by frog
I haven’t yet commented on the situation in New Orleans and don’t intend to, but a frogblog reader has written me an interesting email about it that I thought I’d share. He wrote:
As a US expat/new Kiwi … I fear people in New Zealand might miss the direct link between tax cuts and the disaster in New Orleans. The examples are many that years of gutting public services led the US to this disastrous situation – cutting public works, disenfranchising the poor, villifying the victims of poverty, and generally attacking anything related to commonwealth or community to increase private wealth. It is important to demonstrate the true costs of tax cuts in addition to exposing the “benefits” as specious and uneven.
Counterpunch has gathered several great articles and opinion pieces that succinctly capture this sentiment. Check out Chris Floyd’s piece.
Floyd’s piece reads, in part:
Where were the resources the money, manpower, materiel, transport that could have removed all those forced to stay behind, and given them someplace safe and sustaining to take shelter? Where, indeed, were the resources that could have bolstered the city’s defenses and shored up its levees? Where were the National Guard troops that could have secured the streets and directed survivors to food and aid? Where were the public resources the physical manifestation of the citizenry’s commitment to the common good that could have greatly mitigated the brutal effects of this natural disaster?
… Well, we all know what happened to those vital resources. They had been cut back, stripped down, gutted, pilfered looted to pay for a war of aggression, to pay for a tax cut for the wealthiest, safest, most protected Americans, to gorge the coffers of a small number of private and corporate fortunes, while letting the public sector the common good wither and die on the vine. These were all specific actions of the Bush Administration including the devastating budget cuts on projects specifically designed to bolster New Orleans’ defenses against a catastrophic hurricane. Bush even cut money for strengthening the very levees that broke and delivered the deathblow to the city. All this, in the face of specific warnings of what would happen if these measures were neglected: the city would go down “under 20 feet of water,” one expert predicted just a few weeks ago.
But Bush said there was no money for this kind of folderol anymore. The federal budget had been busted by his tax cuts and his war. And this was a deliberate policy: as Bush’s mentor Grover Norquist famously put it, the whole Bushist ethos was to starve the federal government of funds, shrinking it down so “we can drown it in the bathtub.” As it turned out, the bathtub wasn’t quite big enough — so they drowned it in the streets of New Orleans instead.
But as culpable, criminal and loathsome as the Bush Administration is, it is only the apotheosis of an overarching trend in American society that has been gathering force for decades: the destruction of the idea of a common good, a public sector whose benefits and responsibilities are shared by all, and directed by the consent of the governed. For more than 30 years, the corporate Right has waged a relentless and highly focused campaign against the common good, seeking to atomize individuals into isolated “consumer units” whose political energies kept deliberately underinformed by the ubiquitous corporate media can be diverted into emotionalized “hot button” issues (gay marriage, school prayer, intelligent design, flag burning, welfare queens, drugs, porn, abortion, teen sex, commie subversion, terrorist threats, etc., etc.) that never threaten Big Money’s bottom line.
I’ll leave those statements there without comment – but, as usual, feel free to let me know what you think of Floyd’s arguments.
UPDATE: David Farrar appears to object to the tenor of this post here.
Published in Environment & Resource Management | Health & Wellbeing by frog on Mon, September 5th, 2005
Tags: environment
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
I have long since believed in the “common wealth” and “public good” rather than growth at all costs. Joy.
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Floyd makes some pertinent points.
This situation is layer upon layer of bad decisions dating back to the 1879 decision to start interfering with the natural flow of the Mississippi for profit.
Sure, you could restrict your vision to the short term, and point to the fact that the levee breach happened with a newly contstructed piece of wall (http://xrl.us/hfdb) that was constructed with one sixth of the budget that was required (http://xrl.us/hfc9). You could even speculate that if the Blackhawk helicopters hadn’t been diverted from the mission of sandbagging the levee breach to save some people in a Church that the waters may have been stopped. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_Hurricane_Katrina_on_New_Orleans)
And yes, many of these decisions were based on not wanting to sacrifice profits. Building on floodplains was stupid, but no-one wanted to pay for moving off them.
With this historical perspective in mind, I strongly agree to the “only the apotheosis” comment (though I did have to look that word up
)
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Bah. Here are those links, this time without parens so WordPress doesn’t screw them up:
Levee wall was newly constructed: http://xrl.us/hfdb
One sixth the budget: http://xrl.us/hfc9
Blackhawks were diverted:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_Hurricane_Katrina_on_New_Orleans
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Floyd’s article professionally encapsulates the essence of the argument I have been putting forward on various local blogs for months. I am not certain that Big Money corporate Right are the cause of the trend, or have merely exploited and amplified a deeper shift.
