The Lefts reaction to hurricane Katrina

[Bernie Gunther]

I think their funding was cut locally as well. If you read their 2000 plan (linked on the other thread,) and try to figure out why they didn't follow it, I think what happened was entirely consistent with funding cuts, particularly if those cuts stopped the plan from getting revised, which is always expensive in terms of staff costs because there are so many different sub-plans to update.

The fact that a 2000 plan is on their website is in itself highly suspicious. If they have more recent plans, why aren't they on the website? If they haven't got any more recent versions, then something has gone horribly wrong. A five year old disaster plan isn't worth shit.

When you ring the number to get a critical process kicked off, it'll be out of date and you'll lose a couple of hours trying to find the new contact. Many departmental responsibilities will have changed and if you haven't kept your plan up to date people will be confused and your response will be dead slow.

If the FEMA plan changed at the same time as the local plans were getting out of date due to not being updated regularly, that'd compound the problem.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

mears, you're real fond of asking questions. Let me ask you one. OK?

Suppose we could come up with the cost in human lives, of the impact of the next round of budget cuts on public safety related issues. Say we could quantify it in terms of your very own monthly income, after tax of course.

Let's say for the sake of argument, 100,000 lives globally, of which 10,000 in the US equate to one percentage point off your basic rate of income tax.

Suppose they gave the choice to you in person? There's George Bush in person grinning at you and offering to let you take the decision.

Would you take the money or save the lives?

It's OK to assume you don't know the people who will die personally.

 

[Gumbert]

Socialism or Barbarism

very apt...

written from prison during the first world war. also known as 'The Crisis of Social Democracy'. in response to the spineless position taken by the social democrats over their support for WWI but is also an enditement of free market imperialism that so dominates the mind of our troll mears.

but dont let that deflect from the pertinent question above though mears..

 

[Bernie Gunther]

<snip> but dont let that deflect from the pertinent question above though mears..

I don't think he's ever going to answer it. What could he say? The truth would be too nakedly ugly even for someone who is a fan of Rush and has been rumoured to stalk Celine Dion.

 

[TeeJay]

...Suppose we could come up with the cost in human lives, of the impact of the next round of budget cuts on public safety related issues...

My understanding is that the UK Department of Transport use a figure of £1 million = 1 life/year. This is the amount of money they can spend on making a stretch of road that much safer.

Apparently the NHS also use calculations like this as well when deciding where to spend their budget. They need to work out how many lives (or 'life-year-equivalents') they can save with their money for various different options.

Bernie Gunther - how would *you* make this calculation? How would you decide how much to spend on cancer, how much on safer roads - and how much to leave in peoples' pockets rather than take in tax (or are you a marxist who would take 100% of everyone's money since they don't really "own" it in the first place)?

 

[mears]

mears, you're real fond of asking questions. Let me ask you one. OK?

Suppose we could come up with the cost in human lives, of the impact of the next round of budget cuts on public safety related issues. Say we could quantify it in terms of your very own monthly income, after tax of course.

Let's say for the sake of argument, 100,000 lives globally, of which 10,000 in the US equate to one percentage point off your basic rate of income tax.

Suppose they gave the choice to you in person? There's George Bush in person grinning at you and offering to let you take the decision.

Would you take the money or save the lives?

It's OK to assume you don't know the people who will die personally.

Sure if it will save lives. But I am a net contributer to society as it is. I have paid out thousands of dollars already to state and federal governments.

I don't have a problem with wealthier people paying a greater percentage of their income to taxes, as we do in America.

 

[Gumbert]

up to 50%?

not that bush would mind...

 

[Gumbert]

i mean tax hikes btw

 

[rocketman]

I don't have a problem with wealthier people paying a greater percentage of their income to taxes, as we do in America.

Nor do I. But it's not the US administrations current agenda. Votes can change that a little.

 

[vimto]

I don't have a problem with wealthier people paying a greater percentage of their income to taxes...

...a socialist in the making what

 

[Streathamite]

Keep it up. Fight the good fight. Don't let them "slag" you off partner.

You are too intelligent to be slagged off

err, I hate to point this out, but the 'them' you referred to was in fact....you.
oopsy.

 

[oi2002]

...I'm not american: I don't give a shit from democrat or republican. If this had happened under Clinton's administration, I'd be saying the same thing.

William Kristol, the conservative publisher of The Weekly Standard, said of Mr. Bush: "I do think people think he could have showed stronger leadership." But Mr. Kristol expressed doubt that the hurricane would have much lasting effect on the president's personal and political fortunes, because "people are capable of saying, 'The president kind of screwed this one up, but I still basically agree with him.'"

