Op-Ed

Calls for firing Michael Brown are understandable. Aptly described as “the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA” by columnist Maureen Dowd a few days ago, he’s an easy and appropriate target.

President Bush met with Brown last Friday and publicly told him: “You’re doing a heck of a job.”

In the grisly wake of the hurricane, Brown’s job performance cannot be separated from Bush’s job performance. To similar deadly effect, the president has brought to bear on people in New Orleans the same qualities that he has inflicted on people in Iraq -- refusal to acknowledge basic realities, lethally misplaced priorities, lack of compassion (cue the guitar), and overarching arrogance.

The Bush administration is guilty of criminal negligence that killed thousands of people last week.

Estimates of the death toll in New Orleans are now in the vicinity of 10,000 people. Whatever the number, many would be alive today if the federal government had given minimal priority to evacuation of those who had no way of exiting the city.

Now, key issues involve accountability and decency.

The trillion dollar question has long been: How do we get the major media outlets in this country to notice that the White House is run by oil barons who launch illegal wars based on lies, defund everything else, and destroy the environment at every opportunity – and that this is a single, connected story?

In June we garnered a bit of interest in the Downing Street Memos story, which then dried up and went away.  Then there was the Karl Rove scandal, which dried up and went away.  It's not that the actual events went away.  More evidence continued to come out, protests continued to grow, congressional action by progressive Dems and brave Republicans accelerated.  But the media lost interest.

Next came the Cindy Sheehan story.  This one was such a big splash that the media announced the birth of an anti-war movement (which was born simply because the media had, after all these years, decided to acknowledge its existence – at least briefly).  And now we have the Katrina story.

Reverend Jesse Jackson is working in the Louisiana region with the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Last week, Rev. Jackson and a Rainbow/PUSH delegation visited Venezuela, and are grateful for the relief aid offered by President Hugo Chavez. Below is Rev. Jackson's statement on the tragedy.

CHICAGO- The Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr., the founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition released the following statement regarding the tragedy caused by Hurricane Katrina:

All of us share the pain of those hit so hard by Hurricane Katrina. All of us will do what we can to help ease the burden of the families who have lost their loved ones, their homes, and even their towns and cities.

Even our amigos y amigas in Venezuela have generously offered their assistance. President Hugo Chavez himself told me in Caracas earlier this week, as we watched the flooding on television, that Venezuela would provide millions in aid, as a gesture of compassion from the people of Venezuela, to ease the pain and suffering of the victims of Katrina. We thank President Chavez and the Venezuelan people for their generosity.

In the wake of the New Orleans disaster, I thought of an article I read about Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s other yacht. The 300-foot Tatoosh carries a 30-person crew, two helicopters, a swimming pool, a spa, a private movie theater, six other surface boats (including a separate 54-foot racing yacht and two Hobie catamarans) and a submarine. Reading about the Tatoosh and a third yacht just slightly smaller made me wonder about Allen’s yacht of choice.  Did it have two swimming pools? Four helicopters? Twelve other on-board boats? And what was Allen doing with two yachts, when he could only ride on one at a time?

President Bush has evaded Cindy Sheehan’s question, “What was the noble cause that my son died for?” But he provided a partial answer on the day that the New Orleans levees gave way.

The media coverage was scant and fleeting -- but we should not allow the nation’s Orwellian memory hole to swallow up a revealing statement in Bush’s speech at a naval air station near San Diego.

In the Aug. 30 speech, moments after condemning “a brutal campaign of terror in Iraq,” the president said: “If Zarqawi and bin Laden gain control of Iraq, they would create a new training ground for future terrorist attacks. They’d seize oil fields to fund their ambitions.” In other words, the U.S. war effort in Iraq must continue because control of Iraqi oil is at stake.

Would U.S. troops be in Iraq if that country didn’t have a drop of oil under its sand? Most politicians dodge that kind of question. And for years, the U.S. news media -- with few exceptions -- have elided the oily obvious. Such denials go back a long way.

