THE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES ROAD SHOW COMES TO ALBANY

(from right: Jim Martin, Shyam Reddy and Greg Hecht were three of the candidates appearing at Winfred Dukes' (center) invitation in Albany on 9-24-05)

(This column will appear in the 9/29/2005 THE ALBANY (GA.) JOURNAL


Most of the time the average voter can’t get within a million miles of the real human being who is running for high public office. Typically, candidates are carefully packaged and wrapped in an image paid for with thousands or millions of dollars in bribes, er, “contributions.” Slick commercials with catchy slogans in 15 or 30 second sound bites (“compassionate conservative” “family values” “strong national defense”) define the candidate and probably do far more to determine a voter’s selection than news articles, editorials, and face time with the office seeker. In recent years campaign appearances have become scripted and brief, with meaningless but pleasant sounding general slogans being mouthed by virtually every contestant. (I’m still looking forward to meeting the office seeker who promises a weak national defense, who vows that he’s out of touch with traditional family values, who admits that he’ll spend public money like a drunken sailor, and who avers that he’s not like you or me- he’s better and he’s from somewhere else. Humorous as this may seem, those statements would probably be true if uttered by the country’s highest elected officials- Republican or Democrat.)

But on a warm and breezy Saturday morning in September, for the 75 to 100 South Georgians who took the time to visit the auditorium at Albany Technical Institute, it was a very low keyed, relaxed opportunity to meet, greet, and have one-on-one conversations with the Democratic candidates for next year’s races for Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Superintendent of Schools, and Insurance Commissioner.

Greg Hecht and Jim Martin, two capable and experienced veterans of the Georgia legislature, are squaring off for the Lieutenant Governor’s position that Mark Taylor will vacate as he attempts to move up to the Governor’s mansion. More accurately, they aren’t “squaring off” as the pugilistic metaphor suggests, because they each genuinely like and respect the other and made no secret of it in their prepared remarks. If you want fun, games, and political combat, the election to watch will be whatever race Ralph Reed is in, primary or general. In fact, Greg Hecht’s website has no less than fifty-five links to stories blasting Reed for his cynical manipulation of fundamentalist Christians (motto: “we take the “fun” out of ‘fundamentalist’”) to aid his casino gambling clients. http://www.greghecht.com/gh_reedwatch.html.

Both Hecht and Martin are able speakers, have long resumes filled with civic accomplishments, and each promises to roll back some of the worst legislation spawned by the Republican takeover of the Georgia legislature. Martin named the voter ID bill as his top choice of Republican enacted legislation to repeal. (In an earlier column, “REPUBLICANS TO ELDERLY VOTERS WITH SOCIAL SECURITY CARDS: GET LOST” (June 10, 2005), Ms. Amanda Ruckel and I pointed out that Georgia’s voter ID law was passed in spite of the fact that the Republicans had not produced evidence of a single instance of a voter ID fraud in Georgia. We also noted that the legislation did not originate in Georgia, but came down from the top Republican in Washington (that’s Karl Rove, not George Bush) as part of a national campaign to disenfranchise likely Democratic voters in future elections.) Hecht’s choice of a rollback was Sonny Perdue’s decision to trim the state budget by cutting back on Medicaid funds for nursing home residents.

One intriguing candidate is Shyamsundar (“Shyam”) Komati Reddy, who is running for Cathy Cox’s soon to be vacated Secretary of State position as Cathy and Mark Taylor compete for the gubernatorial nomination. Shyam Reddy is young (30), handsome, and confounding to those voters who make their selections based on stereotypes. He’s of Indian (the subcontinent) descent, but he grew up a country boy in Dublin, Georgia, then attended Emory University (Georgia’s top academic institution according to U.S. News & World Report) and University of Georgia Law School. Although he’s economically joined the upper crust- he’s an associate at a silk stocking Atlanta law firm, Kilpatrick-Stockton, he’s also committed to civil rights for the least among us, having joined other lawyers in a voting rights lawsuit challenging the voter ID law as violating the rights of the poor, the elderly, and African Americans. In a field of unknowns running for the position, this accomplished and bright young man may be the surprise of 2006.

96 Degrees in Mid-September- How the Oil and Coal Companies Helped Bring Us Junk Science and Killer Hurricanes

Coal and Oil companies have paid scientists to scoff at Global Warming even though storms like the above tornado have increased in frequency and intensity

“Canada's Inuit see it in disappearing Arctic ice and permafrost. The shantytown dwellers of Latin America and Southern Asia see it in lethal storms and floods. Europeans see it in disappearing glaciers, forest fires and fatal heat waves. Scientists see it in tree rings, ancient coral and bubbles trapped in ice cores. These reveal that the world has not been as warm as it is now for a millennium or more. The three warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998; 19 of the warmest 20 since 1980. And Earth has probably never warmed as fast as in the past 30 years...” http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change.

