Katrina

A natural and political disaster

 

 

September 9, 2005

 

The catastrophe that is Hurricane Katrina was the top and pretty much the only story last week. It is a story that is, at the least, terrifying and depressing. But beyond the human tragedy, the politics have made landfall and will breach all of the levies constructed of rightwing mythology. Almost as soon as the press showed some refreshing spirit, the wingnut backlash came with a fury.

After the White House fumbled badly, the wingnut echo-chamber geared up for battle. Jon Stewart once again hit the nail on the head, admonishing the rightwing media to "shut up" because this is "inarguably . . . a failure of leadership from the top of the federal government."

Katrina exposed a lot. Like the need for effective government, sound energy policy, reliable transportation infrastructure, and compassionate social policy, for example. The hard truths laid bare by this disaster revealed the ineptitude, deceitfulness and corruption that is the Bush administration for all the world to see. Thus, the faithful had to redirect blame, and repeat their failed mantras.

MYTH: Critics are wrong to be turning the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina into a political issue. Democrats and other critics are simply “playing the blame game.” This especially applies to those who dare point out the correlation between all the poor black people stranded with no means of sustenance or escape, and the right-wing’s war on the social safety net

From Jesse Jackson griping about the funding of the war instead of hurricane relief to Katie Couric grilling the head of FEMA on the "Today" show over why the levees around Lake Pontchartrain weren't stronger, the blood sport of blaming the government for every bad thing that happens to our country is once again in full throttle …

And get ready for the ugliness of the race card, which is already being played by the opportunists of the Congressional Black Caucus and race-baiters like Jesse Jackson. Since so many of the victims are poor black people, America just doesn't care, they say. We're intentionally stranding them, leaving them to die. That's all a load of rubbish …

I reject the politicization and blame game that many are exhibiting. America isn't the enemy. We're not the bad guys. George W. Bush didn't conjure up Hurricane Katrina, like a wizard, in order to distract us from Iraq.

-- Mike Gallagher, “The Katrina Blame Game,” Newsmax, 9/6/05

Since we have a Republican in the White House the media is going to be anxious to push this racial angle to the hurricane response. Soon as the first so-called black "leader" stepped forward the media rushed in. It was as if television had suddenly made the amazing discovery that most of the people who were left or who stayed behind in New Orleans are black. Was this really such a surprise?  Seven out of ten New Orleans residents are black, so why is it so shocking to see that many blacks are among those left? 

The idea that America in general, and George Bush in particular didn't care about New Orleans because the people stranded there were black is so absurd.

-- Neal Boortz, “The Race Game,” Boortz.com (9/6/05)

In another area that didn't take long before the race-hustlers hit the ground. They would have you believe reaction was slow because most of those stranded were black. Ultra-liberal columnist Jimmy Breslin said, "If whites were in trouble in New Orleans, I trust that this government would have been there early."

That is despicable nonsense. Newsday should be embarrassed for printing that kind of garbage. And NBC was embarrassed when rapper Kanye West said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KANYE WEST:  The way America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible, they've given them permission to go down and shoot us. George Bush doesn't care about black people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NBC censored those remarks on the West Coast. And the remarks are simply nutty. I mean, come on, West is saying authorities want to shoot blacks? It doesn't get more irresponsible than that.

But what do you expect from an ideologically-driven newspaper industry and the world of rap, where anything goes? What do you expect? …

New Orleans is not about race. It's about class. If you're poor, you're powerless, not only in America, but everywhere on earth. If you don't have enough money to protect yourself from danger, danger's going to find you. And all the political gibberish in the world is not going to change that.

-- Bill O’Reilly, “The O’Reilly Factor,” 9/6/05

The Echo Chamber gained traction; soon enough, National Public Radio’s Juan Williams said this:

"There are some people who are going so far as to say this week, 'Oh,the president doesn't care about black people,' because there were so many poor black people on the screens around the country as the victims of this tragedy. Well, I can tell you, I think that's ridiculous. I think that's kind of spouting off on people who don't know the president, don't know this administration, don't know the people who work there."

-- Juan Williams, “Fox News Sunday,” 9/4/05

REALITY

Bush’s policies have hurt, not helped, the poorest of the poor in the U.S., and the truth is, the majority of the poor are black. Despite Bill O’Reilly and other loudmouths’ claims that “New Orleans is not about race, it’s about class,” race and class are so inextricably intertwined in the U.S. that we cannot truthfully speak of one without the other.

