At Daily Kos there’s an “exhortation” (relayed by my old friend(s) Astraea) to the effect that the drowning of New Orleans has at last exposed Republican evil for all to see. As is customary in Progressive rants, corruption is equated with free trade, and the campaign for ever more invasive government both at home (papers please!) and abroad is equated with minarchism:
Make no mistake: as we watch our fellow citizens drown, starve, and die in the street in New Orleans, its not incompetence or lack of planning that is killing them. It is willful neglect. It is the direct result of reducing the government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” This is what “starving the beast” looks like.
By expanding it every year?
I’ll shed no tears if either branch of the Biparty somehow manages, despite all the Bipartisan Incumbent Protection Acts of recent decades, to destroy itself and make room for some genuine opposition. But . . argh. Can someone who isn’t a libertarian understand how frustrating it is to see all manner of ills blamed on one’s pet policies when the opposite policies have in fact been in force?
Well, anyway. It has long been observed that a region of frequent hurricanes is not a good place for a city below sea-level. (The Netherlands don’t get hurricanes.) For generations the day of reckoning has been postponed, not by “willful neglect” but by massive intervention: to fight the Mississippi’s tendency to seek a new channel, to maintain the dikes levees, and to keep the price of flood insurance low so that people don’t look at their bills every year and say hm, maybe it would be smart to move to higher ground. If the powers that be had been flint-hearted enough to neglect New Orleans, it might already be a ghost town, with no one left to drown; but what politician could resist the plea to preserve a city of history and romance? It’s not as if they’re spending their own money.
Little news has reached me about the relief efforts; but I have heard that the authorities are obstructing private relief efforts in the name of keeping order — much as they did in Florida, after a hurricane whose name I’ve forgotten, during a Democratic Presidency. [Oops! Andrew was in 1992.] In this case they’re stopping unofficial vehicles because you might have in mind to spring some of the felons being held at the Superdome. Sicherheit über alles!
Meanwhile. Some entity called Castro Valley Moms has chartered a truck to take clothing and toiletries to Houston. (On Wednesday?!) I’ve bagged a bunch of garments that I never wear.
Marcia Blake has the right idea:
If every community in the U.S. sent JUST ONE BUS to retrieve “Katrina” refugees from the unspeakably inhuman warehouses where they are suffering, bringing them to our homes for shelter, we could stop the needless misery and deaths.
I kinda wish we hadn’t got rid of that sofa.
“Can someone who isn’t a libertarian understand how frustrating it is to see all manner of ills blamed on one’s pet policies when the opposite policies have in fact been in force?”
You haven’t been paying attention. FEMA’s budget has been cut repeatedly, taking it from a can-do, helpful responder that George W. Bush praised in 2000 to the useless, slow, even counterproductive agency it is today. Funds needed last year for the shoring-up of the levee that broke were cancelled so Bush could hand rich people a tax cut.
Have you seen the video of Louisiana Sen. Landrieu flying over the levee in a helicopter? She broke into tears as she saw a single crane, “one little crane” working uselessly to try to dam a massive levee breach. That’s what “starving the beast” looks like. http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/09/04.html#a4784
Marcia Blake’s heart is in the right place, but before the “just one bus” can get to the stranded people, the breach must be repaired so the floodwater can be pumped out. There was just one organization of human beings large enough to handle that job, and we call it the government. On Tuesday, on Wednesday, on Thursday, on Friday, that organization was missing in action, because of four years of Republicans “starving the beast.”
Thanks for visiting, Jamie.
It’s true, I haven’t been paying attention. Still, how is it “starving the beast” in any meaningful sense to starve some of those organs least essential to the beast’s survival and beastliness, while expanding it overall? If the beast were truly starving, New Orleans would have more money of its own to repair the levees, without having to rely on the erratic mercy of outside vote-buyers.
Marcia proposes to send the bus to Houston, not to New Orleans.
Tom Knapp defends “looters”
Some have responded to Tom that the Keepers Of Order are not molesting those who salvage necessities.
I heard later that the “one little crane” was all alone not because of parsimony but because there was inadequate footing for anything more.
Will Wilkinson likewise heaps scorn on those who blame the Republicans’ alleged libertarianism.
2012: Will’s piece (I’ve updated the link) contains a broken link to this piece by Tom Palmer.