with which they entered New Orleans and helped evacuate people, while they saw empty buses being turned away.  As I write this, I am listening to CNN, where they report that federal officials are now saying that it wasn't so bad in the SuperDome as the media shots made it appear:  it appears that we should not think that living in urine, feces, and with dead bodies decomposing, in stifling heat and without food and water, and not knowing where loved ones are or indeed if they are safe, is really so bad.

          Meanwhile, the Bush administration failed to acknowledge the depth of the disaster. Bush, in fact, was still on his extended 5-week vacation in Crawford, Texas, which he did not cut short on Saturday or even Sunday when it was clear that a cataclysmic hurricane would hit the Gulf Coast area.  Even after the hurricane hit, after the levees broke, after thousands of mostly poor, mostly black, essentially defenseless people, many of them elderly and many of them sick, were left to fend for themselves in the Convention Center and the SuperDome, Bush stayed away.  He didn't order the flag flown at half mast to honor the dead of New Orleans and Biloxi and Gulfport.  (When the flag was lowered for Rehnquist on Saturday, at least one media outlet reported that it was being flown at halfmast for Rehnquist and the Katrina victims. An afterthought, at best.)   Bush didn't end his vacation till Thursday, and didn't visit the disaster area in person until Friday.

          On his first visit to the Gulf disaster area, Bush created photo opportunities, where the now-regular routine of pre-screening people allowed into Bush events applied even to Katrina victims! In Mississippi, Bush even joked about the ease with which things could be restored, noting that Trent Lott had lost one of his homes but that Bush expected to be resting on Lott's new porch in no time.  The man who liked to think of himself as "a War President" was now revealed to all as the Clueless President.  A quick return visit was staged to repair the damage. Laura Bush did a photo op with a Republican congressman at a shelter in Lafayette, well outside the city, to demonstrate how well the federal response was going: according to this entry on the Daily Kos, the event shut down the normal functioning of the shelter for quite a while.  Barbara Bush, the former First Lady, accompanied her husband on a tour of facilities in Houston and gave her evaluation on American Public Media's Marketplace, as reported also here, as follows.  (Remember that most of the evacuees are poor and black and note the former First Lady's use of the term "scary" and the implication that the victims of this disaster are somehow getting an especially good deal out of their evacuation to Texas.)

     "What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas.  Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.  And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

          Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of this disaster is the callous disregard of some people towards those who have suffered terrible loss of loved ones, pets, homes and cherished memories, as well as disrupted jobs and lives and uncertain futures.  The Agape Press, a relatively mainstream Christian website, has an article about "God's mercy in the aftermath of Katrina."   One pastor suggests that God used the hurricane to purge wickedness from the city:  he praises God that now the city is "abortion free" "Mardi Gras free", and "free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion."   "God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there and now we're going to start over again."

       From the inept federal coordination of disaster response to the uncaring pastoral response, this catastrophe has revealed deep flaws in American institutions.  Our government exists so that we the people can do through the government those things that are too large for each of us to do individually. 

      
        We must hold the Bush Administration accountable for this flawed response. Bush has repeatedly asked Americans to vote for him because he promises to be better at protecting us than the Democrats.  What Katrina has shown is that the only thing he protects us from is the truth itself.  We have to ask now why one-third of the regional National Guard units were in Iraq instead of here at home where they could assist in this catastrophe as they were trained to do.  We have to ask why many rescue workers were given air conditioned tents set up on bases while the poor and the homeless were left without water for days.  Why weren't nearby military bases ready and waiting to create safe tent cities for the evacuees?  Why, in a country that claims to have set aside racism long ago, were the desperate thousands in the Convention Center and SuperDome left in squalor while buses passed them to pick up 700 tourists from the Hyatt Hotel, as told in this story on Yahoo! News?  Just what value system said that the mostly white mostly well-off tourists' lives had higher priority than the mostly black, mostly poor native New Orleans evacuees' lives?   Could not Mr. Bush recognize the outrage we would feel when he said on Friday to his incompetent head of FEMA, the former Arabian Horse Association commissioner who failed to coordinate any kind of acceptable federal response to this overwhelming national emergency, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!" as reported in this Washington Post story?

          And we have to ask the deeper questions as well.  Why have Congress and the Bush administration provided tax cuts that benefit most the people making the most!  Why have they talked about giving the wealthy even more in tax cuts, when at the same time they are talking about paying for those tax cuts by cutting millions from the medicare, food stamps, and other benefit programs that help the poor?  Why was FEMA cut back and reduced to a minor agency in Chertoff's Homeland Security empire, when it is the most important first response agency for protecting American people?  Why were the funds for reinforcing the levees and dealing with a known and predicted danger not forthcoming?  Read this Washington Post story, or this report on Tim Johnson Watch, and ask:  Why did Congress cut the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for levee projects to shreds, while providing more money in the energy and transportation bills for wealthy oil companies and bridges to nowhere in Alaska?  Why did the White House lobby against a plan to spend just $1 billion over 4 years to rebuild wetlands to serve as a buffer to hurricanes? Was Bush protecting the people of Louisiana by using that money instead for tax cuts for the wealthy and the $60 billion a year cost of his war of choice in Iraq?  Why have the Republicans, humming their mantra of "less government, more privatization," cut back government agencies so that they are ill-equiped to deal with the very disasters that epitomize the reason people band together to form governments?
 

          It's time for ordinary Americans to tell Mr. Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress that we've had ENOUGH!  Enough tax cuts for the wealthy.  Enough neglect of the poor and the hungry.  Enough of war and occupation that perversely increase our risks of suffering a terrorist attack.  Enough of government for the big corporations and their wealthy owners.   It's time to fire Brown and Chertoff and put our money to work to make this a better country for everyone, rich and poor, black and white, old and young.  Let's remake America in the image of the America we know we can be--a caring country with open arms and equal opportunity for all.