Mr. Kristol added, "I think the Clinton administration would have done a better job in handling Hurricane Katrina, but I'm also glad Bush is president and not a Democrat."

Link

 

[oi2002]

i mean tax hikes btw

Now you'll cause are American cousins distress they are talking about the fiscal prudence of tax cuts as the only sane and rational response to Katrina.

Last week, House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) suggested that Congress may well need to pass an economic stimulus package, complete with tax cuts, in order to ensure that Katrina’s effects on gas prices and other commodities do not drag down the entire U.S. economy. That sentiment was echoed by Frist. Republicans have also floated a revamped energy bill that could more immediately deal with rising gas prices, to supplement the measure Congress passed at the end of July.

 

[spring-peeper]

Now you'll cause are American cousins distress they are talking about the fiscal prudence of tax cuts as the only sane and rational response to Katrina.

There are a lot of people in Canada asking why our government is not doing the same thing.

I hope it works.

We can't survive very long at these prices.

 

[nino_savatte]

Now you'll cause are American cousins distress they are talking about the fiscal prudence of tax cuts as the only sane and rational response to Katrina.

It's another example of blind faith being placed in ambiguous concepts (in this case the markets and the holy tax cut). How the hell are tax cuts going to help alleviate the suffering? The only ones who will benefit are the usual suspects.

 

[TeeJay]

...How the hell are tax cuts going to help alleviate the suffering?...

Not that I necessarily agree, but they could be talking about petrol prices for example - helping keep them down/stable by reducing petrol duties for example.

The relationship between taxes and revenues is the whole "size of the whole cake vs. size of the slice of cake you take" argument - the argument about 'fiscal stimulus' for the economy - that you can help kick-start the economy if it looks like it is slowing down or having a 'shock', and thereby by actually increasing the size of the 'whole cake' you can actually maintain overall tax revenues.

I am not saying that I agree with this analysis, but this is how I understand the argument. No doubt economically minded posters will be able to debunk it better than me.

 

[gabe2]

hmm....this is one of those rare threads that I've managed to read cover to cover. After having read Rocketman's post (p. 13) there is nothing more to add or say. The rest mostly idle speculation or vituperation. 'Not that there's anything wrong' with speculation.

 

[Barking_Mad]

I saw some poor bloke pushing a floating box around New Orleans on the tv last night, he had nothing but afew bits and bobs. He had lost his wife and his house and was obviously deeply traumatised. Channel 4's film crew picked him up and took him to dry land.

It broke my heart and I sat there with tears rolling down my face. These arent Americans, they are human beings, the ones with the same hopes, fears and dreams that were hit by the tsunami last year. What makes this all the more powerful is that their anger, their sorrow and their pain can be heard and understand by most of us because we speak the same language.

I hope any sane thinking person feels their sorrow and isnt gloating in their loss. To do so simply reduces all humans to nothing less than a cog in the wheel of the state.

 

[TeeJay]

While I respect your compassion, when you say "These arent Americans, they are human beings" I wondered how you would feel if someone said "these aren't Scots/Irish/Welsh/English/Brits, they are human beings"?

Aren't people allowed to be Americans/British/whatever *and* human beings?

(Or even American *and* British *and* a human being - like me)

 

[Barking_Mad]

While I respect your compassion, when you say "These arent Americans, they are human beings" I wondered how you would feel if someone said "these aren't Scots/Irish/Welsh/English/Brits, they are human beings"?

Aren't people allowed to be Americans/British/whatever *and* human beings?

(Or even American *and* British *and* a human being - like me)

I dont really give much of a shite about nationality, so you're asking the wrong person to be honest. To me they are human beings first and foremost, everything else is an after thought.

Point being Im not going to wish them ill because their government are a bunch of fuckwits.

 

[nino_savatte]

While I respect your compassion, when you say "These arent Americans, they are human beings" I wondered how you would feel if someone said "these aren't Scots/Irish/Welsh/English/Brits, they are human beings"?

Aren't people allowed to be Americans/British/whatever *and* human beings?

(Or even American *and* British *and* a human being - like me)

National identity, like the concept of the nation itself, is entirely constructed.

 

[ViolentPanda]

National identity, like the concept of the nation itself, is entirely constructed.

The appropriate question being; who by?

 

[Bob_the_lost]

The appropriate question being; who by?

The Irish.

