A Sad New Era

Call me a racist. Call me a bigot. Call me stupid. Call me whatever.

I watched President Bush's speech live from the French Quarter tonight, then just to be sure I understood I watched the re-run on FOX News.

I, personally, was not impressed, but not for the reason's you might expect.

Yes, President Bush may be able to save his own bacon, such as it is, with a few members of the general public--enough to get the polls back over a 50% approval rating. Also, the bacon of the Republican party might stay out of the political frying pan a little longer, but I personally don't believe that it's a good idea to spend 200 billion dollars of hard earned taxpayer money in the manner that the local politicians and Democrats are going to demand that it be spent in Louisiana.

The Governor and local politicians want us to toss them the cash, turn our heads, and hope for the best. New Orleans' and Louisiana's two hundred and fifty years of corrupt political history causes me to have little confidence in achieving a successful outcome utilizing this method of disaster recovery--but who am I to question their good motives?

Since my family lived through two hurricanes (Eloise and Opal) and the reprocussions of two major floods on a south Alabama river with absolutely no compensation or support from the local or federal governments, I think that I can speak authoritatively when I say that these expendatures are largely unnecessiary and are ripe for fraud and abuse by officials and citizens alike.

Where were these responses to hurricanes Hugo and Andrew? Could it be that largely white, middle income and affluent citizens were affected and pandering and race-baiting were non-issues?

This article puts the current budgets in perspective:

Since Katrina struck, Congress has already spent $62.3 billion, dwarfing the inflation-adjusted $17.8 billion that Congress spent on hurricanes Andrew, Iniki and Omar, which struck in 1992, and the $15.2 billion emergency appropriation for the Northridge, Calif., earthquake of 1994.

The entire Persian Gulf War of 1991 cost less than $83 billion in today's dollars.

Imagine the trillions of tax dollars that will be demanded in the name of recovery, rebuilding, and healing racial inequalities over the next twenty years from the same people that insist on living in flood and storm prone areas and the leaders that base their re-election on pandering to the very cultural shortcomings that caused the New Orleans disaster in the first place.

And ironically, Jessie Jackson says that this still isn't enough since he believes that the poor will be forced to sit on the sidelines while Haliburton and Bectel get multi million dollar contracts and the rich get the hated "tax cuts." And of course, in the end, wealthy people will be allowed to die without paying exorbant estate taxes--oh the humanity!!

Hey Jessie, you moron, you can't get a tax cut if you don't pay taxes...

How many times do I have to say that?