Government still apparently being douches over Katrina

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Catharz
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Government still apparently being douches over Katrina

Post by Catharz »

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... br]"Allies offered $854 million in cash and in oil that was to be sold for cash. But only $40 million has been used so far for disaster victims or reconstruction, according to U.S. officials and contractors. Most of the aid went uncollected, including $400 million worth of oil. Some offers were withdrawn or redirected to private groups such as the Red Cross. The rest has been delayed by red tape and bureaucratic limits on how it can be spent.
...
"Of the $126 million in cash that has been received, most has not yet been used. More than $60 million was set aside in March 2006 to rebuild schools, colleges and universities, but so far, only $10.4 million has been taken by schools.
But none of that money has been used yet, said Meg Casper, spokeswoman for the Louisiana Department of Education. Allocations were just approved by the state board last week, she said, "so the money should start to flow."
...
"The first concrete program officials announced in October 2005 -- a $66 million contract to a consortium of 10 faith-based and charity groups to provide social services to displaced families -- so far has assisted less than half the 100,000 victims it promised to help, the project director said.

Frank probably knows more about how this went down.
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Crissa
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Re: Government still apparently being douches over Katrina

Post by Crissa »

Please replace 'Government' with 'Republicans'. Or at least 'Republican Government'.

Because... Well, because it's true. And it's misstrue to say 'the Government' is doing something bad when it is 'Republicans' - the very people who say the Government does bad.

So... Republicans.

-Crissa
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Re: Government still apparently being douches over Katrina

Post by Username17 »

Not even the entirety of Republicans are on board with this particular methodology. There is a reasonably powerful group of organizations who are specifically attempting to dismantle government in general - and most of them are Republicans (some are Libertarians, Independents, Natural Law or some other political affiliation).

The important part is that the current administration is explicitly made up of advocates of the removal of government from all walks of life in America - to be replaced with corporate and religious interests. Not every Republican wants to do that, but it dovetails nicely with the frequently stated agenda to give tax cuts to the wealthy - at least for now.

Bush's anti-government bias is well known, as he has crusaded for privatization and Christianization at essentially every level of everything. The Katrina behavior was particularly repugnant, as in the interests of producing more avenues for privatization he directly scuttled attempts by the government to solve problems in house.

Naval Construction units were asked to stand down, donated water was sent away, and Italian medicines were kept in warehouses until they went bad. And in every case there were contracts awarded to private concerns to provide these services. The bridge on Highway 90 to Biloxi was left down for over a year despite the government having an elite bridging corps stationed in Gulfport. Eventually the contracts were lined up to do it with private assistance.

---

And that's the deal. President Bush is willing to allow Americans to die in a swamp in order to "prove" that the government cannot be relied upon in order to give himself a causus beli to replace government agencies with private contractors and religious organizations. And he's willing to make sure that his friends happen to be the people who lead those religious and corporate organizations.

That doesn't mean it's all Republicans. But by extension it is all Republicans who allow themselves to support Bush.

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Lago_AM3P
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Re: Government still apparently being douches over Katrina

Post by Lago_AM3P »

FrankTrollman, that was beautifully said.

Reading that has made me angrier than anything that's ever happened to me in my hobby or pretty much anything that's happened on the Internet.

If I had the opportunity to sell my soul in order that these bastards got punished and the right people got put in charge, I'd do it. I'd be laughing my ass off in hell as I did so.
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tzor
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Re: Government still apparently being douches over Katrina

Post by tzor »

Crissa at [unixtime wrote:1177992461[/unixtime]]Please replace 'Government' with 'Republicans'. Or at least 'Republican Government'.


You know, there is a part of me that really wants to see her majesty Queen Hillary of Clinton replace His Royal Pain in the Highness King George of Bush. What goes around will come around you know.

No, there is a significant number of "republicans" in all levels of government who will salivate, say "thank you very much" and will grab any aid they can get their hands on. After all, every million dollars they can get from someone else is a million dollar tax cut to the people right?

Unfortunately I don't think we can blame it all on Bush either. (Probably most of it on Bush, but not all of it.) The Federal government has always been pathetic at accepting donations. (Giving it out we are expert at ... although even here we don't even do it well. We spend tons of money buying food in the US and sending it on slow boats to aid victims who by the time it gets there are already dead from starvation.) Especially since cronyism has resulted in a bunch of federal incompetents, the whole thought of funds means that one has to do ... God forbid ... work.
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Crissa
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Re: Government still apparently being douches over Katrina

Post by Crissa »

Well, my reasoning was that 'the Government' is and has been in the iron grip of people who lead the Republican Party for the last six years. So blaming anyone but 'Republicans' is facetious.

-Crissa
Neeek
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Re: Government still apparently being douches over Katrina

Post by Neeek »

I've never quite figured out why anyone would want to put someone in charge of something when they believe what they are doing not only doesn't work, but can't work.

