Steady! Clear Eyes!

Bill’s crew is now being buffeted by spin machines bearing category 5 winds. From the left, we learn that a heartless president and his market based buddies simply don’t care about the poor, especially poor Blacks, and that they dithered as New Orleans went down for the third time.

From the right, we learn – I heard it myself on Rush Limbaugh and read several incoming screeds from right wing acquaintances – that it (I guess the whole disaster) is the fault of the liberals and the dependency they created on the welfare state. One Evangelical preacher claimed the whole thing was God’s retribution on New Orleans for being a place of sin and evil. The inference I drew was that the good folks who spent their money on the sin got away.

Whew! With spin gusts of this magnitude it is difficult to sort out what those of us rational liberals (as my buddy Frank Lewis labels us) ought to be seeing as the debris flies past.

For openers, no matter how much fog is pumped in from the right, the federal response was a day late and a dollar short. While George was cutting brush and ducking Cindy Sheehan and while Dick was fishing or ranching, their underlings in charge of emergency response were trying to figure out what to do when a storm that every man woman and child with cable TV knew was going to be a monster. Message to Dubya: you were in charge; your boys goofed; it was your watch; you better chop off some heads and pray that that will stanch your bleeding.

To the left: taking advantage of this will get you elected, but if you simply revert to form and don’t spend money on infrastructure – mega-billions - you’ll wind up where you’ve been for that last generation – in the electoral wilderness; another killer storm will come on your watch, guaranteed.

The human tragedy being played out before us is wrenching. But if we elect people to deal with that alone, we will repeat this scene again and again. Our heartland supplies the world through the Mississippi and in turn is resupplied from sources around the world via that great way.

We must spend the money to correct the bad policies of two generations to make the river viable and the ports along it, especially the facilities around New Orleans, must be part of this process.

We cannot ignore our national infrastructure. Our ports, bridges, and airports must be updated constantly.

Our emergency preparedness organizations cannot be used as places to dump political hacks.

We must do these things with a minimum of recrimination. For openers, let’s name the reconstructed levees in New Orleans for Ronald Reagan. This will serve two purposes: returning irony to government and establishing the end of such foolishness.

Blog on!

Wild Bill

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