There’s a movie that periodically shows up on HBO called The Day after Tomorrow, and like a moth to a flame, I can’t tear myself away from the screen when it’s on. Set in the very near future, the story is starkly simple: global warming has started melting the polar ice caps, causing great chunks of ice to break off and a flow of cold water to lower temperatures in the oceans. The Gulf Stream is stopped cold (a bad pun, I know), and great storms with incredibly cold temperatures form in the shape of hurricanes over northern land masses. In only a matter of days a new ice age descends on the earth, and surviving Americans flee south to Mexico and other warmer climes.

The movie seems fantastic, except that the daily news seems to trump Hollywood scenarios every time we turn around. Hurricane after hurricane battered Florida in 2004, coming so fast that one could hardly remember their names a week later. (For the record, they were: Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeane, and they hit, one after another, in 43 days- from August 13th through September 25th .) In the wake of Katrina, they seem like a distant memory- except that Florida still hasn’t fully recovered from their impact.

If you think the weather has been a little crazy the last few years, you’re not alone. Here in Georgia the pendulum has rapidly swung from severe drought to record rainfalls. All over the world, massive storms, torrential downpours, and debilitating droughts have been disrupting lives and destroying property.


Global Warming and the Scientists Paid by the Energy Industry to Lie about it

And the culprit? Most reputable climatologists think that global warming is, at the very least, a substantial part of the cause. As Katrina passed over Florida and hit the Gulf of Mexico, the increased water temperatures- as much as two degrees warmer than normal- gave extra energy to the storm, boosting its winds to incredible speeds (Category 5, with winds over 155 m.p.h.). And Katrina may be only a prelude to more killer storms:

“In August, MIT climatologist Kerry Emanuel reported in the journal Nature that major storms spinning in both the Atlantic and the Pacific have increased in duration and intensity by about 50 percent since the 1970s. During that period, global average temperatures have risen by about one degree Fahrenheit along with increases in the level of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping pollutants from industry smokestacks, traffic exhaust and other sources.” The Associated Press/CNN.

Other climatologists say that it’s too soon for global warming to have had that much impact on the weather, but there is one huge problem with their opinions: many of them are bought and paid for by the industries which pollute the environment and contribute to the greenhouse effect which is slowly raising the earth’s temperatures. Three of those paid shills are Dr. Robert Balling, Dr. Patrick Michaels, and Dr. Siegfried Frederick Singer. They have two things in common: ONE, they are scientists who disagree that global warming exists and who argue that any increase in temperatures is not caused by CO2 emissions from fossil fuels such as coal and oil; and TWO, they have been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by entities such as German and British coal companies, Exxon, Shell Oil, the Kuwait “Institute for Scientific Research,” and OPEC. By the late 1990’s, Balling had already received $300,000 and Michaels had pocketed $200,000 for their television appearances and op-ed columns intended to derail any attempts to deal with global warming.

Singer is also a director of The Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy, a group founded by the Unification Church (the “Moonies”) in 1982, and an Adjunct Fellow of "Frontiers of Freedom," whose President, George C. Landrith, wrote the following comments (pre-Katrina) about global warming:

“One of the favorite ploys of the extreme environmentalist Left is to use politically motivated pseudo-science in an attempt to scare Americans into accepting their job-killing environmental policies and burdensome regulatory regimes.... The problem is their claims of future catastrophes are based on shoddy junk science. Their claims are not true or real.”

Oh yes, the terrible trio has one other link- they are all listed as climate “experts” by The Heritage Foundation on its website. The Heritage Foundation is the right wing Washington institution which has supplied the Bush Administration with many of its political appointees as well as its ideological outlooks on every topic under the sun, from tax policy to defense to sex education.

According to former Washington Post and Boston Globe reporter Ross Gelbspan, a $400 million coal consortium called Western Fuels candidly admitted in its 1991 annual report that it intended to debunk mainstream science with the aid of leading greenhouse skeptics. The consortium paid for a $250,000 propaganda video which falsely portrayed global warming as good for us because increased CO2 levels would promote plant growth in the higher latitudes and thus help us feed the world. (In actuality, Gelbspan reports, global warming will decrease rice and wheat production in Southeast Asia, starving millions.) The video was reportedly shown often around the Bush White House. This helps explain why President Bush has consistently opposed the Kyoto Treaty to halt global warming, has refused to permit federal efforts at energy conservation, and is adamantly opposed to any measures designed to reduce industrial pollution- his stated reason being that costs would outweigh any benefits.

