[Mb-civic] Drowning Government (and the American People) in a Bathtub

[Jef Bek]

The Journal of Doubt

9/11/2005 ­ Philadelphia

Drowning Government (and the American People) in a Bathtub

I¹m sitting outside on my deck here in Philly; it¹s a bright, warm,
absolutely beautiful Sunday afternoon. The Phillies just pounded those
smelly Florida Fishies 8-1; the Phillies look as if they want to fight to
make the playoffs. Monday night our beloved Eagles take the field in a quest
to win us a Superbowl this year.

 I¹ve read the Sunday edition of every American newspaper that I still think
matters in this country: The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles
Times, and Philadelphia Inquirer.

Plus I have wireless Internet and can sit out here in the sun and surf the
Web at the same time. I¹ve got cold beer and Sun Chips. I have nothing to do
but read, contemplate, and study.

I have devoted six hours today to studying the catastrophe of Hurricane
Katrina. Here¹s what I have learned.

The right wing media and blogosphere have been trying‹desperately‹to spin
the living daylights out of this entire Hurricane Katrina mess and deflect
blame from Bush and the federal government.

But one gnawing, irritating, and infuriating fact remains:

Bush and a Republican-majority Congress appointed and approved an
incompetent fool with a spotty work record, this nimrod Michael Brown, to
run FEMA. Plus his boss, Michael Chertoff, head of the Department of
Homeland Security, seems to have had no work experience in emergency
management or national security prior to being appointed to his critical
post.

Bush appointed two men with zero experience to run the federal agencies
mandated to provide us all with ³national security.²

That single fact alone proves the incompetence and mendacity of the Bush
administration.

Worse, however, was the fact Bush used FEMA to win votes in Florida during
his 2004 run for the presidency. When he needed FEMA to work, it did. Once
its usefulness had been exploited for his personal gain, he let FEMA drown
in the bathtub as it had been doing prior to September 2004.

Let me explain.

Last September people gushed about FEMA¹s role in Florida during that
horrible hurricane season.

 However, Bush and FEMA had to look good in Florida during this critical
presidential campaign season that, amazingly, overlapped with Florida¹s
hurricane season, which‹luckily for Florida in terms of comprehensive and
expeditious federal help‹turned out to be the WORST hurricane season in a
long time.

 Florida in September 2004 was a massively key swing state in the
presidential elections coming that November. So relief was everywhere in
Florida after the hurricanes: plenty of water, food and help were
distributed everywhere; the checks to the survivors were generous and
expeditiously sent, the rebuilding began immediately and with great gusto,
and so forth. Everyone applauded the federal response to those terrible
disasters‹and rightfully so.

Florida‹as we know‹voted for Bush in much greater numbers in 2004 than in
2000.

So why wasn¹t FEMA as expeditious in responding Katrina as it had been in
Florida in 2004?

Politics. Plain and simple. And it worked; Bush bought tens of thousands of
Floridian votes merely by having the federal government do its job
effectively in Florida during a horrible‹HORRIBLE‹hurricane season.

 You know, we all joked around when there were maps passed around the Web
that showed the path of the 2004 Florida hurricanes and how they all passed
only through Bush-majority counties. In the context of what I have just
written, doesn¹t it now make sense why these counties voted for Bush? It was
out of gratitude.

Find one of those joke maps showing the paths of the 2004 Florida hurricanes
and study which counties went for Bush and which went for Kerry. Every
country stuck directly by hurricanes in Florida in 2004 voted for Bush.
Funny how the major press ignored this amazing fact. Perhaps they were too
busy chasing more important stories about missing white chicks or Jude Law's
penis.

Now back to my point in this essay.

Cronyism and politics drives the Bush administration in how it runs FEMA and
the Department of Homeland Security. Moreover, Bush guts federal agencies
and turns over their funds and responsibilities to private contractors, many
of whom are huge Bush supporters. I mean, for heaven's sake, Halliburton
really has benefited greatly from its ties to Bush and Cheney.

Want an interesting Bill Clinton Administration fact about FEMA?

 
Clinton, like Bush, appointed a crony to run FEMA: James Lee Witt was a
Clinton buddy from Arkansas; everyone knew it at the time.

 
The difference in this cronyism?
 

Witt ran Arkansas¹ department of emergency management prior to his
appointment to run FEMA.

 
That bastard, Bill Clinton! How DARE he appoint competent buddies to key
posts! And anyone who knows emergency management will attest that Witt
turned FEMA into a first-class federal agency. He did this simply by letting
the civilians who worked in FEMA to help direct the path the agency would
take instead of the paths taken by the sleazy cronies in the Reagan and Bush
I administrations who were appointed to gut the agency and pass the savings
on to the ultra-wealthy who got generous tax cuts from  Reagan. Reagan and
his OMB director, David Stockman, gutted an impressive array of federal
agencies back in then in much the same manner. Clinton spent his entire
administration trying to make these agencies work for the people again. In
the case of FEMA, everyone agrees Clinton and Witt's recovery efforts were a
major success.

George W. Bush and his buddies began gutting FEMA the day they took over.
This ³gut and drown a federal agency in a bathtub, then funneling the cash
saved to private contractors who funded the Bush campaign² strategy had been
the Bush gang¹s goal from day one in most federal agencies. Look at who he
appointed to run most of his departments. He hired a lobbyist from the
timber industry to run the EPA, for instance. And so on. The pattern of
mendacity and malfeasance is clear if one digs deep enough into what Bush
and his backers wish to do

Some have even been bold enough to openly explain it.

 Just ask Grover Norquist, head of an anti-government, anti-tax organization
with close ties to Bush. ³I don't want to abolish government. I simply want
to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it
in the bathtub,² he once quipped.

So don¹t let these right-wing apologists deflect blame here. Bush and his
gang have been about protecting the financial security of pals and cronies
in the business world. They have been about drowning the government in a
bathtub. Every government agency they gut, they turn over its
responsibilities‹and generous budgets‹to private firms run by cronies and
pals. It¹s that simple, folks. It¹s right before your eyes. The federal
government's early failures during and after Hurricane Katrina were the
result of policies the Bushies deliberately executed to debase, weaken, and
eventually "drown" the federal government.

And hence the Bushies drowned, literally and figurative, thousands of
American citizens who waited in a pool of flood water and filth for the
federal services they pay for!

How's that for ³national security² for the people? We all saw how well that
post-9/11 ³national² security worked in New Orleans, didn¹t we? Some
national security we have. Even the Indonesians are ashamed of us.