The September 24 demonstration: what I saw, why I went
I went to the "March on Washington: End the War on Iraq" demonstration today. I met some online friends for the first time, and took a few pictures, and came away with a lot of impressions.

There were a *lot* of people. I didn't arrive before the march began, so I didn't get a look at the Ellipse before people started filing off to march past the White House. Afterwards, I heard on the radio that DC police chief Ramsey said he thought organizers had met their goal of 100,000, which suggests to me they probably got much more than that.

The ambience was festive, the signage imaginative and plentiful. One updated the old 60s slogan to "Make levees, not war." Another said "Bush has done so much stuff I couldn't fit it all on this sign." A dance troupe of Iraqi bodies, led by a kind of pagan god drum major; people dressed as Cheney playing Bush on a marionette -- and being played as a marionette by a devil behind him; Lady Liberty on stilts; "Billionaires for Bush" ironically supporting "Blood for Oil" and "Small Government -- Big Wars" -- in short, a wonderful, walking political circus.

It accompanied the thousands upon thousands of people with more serious signs. A seemingly endless chain of people carried a long cord with pieces of paper fluttering from it; on closer examination, the papers had names, portraits, and dates of death of soldiers. Other signs said "They Lied -- They Died" with pictures of Bush, Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld atop a one and a half by two foot list of names in fine print. Other signs referred to Katrina; one black woman's sign said "No Iraqis Left Me on a Roof."

The march was also a chance to meet "eRobin" and her husband, and the Philadelphians they came to the march with -- "Riggsveda"; Alana, Danny, and their folks -- and "AltHippo", a DC area blogger. It was a pleasure meeting all of them, particularly eRobin, who has been one of my most frequent stops in the "blogosphere."

Lest anyone reading this be misled, I should say that it's been a long, strange trip for me to get to this demonstration. As the record of this blog shows, I was initially skeptical of the looming war, but came around, basically in the belief that there was real WMD development going on that I assumed the Bush people would be able to prove. Obviously, that didn't happen, any more than a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda could be shown.

Bush's other supposed motivation -- democracy in the Middle East -- has been discredited by the immoral behavior his administration has allowed and encouraged, the lackadaisical approach to security in the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad, and the theocratic state that is on the horizon for Iraqis.

While it's hard to pin down the correct proportions of stupidity, avarice, and depraved indifference involved in the Iraq debacle, it hardly matters as much as not having Americans pay for it with their lives and limbs and treasure any longer.

Nor should we pay for it with a diminished democracy here in the United States any longer. It was a blot on this country's history that a known screwup and/or liar could be re-elected president, and that we (myself included) could allow a war in our name on such flimsy pretexts. Now the Katrina debacle seems to have finally taken the luster off what has been a Potemkin presidency -- all show, no substance, photo ops and poses instead of competence and integrity. "Worst President Ever" was another popular sign, and it's not too far off the mark.

In the meantime, though, we've become a less democratic, even brutalized country. Too many are all too ready to treat yet another swathe of humanity as subhuman; too many accept the diminishment of their own civil rights in the name of safety at all costs; too many accept the way elections themselves have become manipulated; too many are ready to smear and suppress dissent itself by any means necessary. At the end of the day, I care more about preserving real democracy in my own country than I do about trying to export it -- let alone George W. Bush's understanding of it -- to another.

The only thing that made me waver before joining this demonstration was a feeling of responsibility towards a country whose blood was in some part also on my hands. But whatever the "mission" supposedly is in Iraq anymore, it's not being designed, explained, or executed by anyone I trust. I can't undo my earlier support for the war, however qualified and regretful it was. I can support not making it worse. I think our continued involvement in Iraq is making things worse. It's time for us to go.


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UPDATE, 9/27:Riggsveda, eRobin, and altHippo describe the march. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:51:00 PM -- |    

 
Frist Blind Trust Miraculously Regains Eyesight
Praise the Lord:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a potential presidential candidate in 2008, sold all his stock in his family's hospital corporation about two weeks before it issued a disappointing earnings report and the price fell nearly 15 percent. [...]

Blind trusts are used to avoid conflicts of interest. Assets are turned over to a trustee who manages them without divulging any purchases or sales and reports only the total value and income earned to the owner.