A recent report by the Current Population Survey (CPS), a joint venture of the Bureau of the Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, proves this stark reality. Its “2005 Annual Social and Economic Supplement” shows that, in 2004, 24.7% of black Americans lived below the poverty line (including 33.2% of those under 18, and 37.4% of those under 5). Meanwhile, 10.9% of white Americans lived below the poverty line.

Those who can work face a stagnant minimum wage with an ever-falling purchasing power:

The federal minimum wage has remained at $5.15 an hour since September 1, 1997. So for eight straight years the value of the minimum wage has eroded due to the effects of inflation, and the wage standard has fallen further behind the wages of other workers. The minimum wage now equals only 32 percent of the average wage for private sector, nonsupervisory workers. This is the lowest share since 1949. Over the past eight years, the purchasing power of the minimum wage has deteriorated by 17 percent. 

-- The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, “Unhappy Anniversary,” 9/1/05

And those with these minimum wage jobs, and the jobless, are in an increasingly perilous situation. The Census Bureau recently released data showing that in 2004 the poverty rate rose and the number of people without health insurance also rose. While the poor and black are attempting to scrape by on what is actually less and less, the administration is cutting essential services (while cutting taxes for the wealthy and piling up record deficits):

The President’s budget proposes to cut the Food Stamp Program by $500 million over the next five years (and by $1.1 billion over ten years) by cutting more than 300,000 low-income people off the program in an average month. The Administration would achieve these savings by stripping states of flexibility provided in the 1996 welfare law that allows states to coordinate certain aspects of eligibility for the Food Stamp Program with eligibility rules used for state TANF programs. More than 40 states take advantage of this option. The impact of the proposed cut would be borne primarily by low-income working families with children.

-- The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, “Administration’s Budget Proposes to Cut The Food Stamp Program,” 3/4/05

Overall, the Bush administration’s FY 2006 budget clearly shows the Bush priorities, according to the non-partisan research group Center for Budget and Policy Priorities:

The budget makes very substantial cuts in domestic spending at the same time that it calls for large additional tax cuts.

1. The budget proposes new tax cuts costing $1.4 trillion over 10 years (a figure that rises to $1.6 trillion when the resulting interest payments are added in), even though the paucity of revenues is the main reason behind the rise in the deficit. 
2. Key low-income programs would be hit even though these programs have contributed little to the return of the deficit, and since 2000, poverty has risen and the number of Americans without health insurance has climbed.

-- See “Assessing President Bush’s New Budget Proposal,” 2/14/05

So, while the right-wingnuts complain about “race-baiters” and the “blame game,” it is abundantly clear that we have a serious problem with race and poverty in America. Katrina exposed this to the world, as the poorest of the poor have been left to essentially fend for themselves in a devastated city.

MYTH: The City of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana acted just as, if not more, irresponsibly than the federal government in responding to Katrina

As the administration scrambled to respond to Katrina a week later, Republican talking points emphasized the “blame game,” and the administration’s spin machine coordinated efforts to shift blame to state and local officials. A key part of this strategy is portraying La. Governor Kathleen Blanco as irresponsible – claiming that she did not act fast enough, and impeded federal efforts (while Bush was on vacation).

Though her state has been devastated by Hurricane Katrina and thousands are believed dead in New Orleans, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco has refused to allow the federal government to take control of evacuation efforts.

-- “Gov. Kathleen Blanco Refused Bush Aid,” Newsmax, 9/4/05

This piece originated on the front page of that day’s Washington Post, where editors let reporters incorrectly pass along the administration’s spin:

Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said.

-- Manuel Roig-Franzia and Spencer Hsu, “Many Evacuated, But Thousands Still Waiting” 9/4/05 

The article offered no competing claim to this, and apparently, decided to take this senior Bush official’s word at face value, despite Bush's prolonged vacation, and his administration's long record of lies.

REALITY

Blanco declared a state of emergency on Aug. 26, before Katrina made landfall (the Post later ran a correction). And did we mention that Bush was still on vacation.

Regardless of specifics regarding the state of emergency, right-wingers were eager to pin blame on Blanco and city officials in their attempt to absolve the Bush administration. Usually this took the form of what I call selective interpretation. They choose to interpret Hurricane Katrina as just that – as an event, a natural disaster. By pinning the death and devastation solely on the hurricane, they can get away with ignoring the social and institutional failures that followed. This was borne out of not just strong winds, but budget cuts and ineptitude, not just out of breached levees, but years and years of neglect of the urban and black poor.