As a result, ordinary Americans are now suffering the effects of the best junk science that oil and coal money can buy, and taxpayers are footing the bill for a $200 billion recovery plan

Katrina Part II: How NOT to prepare for a national disaster

(photo camption) On August 29th, while Katrina battered the Gulf Coast, President Bush took a respite from his vacation to go to Scottsdale, AZ and promote "privatization" of Social Security, the same policy which crippled FEMA's ability to respond to Katrina

******

Paula Zahn: “Sir, you're not telling me — you're not telling me that you just learned that the folks at the convention center didn't have food and water until today, are you? You had no idea that they were completely cut off?”

Brown: “Paula, the federal government did not even know about the convention center people until today.”

On August 29th, when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, most of America had never heard of lethally inept Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director Mike Brown. Certainly few were aware that the man entrusted to run the government agency with responsibility for disaster response had no experience in the field- his prior experience in management was being Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association, from which he was “asked to resign” after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures! What a difference a week makes- by September 9th, only 11 days after Katrina hit, the nation cheered when the Bush Administration finally caved and yanked Brown back to Washington and replaced him with Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thad W. Allen.

How did we get stuck with a FEMA director who was so incompetent that he told CNN’s Paula Zahn on live television September 1st that he was unaware that New Orleans residents were stranded in the city’s convention center- even though television and the internet had repeatedly broadcast their plight?

The answer is twofold. First, from the earliest days when they took over the reins of government in 2001, there was a systematic, philosophical decision of the architects of the Bush Administration to privatize government functions wherever possible, and FEMA was not spared the ax.

“April 2001: Budget Director Mitch Daniels announces the Bush administration's goal of privatizing much of FEMA's work. In May, [former FEMA Director Joseph] Allbaugh confirms that FEMA will be downsized: "Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program...." he said. "Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level." Washington Monthly online, 9/1/05.

Second, in stark contrast to Bill Clinton, George W. Bush put inexperienced, incompetent cronies in charge of critically important government agencies. When Clinton took office, the head of FEMA appointed by the first George Bush was Wallace Stickney, whose only apparent qualification for the post was that he was a close friend and former next door neighbor of Bush Chief of Staff John Sununu. Clinton replaced Stickney with James Lee Witt, the former Director of the Arkansas Office of Emergency Services. Witt, who got high marks from Republicans and Democrats alike in his professional handling of disaster relief, was the first FEMA head who came to the position with direct experience in emergency management. On Witt's recommendation, Clinton filled most of the FEMA jobs reserved for political appointees with persons who had previous experience in natural disasters and intergovernmental relations.

Eight years later George W. Bush replaced Witt with Texas crony Joe Allbaugh, who had no experience in disaster management. Brown (Allbaugh’s college roommate) replaced Allbaugh in December of 2002 when Allbaugh decided to form a private company to cash in on upcoming government contracts to rebuild an Iraq that had not yet been reduced to rubble. In short order, Allbaugh and Brown politicized the agency to the point that professional disaster managers were forced out and replaced by incompetent hacks (which may explain ABC News' report that FEMA’s website listed assassination proponent Pat Robertson’s “Operation Blessing” as the #1 conduit for Katrina relief donations):

"Over the past three-and-one-half years, FEMA has gone from being a model agency to being one where funds are being misspent, employee morale has fallen, and our nation's emergency management capability is being eroded. Our professional staff are being systematically replaced by politically connected novices and contractors." Sixteen year FEMA veteran Pleasant Mann, in June 2004 letter to members of Congress warning that the politicization of FEMA was decimating the agency.

Brown’s chief henchmen are no more qualified than he. Daniel A. Craig, director for the Recovery Division of FEMA, is a onetime political fundraiser and campaign adviser who came to FEMA in 2001 from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. FEMA Chief of Staff Patrick J. Rhode and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler came from President Bush's 2000 campaign operation.

FEMA was folded into the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2002, and its mission was re-prioritized from natural disasters to anti-terrorism efforts. Even so, Americans deserve answers as to how FEMA could have been so unprepared for a disaster which had been anticipated for years- the agency reported in 2001 that a severe storm hitting New Orleans was number one of its top three anticipated disasters (the other two being a terrorist attack on New York City and a San Francisco earthquake). FEMA was caught flatfooted even though Louisiana’s Governor Kathleen Blanco declared a state of emergency on August 26th- three days before the storm hit, and the scope of the damage was predicted before the storm hit by LSU researchers and (NBC’s Brian Williams reported) by the National Weather Service:

“URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA
1011 AM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005
...DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED...

