The warning signs
It may seem indelicate to move into the politicizing phase of the tragedy in New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta, but some of the facts coming out have been alarming.The New Orleans' newspaper, the Times-Piscayne, has been raising the issue of lost federal funds for new levees in Louisiana since spring of last year. On June 8th, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, LA, told the paper, "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."
Also that June, an Army Corps project manager "essentially begged" (according to the Times-Piscayne) for $2 million for urgent work as the levees sank. Obviously, it's unfair to blame the Bush administration for the hurricane, but it's fair to critique the President for the status of New Orleans as he cuts his six week summer vacation short by two days and sends 30,000 National Guard troops to the disaster area. 7,500 members of the Guard have been assigned from Louisiana and Mississippi, but 35 percent of Louisiana's Guard, and 40 percent of Mississippi's Guard are stationed in Iraq. On top of that, you were dealing with a steep decline in Guard recruitment, in the Delta and elsewhere, caused by the Iraqi occupation.
Environmental agencies have been very critical of the Army Corps of Engineers' activities in the lower Mississippi. Oil and petrochemical factories have been pumping God knows what- and how much?- into the Mississippi for a generation, as the Corps-built dikes turned the river into a gushing sewer. The wetlands, which should serve as a modest level of protection during a hurricane, have been used as landfill for suburban development along the Mississippi. (Louisiana loses 25 square miles of coastline a year.)
Meanwhile, last month's Nature magazine published an especially sobering study by an MIT meteorologist from MIT that found "that hurricane wind speeds have increased about 50% in the past 50 years, and that a rise in surface temperatures linked to global warming was at least partly responsible."
It would be incorrect to assume that global warming caused this hurricane, but it's irrefutable that warming global temperatures will cause more hurricanes to occur and will heighten their impact.
The city of New Orleans has a poverty rate of 34 percent, triple the national average, so it also wouldn't be incorrect to say that many people died in the hurricane because they didn't have the money to leave. An estimated hundred thousand New Orleans' residents, most of them African-American, had no cars in which to vacate the city. A first-hand account in Wednesday's Des Moines Register by an Iowan still stuck on the 7th floor of a New Orleans hotel suggested that taxi rides to the airport in the hours before the storm were going for $1,000. This might explain some of the extensive looting that's taking place in the city now, as Wal-Mart's impressive supply of firearms makes its way into the hands of the desperate and resentful.
This may sound as though I'm casually tossing out blame over a remarkable, and very possibly unavoidable, natural tragedy, but I'm really furious. New Orleans is one of my favorite American cities, and I've been reading obituaries by its own sons and daughters, like Josh Levin, and it all seems so senseless, in an era of such staggering callousness and greed.
Corporate America appears to be heeding the President's call to donate what it can. Of course, the six and seven figure contributions will be generally offset by the free publicity the companies receive for their gifts, including a running crawl at the bottom of the screen tonight on CNBC. Earlier today, George W. Bush finally asked Americans for their sacrifice in a time of national tragedy, urging them to avoid buying gas in the next few weeks unless they need it. After September 11th, Americans were willing to sacrifice, and the President merely asked us to "shop till we drop," as the military and their families payed the unfair price of fighting an illegal and immoral war.
Now, Bush should heed Howard Dean's call and ask his friends in Big Oil to join in the sacrifice and stop gauging American families at the pump. He should stop hiding behind their profit-driven junk science and own up to the facts about global warming, and he should acknowledge the culpability of his own administration in failing to take the ecological warning signs seriously.
posted by CM @ 9:07 PM
8 Comments:
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Most of the time your political posts just sound like Democratic nonsense that I can easily ignore. But some of this stuff sounds outright anti-American, something I would expect to read when looking at a transcript of the latest al-Qaida videotape. Let's try to tone down the political and anti-business rhetoric in this time of disaster and realize that it is big business and the Bush administration that will be providing billions of dollars in relief to the region.
Points of fact:
1) Neither Bush nor other Republican politicians cause global warming
2) Gas and oil are expensive because demand is high (thank you China)
3) Just because Wal-Mart sells firearms doesn't mean people should use them to steal
4) The region is better off with donations from business looking for free advertising than it is if businesses didn't donate anything
5) The levees weren't designed to stand up to a storm of this magnitude, and $2m wasn't going to change that fact.
Just send your money to the Red Cross or whoever else you think can do the most to help and save your thoughts on who is to blame for this.
