Did everybody forget Bush cut the levee maintenance funds? By martinweiss

[Demeter]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Did-everybody-forget-Bush--by-martinweiss-080619-294.html


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June 19, 2008




Before Katrina hit New Orleans, Bush cut the budget of the Army Corps of Engineers for levee maintenance. So once again we have a disaster carefully engineered to cost billions which could have been prevented at a cost of millions.

The Bush cabal profits from suffering and death. They employ it to take control of resources, as Naomi Klein has demonstrated in her book. I keep thinking the book is called "Shock Economics", but that could be wrong.

The Iraq debacle is no mistake. Every move made by Bush generates crisis, catastrophe, and conflict on purpose. Cynical? Yes. But terribly acute.





Authors Website: martiweiss.googlepages.com

Authors Bio: Avid reader, jazz musician, philosopher, chef, stone mason, carpenter, writer, painter, poet,humanist, teacher, holistic ethicist who believes consciousness and love pervade the universe, except among self-obsessed humans.

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[hedgehog]

1. I don't think they do it on purpose. There is a certain management mindset almost everywhere that

ignores facts and costs that are inconvenient. For example, engineers told NASA managers that it was too cold to launch the Challenger. It was inconvenient to delay the launch, so that fact was ignored. Dozens of people told Bush and his buddies what the war in Iraq was going to cost in terms of both lives and dollars. That cost was inconvenient when balanced against Bush's desire to invade, so that information was ignored. I've seen it in private industry as well. Machine X needs to be taken down for maintenance, Management wants to keep running or doesn't want to spend the money. Machine X then has an un-planned catastrophic failure that costs 10 times as much to repair.

[unblock]

5. were the disasters random and hurt republicans and democrats equally, i might agree with you

i live by the motto "never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity".

but in the case of shrub, it's simply too remarkable that his donors always seem to benefit from everything, with the possible exception that this upcoming election may yet prove that they have overreached in their greed.

katrina hits and what happens? companies who donated get tons of federal bucks to rebuild, and yet many democrats as displaced from from more purple louisiana to more solidly red texas.

the iraq war is a nightmare for the soldiers, for the middle east, for oil consumers, etc., and yet domestic oil producers (HUGE shrub backers) rake in billions in profit each MONTH, and defense contractors (also big shrub backers) similarly make a fortune while draining our national defense capabilities.

it's just too damn convenient to be stupidity or managerial rigidity. the ONLY thing that's worked against them is excess, and even that has yet to be proven.

[whistle]

2. No, all of his actions since being appointed and anointed by the Supreme Court

...have brought tremendous harm to the country and have demonstrated the total failure of conservative policies. These must be all reversed to get the country back on track as a prosperous nation and leader to the world

[azureblue]

3. Arrrggghhhh!!!!!!!!!

I have been posting this ever since a week after Katrina, on just about all the Democratic blogs plus Harry Shearer's dairies on Huffpo, and it STILL GETS IGNORED!!!!!! I will post the facts again, and MAYBE somebody will wake up to the fact that Bush destroyed New Orleans. Bush cut the ACOE budget not just once, but three times to cover the tax breaks he gave to his rich friends:

June 7, 2001
Bush signed his massive $1.3 trillion income tax cut into law—a tax cut that severely depleted the government of revenues it needed to address critical priorities. The first major economic initiative pursued by the president was a massive tax cut for the rich, enacted in June of 2001. Those with incomes over a million got a tax cut of $18,000—more than 30 times larger than the cut received by the average American. The inequities were compounded by a second tax cut, in 2003, this one skewed even more heavily toward the rich. Together these tax cuts mean that in 2012 the average reduction for an American in the bottom 20 percent will be a scant $45, while those with incomes of more than $1 million will see their tax bills reduced by an average of $162,000.
Bush’s first budget introduced in February 2001 proposed more than half a billion dollars worth of cuts to the Army Corps of Engineers for the 2002 fiscal year. Bush proposed providing only half of what his own administration officials said was necessary to sustain the critical Southeast Louisiana Flood Control Project (SELA)—a project started after a 1995 rainstorm flooded 25,000 homes and caused a half billion dollars in damage. Similarly, less than two weeks after Bush signed his tax cut on June 7, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that “despite warnings that it could slow emergency response to future flood and hurricane victims, House Republicans stripped $389 million in disaster relief money from the budget.”


February 2002
The president unveiled his new budget, this one with a $390 million cut to the Army Corps.
The cuts came during the same year the richest 5 percent (those who make an average of $300,000 or more) were slated to receive $24 billion in new tax cuts. The cuts were devastating. The administration provided just $5 million for maintaining and upgrading critical hurricane protection levees in New Orleans—one fifth of what government experts and Republican elected officials in Louisiana told the administration was needed. Likewise, the administration had been informed that SELA needed $80 million to keep its work moving at full speed, but the White House only proposed providing a quarter of that. These cuts came even though the potential cost of not improving infrastructure was known to be astronomical. A widely-circulated 1998 report on Louisiana’s insurance risks said a serious storm could inflict $27 billion worth of damage just to homes and cars—and that didn’t include industrial or commercial property. Local insurance executives estimated in 2002 that the total damage would be closer to $100 billion to $150 billion—estimates that now look frighteningly accurate.



February 2, 2004
White House on February 2 released a budget with another massive cut to infrastructure and public works projects—
this time to the tune of $460 million. As the Denver Post later reported, “the Southeast Louisiana Flood Control project sought $100 million in U.S. aid to strengthen the levees holding back the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, but the Bush administration offered a paltry $16.5 million.” The Chicago Tribune noted that the Army Corps of Engineers had also requested $27 million to pay for hurricane protection upgrades around Lake Pontchartrain—but the White House pared that back to $3.9 million.
Gaps in levees around Lake Pontchartrain and the Industrial Canal (where the levees broke), which were supposed to be filled by 2004, would not be filled because of budget shortfalls. Corps officials told the Times-Picayune in April “that the lack of money will leave gaps in the structure, weakening its effectiveness and pushing back its completion date.” Worse, because budget cuts had been compounding for three years straight, “even after all the gaps are closed, the levee must settle for several more years until it reaches its final height.” By June, the newspaper reported that “for the first time in 37 years, federal budget cuts have all but stopped major work on the New Orleans area’s east bank hurricane levees.”

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. Good on you for the information.

which bears repeating a lot.
Often
and again.

:applause: :applause: :applause: :applause:

[roody]

8. I am printing this to take to Iowa Saturday,

when I go to visit my right-wing republican family.

[JDPriestly]

4. It's the Shock Doctrine, and thanks for the post.

[badgerpup]

7. Keep in mind that Bush and his cronies don't 'hate' us.

It's nowhere near as personal as that.
We aren't really people.
We are merely background noise...to be ignored if possible, squelched if not.

edit for spelling
(preview is my friend...)

[Igel]

9. True.

But not always relevant. Most of the levees in Iowa were local or private. ACE evaluates them when producing flood-plain maps, but doesn't rebuilt locally owned/maintained or privately owned/maintained levees.

NOLA ... almost all ACE's fault (with a nod to NOLA, which was also responsible in some cases for some matching funds and inspections).

It's important to keep the facts straight. When Obama's president and things happen, we'll be screaming at the other side when they make false representations, when he's held responsible for things he's not responsible for, and upset when he preemptively tries to take responsibility away from local governments and they don't like it.