HURRICANE KATRINA...A MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED STRENGTH...RIVALING THE INTENSITY OF HURRICANE CAMILLE OF 1969.

MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER.”


Probably nothing better illustrates the incompetence of FEMA than the counties which were declared a state of emergency just prior to the storm hitting. An astute blogger put together a map of the Louisiana counties that President Bush designated in his declaration of emergency; it turned out that the map was upside down- only counties not on the Gulf Coast were designated, while New Orleans and Jefferson Parish were left out.

So it is even more troubling to Americans worried about how our government will respond to another 9-11 type attack that in the days before and after Katrina’s landfall the agency performed so miserably:

“If Hurricane Katrina represented a real-life rehearsal of sorts, the response suggested to many that the nation is not ready to handle a terrorist attack of similar dimensions. ‘This is what the department was supposed to be all about. Instead, it obviously raises very serious, troubling questions about whether the government would be prepared if this were a terrorist attack. It's a devastating indictment of this department's performance four years after 9/11.’“ Clark Ervin, DHS's former inspector general,.

“We've had our first test, and we've failed miserably. We have spent billions of dollars in revenues to try to make our country safe, and we have not made nearly enough progress. With Katrina we had some time to prepare. When it's a nuclear, chemical or biological attack, there will be no warning.” Former representative Timothy J. Roemer (D-Ind.), a member of the 9-11 commission. (both quotes from 9/5/05 Washington Post.)

There were two disasters on the Gulf Coast- the first created by nature (with more than a little help from man), the second was inflicted by the Bush Administration’s criminal negligence in failing the most central of government functions- protecting the lives and health of the people of the country. Why? It’s been said that we get the government we deserve, so one can only conclude that we are suffering our just consequences for entrusting the reins of power to America’s self proclaimed “conservatives” (motto: no wilderness is too pristine to strip mine or drill for oil). Our country is now run by acolytes of Bush advisor Grover Nordquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and the Republican strategist behind the Bush tax cuts targeted for the superwealthy. Nordquist’s agenda calls for the elimination of the Food and Drug Administration, the IRS, and other government agencies, explaining:

“"My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

Nordquist got his macabre wish partially fulfilled- his privatization policies led to Americans drowning, but not in a bathtub

LESSONS WE NEED TO LEARN FROM HURRICANE KATRINA

(caption- Katrino hits land as a Category 4 hurricane with winds over 140 mph)

“I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.” President George W. Bush 9/1/05.

"When levees are below grade, as ours are in many spots right now, they're more vulnerable to waves pouring over them and degrading them," Al Naomi, the senior project manager for the Army Corps of Engineers, quoted in the Times-Picayune of New Orleans in June of 2004. Naomi reported at the time that he was getting only half as much money as he needed and that much of the funding was being used to pay contractors for past work.

"All of us said, 'Look, build it or you're going to have all of Jefferson Parish under water,' And they didn't, and now all of Jefferson Parish is under water." former Louisiana senator John Breaux.

“In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.... A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken.” Sidney Blumenthal, writing in Spiegel online.

“... disappointing was the lowest of the lows in partisanship- those who rose to try to lay blame on President George W. Bush for levee breeches [sic] that allowed New Orleans to flood.... Shame on anyone who tries to use this mammoth tragedy for partisan political purposes now, next year or in years to come.” unsigned Albany Herald editorial, 9/4/05 (note to Herald editor: "breeches" are short pants.)

We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn't need them. This was a week ago. FEMA--we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, "Come get the fuel right away." When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. "FEMA says don't give you the fuel." Yesterday--yesterday--FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, "No one is getting near these lines." Sheriff Harry Lee said that if America--American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn't be in this crisis....”

We have been abandoned by our own country. Hurricane Katrina will go down in history as one of the worst storms ever to hit an American coast, but the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history.... Why did it happen? Who needs to be fired? And believe me, they need to be fired right away, because we still have weeks to go in this tragedy. We have months to go. We have years to go. And whoever is at the top of this totem pole, that totem pole needs to be chain-sawed off and we've got to start with some new leadership.... “ Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard, on Meet the Press, 9/4/05.

"You have watched during a period of 72 hours a modern city of New Orleans [become] a Third World country, and it is all because of the disintegration of infrastructure. Everybody is to blame -- it transcends administrations. It transcends party." Michael Parker, who was forced by President Bush to resign as assistant secretary of the Army for civil works after accusing the White House of shortchanging the Corps of Engineers.