 

[CyberRose]

CyberRose I'm really lost trying to figure out what you are saying.......

Might I suggest you do a search of Bernie Gunther's & Rocketman's (for starters) posts and read what both have said, they strike me as intelligent reasonable people who forgo the mud slinging, trash talking that seems to creep in from so many other posters. Then come back and tell me and all the other people of U75 if your post makes any sense.

Have done, bought the T-shirt and already said I wouldn't have written what I did earlier on

 

[fishfingerer]

The Irish.

Inventing Ireland.

 

[spring-peeper]

The appropriate question being; who by?

It may be easier to see how a nation should be defined by looking at the U75 community.

How are we defined? Who decides this community's identity?

 

[oi2002]

Just to turn this arround. What in hell are the American right doing? Dubya's teams time in office has been charecterised by escalating signs that they simply aren't up to the job. Even if you supported the policies defending pisspoor execution with dog like loyalty is just plain servial. Finally we get this grotesque display of govermental incompetence followed by transparent and frankly shameful attempts to deny any wisp of culpability.

Now ignoring old fashioned ideas like civic duty and patrotism this is reaching the point of political stupidity the congressional elections are on the horizon and a fair wedge of the GOP appears too spineless to even examine the possibility that this is a systemic failure brought on by naive arrogance and unaccoutability. It's time for the long knives I'm afraid or the GOP is liable to end up as a party that even the Redstates will no longer trust. It's time to say yes great mistakes have been made, take ownership of a few of them and start ruthlessly cutting away the gangrenous flesh so that this administration at least gives the appearence it takes its responsibility to govern seriously.

Gregory at The Belgravia Dispatch gets it right:

These are very complex issues, and investigations will have to bore into the detail, but Homeland Security and its structure must be high on the list of matters needing follow up post-Katrina. As for FEMA, its response too often evoked disarray. 'Heck of a job' my ass. And so the President seemed removed, especially during the first days, from the reality of the full scale of the disaster (put down that guitar POTUS, and show some dignity in the face of such abject human tragedy!). Tone deaf, and it will take much Roveian and Bartlettian boulot indeed to get back ahead of message on this one (this problem of tone was compounded with his cheap frat-like jocularisms about Trent Lott's porch as well as Barb's Marie Antionette moment, as Sully put it well). As David Brooks has said, people are mad as hell and don't want to take it anymore. They want professionalism and rigor. They want accountability and seriousness. Above all else, they want competence, especially in ensuring basic security in their very own nation (or Iraq, for that matter). It doesn't get more basic than that, folks.

I don't know what this moment heralds. Whether people realize that government matters, mightily sometimes, so that some neo-liberalism a la FDR might be in the offing. I doubt it, as the Democrat party is hobbled by mediocrities up and down its sad ranks too. More likely, if I had to guess, I believe we will see a yearning for professional law and order a la Guiliani, as David Brooks also recently suggested--perhaps married to real national greatness Teddy Roosevelt style independent politics. People that walk the walk, rather than, say, just piffle along with just enough troops to lose in Iraq a la Don Rumsfeld (what I wouldn't do for a McCain-Guiliani ticket!).

America, at its best, is a place where personal responsibility is valued and expected.

Encouraging responsibility is not a search for scapegoats, it is a call to conscience. And though it requires sacrifice, it brings a deeper fulfillment. We find the fullness of life not only in options, but in commitments. And we find that children and community are the commitments that set us free.

Our public interest depends on private character, on civic duty and family bonds and basic fairness, on uncounted, unhonored acts of decency which give direction to our freedom.

link

 

[Streathamite]

It may be easier to see how a nation should be defined by looking at the U75 community.

How are we defined? Who decides this community's identity?

it emerges as a natural consequence of the interaction between its' members?

 

[nino_savatte]

It may be easier to see how a nation should be defined by looking at the U75 community.

How are we defined? Who decides this community's identity?

Aye, communities, like nations, are also constructed.

 

[nino_savatte]

I couldn't find the other thread, so I've posted this here. It seems the USG under this rightwing administration wants to conduct a social darwinist experiment on the region devastated by Katrina.

The White House has argued that the deregulation measures are designed to disentangle the relief effort from federal red tape. But Democrats are furious at the proposals. They view them as an attempt to slip through unpopular policies under cover of the wave of sympathy for Katrina's victims. "The plan they're designing for the Gulf coast turns the region into a vast laboratory for rightwing ideological experiments," said John Kerry, the party's defeated 2004 presidential candidate.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1575235,00.html