What we are seeing is the systemic breaking down of all communal and public institutions, and our loyalties to them. What is quite astonishing is the depth of outright hatred that is has been roused; so many otherwise intelligent people vociferously expressing the absolute supremacy of individual rights, and the total nullity of all public ones.
Indeed we only have to look at the USA to see this process more progressed than it is here. The irony of course is that while the NeoCons have on one hand proclaimed small conservative government, the result has been the exact opposite with any number of commentators observing that the USA is on the slippery slope to a new form of corporatist fascism.
At some point in the future this process of atomising individuals will reach it’s end-point, creating a world highly polarised between alienated and disempowered masses (permitted to cling to the illusion of their freeedom for as long as it is convenient) and an uber-wealthy elite. Welcome to the new slavery. Is such a configuration stable?
In the sense that unbridled capitalism feeds on and distorts the natural variance between rich and poor, that the rich really do keep getting richer vastly faster than the poor become better off, then yes the new slavery is stable. But capitalism’s other tenet is continuous growth, which as long as this growth means intensified consumption of resources, will of course fail at some point.
This creates a fascinating vista… broken and disillusioned humanity…yet one whose global scope, knowledge and capacity is absolutely more potent than the broken shards that ushered in the Dark Ages and collapses of history. It will be the era of an entirely new race of humans.
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Counterpunch is well known as a Stalinist website that peddles the very worst from the extreme Left.
So not a good look for the Greens to going there for inspiration.
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Frog:
To be blunt, I wanted to vomit listening to Morning Report and both the American left and right playing partisan silly-fuckers around this. I know mid-terms are just over a year away, and that’s that the Beltway media/political players are interested in; human beings are suffering and dying NOW.
IMO, it looked like local and state government have just as many questions to answer – and unplatatable answers to face – as the federal Government and bureaucracy. But I’m sure the usual finger pointing and partisan jockying will guarantee nothing meaningful changes, yet again.
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New Orleans is a disgrace. Brashian Bloggers for shame,
even hardcore American right-wingers like the NYT’s David Brooks are outraged. Finally, with George W, enough is probably enough.
Is there a better example of the dangers of tax-cutting, public service cutting that enrich the elite at the expense of the masses?
Another salient point: maybe Duncan Garner would be up for asking Dr Brash if he still thinks global warming is a commie conpiracy?
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Sock Thief –
Classic approach — red-bait and evade. What other attacks can you make before you address the central issue?
Craig — there is plenty of failure to go around. And if you want to avoid blame for failure, keep bees and stay out of government. Republicrats have defunded America for their corporate paymasters. This isn’t partisan and only partisans try to make it so. The Government at all levels has failed people and in a democracy it is one’s right and duty to point this out. Only people like, I dunno, Stalin, seek to stifle dissent.
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sockthief: to criticise the new orleans disgrace is “stalinist”.
i’m confused. you’re going to have try a bit harder.
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Tony:
Try and avoid circular reasoning, and where did I ever try to “stifle dissent”? I just find it appalling to see the partisan finger-pointing begin while the lives of thousands hang in the balance. I’d like to think the focus is on human beings not prosecuting a mindless “culture war” or positioning for the next round of poll. At the moment, I’m feeling a bipartisan contempt for most of the Beltway bubble-heads.
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Don’t blame on ideology what can be blamed on incompetence.
The Bush administration are right-wing prats, but I don’t think that’s the problem here. The problem here is that the Bush administration is good at playing politics but just plain incompetent at the basic work of governing.
I can’t think of a policy that has been
(a) enacted by the Bush administration
and
(b) competently carried out.
Their economic policy (if they have one) is lurching the US economy towards vast indebtedness, their Iraqi occupation has been botched in more ways we can count, their main health policy work (medicaid changes for drugs) are hugely expensive and chronically ineffective, their trade policy is absurd (increased steel and farm subsidies along with Free Trade rhetoric?), their key education policy has failed to actually improve schools (‘no child left behind’ now provides very expensive measures of which schools are ‘failing’ according to a very odd set of criteria- but does nothing about it!), etc, etc…
Now we see what the Bush administration’s disaster-planning is like – when they claim to be preparing for disasters because of their fear of terrorist strikes.