*****

If you want insight into a human being’s character, observe what he or she does after a natural disaster. We saw in the wake of Katrina in New Orleans that some people will loot, rape, rob or kill when freed from civilized restraints. But millions upon millions of Americans, from coast to coast, lined up at Red Cross centers to donate blood and cash. Communities as far as a thousand miles from New Orleans are putting up hurricane victims. Diehard football fans in Alabama gave up their hotel rooms, and in some cases, their tickets, to refugees staying in hotels which had been booked for opening games. My ex-wife Dawn, an EMT in Phoenix, Arizona, called to tell me that her ambulance service sent two stocked ambulances (including her ambulance, “Daisy”) to Louisiana, and she is going to house two members of the Louisiana family of one of her co-workers. In communities from the East Coast to the West, relief efforts were organized to send food, water, and clothing to the victims.


We respond to disasters better than we prevent them

As wonderful as we can be to our brethren after disasters strike, it’s sad that too often it takes a disaster to get us to do what we should have done in the first place. People build homes and schools downstream from unsafe dams (my home town of Johnstown was destroyed in 1889 when the South Fork Dam burst; the Kelly Barnes Dam Flood of November 6, 1977, near Toccoa, Georgia, killed 39 near Christian and Missionary Alliance College), live too close to active volcanoes ( Mt. St. Helen's, Washington, exploded on May 18, 1980, killing 57), or cram expensive vacation homes and condominiums check by jowl on the beaches in areas regularly hit by hurricanes (hello, Florida and South Carolina!). When (not if) a huge earthquake strikes portions of California where millions live on fault lines, Kristina may be relegated to a footnote in history.

But unfortunate as it is when individuals’ thoughtless lifestyle decisions cause needless deaths, it is unforgivable when deliberate political decisions are made that leave citizens at risk and exacerbate the loss of life. In early 2001 (before the 9-11 attacks), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) ranked a major hurricane strike on New Orleans as "among the three likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country," directly behind a terrorist strike on New York City. (The third is another San Francisco earthquake.)


Global Warming increases the strength of hurricanes

The Bush Administration’s response to the hurricane threat to New Orleans was, unfortunately, no better than its actions to prevent a terrorist attack on New York. Long term, it has consistently opposed efforts to reduce global warming, refusing to sign the Kyoto Treaty and saying that it needed more proof before acting because (it contends) scientists were in disagreement as to whether human activity had any impact on the phenomenon. (Mr. Bush didn’t apply the same logic prior to invading Iraq.) This year oceanographers have reported that the Gulf of Mexico is two degrees warmer than usual, which provided the heat energy Katrina used to regroup from the Category 1 hurricane that weakened over land in Florida to the Category 5 hurricane it became off the coast of Louisiana and Mississippi. Hurricanes start in the warm waters of the South Atlantic, and the season doesn’t start until mid year when the ocean water temperature rises sufficiently. In short, whether or not global warming sends us more hurricanes, those that occur will be more intense as ocean temperatures rise.

The Bush budget cut Army Corps of Engineer funds for Louisiana levees

Since the 2001 FEMA warning about the danger to New Orleans, budget cuts caused by the War in Iraq and by large tax cuts led to elimination of the funds the Army Corps of Engineers had budgeted to maintain and improve levees and canal walls to keep Lake Pontchartain from flooding the city. Pulitzer Prize winner Will Bunch noted in Editor and Publisher that the city’s premier newspaper, The New Orleans Times-Picayune, had regularly run stories warning of the disaster that actually occurred:

“When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA. Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The [U.S. Army Corps of Engineers] 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. On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."”

As it turned out (Sixty Minutes reported on September 4th in an interview with a member of the Army Corps of Engineers), the levees didn’t break- but the canal walls (only two feet thick!) ruptured, letting the lake in to flood the bowl that New Orleans has become over the years.

Bush’s policies helped eliminate the wetland buffers

When he came into office, President Bush pledged to uphold "no net loss" wetland policies of his predecessors, including the first President Bush. Instead, he gutted federal wetland policies, ordering federal agencies to stop protecting 20 million acres of wetlands and waterways. The Washington Post reported last year that four environmental groups issued a joint report showing that administration policies had allowed "developers to drain thousands of acres of wetlands." The result was to leave New Orleans in greater danger of catastrophe from a hurricane, as the wetland areas south of the city were essential buffers to defuse the power of a hurricane before it hit.



(caption- New Orleans survivors wait on roof for help that was late in coming- note the "SOS" written at bottom)

When Katrina hit, America’s treasury, National Guard troops, and equipment were in Iraq

Two days after Katrina hit, Jefferson Parish’s Emergency Services Chief told CNN’s Aaron Brown that the community of half a million was unsafe because urgently needed Louisiana National Guard troops were in Iraq. Meanwhile, New Orleans descended into chaos as the Guard units, depleted by assignments in Iraq and declining enlistments, took over four days to arrive in force. Even before the hurricane hit, local officials decried the President’s decision to permanently mobilize reservists and National Guard troops (including many police, firefighters, and first responders) out of their home states and send them and their equipment to Iraq , leaving local governments without the resources needed to meet disasters like a Katrina.