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AUSTIN, Texas -- Happy Labor Day, comrades. Hail to all who have yet to be outsourced, downsized, zero-budgeted, streamlined, cut back, laid off, globalized or otherwise pre-shrunk. Those of us who are lucky winners in the employment lottery can still enjoy our stagnant wages, disappearing benefits and collapsing pension plans. What, us worry?

Not that I want to start off one of my favorite national holidays on a bummer note, but it's enough to make Joe Hill rise from the dead yet again. One of the handicaps Americans have when it comes to discussing labor is that about 90 percent of us think we're middle class. Upper-class people are quite as likely to self-identify as middle class as are working-class folks. And middle-class folks do not think of themselves as "labor."

How could you be part of labor when you don't wear a hardhat or carry a lunch bucket? When you live in a suburb and own a bass boat, as well as an SUV? When you wear a suit and tie or high heels to work? When you're management, for pity's sake? Because that's what American labor looks like now -- just like you.

The death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist and the deaths of some 10,000 or more American citizens in New Orleans and Mississippi have come virtually at the same time.

We thus face one of the most important moments of decision in all US History---the appointment of two new Justices to the Supreme Court, including a new Chief Justice.

Such decisions are too momentous to make amidst the chaos and crisis that is today's United States. There is only one thing that can be done under the circumstances: postpone the appointments.

The nation is reeling from what may be its deadliest weather-related disaster ever. In effect, the country has lost an entire city, and it has done so in ways that could have been avoided.

New Orleans will almost certainly be rebuilt. But what emerges will be a very different place from the one America has known and loved for so long.

The implications of what has happened there are enormous and unique. The last time the nation and world lost entire cities in one fell swoop was at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

George W. Bush was in New Orleans to deliver a clear and unmistakable message: Drop Dead. And then, according to various reports, he went off to play golf.

Little in our history can match his administration's astounding non-response to this excruciating human catastrophe.

Before Katrina, even Bush's harshest critics might have found non-credible his leaving tens of thousands of American citizens to suffer and die in utterly gratuitous squalor, disease, hunger and thirst.

Taxpaying American citizens are dying in the heart of a great city because their government can't be bothered to get them clean water. Or a bed. Or to a hospital.

The weather has been clear since Katrina passed. Bush commands the world's most advanced armada of land, sea and airborne vehicles. The resources to save our brothers and sisters are readily available.

But we see our elders, black and white, sitting confused and in pain, dying of heat and thirst and utter neglect in clear, sunny weather while the President of the United States babbles aimlessly and the Secretary of State shops for shoes.

We're told the 911 attacks changed everything for America--that they ushered us in to a new and more dangerous world, where we could no longer afford old illusions. If we take its full lessons, the disaster of Hurricane Katrina challenges us even more profoundly.

If the comparison seems overstated, the death tolls from Katrina may well exceed the number of those lost at the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The projected cost of rebuilding New Orleans and its surroundings is now projected at $25 billion and may even approach the $40 billion paid out by insurance companies worldwide related to the 911 attacks. And while New York City beyond the Twin Towers remained intact, a refuge to flee to and base from which to assemble emergency resources, New Orleans is a sea of desolation, a wet and desperate landscape with no place to hide. New York City and the national economy rebounded relatively quickly from the attacks. The New Orleans projections are far grimmer.

The National Public Radio news anchor was so excited I thought she'd piss on herself: the President of the United had flown his plane down to 1700 feet to get a better look at the flood damage! And there was a photo of our Commander-in-Chief taken looking out the window. He looked very serious and concerned.

That was yesterday. Today he played golf. No kidding.

I'm sure the people of New Orleans would have liked to show their appreciation for the official Presidential photo-strafing, but their surface-to-air missiles were wet.

There is nothing new under the sun. In 1927, a Republican President had his photo taken as the Mississippi rolled over New Orleans. Calvin Coolidge, "a little fat man with a notebook in his hand," promised to rebuild the state. He didn't. Instead, he left to play golf with Ken Lay or the Ken Lay railroad baron equivalent of his day.

In 1927, the Democratic Party had died and was awaiting burial. As depression approached, the coma-Dems, like Franklin Roosevelt, called for balancing the budget.