A Crisis That Continues
This is a powerful editorial from the San Francisco Chronicle. A total bitch slap to Bush, White House, and the Republicans in both the House and Senate.
HURRICANE KATRINA happened two years ago, but you wouldn’t know that by looking at some neighborhoods in the Gulf Coast. Houses, or what’s left of them, still stand derelict in New Orleans, their yards choked with weeds. The city of Houston, which took in more than 150,000 refugees in a grand act of compassion, is still reporting overcrowded public services and way too many hastily assembled trailer-park settlements. Of course, the Bush administration is still placing blame for the continuing disaster on others; on bureaucracy, on the region’s state and local governments, not on the federal levees that failed, nor on its own weak and tardy response.
The mismanagement, missed opportunities and suffering that is the legacy of Katrina still matter because the victims of the storm were—and are—facing the same problems that the people of America are facing. We’re talking about poorly maintained public infrastructure. (The Minneapolis bridge collapse, though responsible for only 13 deaths, created a national sense of deja vu.) We’re talking about communities with poor access to health care, decent schools, jobs that pay a living wage. We’re talking about insurance companies that seem all too happy to take your premium—whether it’s for homeowners’ insurance or health care—and then run away when the bills come due. Most important, we’re talking about the lack of public leaders who have the ability to lead, or at the very least to take responsibility for their failures instead of looking for someone else, or something else, to blame.
The editorial sends with a quote from Donald Powell, President Bush’s Gulf Coast Rebuilding Chief at a recent recovery summit. "It’s not merely going to be a story of tragedy.
"It’s going to be a story of renewal, rebirth and redemption. But this
kind of transformation will not happen without leadership— without
local leadership." Bush, Chertoff, and Powell wouldn’t know leadership if it was standing right in front of them.
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