To keep the trust blind, Frist was not allowed to know how much HCA stock he owned, [Frist spokesperson Amy] Call said, but he was allowed to ask for all of it to be sold.
(emphasis added)

That's some blind trust. "We're gonna tank, Bill." "No worries: this is just the kind of thing my blind trustees are there for." Frist's spokesperson yields one more gem in the article:

To avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest, Senator Frist went beyond what ethics requires and sold the stock,' Call said. Asked why he had not done so before, she said, 'I don't know that he's been worried about it in the past.'

Now that just cries out for followup: not worried about what? The value of the stock? Or the conflict of interest?

(Washington Post: "Senator Sold Stock Before Price Dropped", Jonathan Katz; via Josh Marshall) posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:02:00 AM -- |    

 
Folk songs OK, but for really free speech you'll need a permit
The New York Times Shadi Rahimi reports ("An Antiwar speech in Union Square Is Stopped by Police Citing Paperwork Rules"):

An antiwar speech by Cindy Sheehan, the mother of an American soldier killed in Iraq, was cut short yesterday after the organizer of the event was arrested and police officers confiscated his audio equipment.

The claps and cheers that had greeted Ms. Sheehan's arrival at the rally in Union Square quickly turned to furious chants of 'Let her speak!' as officers ushered away the organizer, Paul Zulkowitz, who the police said lacked audio permits for the event.

Angry activists followed officers as they led Mr. Zulkowitz away, waving their fists and shouting, "Shame, shame, shame." Ms. Sheehan, who was visiting New York on the last leg of a bus tour across the country, was nearing the end of her speech when the police officers arrested Mr. Zulkowitz. She was whisked to a car by two supporters just before the police officers seized the microphone. Mr. Zulkowitz was arrested because he did not have a permit, said the commanding officer of the 13th Precinct, Inspector Michael J. McEnroy.

Via Steve Gilliard, who comments "Cindy Sheehan was protected by the Crawford sheriff. She was silenced by the NYPD." The Village Voice's Sarah Ferguson points out:

Yet for all their fussing over sound permits, the police evidently weren’t troubled the young folkie who set up his own mic and portable amp shortly after Sheehan and her entourage had left, then launched into a round of Dylanesque protest songs.

Sheehan’s mic wasn’t that much louder, leaving one to wonder whether the cops’ hasty halt to the speakout was perhaps motivated more by the crowd she drew and the radical posturing voiced by some of the speakers leading up to her—including Dustin Langley of the Troops Out Now coalition, who urged the anti-warriors milling in the bright sun to "open a new front of resistance right here. Bring Falluja to New York and shut it down!”

Right, that's a sound bite that's really going to work wonders. But it's speech, it's political speech, and he's free to say what he said. More importantly, so is Ms. Sheehan. The authorities seem to have confused their speech -- and someday yours and mine -- with noise.


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UPDATE/EDIT, 9/22: Photo added, courtesy of Mike Fleming. Via Joel Moore -- possibly the "young folkie" in the Village Voice story -- who comments:

She was saying her last few words of thanks for our support when the police came up from behind and grabbed Zool(Paul Zolkowitz) the event organizer. He was arrested and held for about 8 hours for operating an amplifier without a permit. If the cops would have waited even 2 seconds longer the whole thing could have been avoided.

There's also some video of the incident at Moore's web site. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:25:00 PM -- |    

 
Global warming, coming soon to a coastline near you
Elizabeth Kolbert recently published a three-part series on global warming in the New Yorker.* After Katrina hit the Louisiana/Mississippi Gulf coast, she wrote:

Katrina was so destructive—whole towns and cities devastated, and their traditions swept away—that anyone who would presume to comment on it has a heavy burden. A disaster of this magnitude seems to demand not dispassionate analysis but simple human empathy. To use it as an occasion to point out the folly of U.S. energy policy, as, for example, the German environmental minister, Jürgen Trittin, did, is to invite the charge of insensitivity, or even worse. ... But, callous as it may seem to say so, America’s consumption of fossil fuels and catastrophes like Katrina are indeed connected. [...]

In a paper published in Nature just a few weeks before Katrina struck, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported that wind-speed measurements made by planes flying through tropical storms showed that the “potential destructiveness” of such storms had “increased markedly” since the nineteen-seventies, right in line with rising sea surface temperatures.

From the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency's NOAA News Online:

The June-August summer season was the tenth warmest on record for the contiguous U.S., while precipitation was above average. Global temperatures were second highest on record for the boreal summer, which runs from June 1 through August 31. Twelve named tropical systems formed in the Atlantic by the end of August, including Hurricane Katrina, which was among the strongest hurricanes ever to strike the U.S., according to scientists at the NOAA National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. [...]

