conti2005 - 7:15 AM ET September 19, 2005 (#101 of 101)Impeach Bush and Cheney ! Rove is their 'Front Man'The Neocon Silver Lining
According to the old adage "There is a silver lining to every cloud." According to the acclaims of news media such as the Wall Street Journal and in this case the Houston Chronical Wal-Mart is the 'chain store' with the answer to privatizing FEMA.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/special/ [...]
"W"rong !
Wal-mart is a global, multi-national company that has attained an expertise in disaster relief because some of it's best clients can be found in the South Pacific where poverty, fundamentalistic religion, tsunamis and cyclones are common place.
Wal-Mart is a third world company who finds their biggest pain in the tush the USA. This country NORMALLY under COMPETENT administrations has high expectation of private employers as well as the highest expectations of it's government employers including AFFORDABLE HEALTH INSURANCE and a work environment free of SEXUAL HARRASMENT. As a USA employer Wal-Mart supplies neither. In gratitude to any and all private interests in this country Wal-Mart's efforts and accomplishments pre and post Katrina are appreciated. However, to cite Wal-Mart as the BETTER and PRIVATE option to a competently run GOVERNMENT including FEMA is an incorrect focus but granted THE ONLY ONE left to the Neocons of the country.
Wal-Mart as an employer is the greatest contributor to the working poor in the nation allowing the number of populous to fall below the poverty line to grow higher and higher enabling the dysfunction of the Bush Administration.
One has to wonder although Wal-Mart the corporation was an example of emergency management during the storm season; as I am sure this response by this corporation was not unique just to Katrina so much as a management style of this corporation; how many of the dead or displaced in "Nah'leans" belongs to them as well.
To highlight Wal-Mart as an answer to the nations problems at all levels is the sorriest theme I have yet heard coming out of a Republican society as their example of excellance. It is however an example of how corporations triumph over citizens with their influence in government.
I found this commentary interesting at the Wall Street Journal Opinion page.
The GOP's New New Deal
The bill for Katrina may fall due next November.
BY STEPHEN MOORE
Monday, September 19, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
There's an old adage that no one in Washington can tell the difference between $1 million and $1 billion. Seldom has that Beltway learning disability been more vividly demonstrated than in the weeks since Katrina.
When President Bush announced last Thursday that the feds would take a lead role in the reconstruction of New Orleans, he in effect established a new $200 billion federal line of credit. To put that $200 billion in perspective, we could give every one of the 500,000 families displaced by Katrina a check for $400,000, and they could each build a beach front home virtually anywhere in America.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html
"Nah'leans" deserves better than Wal-Mart on all fronts.
washingtonpost.com
End of the Bush Era
By E. J. Dionne Jr.Tuesday, September 13, 2005; A27
The Bush Era is over. The sooner politicians in both parties realize that, the better for them -- and the country.
Recent months, and especially the past two weeks, have brought home to a steadily growing majority of Americans the truth that President Bush's government doesn't work. His policies are failing, his approach to leadership is detached and self-indulgent, his way of politics has produced a divided, angry and dysfunctional public square. We dare not go on like this.
The Bush Era did not begin when he took office, or even with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It began on Sept. 14, 2001, when Bush declared at the World Trade Center site: "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon." Bush was, indeed, skilled in identifying enemies and rallying a nation already disposed to action. He failed to realize after Sept. 11 that it was not we who were lucky to have him as a leader, but he who was lucky to be president of a great country that understood the importance of standing together in the face of a grave foreign threat. Very nearly all of us rallied behind him.
If Bush had understood that his central task was to forge national unity, as he seemed to shortly after Sept. 11, the country would never have become so polarized. Instead, Bush put patriotism to the service of narrowly ideological policies and an extreme partisanship. He pushed for more tax cuts for his wealthiest supporters and shamelessly used relatively modest details in the bill creating a Department of Homeland Security as partisan cudgels in the 2002 elections.
He invoked our national anger over terrorism to win support for a war in Iraq. But he failed to pay heed to those who warned that the United States would need many more troops and careful planning to see the job through. The president assumed things would turn out fine, on the basis of wildly optimistic assumptions. Careful policymaking and thinking through potential flaws in your approach are not his administration's strong suits.
And so the Bush Era ended definitively on Sept. 2, the day Bush first toured the Gulf Coast States after Hurricane Katrina. There was no magic moment with a bullhorn. The utter failure of federal relief efforts had by then penetrated the country's consciousness. Yesterday's resignation of FEMA Director Michael Brown put an exclamation point on the failure.
The source of Bush's political success was his claim that he could protect Americans. Leadership, strength and security were Bush's calling cards. Over the past two weeks, they were lost in the surging waters of New Orleans.
But the first intimations of the end of the Bush Era came months ago. The president's post-election fixation on privatizing part of Social Security showed how out of touch he was. The more Bush discussed this boutique idea cooked up in conservative think tanks and Wall Street imaginations, the less the public liked it. The situation in Iraq deteriorated. The glorious economy Bush kept touting turned out not to be glorious for many Americans. The Census Bureau's annual economic report, released in the midst of the Gulf disaster, found that an additional 4.1 million Americans had slipped into poverty between 2001 and 2004.
The breaking of the Bush spell opens the way for leaders of both parties to declare their independence from the recent past. It gives forces outside the White House the opportunity to shape a more appropriate national agenda -- for competence and innovation in rebuilding the Katrina region and for new approaches to the problems created over the past 4 1/2 years.
The federal budget, already a mess before Katrina, is now a laughable document. Those who call for yet more tax cuts risk sounding like robots droning automated talking points programmed inside them long ago. Katrina has forced the issue of deep poverty back onto the national agenda after a long absence. Finding a way forward in -- and eventually out of -- Iraq will require creativity from those not implicated in the administration's mistakes. And if ever the phrase "reinventing government" had relevance, it is now that we have observed the performance of a government that allows political hacks to push aside the professionals.
And what of Bush, who has more than three years left in his term? Paradoxically, his best hope lies in recognizing that the Bush Era, as he and we have known it, really is gone. He can decide to help us in the transition to what comes next. Or he can cling stubbornly to his past and thereby doom himself to frustrating irrelevance.
postchat@aol.com
AS A SIDE NOTE:
"The Clinton Global Initiative" also known as The Democratic United States of America is making progress already in it's foreign policy. North Korea is becoming reasonable. Now. THAT. Is what I call RESPECT. And although there are songs instructing men on how to spell R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
I spell respect :: C - L - I - N - T - O - N !!!!!!
You go boy !