MYTH: It's not our fault. Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster, and it's the state and city's responsibility, not the president's. It was the immoral impulses of poor black people in New Orleans caused the chaos, not neglect and bad policy

George Bush and the federal government are not to blame for the disaster we have witnessed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In fact, the primary responsibility for the disaster response lies with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and other local officials. Yet leading Democrats and their allies in the major media are clearly using this disaster for political purposes and ignoring one obvious fact. This fact – which needs to be repeated and remembered – is that in our country, state and local governments have primary responsibility in dealing with local disasters.

-- Christopher Ruddy, “Don’t Blame Bush for Katrina,” Newsmax, 9/5/05

Another way of deflecting responsibility popular in rightwing circles is to blame the victim. An ever-popular rhetorical tool of the powerful, it reared its ugly head this week.

The storm may have triggered the violence, but it did not cause it. What we saw in New Orleans was what happens in America’s most murderous city when the criminals realize that all the cops have left. It wasn’t desperation, or insanity, or protest. It was New Orleans, without police.

-- Mac Johnson, “New Orleans Didn’t Just Go Nuts – It’s Been Nuts,” Human Events, 9/6/05

Meanwhile, what about the looters and carjackers and rapists whose emergence and persistence in New Orleans must also somehow be Bush's fault? Here we get to another unpleasant byproduct of our reliance on government: namely, moral complacency.

Just when you think you've buried the nastier human impulses beneath a stack of government incentives and initiatives, you find -- as at the New Orleans Convention Center and the Superdome -- that here those impulses come again, nastier than ever.

-- William Murchison, “The President’s Fault – Of Course!” Human Events, 9/6/05

I have never lived in nor have I ever visited New Orleans. I don't first-hand know its sights, sounds or people. I must ask: What was it in that city that, after the storm had passed, quickly made men embrace savagery? What caused people there to rape and to murder, to steal from the desperate, to loot things unconnected to survival? What caused organized groups of people to attempt murder on those coming to save them? Why didn't their neighbors - the good people- band together to stop them from doing those things? The answer is simple: For the last forty years they had been taught by the creators of the Welfare State that they were permanently absolved from the responsibility of tending to their lives.    

-- Rocco DiPippo, “A Tale of Two Hurricanes,” Front Page Magazine, 9/6/05

REALITY

Money denied by the Bush administration could have saved countless lives. David Remnick summed it up nicely:

In an era of tax cuts for the wealthy, Bush consistently slashed the Army Corps of Engineers’ funding requests to improve the levees holding back Lake Pontchartrain. This year, he asked for $3.9 million, $23 million less than the Corps requested. In the end, Bush reluctantly agreed to $5.7 million, delaying seven contracts, including one to enlarge the New Orleans levees. Former Republican congressman Michael Parker was forced out as the head of the Corps by Bush in 2002 when he dared to protest the lack of proper funding.

Similarly, the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, which is supposed to improve drainage and pumping systems in the New Orleans area, recently asked for $62.5 million; the White House proposed $10.5 million. Former Louisiana Senator John Breaux, a pro-Bush Democrat, said, “All of us said, ‘Look, build it or you’re going to have all of Jefferson Parish under water.’ And they didn’t, and now all of Jefferson Parish is under water.”

While there was clearly a lack of order in New Orleans post-Katrina, there is good reason to doubt some of the claims that have been nebulously floating around as facts. We don’t know how many people are being raped, we don’t know that people shot at a helicopter. And with the crackdown on the press, realized both in FEMA’s dictate that photos of dead bodies need not be shown and in a general bullying and threatening of members of the press, how can we ever know? With a weaker press and a stronger public relations effort coming out of the White House, verifiable truth becomes much harder to come by. Add that to the list of Hurricane Katrina’s casualties.

It is clearly the responsibility of the federal government to maintain order in the wake of disasters, as HW did in LA during the Rodney King riots. Didn't this administration win re-election on its bona fides to protect us from terrorism? Isn't disaster response, whether attack or act of God, part of that? Katrina laid bare this administration's avarice, incompetence, corruption and ineptitude. It striped away the facade that covered the naked failure of the administration's policies in every area, especially national security, domestic welfare, and energy.