The Washington Monthly reported that because of the drain of resources to Iraq, in the summer 2004, FEMA denied Louisiana's pre-disaster mitigation funding requests. Said Jefferson Parish flood zone manager Tom Rodrigue: "You would think we would get maximum consideration....This is what the grant program called for. We were more than qualified for it."
When the Army Corps of Engineers budget for levee construction in New Orleans was slashed in June of 2004, Jefferson Parish emergency management chiefs Walter Maestri commented: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay."

Our government is now run by men who want to “drown it in a bathtub”

It’s said that we get the government we deserve, so one can only conclude that we are suffering our just consequences for entrusting the reins of power to America’s self proclaimed “conservatives” (motto: no wilderness is too pristine to strip mine or drill). Our government is now run by acolytes of Bush advisor Grover Nordquist. Nordquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and the Republican strategist behind the Bush tax cuts on the superwealthy (average Americans currently don’t pay significant, if any, taxes on interest, capital gains, or estates), unashamedly calls for the elimination of the Food and Drug Administration, the IRS, and other government agencies, explaining:

"My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."


Even in the wake of the unprecedented need for federal funds to alleviate suffering and rebuild in the wake of Katrina, Nordquist has urged Congress to stay the course and vote next week on a permanent repeal of estate taxes on millionaires. (Estates under a million dollars were already scheduled to be fully exempt from federal estates taxes.)

FEMA has been run by Bush cronies with no experience in disaster management

"It's such an irony I hate to say it, but we have less capability today than we did on September 11," said a veteran FEMA official involved in the hurricane response. "We are so much less than what we were in 2000," added another senior FEMA official. "We've lost a lot of what we were able to do then." The Washington Post, 9/4/05.

In keeping with his governing philosophy of putting old friends in high places, President Bush appointed a Texas crony, Joe Allbaugh, to head FEMA in 2001. The problem was that Allbaugh had no experience in disaster management. This didn’t deter the President, possibly because his budget director, Mitch Daniels, already had a plan to “privatize” much of FEMA’s work:

“April 2001: Budget Director Mitch Daniels announces the Bush administration's goal of privatizing much of FEMA's work. In May, Allbaugh confirms that FEMA will be downsized: "Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program...." he said. "Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level." Washington Monthly online, 9/1/05.

Allbaugh left FEMA in December of 2002 to head up a private company to get government contracts for rebuilding an Iraq that had not yet been reduced to rubble. Bush then appointed Mike Brown, who also had no experience in disaster management, to head the federal agency charged with anticipating and preparing for national disasters. Brown, a loyal Republican, came from Colorado where he practiced law in the area of estate planning. His only managerial experience came as the commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association(!) where he was “asked to resign” after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures.

Brown’s incompetence became readily apparent on September 1st, with his nationally televised comment that he was unaware that thousands of New Orleans residents were stranded in the Convention Center- even though anyone with access to a television set or the internet had already seen pictures of those unfortunates who were reduced to begging for food, water, and police security:

[CNN’s] Paula Zahn: “Sir, you're not telling me — you're not telling me that you just learned that the folks at the convention center didn't have food and water until today, are you? You had no idea that they were completely cut off?”

Brown: “Paula, the federal government did not even know about the convention center people until today.”

Since then, many of the top officials in the Bush Administration have been engaged in damage control- not dealing with the survivors of the hurricane, but attempting to deflect the storm of criticism it has weathered for its slow response in responding to the disaster. On September 4th The Washington Post reported that high officials were blaming the Governor of Louisiana for not declaring a state of emergency as of Friday, September 3rd. The only problem with that statement was that it was false- in fact, Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco had declared a state of emergency August 26th- three days before the storm hit. The Post then identified the real problem with Homeland Security’s inadequate response to the disaster- if the Bush Administration can’t handle the effects of a natural disaster four years after the 9-11 attacks, then how can we expect them to properly respond to a terrorist attack on a major city?

"’This is what the department was supposed to be all about," said Clark Kent Ervin, DHS's former inspector general. ‘Instead, it obviously raises very serious, troubling questions about whether the government would be prepared if this were a terrorist attack. It's a devastating indictment of this department's performance four years after 9/11.’”

Can we learn our lesson?

