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September 4, 2005
Shame on the Administration
It's a good time to restart entries on the blog, and with the devistation from Katrina's wake, I've got a few commetns I feel I need to make.
If you haven't heard, people are still suffering in New Orleans, even a week later. While nobody wants to politicise the problem, there is somthing that has become clear because of the "unforseen" events.
The administration, who could not have forseen the levees breaking, shunted the money to fix the fractures to Iraq--not to the soldiers who are fighting the administration's war, but to the corporations who stand to make billions upon billions in Iraq's rebuilding.
The administration drove resources, like the National Guard of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama to Iraq, when they should have been here, ready for an emergency. Plus, the administration cut FEMA's funding, and reversed all of Clinton's changes to the organization, makign it a substandard organziation, answerable to the Homeland Security office. If Katrina occurred in 1998, FEMA would have been able to mobilize the evacuation from New Orleans of the poor and infirmed, saving countless lives, and the Guard would have been ready to build makeshift bridges within days, freeing more people from the deteriorating conditions and ongoing looting.
The administration, ever quick to respond to crises on the other side of the world, couldn't get its shit together before possibly hundreds more people died days after Katrina passed, from starvation, exposure, or violence taking place in the disorganization following Katrina's wake. The adminstration's response? "They (The Poor) should have evacuated before the storm!" In the words of another elite: Let them eat cake!
Of course, nobody could have predicted Hurricane Katrina. Nor whatever other events or disasters our nation is ill prepared for in the coming years. Removing the United States from the Kyoto Protocol in 2001 because of Corporate Greed effectively crippled the one worthwhile international effort to reverse global warming. Shame on the Administration.
The new wing of the Republican party has an "Every Man for Himself" attitude when it comes to governmental spending--i.e., spend only when it benefits the people in power. This philosophy is inevitably flawed, and as we move forward into the twenty-first century, as the difference between the haves and the have-nots becomes greater, the holes in the philosophy will continue to expand.
There is nothing good to be gained from the tragic events in New Orleans, Louisiana, Mississippi or Alabama. But if people finally open their eyes to the fraud and corruption present in the present administration, and to a lesser extent, the government, and votes in a different variety of people in 2006, we can at least have hope that this will never happen again.
Posted by Bastique at September 4, 2005 6:49 PM