That's like putting a Flat Earther in charge a trip to circumnavigate the globe.
Catharz
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Re: Government still apparently being douches over Katrina

Post by Catharz »

Neeek at [unixtime wrote:1178044741[/unixtime]]
That's like putting a Flat Earther in charge a trip to circumnavigate the globe.

That's exactly what a flat-earth politician will always do.
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Cielingcat
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Re: Government still apparently being douches over Katrina

Post by Cielingcat »

The problem is that people don't vote on qualifications, but on propaganda. If you convince them that the evil terrorists will attack the country unless you're in office, they'll vote for you even though you plan to cut all their social services and give them to private corporations.
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Count Arioch the 28th
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Re: Government still apparently being douches over Katrina

Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

Crissa at [unixtime wrote:1178044307[/unixtime]]Well, my reasoning was that 'the Government' is and has been in the iron grip of people who lead the Republican Party for the last six years. So blaming anyone but 'Republicans' is facetious.

-Crissa


Question.

If you can do so without throwing a juvenile insult at me for no reason whatsoever, what proof do you have that the Democrats would have done any different? Why wouldn't they have done the exact thing, except the privatisation would have gone to, say John Kerry's old college buddies instead of George Bush's?

Sure, the Democrats paint a pretty picture of themselves, I don't deny that. But what proof do you have that should make me deny every urge in my body and ignore everything I know about politics to think they just aren't saying one thing but doing another?
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Re: Government still apparently being douches over Katrina

Post by Username17 »

Count_Arioch_the_28th at [unixtime wrote:1178052660[/unixtime]]
Question.

If you can do so without throwing a juvenile insult at me for no reason whatsoever, what proof do you have that the Democrats would have done any different? Why wouldn't they have done the exact thing, except the privatisation would have gone to, say John Kerry's old college buddies instead of George Bush's?


You can't prove that things would have been different under different circumstances - because the whole "Free Will vs. Fate" thing hasn't been conclusively proven one way or another (and cannot be given our understanding of Time). But we can be fairly sure.

Bush's levels of cronyism and obstructionism are unprecedented. Literally there has never been a US administration as corrupt or as willfully incompetent. It isn't just that we can say that it is almost inconceivable that things would have gone down as badly with Kerry at the wheel, it is essentially just as inconceivable that things would have gone down this badly with Robert Dole behind the desk.

Heck, when Richard Nixon was behind the desk and confronted with Hurricane Camille in 1969 he bloody well sent the troops. That was Richard Nixon, a man I personally take great relish in hating and cursing, and when he was confronted by essentially exactly the same problem he found it in his heart to actually deploy the National Guard and federal personel to save lives and rebuild infrastructure.

So the question really isn't "would the democrats have done it better" - we know that basically anyone ever elected to high office would have done it better. The question is whether the jack holes from Regent University been allowed to write policy if even another Republican had gooten into the highest office? I honestly don't know, Pat Robertson's poisonous agenda pays the bills for the Republican National Committee, so it's entirely possible that even a Republican who happened to be a decently skilled administrator would have been forced to bring those guys on board by the party apparatus of 2000-2004.

Sure, the Democrats paint a pretty picture of themselves, I don't deny that. But what proof do you have that should make me deny every urge in my body and ignore everything I know about politics to think they just aren't saying one thing but doing another?


There are levels and levels of hyperbole and double talk. Clinton, for example, is often lambasted for having deceived the American people as to the reason he authorized troops into Kosovo. What with the fact that it's pretty obvious we didn't care about the genocide going on and actually did it as a political maneuver to arm the Germans and bring the Russians into our camp.

But his actual economic corruption was pretty minor - if Whitewater is the best people can come up with, you run a pretty clean ship as these things go.

Carter, similarly, ran a very clean administration. Reagan, on the flip side had Edwin Meese running the Attorney General's Office as an extortion racket. Bush Sr. used the office office of the Presidency to invade all his old associates.

There really is a clear pattern if you look at the last 30 years. Democratic Administrations have done small c corruption that I don't give a damn about, and Republican Administrations have done Big C Corruption that sickens me and makes me ashamed to be an American.

---

Of course it wasn't always this way, and it probably won't be that way forever. Remember that The Gulf of Tonkin (a fake battle that pulled the American people into Vietnam) happened under a Democratic Adminisstration. And of course if you go back far enough Lincoln was a Republican. But for my entire life the Republicans have performed immensely more corruption and less forgivable corruption than Democrats have with similar levels of power.

-Username17
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Crissa
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Re: Government still apparently being douches over Katrina

Post by Crissa »

http://google.com/search?q=FEMA+site%3A ... onthly.com

It's hard to not snark about how badly things have performed under this administration... So badly that there just is no precedence. How could it possibly have been this bad when we couldn't conceive of it being this bad under these guys?

-Crissa
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