The lesson of my home town, Johnstown, Pa., is that sometimes an ounce of prevention is worth a thousand pounds of cure. The 1889 Johnstown flood (more like a tidal wave when an upriver earthen dam burst) virtually destroyed the city, killing thousands. Within years Johnstown was rebuilt, but it endured a second, less serious flood in 1936, caused by overflow from the two rivers which meet in the valley. After the 1936 flood, the Army Corps of Engineers built retaining walls to contain the rivers. We were lucky- no Grover Nordquist was around in those days to try to drown the federal government in a bathtub.

Unfortunately for residents of New Orleans in 2005, because the Administration failed in every regard to deal with a disaster of “national significance”- before, during, and after Katrina hit, and because it failed to budget needed funds to upgrade levees and canal walls to avert or reduce the damage from a catastrophe predicted by FEMA in 2001 , President Bush has already had to ask Congress for over $10 billion to clean up the disaster- and that’s just a down payment. This should not be a total surprise from an administration that has budgeted over $200 billion to rebuild and safeguard an Iraq which it destroyed in an unnecessary invasion, two years after top officials claimed that the war would “pay for itself” from Iraq’s oil fields.

In the earliest years of our nation, Ben Franklin counseled against being "penny wise and pound foolish." What Ben didn’t know was that no American politician can get elected in the age of television and talk radio by being penny wise- so we get stuck with leaders who are just plain foolish.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD

.
(top) August 30, 2005, Pres. Bush returns to the scene of his "Mission Accomplished" banner in San Diego while hundreds of thousands in Mississippi and southern Louisiana were desperately waiting for help from the National Guard and FEMA
(bottom) Johnstown, Pa. in 1889, after the South Fork dam burst and a wall of water crushed the city



"I bet Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana are missing their National Guardsmen right now."

"Where are Louisiana's National Guard troops when their neighbors really need them? Mostly in Iraq, of course, defending the homeland."

"Bring home the National Guard."

"Let's have a vote on where we want to spend billions of U.S. taxpayer money in relief, Baghdad or the Gulf Coast of our own country"

Anonymous vents, the Atlanta Constitution after Katrina.

*****

If you want to know a human being’s character, see what he or she does after a natural disaster. At the same time that looters walked the streets of New Orleans, people all over America were lining up at Red Cross centers to donate blood and cash. And more were organizing relief efforts to send food, water, and clothing to the victims.

Albany’s Flood of 1994

Albanians are well aware of what it is like to live in the wake of a natural disaster that upends all things normal. In 1994, the Flint River overran its banks by miles, cutting Albany in half for weeks as all bridges south of Lake Blackshear were closed. We had a curfew, coffins floating out of the riverside cemetery, National Guard troops at checkpoints, and for the chosen few, helicopter rides to travel 100 yards across the Flint. Most of Albany State University was under water.

As the waters rose, many of us joined together to sandbag important resources, including the County Public Health Department and Palmyra Hospital. Albany High’s gymnasium was one of the shelters for those driven out of their homes by rising floodwaters, and numerous good hearted citizens drove down there to drop off food, clothing, pampers, drinks, and other necessities. Putting the official stamp of government recognition to the magnitude of our disaster, Governor Zell Miller visited, and President Clinton flew over to view the damage.

The Johnstown Flood of 1889 and the Red Cross

Now take all of that and multiply it by 10,000, and you have a glimmer as to what the country is facing in Mississippi and Louisiana right now, and for months to come. But the truly incredible thing about human beings is that we will prevail. Without a doubt. I grew up in a community which had been nearly destroyed by the (then) greatest natural disaster in our nation’s history. When the South Fork earthen dam gave way miles upstream from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in 1889, it unleashed a tidal wave that coursed down the narrow valley and smashed the city, killing thousands and leaving rubble in its wake.

The American Red Cross cut its baby teeth on the relief efforts in 19th century Johnstown, an effort that was repeated 88 years later when another devastating flood hit- this one caused by a freak torrential rainfall over the hills surrounding the City (similar to Tropical Storm Albert that inundated areas upriver of Albany in 1994). In 2005, Red Cross workers are still the lynchpin of private relief efforts to areas devastated by a natural disaster.


We respond to disasters better than we prevent them

As wonderful as we can be to our brethren after disasters strike, it’s sad that too often it takes a disaster to get us to do what we should have done in the first place. People build homes and schools downstream from unsafe dams (the Kelly Barnes Dam Flood of November 6, 1977, near Toccoa, Georgia, killed 39 near Christian and Missionary Alliance College), live too close to active volcanoes ( Mt. St. Helen's, Washington, May 18, 1980, 57 deaths), or cram expensive vacation homes check by jowl on the beaches in areas regularly hit by hurricanes (hello, Florida and South Carolina!). When (not if) the huge earthquake strikes the portions of California where millions live, Kristina may be relegated to a footnote in history.