Oh, you have the compliance manual for being a true American? I've been looking everywhere for it. Does "toning down the political rhetoric" include linking public dissent to enemy conduct? I'm not sure. Though, I know it's the first rule of fascism.
Points of fact:
1) Oil and chemical companies cause global warming by belching toxins into the atmosphere. Bush, the politicians in his party, and unethical Democrats, are well-paid for their protection services.
2) Gas and oil are expensive because the gas and oil companies' primary loyalty is to their profit margin. Bush was mindful of this when his first act after the hurricane- and only act so far- was to release some oil reserves and cut further controls on pollution. On behalf of his paymasters, Bush will continue to argue that we're experiencing a gas shortage while we're swimming in surplus.
3) Since guns can be stolen, or simply purchased by criminals without adequate background checks, and we live in the most violent society in western culture, perhaps Wal-Mart should be out of the business of selling firearms.
4) The region IS better off with donations from corporations than it is without, but if the donations are made in return for free publicity, why are we even calling them donations? It also seems the least these companies can do for a society in an excelerated process of eliminating their tax rate.
5) It sounds like these levee improvements could have made a significant improvement. I thought everyone was on the same page on that. Regardless, we should at least acknowledge that the impact of these storms will be progressively worse if we continue to inflame the atmosphere and strip away our coastal barriers.
It's unfortunate that our government has been almost entirely dependent upon private relief organizations like the Red Cross during this disaster. Unfortunately, it's part of a larger governing philosophy in Washington over the last three decades to privatize everything that moves, and strip every one of these public assistance organizations of their resources. Is this what Bush means by Homeland Security?
If only he had the use of the most powerful military in the world at his disposal. Of course, he does, but I suspect he'd be less reticent to use it if that was his political base dying this week down in the New Orleans slums.
Anger may seem like a dangerous trait to display during times of national tragedy, but it's not the worst. At least it can be productive. Fear is worse.
3) CM, could you expand on this one? I don't see the connection? The New Orleans situation has, like never before, made me regret the fact that I do not (yet) own a handgun. TA
Perhaps it's wrong to even assume that criminals were taking the guns. Maybe they were being swiped by people to protect themselves from criminals. Here's a quick media guide on looting-- if they're black, it's looting. If they're white, it's taking necessary supplies.
My unsolicited advice is to hold off on buying that gun. You must have heard by now that you're statistically more likely to be injured by your own gun than by an intruder.
Besides, I don't remember seeing any guns on "Free to Be You and Me."
Now I remember, I want a doll instead. I can sometimes still hear the voices as I drift off to sleep at night, "A doll, a doll, William wants a doll!" CM, where did you see this film?
I have heard that gun argument before, but I have never seen it in writing with a scientific description of how the study was conducted. Please point me to a good source. For that argument to have any meaning, I would also need to see the probabilities for non-gun-owners being injured by intruders. You could have the scenario below (greatly exaggerated for illustration) which would agree with what you just stated, but which would also totally make a case for purchasing a gun:
Probability of non-gun-owners being injured by intruders = .01
Probability of gun-owners being injured by intruders = .0000001
Probability of gun-owners being injured by their own gun = .000001
What's the old quote about lies, damn lies, and statistics? Anyway, the main reason for getting a gun would be for when the sh*t really hits the fan and thirty something, strait, middle-class, white, Christian, American, males (I don't want anyone to thing I'm a racist or a sexist or a homophobe or an elitist or a xenophobe or an ageist) start acting like scared animals. I like the chances of the gun-owners thank you very much. Ever wonder why there is so much violence in the world? Its because the strong, i.e. those with better weapons, survive when the going gets tough – textbook evolution.
Its 10:30 pm on a Friday night on Labor Day weekend. How about some advice on a way for me to get a life. TA
Computer solitaire?
I admit I haven't seen the statistic on the guns. I was just repeating the mantra. I just attempted an on-line search and had a hard time finding any source that didn't have an axe to grind on one side or another.
Your hypothetical statistics could even be accurate on a pie chart, but the numbers look more like Europe. American gun accident and crime statistics wouldn't have that many zeroes before the numbers.
I don't remember specificly seeing "Free to Be..." I only remember always being vaguely familiar with it. My mother was a Sociology and Women's Studies professor so that would probably explain it, but this was before the era of videotape. I doubt they would have shown the film at the evangelical, parochial elementary school I attended. But then again, this was before the days of the Christian Coalition, and I do remember our music teacher leading us in choruses of "Blowin' in the Wind" and "Abraham, Martin, and John."
I didn't remember the doll song until I googled it.
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