Federal government Katrina apologists, take note
For those who say that local and state Gulf Coast officials deserve blame for the Katrina mess, I offer you this Katrina timeline that details, with specific backup, exactly what went on from the beginning of the crisis up until now. It shows that there was a ridiculous failure of leadership from the top down. Bush was literally eating cake and playing guitar while people were drowning.
Bush appointed Michael Brown (a man who could not possibly be more unqualified for the position) to head FEMA because he was college buddies with Bush’s reelection campaign manager. If appointing someone who has absolutely zero experience managing emergencies to the Federal Emergency Management Agency does not show a complete abdication of responsibility for the power Bush was given as President I don’t know what does.
How many other people has Bush appointed to positions where their failure will result in the deaths of potentially thousands of people? Or even result in mild hardship for people? Bush has shown he’s a big fan of nepotism. I don’t know how he keeps his hands as manicured as they are with the amount of innocent blood that soaks them daily.
The Catholic Church had it right in the 1960’s. It’s time for the First American Reformation Council. We need to take a long, hard look at our federal government and at what’s missing from the Constitution, including an explicit right to privacy, methods for handling campaign finance and political parties, and a civil rights amendment. We need to stop spending tax dollars on corporate subsidies, reform welfare, refocus our country’s laws to support individuals rather than corporations, massively increase education funding (including perhaps giving it a budget where increases in military spending directly increase educational spending, but not the other way around), put a stop to the Religious Right’s attempt to impose its theocracy on all Americans, stop the hysteria over terrorism and likewise stop causing it, quit the Drug War, reinstate the Fariness Doctrine after the Reagan administration axed it, increase taxes for the top 1% of the country and drop them for the bottom 80%, earmark billions of dollars for a Manhattan Project-esque race to build an energy infrastructure that’s not dependent on oil… The list goes on and on.
The emperor has no clothes. Thank god Americans can see it for what it is now. We’re in a quagmire, and this Administration is whistling all the way to the bank while everyone else suffers.
