Killing New Orleans
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Posted by Lorelei Kelly
Katrina's wicked aftermath in Louisiana and Mississippi is heart-wrenching for Americans. But some of our tears should be shed in fury. The shocked, looting-obsessed blatherers on TV obviously finds it distasteful to bring up politics as we watch our nation's most unique city sink into a deadly brew, yet we need to face the fact that our leadership's track record on keeping Americans safe at home is clearly not a priority.
Water destroying New Orleans has always been a matter of national defense. Despite this, and aided and abetted by conservatives, President Bush has gutted the Federal Emergency and Management Agency (FEMA) exiled the National Guard to purgatory in Iraq, and stripped flood control and mitigation programs --just to mention three relevant items. Though these actions did not cause the hurricane, they left New Orleans vulnerable and now bereft. Conservative politics and the safety of American citizens have come full circle on the Gulf Coast and collided in spectacular horror with the citizens taking the hit. Natural disasters are in the hands of God. Incompetence and ideology are ours to claim, however, and today they reign supreme.
A broken levee wall is what caused the city to drown. For years the walls have been sinking. Starting in the 1960's, the federal government began working with regional state and local officials on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA in 1995. Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. As blogger Attytood notes, the Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project is another major Corps project, which remained about 20% incomplete due to lack of funds. That project consists of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank of the Mississippi River. In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain.
FEMA enfeebled: FEMA's Project Impact, a model mitigation program created by the Clinton administration, was canceled outright under Bush and conservative congressional leadership. Federal funding of post-disaster mitigation efforts designed to protect people and property from the next disaster was cut in half.. In Louisiana, requests for flood mitigation funds were rejected by FEMA this summer.
The tradeoffs are appalling. In Fiscal Year 2006, Louisianan's will spend 78.4 million dollars on Cold War boondoggle missile defense. They will spend 1.7 billion for the war in Iraq. Mississippi will spend 42.9 million on missile defense and 918.7 for the war in Iraq. This would have paid for the levee repair with change.
Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of Americans would have translated into 930 million dollars for Louisiana and 707.1 million for Mississippi. Louisiana spent 1.6 million dollars on abstinence only education programs last year.
Like a macabre parody of Thomas Frank's economic thesis, Louisiana's congressional delegation became majority conservative in the last election. Senator David Vitter was designated the most conservative of the freshman class by the National Journal this year. He has voted for every tax cut as well as for the invasion of Iraq . A cursory check on a vote rating website showed similar results for the mostly Republican Louisiana delegation.
I don't think it takes too many cartwheels of reason to say flat out that these terrible tradeoffs are what happens when your political leadership relies on an extreme ideological base --many of whom attack reasoned debate as treasonous and any questioning of our national priorities as communism redux. Maybe it will now be obvious. Our leadership is a bunch of towel-snapping fraternity boys who are not interested in government. Likewise, their mean spirited power base--instead of governing--would rather stand on the last radioactive pile of rubble with a megaphone yelling "I told you so!" Maybe this will be more clear to middle Americans as they watch our precious New Orleans drown.
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