But as unfortunate as it is when individuals’ thoughtless lifestyle decisions cause needless deaths, it is unforgivable when deliberate political decisions are made that leave citizens at risk and exacerbate the loss of life. The Bush Administration bears direct responsibility for the lack of a prompt response by a sufficient number of armed National Guard troops needed to restore order. Two days after Katrina hit, the Emergency Services Chief of Jefferson Parish told CNN’s Aaron Brown that the community of half a million was unsafe because urgently needed Louisiana Guard troops were in Iraq.

Other Bush Administration policies have left the nation at risk. Long term, it has consistently opposed efforts to reduce global warming. Scientists have reported that the Gulf of Mexico is two degrees warmer than usual, providing the fuel Katrina used to regroup from the Category 1 hurricane that struck Florida to the Category 5 hurricane it became off the coast of Louisiana and Mississippi. (Hurricanes start in the warm waters of the South Atlantic, and the season doesn’t start until mid year when the ocean water temperature rises sufficiently).

Bush cut Army Corps of Engineer funds to maintain the Louisiana levees

The people of New Orleans and Jefferson Parish have more reason to be bitter: the budget cuts caused by the War in Iraq and tax cuts led to the door slamming on funds the Army Corps of Engineers had budgeted to maintain and improve levees in Louisiana.

Former Clinton staffer Sidney Blumenthal reported in Spiegel online that:

“In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.”

“A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken.”

Will Bunch noted in Editor and Publisher that the New Orleans Times-Picayune had regularly run stories since Bush took office that the war in Iraq and tax cuts had shortchanged efforts to safeguard the City of New Orleans:

“When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The [U.S. Army Corps of Engineers] 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.

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."”

We the People prefer tax cuts to disaster prevention

However, if we want to know where the blame squarely lays- it is with us, with “We the People.” Like Pavlov whose dogs salivated when the bell rang, we drool all over those politicians who will tell us what we want to hear- even when there is no dog biscuit awaiting us. No matter what disaster has befallen this nation, no matter how urgent the need, any candidate for public office who won’t sign up for the crack cocaine of the political world- namely, tax cuts- will go the way of Walter Mondale. When the former Vice President was foolish enough to tell voters we would have to raise taxes to pay for essential government programs, he was done in by a 1984 Reagan landslide, winning only his home state of Minnesota. Voters preferred the Reagan promise of supply side economics- tax cuts that would miraculously generate more tax revenues.

The promised balanced budget never arrived for America under Reagan, nor under his successor, George H. W. Bush. Instead, the country suffered through ever increasing massive deficits made worse by the billions spent on Savings and Loan bailouts. It’s only been 20 years, but before there was Enron and Worldcom, the nation was rocked by failures of S&L’s made possible by Reagan’s decision to remove the safeguards that protected investors.

Our government is now run by men who want to “drown it in a bathtub”

It’s said that we get the government we deserve, so one can only conclude that we are destined for a warm seat in Hell for entrusting the reins of power to America’s self proclaimed “conservatives” (motto: no wilderness is too pristine to strip mine or drill) who have been Pied Pipered by Bush guru Grover Nordquist. Nordquist famously opined that he wants to reduce America’s government by cutting taxes until what’s left is small enough to fit in a bathtub- where he can drown it! I wonder how many of those conservatives who live in Gov. Haley Barbour’s Mississippi (Barbour is a former National Republican Committee chairman who was a strong advocate of tax cuts) are going to turn down federal tax dollars in the form of help from FEMA and the National Guard because government is the "problem, not the solution?"

Can we learn our lesson?

The lesson of Johnstown is that sometimes an ounce of prevention is worth a thousand pounds of cure. After my home town endured a second, less serious flood in 1936, caused by overflow from the two rivers which meet in the valley, the Army Corps of Engineers built retaining walls to contain the rivers. We were lucky- no Grover Nordquist was around in those days to try to drown the federal government in a bathtub.

Unfortunately for residents of New Orleans in 2005, because the Bush Administration refused to spend $250 million dollars to avert or reduce the damage from a predicted catastrophe, President Bush has already had to ask Congress for over $10 billion to clean up the disaster- and that’s just a down payment. Not too surprising from an administration that has spent $200 billion to rebuild and safeguard an Iraq which it destroyed in an unnecessary invasion.

Over 250 years ago, Ben Franklin counseled against being "penny wise and pound foolish." What Ben didn’t know was that no American politician can get elected in the age of television and talk radio unless he is just plain foolish.