Liberal Oasis: Conservatism's Failures for Katrina
By Nicole Belle Saturday Sep 01, 2007 12:16pmBill Scher's Liberal Oasis radio program this Labor Day weekend with guest Rick Perlstein focused on the failures that Conservatism played on the Gulf Coast after Katrina
Part 2:
Mentioned on the broadcast...
Huffington Post's Eric Deggans post on the shallow media coverage of Katrina is
here.Read the Heritage Foundation white paper, "Taking Charge of Federal Personnel."
Hear Newt Gingrich blame the victims of Katrina for "failure of citizenship" here.
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:(
To be fair, I think all politicians failed here, both R and D.
Off Topic:
Hitchens is live now on C-Span2 (Book TV).
deb in IL @ 2:
Perlstein's point is not R vs. D, deb. Perlstein's point is that the ideology of conservatism that has promoted pulling one's self up by bootstraps and cronyism over competence has failed the Katrina victims.
E Coli conservatism and Chicago School economics bring despair wherever they are tried
"Conservatism’s Failures for Katrina..."
What about Conservatism's failure for America, the world and the whole human race in general?
A failure in citizenship was shown by the inability of NO citizens to get out of the way of Katrina? By that same notion, I guess the deaths of 3,700 Americans in Iraq was caused by a failure of -- maybe even a dereliction of -- duty by soldiers who should have gotten out of the way of IED's and bullets. Thank you, Newt, for a novel way to blame the victims of your Party's sickening incompetence.
How about conservatism's failures for the past 30 years.
We have been governed by conservatives since the "Reagan Revolution" and look where we are.
Our airlines are deregulated and incompetent, with CEO's making millions while they cannot make a schedule.
American industry has gone overseas, conservatives/republicats finally defeating the great American Labor Movement and making it possible for MBA bloodsuckers to make hundreds of times what their few remaining workers make. All of our products are manufactured overseas except, thank God, for Budwieser.
Our children are not getting a decent education. No child left behind? Our highways are more asphalt patch than smooth road, our bridges are falling down.
The military is made up of the children of our working class who have very few other options since industry is no longer employing them in America.
We cannot support a great city's reconstruction after a natural disaster, why do we think these conservative clowns can protect us or help us rebuild after any kind of disaster?
Thanks, conservatives and Repulicats. We have seen how well things work in your "less government" world.
Will be be able to undo your damage? I don't know...
Of course, Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! (democracynow.org) broadcast Thursday and Friday from the lower ninth ward. Best news in the nation.
Nicole Belle @ 4:
For many people, their bootstaps got FLUSHED down river. :(
Perlstein nails it.
If you're a younger citizen, this is a solid history lesson on how the thugs screw things so badly. Conflating expertise in one's field as liberalism, when you then take your expertise into government service, is the deep crime of thuglican "thought."
They don't think because they don't care.
What seriously pissed me off after the storm, apart from the overall incompetence of the FEMA and the fed response to Katrina, was the notion that faith-based initiatives would take care of everyone and everything. Just another stupid, pandering move to give power and money to the fundies. About all that cost them was some canned goods, bottled water, old clothes, and transportation costs---for which they were abundantly rewarded.
Horrible. As a strategy and as a practice. Churches can't coordinate to meet the immediate needs of a stricken city. The help was nice, but it should have been secondary to a coordinated effort by all governmental entities (including the military).
I wish there really was a hell, just for Bush' sake. He needs extreme punishment for all he has done. Not just to NOLA. Not just in Iraq. But for every soul his adeministration has cut-off from the help that any sane government normally provides.
Once I attended a ceremony where his dad spoke (godawful). Should that happen with Jr., well........
Hmm. He's kinda cute. And kinda smart. Nice post - I'll be listening to this guy again.
Nicole Belle @ 4:
In what way is cronyism a part of legitimate conservative ideology?
One could easily say that liberalism failed here. Throwing billions of dollars at a problem hasn't worked.
Greed is what really caused the failure here. Human nature.
[...] Clark Liberal Oasis: Conservatism’s Failures for Katrina » This Summary is from an article posted at Crooks and Liars on Sunday, September 02, 2007 This [...]
Oh yeah.
OT, but Yoko Ono says you can take your Prius and stuff it. She'll stick with her Bentley, thank you very much.
http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/article/ono%20blasts%20eco%20friend...
The republicans don't want to push for the rebuilding of New Orleans as it was because it's now a conservative stronghold. Secretly, many white conservatives who live there feel the same way. They're happy that the black democrats are gone, because they'll get their republicans voted into office much more easily now, and the state will be a sure thing for republicans in the future.
I live south of New Orleans, and I hear these types of comments everyday. The conservatives in the state are happy that Bush did what he did (or didn't do) when the city was abandoned and continues to be abandoned by the federal govt. If the money comes rolling in for the return of the residents, it will revert back to a democratic majority in the city. That's not acceptable to them, so they'll continue to stonewall the money by keeping it tied up for various reasons, until it's too late for anyone to return.
It's a horrible thing, when the very lives of U.S. citizens are politicized like this. It's not something to be proud of.
GWB and his ilk have continued to cause our great nation to sink into the mire of dirty politics. At every turn, they have harmed the United States and its citizens.
On the anniversary of Katrina, and the new "awakening" to the failures of King George, the neocons are doing all they can to distract from the fact that Bush is responsible for the flooding of New Orleans. So they smear and lie, again, are called out, again, and the media fails to reveal why the repair work on the weakened levees was not completed. So, here it is, once again, how Bush looted the ACOE budget to cover the tax breaks for his rich buddies:
everything bush and cheney touch goes into a grave.
pray they are in one and soon.
bet there were a lot of jewish people living in the lower 9th ward.
More Conservative failure.
Such an endless supply!
It is beyond me why anyone would want to listen to anything the has been Newt Gingrich has to say.
Maybe Pat Buchannan would, but actually Pat is not a has been, he has always been a wanna be.
Just another couple of repug losers.
Never in the history of this country, have incompetance
and stupidity been so generously rewarded.
It is not just "Brownie" and FEMA look around you,
Gonzo, Monica Goodling, Rumsfeld, Rice.
Absolute failures each and every one, plus hundreds if not
thousands, whose names we don't even know,
who have no experience or qualifications other than
having some neo-con patron hand them a job in
return for blind loyalty.
Ask any conservative, though, and they will screech and gibber about how conservatism cannot fail and how any perceived set back suffered when conservatives are in control is somehow the fault of everyone but the "personal responsibility" crowd themselves. To be a modern movement conservative is to live with a nearly surreal sense of exceptionalism, entitlement and hypocrisy
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