Nation in shambles under Bush
On Sept. 15, President Bush outlined his vision for rebuilding our Gulf Coast. And his favorite Arabian Horse Association director is no longer heading the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). That years of warnings were mocked and ignored, however, should trouble Americans more than the response.
Despite repeated studies detailing New Orleans flooding as one of America’s most likely disasters, little was done.
The Army Corps of Engineers for 2005 requested $105 million for New Orleans flood control; $40 million was granted.
Yet Congress approved a “pork barrel” $213 million bridge to a small, uninhabited Alaskan island.
A 30-year, $14 billion project to protect our busiest port was reduced to a $2 billion, 10-year plan – one that was not being fully funded.
We spend $4 billion every month to kill Iraqis and young Americans, destroy another nation and ruin our world reputation.
Yet this administration continues to push more tax cuts for the wealthiest 20 percent of Americans, in an alliance of insanity and greed.
President Bush I established a “no net loss of wetlands” environmental policy. President Clinton strengthened it.
But Bush II scuttled it, unleashing developers on fragile areas and making New Orleans more vulnerable.
Right wing “conservatives,” in their standard-style response to anyone who tells the truth, labeled Al Gore “environmentalist wacko.”
“It’ll hurt our economy,” Bush II explained in making America the only major nation to refuse to cooperate in curbing global warming.
Now we’ll spend hundreds of billions rebuilding large parts of three states while awaiting the next disaster in a world where the intensity and duration of hurricanes has risen 60 percent in 30 years and our debt multiplies.
Yet Bush’s rebuild calls for scrapping prevailing wage and workplace safety laws – and suspending environmental regulations!
In my 2004 Congressional campaign I noted repeatedly that it’s cheaper to prevent pollution than to clean it up.
Few cared. That’s because few realize that a billion seconds ago it was 1959, a billion minutes ago Jesus was alive and it would take your favorite bank teller 99 years to count out one billion one-dollar bills. One group probably cares very much – the Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana National Guardsmen in Iraq.
Paul Politis
Greencastle