[Crossposted from Loaded Mouth]

I know some people might find this hard to believe, but I've been trying not to criticize Bush in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. This is probably the worst natural disaster in the history of this country, and I don't want to contribute to the cause of any divisions in a time of national crisis.

However, there are lessons to be learned here. And since Bush and his ilk only seem to listen to dollar signs, I'll explain this in simple financial terms: When does $3.9 million actually equal billions of dollars? When you should have spent $20 million to fix the levees.

The cleanup and recovery efforts for Hurricane Katrina are going to skyrocket into the billions, but it didn't have to be this way. The catastrophe that happened to New Orleans could have been avoided if the city was properly protected by a system of levees that required federal funding to be fixed. Let us not forgot that Katrina did not cause the massive amounts of flooding we now see in New Orleans; this was caused by the failure of levees after the storm had passed. Why did these levees fail? Because Bush grossly underfunded the Army Corps of Engineers projects needed to repair them. Attytodd has used Lexis/Nexis to dig up some articles about the levee projects. Here's what he found in an article from 2/16/04 in the New Orleans CityBusiness:

The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project is another major Corps project, which remains about 20% incomplete due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi, project manager. That project consists of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson parishes.

The Lake Pontchartrain project is slated to receive $3.9 million in the president's 2005 budget. Naomi said about $20 million is needed.

"The longer we wait without funding, the more we sink," he said. "I've got at least six levee construction contracts that need to be done to raise the levee protection back to where it should be (because of settling). Right now I owe my contractors about $5 million. And we're going to have to pay them interest."

The Attytodd piece is a must-read, and it has much more detail into how much the funding was undercut and why. For the sake of brevity, I'll sum it up: The levee projects were started and fully funded while Clinton was in office, but ever since Bush took office, he has cut taxes spent boatloads of money on the Iraq war.

So under the pretense of protecting American lives and cities, the funding of the Iraq war has led to the destruction of New Orleans and who knows how many deaths. Hundreds? Thousands? Bush said he would protect us from a dirty bomb, and as a result we got a dirty flood and an unwinnable war of questionable intentions.

The irony doesn't stop there, given the fact that the cost-cutting measures Bush imposed on the homeland to fund his billions in war spending now mean that we'll have to spend billions to clean up a tragic mess that could have been avoided.

Disgusting. Simply disgusting. Bush and his war buddies walk away with billions in cash because of this war, yet not a dime could be spared to fix the levees of New Orleans. Lives, homes, culture, and history all destroyed, all washed away... Does this man have respect for anything? Will he take responsibility for anything? But, more importantly, have the Republicans finally learned that tax cuts and wars aren't always a good thing, and that the homeland needs to be protected and serviced by a sound infrastructure before we can think about doling money out to the richest among us?

[Big hattip: Chrissy]

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.grupo-utopia.com/blog/mt/mt-tb.cgi/778

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Yes, I'll say it: Bush is to blame:

» Yes, I'll say it: Bush is to blame from Loaded Mouth

I know some people might find this hard to believe, but I've been trying not to criticize Bush in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. This is probably the worst natural disaster in the history of this country, and I don't want to contribute to the cause of

[Read More]

Tracked on August 31, 2005 11:47 PM

Posted by: Digger at September 1, 2005 07:21 PM

Posted by: David Anderson at September 1, 2005 07:39 PM

Posted by: David at September 2, 2005 08:45 AM

Posted by: Your a schmuck at September 2, 2005 12:52 PM