The 'Stuff Happens' Presidency - Meyerson

[Cassandra]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/06/AR2005090601363.html

"Even if we'll never win the national-greatness sweepstakes for solidarity, though, we've long been the model of the world in matters infrastructural, in roads, bridges and dams and the like. But the America in which Eisenhower the Good decreed the construction of the interstate highway system now seems a far-off land in which even conservatives believed in public expenditures for the public good. The radical-capitalist conservatives of the past quarter-century not only haven't supported the public expenditures, they don't even believe there is such a thing as the public good. Let the Dutch build their dikes through some socialistic scheme of taxing and spending; that isn't the American way. Here, the business of government is to let the private sector create wealth -- even if that wealth doesn't circulate where it's most needed. So George W. Bush threw trillions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, and what did they do with it? Did the Walton family up in Bentonville raise the levees in New Orleans? Did the Bass family over in Texas write a tax-deductible check to the Mennonites for the billions of dollars they would need to rescue the elderly from inundated nursing homes?
Even now, with bedraggled rescuers pulling decomposed bodies from the muck of New Orleans, Bill Frist, the moral cretin who runs the U.S. Senate, wanted its first order of business this week to be the permanent repeal of the estate tax, until the public outcry persuaded him to change course. The Republicans profess belief in trickle-down, but what they've given us is the Flood.

The world looks on in stunned amazement, unable to understand how a once great nation has grown so indifferent not just to its poor and its blacks but even to the most rudimentary self-preservation. Some of it is institutional racism, but the primary culprit is the economic libertarianism that the president still espouses whenever he sells his Social Security snake oil. It's that libertarianism, more than anything else, that has transformed a great city into an immense morgue."

Good stuff.

[necso]

1. Nice piece.

The "discreetly, and discretely..." is a nice touch.

And although the choice of words may trouble some, "economic libertarianism" is an accurate descriptor.

But, of course, in a climate of "economic libertarianism", the powerful (the large corporations and the wealthy families) can be expected to surround themselves with (paid or aspiring) flunkies (along with assorted fellow-travelers) and to ruthlessly seize (and desperately cling to) what power they can.

So "corporatism" would be an accurate descriptor also.

[phantom power]

2. There's been many great essays like this. But what will change?

Like he says, these people don't care. Even after witnessing New Orleans, they aren't changing their minds about anything.

I wonder what we can do? We've got more than Katrina to deal with. We may be dealing with avian flu in another 6 months. And that could make the Katrina aftermath look like a party. Bush has already made it clear he isn't going to replace Horse Whisperer as head of FEMA, so we can fully expect the same total lack of preparedness or effectiveness from FEMA, or DHS, for the forseable future.