Bush likes to present himself as a ‘big picture’ kinda guy with ‘vision’. But govt is also about boring details, tedious meetings, careful delegation to qualified managers, contingency planning, and worrying about the small things that can trip you. That stuff doesn’t make good TV soundbites. But it matters. And it looks like he’s really bad at it.
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Craig,
But this isn’t pointless finger-pointing. It’s trying to learn from other’s mistakes when we have an election coming up.
Some are saying here that it’s electing a right-wing cut-govt-funding govt that’s the mistake.
I’m saying that the key mistake was re-electing someone who had a clear history implementing policies that failed to work (with strong memories of National’s terrible education and health policies last time they were in govt).
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Craig — it would help your agument if you understood what circular reasoning actually meant. Let me help. Here is an example, taken completely at random:
All criticism of the government’s handling of Katrina is partisan discourse. You are criticising Katrina. You are engaging in partisan discourse.
See how in this totally random example the major premise is actually restating the conclusion. Now, try again.
Also, bear in mind fallacious arguments are often used to cut off valid inquiry by creating false categories. Again, taking a totally random example — All dissent and criticism is partisan and should be dismissed as such.
Finally, I refuse to accept your classification of all political discourse falling into either of two narrowly focused, nearly indistinguishable groups — the Dems and Repubs . Citizens are criticizing government failure. When I stated only partisans engage in partisan namecalling it was the observation that both elements of the corporatist party are busy apportioning blame while an angry citizenry situated outside this category demands accountability.
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This discussion is absolutely ridiculous. My understanding is that the US have accepted our offer for assistance on Saturday. When is New Zealand going to send our Emergency services personnel to help?
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“Another salient point: maybe Duncan Garner would be up for asking Dr Brash if he still thinks global warming is a commie conpiracy? ” – AliG
AliG. The worlds hurricane experts have come forward to show that there is no evidence in the hurricane data of any changes in hurricane patterns. There is well documented data on regular hurricane cycles (the 50′s was our last bad patch) and nothing to suggest that it has changed.
Still, I’m sure you, Jim Anderton and Duncan Garner have more collective Wisdom on the subject.
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Archon — Bonk! You are wrong. Kerry Emmanuel of MIT just released a study which states that while frequency has not changed, intensity has. So, we are entering a natural cycle of increased hurricanes which, because of global surface temperature increases, will make them more destructive.
Check out Insurance Journal, that commie-leftist rag, for the article. I quote:
“An analysis of storm winds and duration shows that potential wind-caused damage has roughly doubled over the past 30 years, according to Emanuel, although tropical sea-surface temperatures have increased by only half a degree over that time.
The frequency of hurricanes seems unaffected by global warming. Regional totals vary periodically, but the number of tropical cyclones around the world averages a steady 90 per year. But Emanuel’s study is the second in weeks to link storm intensity with climate.”
This is directly tied to corporate policies of defunding the public sphere for private profit. Costs are transferred into the public space in the form of pollution and profits are moved into private hands. At the same time, taxes are cut that could fund public works to mitigate the disaster.
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icehawke, it will be very interseting to see how this plays out for Bush (not that I really care about that side issue). These early days have not been good for him but it is still just early days and the present anger may disipate. There is a danger for the Dems and for the Left in general of getting out of step with public opinion if this changes in favour of Bush. But anyway he’s not running again so the important question, politically at least, is how this may effect the Reps more generally. And that’s difficult to predict.
I’m not as confident as you that the failings of the disaster relief effort can be laid quiet so squarely at Bush’s doorstep. The most important issue is learing from the mistakes made and this sort of partisan axe grinding we are seeing is not helpful.
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The Conservatives (real not neo-cons) are calling for his impeachment before more people are butchered.
There’s almost zero chance that everyone who NEEDS to be rescued will be rescued before they expire at this point.
The Governor of Louisiana asked for help on the day, as is required by law, because you can’t ask for aid until you know the scale of the disaster. However the help he was asking for SHOULD have been prepositioned. It is now, a week later, and a response is beginning to show itself. In the meantime people have died and more will die.
The head of FEMA is presiding over an agency that Bush decided should cease to exist, who’s funding has been gutted year on year since 2001 and who’s tasks have been shifted to Homeland Security. He is a political hack with zero experience in emergency management. Contrast to the professional placed in an independent Cabinet level position under Clinton.
The money that was budgeted for work on Flood Control in Louisiana was sucked into the Iraq budget and the Homeland Security Budget. This is documented by the Louisiana newspapers 9 times in the last year… it goes back further.
