9-03-05, 1:17 am
'I hate the way they portray us,' said hip-hop star Kanye West Friday evening on a NBC telethon to raise money for the Red Cross relief efforts for victims of Hurricane Katrina. 'They show a white family and they say they are looking for food. They show a Black family and say we’re looters.'
West discarded his scripted for the show and denounced a race-divided society and the Bush administration for failing to provide adequate, effective, and timely relief and aid going into the sixth day of the hurricane disaster for the predominantly Black city of New Orleans. West further criticized the 'shoot-to-kill' order handed down by Louisiana officials. NBC censored his remarks directly mentioning the Bush administration.
New Orleans is two-thirds Black and 28 percent white. So is racism the motivation that drove Bush to target the city’s anti-flooding projects for funding cuts in order to pay for his tax cuts for the rich and his war in Iraq that has, in the view of most people, failed to make the world safer?
The answer is most certainly yes.
Despite President Bush’s ability to grin and joke at two public appearances in the six days since the hurricane disaster began, early estimates indicate that Katrina may be the worst natural disaster in our history.
But, as has been reported in the major news media, it was not a surprise. Experts have been warning for years of the catastrophe that a category 4 or 5 hurricane could cause on the Gulf Coast. In Louisiana, specifically, local officials fought for, begged for, and demanded federal funding to implement hurricane defense plans that could have avoided the widespread flooding of New Orleans.
But the Bush administration has continuously slashed funding for those projects. Robert Hartwig, chief economist for the Insurance Information Institute, was quoted early last week in Newhouse News Service as saying, 'It’s going to be very evident that there were an enormous number of vulnerabilities that weren’t addressed.'
Toby Chaudhuri, communications director for the Campaign for America’s Future, said, 'This is a very hard time for many of us, but we can’t forget that while the hurricane was an accident, the tragedy and horror were allowed to happen. It was not a surprise.'
Since 2001, key federal disaster mitigation programs, including FEMA’s Project Impact, a model mitigation program created by the Clinton administration, have been cut or canceled outright. Cuts in federal funding for these programs have pushed communities across the country to compete for scarce pre-disaster mitigation dollars.
In 2003, the Republican-controlled Congress approved a White House proposal to cut FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) in half.
Bush’s 2006 budget proposal cuts funding for the Army Corps of Engineers, the entity that has helped build much of the levee system in New Orleans and proposed major renovations in 2004 and early 2005 for which it couldn’t scrounge up the funds. These proposed cuts come after Bush’s 2005 budget proposal called for a 13 percent reduction in the Army Corps of Engineers budget, down to $4 billion from $4.6 billion in fiscal 2004.
'I’ve been here over 30 years and I’ve never seen this level of reduction,' Al Naomi, project manager for the New Orleans district of the US Army Corps of Engineers, told the local papers prior to this year’s hurricane season.
'Money is so tight the New Orleans district instituted a hiring freeze. The freeze is the first of its kind in about 10 years,' said Marcia Demma, chief of the Corps’ Programs Management Branch last June.
'I think it’s extremely shortsighted,' Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu (D) warned at the beginning of the summer. 'When the Corps of Engineers’ budget is cut, Louisiana bleeds. These projects are literally life-and-death projects to the people of south Louisiana and they are (of) vital economic interest to the entire nation.'
The Bush administration’s shift in concern to the 'war on terrorism' and its war on Iraq have forced states to shoulder more of the responsibility to provide support for natural disasters and emergencies. Unfortunately, state budget shortfalls, fueled by cuts in direct grants to states on many levels, have meant fewer dollars for emergency management programs. In fiscal year 2004, the average budget for a state emergency management agency was $40.8 million, a 23 percent reduction from fiscal year 2003.
In an effort that showed the President’s personal lack of concern for natural disaster preparedness, Bush called for cutting the federal percentage of large-scale natural disaster preparedness expenditures from 75 percent of such costs, with states and municipalities funding the other 25 percent, to a 50 percent federal responsibility.
For Louisiana directly, Bush rejected pleas from the state’s congressional delegation which urged Congress earlier this year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana’s coast. Ultimately a deal was struck to steer $540 million to the state over four years, far short of the needed estimated of $14 billion. In its budget, the Bush administration also proposed only $10.4 million in funding, a sixth of what local officials say they needed for southeast Louisiana’s chief hurricane protection project.
Last September, Terry Tullier, the New Orleans emergency preparedness director, expressed anger at learning that a federally funded study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved. 'I’m all for the war effort, but every time I think about the $87 billion being spent on rebuilding Iraq, I ask: What about us?' he told New Orleans’ Time-Picayune.
Rev. Jesse Jackson, in a statement released yesterday, remarked, 'Homeland security means more than removing people’s shoes at the airport. It means making sure that our levees, our dams, our bridges, our roads, our ports and rails are all safe. Unfortunately, the tax cuts for the rich and the billions wasted on an unnecessary war in Iraq have devastated our public infrastructure, forcing cuts at every level—including levee protection and maintenance.'
'The tragedy of Hurricane Katrina points to the problems of long-term divestment in our infrastructure and our communities,' said Greg Speeter, executive director of the National Priorities Project. 'At the same time, the federal government has found $205 billion to fund the Iraq War. In comparison, money required for necessary infrastructure development looks like peanuts.'
Disaster experts also expressed concern over deep cuts adopted by Bush and the Republican Congress to the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA). SELA’s budget was slashed from $36.5 million awarded in 2005 to $10.4 million suggested for 2006 by congressional Republicans and the president. Likewise, $35 million in projects to build and improve levees identified by the Army Corps of Engineers in New Orleans simply went unfunded.
Last March, Senator Landrieu warned that budget cuts for these projects could have dire consequences. 'We could have lost 100,000 lives had Hurricane Ivan hit the mouth of the (Mississippi) River,' said Landrieu. 'God has been good, but one of these days a hurricane is going to come and, if we don’t get projects finished, were sitting ducks.'
National Guard resources and personnel needed for disaster relief stuck in Iraq prompted sharp criticism from National Guard officials and many politicians. 'Missing the personnel is the big thing in this particular event. We need our people,' Lt. Andy Thaggard told the Washington Post. Thaggard is a spokesperson for the Mississippi National Guard, which has a brigade of more than 4,000 troops in central Iraq. Louisiana also has about 3,000 Guard troops in Baghdad.
In addition to personnel shortages, National Guard officials have complained of equipment shortages. To equip troops in Iraq, according to a report in the Detroit Free Press, the Pentagon stripped local Guard units of about 24,000 pieces of equipment. That has left Guard units at home, already seriously short of gear.
Since the results of this disaster, many state officials fear that continued occupation of Iraq will negatively impact on National Guard recruitment and leaves their states unprotected against natural disasters and forest fires.
This situation even generated criticism from Republican ranks. Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) called for the return of Florida’s National Guard contingent from Iraq to aid in ongoing disaster relief operations their and to bolster disaster prevention measures.
According to National Priorities Project estimates, Louisiana taxpayers will pay $1.7 billion for what Congress has allocated so far for the Iraq War, Mississippi will pay $919 million, and Alabama will pay $1.9 billion. These amounts easily could have funded not only an array of social programs in these three states, but could have rebuilt and strengthened the levee system around New Orleans.
For Bush’s racist politics of cutting needed funds in Louisiana to pay for tax cuts for the rich and a war for oil, tens of thousands are suffering. It is a crime that cries out for justice.
--Contact Joel Wendland at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.