The average global temperature anomaly for combined land and ocean surfaces for the June-August season (based on preliminary data) was 1.1 degrees F (0.6 degrees C) above the 1880-2004 long-term mean. This was the second warmest June-August since 1880 (the beginning of reliable instrumental records). The warmest June-August was in 1998 with an anomaly of 1.2 degrees F (0.7 degrees C) above the mean. Warmer-than-average conditions covered most land areas of the world.

NASA Earth Observatory explained a couple of days ago ("Warm Waters Provide Fuel for Potential Storms") that hurricanes over the Atlantic pull deeper, colder water up in their wake, making it harder for new hurricanes to form for a while. Unfortunately, the story is different for the relative wading pool that is the Gulf of Mexico:

When a storm tracks into the Gulf of Mexico, however, the situation is different. Although the Atlantic has cool water beneath the surface waters, the shallower Gulf does not; its entire water column is warm. Katrina did leave a cool-water trace near the Florida coast, but that trace has since been swallowed up by the Gulf’s warm waters. The widespread orange colors across the Gulf indicate the temperature has reached the hurricane-temperature threshold of about 28 degrees Celsius; the Gulf is once again capable of brewing a strong tropical storm.**

The historical record of the increasing warmth of the Earth's sea waters appears to be best explained by human "forcings" -- 20th century greenhouse gas emissions -- on the Earth's climate, according to a recent study mentioned here, "Earth's Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications," by James Hansen et al. If so, ever more monster hurricanes like Katrina are likely to be in our future.

In fact, the next one may be this week. NOAA reported at 5PM today that Hurricane Rita -- only just upgraded from tropical storm status -- is already at Category 2 hurricane strength, with maximum sustained winds near 100mph, and was just passing south of Key West into the Gulf of Mexico. A discussion concludes:

ALL INDICATIONS ARE THAT RITA AS AN INTENSE HURRICANE WILL BE APPROACHING THE TEXAS COAST IN ABOUT 3 DAYS.

Nature looks ready to bowl another strike at the United States Gulf coast, with Houston more or less squarely in the kingpin position.

As Houston resident Aziz Poonawalla points out, the real heart of the American oil economy is in Houston. I hope that all the areas to be hit by Rita will be spared the destruction and loss of life that Katrina wrought three weeks ago. It will be the least immediate of our worries, but otherwise hurricanes may do what Washington would not -- impose an involuntary energy "policy" on an unwilling nation, and an involuntary constraint on greenhouse gas emissions that may well be fueling more frequent and powerful storms.


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* Mentioned on this blog in "Every day is Earth Day" and "Earth's albedo falling." EDIT, 9/21: bowling metaphor unmixed.
** "Image by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, based on data gathered by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-EOS (AMSR-E) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on September 18, 2005."
UPDATE, 9/21: Washington Post, "Rita is Gaining Force in the Gulf": "Forecasters expect Rita to swell on Wednesday into a Category 4 monster, carrying 131-mph winds, as it gains strength from the warm Gulf waters and spins westward toward an anticipated landfall Friday near Galveston, Tex."
UPDATE, 9/21: Changes in Tropical Cyclone Number, Duration, and Intensity in a Warming Environment. P. J. Webster, G. J. Holland, J. A. Curry, H.-R. Chang. Science, Vol 309, Issue 5742, 1844-1846, 16 September 2005. The scientists agree global warming may well be behind a definite uptick in Category 4 and 5 hurricanes over the last 30 years, but say they don't have enough data to be completely sure:

We conclude that global data indicate a 30-year trend toward more frequent and intense hurricanes, corroborated by the results of the recent regional assessment. This trend is not inconsistent with recent climate model simulations that a doubling of CO2 may increase the frequency of the most intense cyclones, although attribution of the 30-year trends to global warming would require a longer global data record and, especially, a deeper understanding of the role of hurricanes in the general circulation of the atmosphere and ocean, even in the present climate state.

Via Mr. B. at "Bitch, Ph.D."
UPDATE, 9/21: RealClimate blog ("Hurricanes and Global Warming: Is there a connection?", by Stefan Rahmstorf, Michael Mann, Rasmus Benestad, Gavin Schmidt, and William Connolley):

The situation is analogous to rolling loaded dice: one could, if one was so inclined, construct a set of dice where sixes occur twice as often as normal. But if you were to roll a six using these dice, you could not blame it specifically on the fact that the dice had been loaded. [...] What we need to discuss is not what caused Katrina, but the likelyhood that global warming will make hurricanes even worse in future.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:15:00 AM -- |    

 
Guard needed "overwhelming force" to "take down" convention center
So why did it take forever and a flipping day for relief to get to the New Orleans Convention Center? Why did New Orleans citizens desperate for food and water come to believe they were going to be killed, not rescued?