The head of Homeland Insecurity had no plan? My 6 year old knows enough to preposition assets (cookies) when she knows she’s about to make Papa angry. Honestly, the incompetence of the current mob in power in Washington takes ones breath away. Moreover, FEMA *did* have a plan. One would think they’d talk to one another. Halliburton got the no-bid contracts for reconstruction of some Naval facilities in Mississippi, and nobody is surprised.
Apparently timely assistance does occur, as long as you’re on the right list.
Of course the major assets needed were already prepositioned… in Iraq. Nobody in the USA has missed that point. Nor are they missing the fact of the missing money in the flood control budget.
Money was diverted from preparedness and prosperity for all, to war, tax-cuts for the wealthy and propaganda. It is PERFECTLY clear to everyone in the USA at this point, and OBL is probably more in danger of dying of convulsions of laughter than of capture.
New Orleans will be uninhabitable for months, and it may never be rebuilt. That’s the 35th largest city in the USA. The USA did it TO ITSELF, by handing out money to the wealthy and engaging in stupid empire building warfare. See the PNAC manifesto if you’ve any doubt of the latter.
As an American expat I warn – do not take this path. DO NOT elect conservative political hacks who’s failure of vision destroys lives and the very fabric of the society in order to enhance wealth for the few.
respectfully
BJ
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No-one’s mentioned FEMA – this has to be the most disgraceful of the neo-cons activities. For many years the Federal Emergency Management Agency rushed into action saving lives – but not any more, Bush and his cronies killed it off by cutting funding and absorbing it into the Dept of Homeland Security.
Another item on the list of shame, is the lax development rules that allowed wetlands that would have absorbed the storm surge to be drained, paved over and turned into yet another suburbia.
Sadly, what has hppened in New Orleans is an indication of what’s going to happen all over the world once peak oil and climate change begin to bite.
And Archon, perhaps you could come back to us with some evidence that “The worlds hurricane experts have come forward to show that there is no evidence in the hurricane data of any changes in hurricane patterns.”
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BJ, I’m not sure that the simple narrative of Bush being responsible for under-resouring will hold up. In the 90s Clinton often withheld flood protection funding. Not that I’m critical of that, it was often for environmental reasons or the ever present State/Fed responsibilty arguments.
The NYT
http://nytimes.com/2005/09/01/national/nationalspecial/01levee.html
is reporting the section of the levee which was breached was recently upgraded. So it not clear that under-resouring was a determing factor.
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Sock Thief:
Describing Counterpunch as “peddling the very worst from the extreme Left” and … “not a good look for the Greens to go there for inspiration” … suggests a willingness to seriously limit one’s search for human knowledge and wisdom.
As far as labels go: it would be more accurate to label Greens as … well … “Green” rather than “left” or “right”.
Having said that, I recommend the following web address (from “truthout”) as one very pertinent example of related succesful human problem-solving, in stark contrast with the happenings in New Orleans.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10112.htm
eredwen
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I see on the Independent UK a mention of the Led Zeppelin song, “When the Levee Breaks” –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_the_Levee_Breaks
From
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/comment/article310396.ece
I’m not sure whether the members of Led Zeppelin ever got degrees in civil engineering, but “When the Levee Breaks”, their blues song about life on the Mississippi delta, suddenly looks remarkably prescient. As Robert Plant sung (or wailed) on Led Zeppelin IV, “if it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break, when the levee breaks I’ll have no place to stay”. And, faced with no home, Plant’s advice was to head to Chicago, not south. After all, “if you’re goin’ down south, they got no work to do”.
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SockThief
He gutted the programs. He needed the money for his buddies in the Oil Patch and his vanity war and he gutted the programs.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/4/233718/2082
These were not the only programs he gutted, these are not the only deaths his greed and stupidity have caused. His congenital inability to understand what it means to live on less than a 6 figure salary…. This isn’t the USA I grew up in anymore. It isn’t even the USA Ronald Reagan knew and loved.
It has become something meaner, something more desperate and less supportive of life and liberty. It has become have’s vs have-not’s. That is what the USA is turning into, that is what Bush and his cronies are making it into. Is it intentional? Are they delusional? Does it matter? I am telling you of what is happening. Some places worse, some almost unaffected so far, but all paying for the war in Iraq. All the children are born owing more than a hundred thousand US $, and he’s looking for new ways to loot the future.
There’s a vast difference between what happened under Clinton and what has happened under Bush, and even the Republican Congress that controlled the purse couldn’t keep Clinton from making the director of FEMA a Cabinet position and hiring a pro. Not even 9/11 could prevent Bush from gutting FEMA and putting a political hack in as director.
