- Austin, Texas - Like many
of you who love New Orleans, I find myself taking short mental walks there
today, turning a familiar corner, glimpsing a favorite scene, square or
vista. And worrying about the beloved friends and the city, and how they
are now.
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- To use a fine Southern word, it's tacky to start playing
the blame game before the dead are even counted. It is not too soon, however,
to make a point that needs to be hammered home again and again, and that
is that government policies have real consequences in people's lives.
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- This is not "just politics" or blaming for
political advantage. This is about the real consequences of what governments
do and do not do about their responsibilities. And about who winds up paying
the price for those policies.
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- This is a column for everyone in the path of Hurricane
Katrina who ever said, "I'm sorry, I'm just not interested in politics,"
or, "There's nothing I can do about it," or, "Eh, they're
all crooks anyway."
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- Nothing to do with me, nothing to do with my life, nothing
I can do about any of it. Look around you this morning. I suppose the National
Rifle Association would argue, "Government policies don't kill people,
hurricanes kill people." Actually, hurricanes plus government policies
kill people.
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- One of the main reasons New Orleans is so vulnerable
to hurricanes is the gradual disappearance of the wetlands on the Gulf
Coast that once stood as a natural buffer between the city and storms coming
in from the water. The disappearance of those wetlands does not have the
name of a political party or a particular administration attached to it.
No one wants to play, "The Democrats did it," or, "It's
all Reagan's fault." Many environmentalists will tell you more than
a century's interference with the natural flow of the Mississippi is the
root cause of the problem, cutting off the movement of alluvial soil to
the river's delta.
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- But in addition to long-range consequences of long-term
policies like letting the Corps of Engineers try to build a better river
than God, there are real short-term consequences, as well. It is a fact
that the Clinton administration set some tough policies on wetlands, and
it is a fact that the Bush administration repealed those policies - ordering
federal agencies to stop protecting as many as 20 million acres of wetlands.
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- Last year, four environmental groups cooperated on a
joint report showing the Bush administration's policies had allowed developers
to drain thousands of acres of wetlands.
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- Does this mean we should blame President Bush for the
fact that New Orleans is underwater? No, but it means we can blame Bush
when a Category 3 or Category 2 hurricane puts New Orleans under. At this
point, it is a matter of making a bad situation worse, of failing to observe
the First Rule of Holes (when you're in one, stop digging).
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- Had a storm the size of Katrina just had the grace to
hold off for a while, it's quite likely no one would even remember what
the Bush administration did two months ago. The national press corps has
the attention span of a gnat, and trying to get anyone in Washington to
remember longer than a year ago is like asking them what happened in Iznik,
Turkey, in A.D. 325.
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- Just plain political bad luck that, in June, Bush took
his little ax and chopped $71.2 million from the budget of the New Orleans
Corps of Engineers, a 44 percent reduction. As was reported in New Orleans
CityBusiness at the time, that meant "major hurricane and flood projects
will not be awarded to local engineering firms. Also, a study to determine
ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved
for now."
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- The commander of the corps' New Orleans district also
immediately instituted a hiring freeze and canceled the annual corps picnic.
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- Our friends at the Center for American Progress note
the Office of Technology Assessment used to produce forward-thinking plans
such as "Floods: A National Policy Concern" and "A Framework
for Flood Hazards Management." Unfortunately, the office was targeted
by Newt Gingrich and the Republican right, and gutted years ago.
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- In fact, there is now a governmentwide movement away
from basing policy on science, expertise and professionalism, and in favor
of choices based on ideology. If you're wondering what the ideological
position on flood management might be, look at the pictures of New Orleans
- it seems to consist of gutting the programs that do anything.
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- Unfortunately, the war in Iraq is directly related to
the devastation left by the hurricane. About 35 percent of Louisiana's
National Guard is now serving in Iraq, where four out of every 10 soldiers
are guardsmen. Recruiting for the Guard is also down significantly because
people are afraid of being sent to Iraq if they join, leaving the Guard
even more short-handed.
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- The Louisiana National Guard also notes that dozens of
its high-water vehicles, Humvees, refuelers and generators have also been
sent abroad. (I hate to be picky, but why do they need high-water vehicles
in Iraq?)
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- This, in turn, goes back to the original policy decision
to go into Iraq without enough soldiers and the subsequent failure to admit
that mistake and to rectify it by instituting a draft.
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- The levees of New Orleans, two of which are now broken
and flooding the city, were also victims of Iraq war spending. Walter Maestri,
emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, said on June 8, 2004,
"It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget
to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq."
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- This, friends, is why we need to pay attention to government
policies, not political personalities, and to know whereon we vote. It
is about our lives.
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- http://www.chicagotribune.com/
- news/opinion/chi-0509010009sep0
- 1,1,6491327.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
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