AUSTIN,
Texas -- George W. Bush has come up with his worst idea since he decided
to have the military investigate torture by the military at Abu Ghraib
prison. He, George W. personally, plans to investigate to "find out
what went right and what went wrong" in the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina.
It's hard to guess where Bush will look first, but maybe he should start
with the appointment of "Brownie" to head FEMA, the federal
disaster relief agency. "Brownie" is Michael Brown, who was
appointed by some president.
At the time, Brownie was deputy director of the agency under Joe Allbaugh
-- because he was Joe Allbaugh's college roommate, you see, and Allbaugh
was Bush's campaign manager in 2000, you see, which made both of them
qualified to manage disasters.
The FEMA press release announcing Brownie's appointment started with his
other obvious qualification, "From 1991 to 2001, Brown was the commissioner
of the International Arabian Horse Association." It's unclear whether
"Brownie" was fired or resigned from the organization in the
wake of financial mismanagement and lawsuits.
Hours after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Brown wrote his boss, Homeland
Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, to ask permission to send 1,000 FEMA
employees to the scene to support rescuers and to "convey a positive
image" about the government's response. Brownie said he expected
the workers to be there two days later. This apparently inspired Bush's
comment, "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job."
Brownie is ably assisted by two top aides, one a former Bush campaign
advanceman and the other a former Bush campaign public relations guy.
FEMA was once considered one of our better federal agencies (those in
the government-is-the-enemy camp may not believe this, but some government
agencies are actually known for effective performance.) Exactly why the
right-wing Republicans chose to make FEMA a political football was never
clear -- unless you subscribe to the theory that they particularly dislike
any government agency that helps people, since that makes government popular
and they are bent on making government unpopular.
At any rate, going back to the Reagan administration, conservatives have
been hacking away at FEMA -- they mostly just under-funded it, one of
their favorite tactics, unless a hurricane hit Florida just before an
election. Sorry to sound boringly partisan, but that is the record, and
the Clinton administration did work hard at rebuilding the agency.
So now those on the liberal side are saying: "See, that's what happens
when you starve government in order to give rich folks tax cuts. Government
agencies can't do the jobs they were set up to do."
Silly liberals see this as vindication that they have been right all along.
But the Bush administration officials are in full blame-shifting mode:
First, they announced repeatedly they don't want to "play the blame
game." Then, they start blaming everybody else.
According to The New York Times, Karl Rove and Dan Bartlett, White House
communications director, began a campaign this weekend to blame local
and state officials. The "woefully inadequate response," said
"sources close to the White House," was the fault of "bureaucratic
obstacles from state and local officials."
The bottom line is they're playing the race card. As many of you have
noted, it IS a racial issue that poor people suffer most in any natural
or economic disaster. Because Katrina hit the Deep South, a great many
of the poor people affected are black, especially in New Orleans -- both
hit hardest and majority black to begin with.
I'm not sure what to say about a cable news station that plays a "loop"
of black looters over and over -- about 20 seconds of actual footage,
replayed for four minutes, while the voiceover dwells on the looting problem.
Obviously, there are some looters in New Orleans and elsewhere, and equally
obviously, there are lots of people who were without food or water for
days.
The exhausted and desperate black mayor of New Orleans begged for help
in an interview late last week. "They're feeding the public a line
of bull and they're spinning, and people are dying down here," Mayor
Ray Nagin said, talking about the feds. "It's politics, man, and
they are playing games. ... They're out there spinning for the cameras.
... I don't want to see anybody do any more goddamned press conferences.
... Excuse my French, everybody in America, but I am pissed. ...
"Don't tell me 40,000 people are coming here! They're not here! It's
too doggone late. Now get off your asses and do something, and let's fix
the biggest goddamned crisis in the history of this country. People are
dying."
The mayor was in tears. I heard two nice, white American "ladies"
deploring this interview. "Well! He should remember there might be
children listening!" Children still without food and water. What
happens to people when they talk about race? Of course, most of us don't
actually talk about race any more, we refer to it only indirectly, we
talk "those people."
Watch carefully, listen carefully -- minority groups have always been
blamed after natural disasters, since the days when the Hungarians were
supposed to have cut the fingers off bodies to get the gold rings in the
wake of the Johnstown Flood. Dirty Bohunks.