Osama must be proud of his son.
respectfully BJ
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Can’t resist contributing here. The New Orleans debacle is unbelievably awful, and certainly a good amount of blame for exactly how things transpired does seem to attach to the Feds. As BJ mentions, in effect FEMA’s (the principle disaster relief corp) been drained of funds and people (and treated as a toy agency where you install your polo buddies or whatever it is!) as the new Homeland Security Dept has been getting off the ground. That’s bad because nature does not care whether you’ve got terrorists on your hand or not. Whether the disaster conclusively shows that the US has too much money in private hands/pays too little tax to fund decent infrastructure is more disputable I think. It’s certainly a possibility, but I think that the tax issue that’s most relevant to the core issue of massive racially segregated ghettos/poverty is entirely at local and state levels and is distributional in its basic character. Here are the figures for % of income paid in local and state taxes in Louisiana by the average persons in the lowest 20% of income range, 20-40%, 40-60%, 60-80%, 80-95%, 96-99%, 100%
(Oh if only we had such good data for NZ!)
Average Income in these Groups (in obvious order)
$7,000 $15,600 $26,200 $44,300 $76,200 $146,400 $528,200
TOTAL TAXES 11.5% 10.6% 9.5% 8.7% 7.5% 6.6% 6.0%
Federal Deduction Offset — –0.0% –0.0% –0.1% –0.4% –0.8% –1.1%
TOTAL AFTER OFFSET 11.5% 10.6% 9.5% 8.6% 7.1% 5.8% 4.9%
So the poor died like flies after they paid the most in local and state taxes!
Almost all states in the US follow this pattern: incredibly regressive tax structures relying heavily on sales taxes and excise taxes of various sorts. They literally balance their budgets on the backs of the poor. Where I used to live, Washington State, is the *worst* state on this front – despite its reputation as a liberal state!
After federal offsets, in WA the top 1% of earners (who average $1,655,400 in annual income) pay only 3.1% of their income in state and local taxes. The bottom 20% of earners (who average $9,600) pay a whopping 17.6% of their income in state and local taxes.
(The report I’m quoting from is at http://www.itepnet.org/whopays.htm – it’s by a respected, non-whacko think tank.)
I bring all this up because the sorts of weakness in American society that Katrina and its aftermath exposed are very deep and disturbing to most Americans (and easy for all of us to criticize). But the oppressive forces that help manufacture and perpetuate those weaknesses are very complex and very ingrained at every level of the country. (Even focussing on tax issues this is true, as I’ve tried to show.) Complicated problems that portend some sort of national character flaw tend to be like that. Americans have the next 20 years ahead of them to try to do something about this. There’s lots to be done, and booting Bush, for example, won’t even scratch the surface. The silver lining of this disaster is that the political will now be there to make another attempt on the great work of ending serious poverty and general hopelessness in the US.
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Good on you Glaister
Put more succinctly.
In the US, the class war is over. The wealthy won. The results are obvious. The invisible hand also kills.
Here in NZ it is still going on. Let’s not make the SAME mistakes.
Labour CAN STILL pledge to re-examine benefit/tax balance to FIX the incredible effective marginal tax paid by the middle class vs what is paid by the wealthy. What has been done to date falls short, and so does labour’s support among its natural allies in the middle class. I know people who find Brash problematical but who are still forced to consider voting their pocketbooks.
respectfully
BJ
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this has been a great thread to read..blogging at it’s best..
thanks to all……
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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Phil,
My thoughts exactly. Great debate, a lot of careful thought, good links. Thank you all. Joy.
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I know this is a little late (and I argued above that Bush was only a minor part of the big issues raised by Katrina and its aftermath) but this is too good not to share:
‘Pelosi [Leader of Democrats in the House of Representatives], speaking at a news conference, said Brown had “absolutely no credentials” when Bush picked him to run FEMA.
She related that she urged Bush at the White House on Tuesday to fire Brown.
“He said, ‘Why would I do that?’” Pelosi said.
“I said because of all that went wrong, of all that didn’t go right last week.’ And he said ‘What didn’t go right?’”
“Oblivious, in denial, dangerous,” she added.’
It’s from
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050907/ap_on_go_pr_wh/katrina_washington;_ylt=AqESFh0lklDGLwpO2u2soMSyFz4D;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl
I can’t even *imagine* how far right you have to be to not be experiencing “buyer’s remorse” right now about Bush.
cheers — stephen
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