UPDATE BELOW:
Don’t often agree with the New York Times but much of this editorial is right on the mark. New Orleans is dying and instead of the country rallying to the side of one of its great cities, everyone is looking away hoping that we die quickly. In the same fashion that the French pushed their old away to die in the summers heat last year, so have we pushed New Orleans away to die quietly and hopefully quickly. So in spite of all that marvelous rhetoric by a terrific President we got the flint-hearted wing of the Republicans calling the shots.
Death of an American City – New York Times: “We are about to lose New Orleans. Whether it is a conscious plan to let the city rot until no one is willing to move back or honest paralysis over difficult questions, the moment is upon us when a major American city will die, leaving nothing but a few shells for tourists to visit like a museum.”
Further down more hard ugly truths.
The price tag for protection against a Category 5 hurricane, which would involve not just stronger and higher levees but also new drainage canals and environmental restoration, would very likely run to well over $32 billion. That is a lot of money. But that starting point represents just 1.2 percent of this year’s estimated $2.6 trillion in federal spending, which actually overstates the case, since the cost would be spread over many years. And it is barely one-third the cost of the $95 billion in tax cuts passed just last week by the House of Representatives.
I am a strong advocate of both the tax cuts and the war on Iraq. Neither of those choices precludes the reconstruction of the levee system in New Orleans and it is a lie to say so. If it is true that it is welfare for the country to help rebuild the levee system then it is also true that when NYC is evaporated due to terrorist attack, which may be more inevitable than another Hurricane hitting New Orleans, or when San Francisco is destroyed in a earthquake which is as natural as a hurricane, the country must not help either of those cities rebuild. No if this country’s new motto is every man for himself then state it clearly and let the voters decide whom to support. Hint, Republicans will come out the other side of that debate with a minority, Danny Hastert did not do anyone any favors with his announcement days after the hurricane that we shouldn’t rebuild New Orleans.
Maybe America does not want to rebuild New Orleans. Maybe we have decided that the deficits are too large and the money too scarce, and that it is better just to look the other way until the city withers and disappears. If that is truly the case, then it is incumbent on President Bush and Congress to admit it, and organize a real plan to help the dislocated residents resettle into new homes. The communities that opened their hearts to the Katrina refugees need to know that their short-term act of charity has turned into a permanent commitment.If the rest of the nation has decided it is too expensive to give the people of New Orleans a chance at renewal, we have to tell them so. We must tell them we spent our rainy-day fund on a costly stalemate in Iraq, that we gave it away in tax cuts for wealthy families and shareholders. We must tell them America is too broke and too weak to rebuild one of its great cities.
Our nation would then look like a feeble giant indeed. But whether we admit it or not, this is our choice to make. We decide whether New Orleans lives or dies
The Democrats continue to shoot themselves in the foot with their denial, against all the evidence, that Iraq was central to the war on terror. They also continue to forget what tax cuts did for John F Kennedy. But the Republicans continue to give Democrats opportunities and sooner or later if given enough chances, just like the proverbial monkeys with typewriters, they will get it right. Giving the Democrats a chance to prove that Republicans don’t care about the middle and lower classes probably isn’t the best idea that Danny Hastert has ever had. Much of the country, even if they don’t admit to it, look at a rotting dead New Orleans and wonder if that is what would happen to their city should it be destroyed while the Republicans are in power.
If being a Republican means that I am to declare that I am not my brothers keeper, then I am Republican no more. If being Republican means that should my brothers house burn down I will berate him for not having a place to stay, then I am Republican no more. If being a Republican means that I will search for every reason possible to put my brother and his family into the street then, I am Republican no more.
I do not believe it means all of these things and Republicans would do well to consider the damage done to the Democrats when they have taken the counsel of their radical elements. Remember this lesson when they are taking the counsel of those libertarian bits of the party that would bulldoze New Orleans.
Republicans should be out in front of rebuilding the levee system in South Louisiana not hiding behind a green accountants visor taking the house away from widows and young children. If we cannot afford to rebuild the levee system of South Louisiana then we are in as bad a shape as the Democrats have been declaring all of this time.
UPDATED: Govenor Blanco signed the order today to indefinitely postpone the election. Democracy talks a walk in the United States! Cheeky to sign an order declaring to the world that, unlike Iraq where there is a war on, New Orleans cannot get it’s shit together enough to have an election.
Naturally everyone can see right straight through the motivations of the Democratic Govenor. She is trying to let enough time pass in the hope that people won’t be so tremendously pissed off with the entire Government of Louisiana that we throw all the buggers out. I suspect that all she is doing is making matters worse for the Democratic party in this state.
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