A September 3rd Defense Department briefing sheds some light -- whether embarrassing or infuriating depends on your Myers Briggs scores, I suppose -- on the mindset of our supposed protectors. DoD News: Defense Department Briefing on Ongoing National Guard Response to Hurricane Katrina:

The most contentious issues were lawlessness in the streets, and particularly a potentially very dangerous volatile situation in the convention center where tens of thousands of people literally occupied that on their own. We had people that were evacuated from hotels, and tourists that were lumped together with some street thugs and some gang members that -- it was a potentially very dangerous situation.

General Steven Blum ("chief, National Guard Bureau") continued:

We waited until we had enough force in place to do an overwhelming force. Went in with police powers, 1,000 National Guard military policemen under the command and control of the adjutant general of the State of Louisiana, Major General Landreneau, yesterday shortly after noon stormed the convention center, for lack of a better term, and there was absolutely no opposition, complete cooperation, and we attribute that to an excellent plan, superbly executed with great military precision. It was rather complex. It was executed absolutely flawlessly in that there was no violent resistance, no one injured, no one shot, even though there were stabbed, even though there were weapons in the area. There were no soldiers injured and we did not have to fire a shot.

Some people asked why didn't we go in sooner. Had we gone in with less force it may have been challenged, innocents may have been caught in a fight between the Guard military police and those who did not want to be processed or apprehended, and we would put innocents' lives at risk. As soon as we could mass the appropriate force, which we flew in from all over the states at the rate of 1,400 a day, they were immediately moved off the tail gates of C-130 aircraft flown by the Air National Guard, moved right to the scene, briefed, rehearsed, and then they went in and took this convention center down.

(all emphases added) Put me down for "infuriated." The briefing comes via tex of "UnFairWitness," who you should go read, it'll save me a rant.

"tex" takes it another step, juxtaposing the National Guard spokesman's breathless assessment of the situation with that of Dumas Carter, an eight year New Orleans Police Department veteran who was on the scene at the Convention Center throughout the ordeal. His story -- which matches up well with others* eRobin and I are collecting at "Recording Katrina" -- is that the vast majority of people at the Convention Center were (a) law abiding, "aside" from procuring foodstuffs and necessities for survival, (b) cooperative with him and other police, (c) positively hoping for security from the relative handful of predators in their midst, and (d) too physically spent to have resisted a boy scout troop, much less the National Guard. Carter:

At this point it's like four days into it, and we're trying to explain to the captain, these people are so tired and thirsty and hungry they couldn't flip over a lawn chair if they wanted to riot. [...]

The majority of the people were staying outside. We were hearing all kinds of horror stories from inside, murder to rape to robberies to shootings to beatings. There was no way to verify any of that stuff. Ninety-seven percent of these people were behind us. They wanted us to be the police and they loved that we were still there. We were the only police they saw for four or five days. The majority of the conversations were, "Baby, I know you're being left here just like we're being left here and you don't know anything, but if you find out something, could you tell us?" My response was, you've got the radio--you tell us what's going on. And these people would come over and give us bulletins as they heard it from the news.

There's even more at "Unfair Witness", including a discussion of "clear and hold" tactics supposedly planned for the Convention Center -- which turn out to be standard operating procedure in Iraq. (In a nice bit of snarling propaganda, the linked UPI report explains: "Once host to the 1988 Republican National Convention, the convention center was now unofficial host to thousands of refugees - squatters all - who were mixed in with criminals and thugs.") Squatters, criminals, thugs -- clear 'em out, take 'em down.

I should say I bought into the story of rampant, uncontrollable lawlessness and danger -- even to troops -- more at the time than I do now. That said, it's not my professional duty to assess dangerous situations and deal with them expeditiously so I can protect or rescue fellow Americans.

The National Guard leadership was clearly more concerned for the lives and safety of its troops than for the lives of citizens it was supposed to protect. Moreover, it appears to have drastically overestimated the dangers involved, maybe because it was far too quick to cast the situation in racially charged terms ("tourists that were lumped together with some street thugs").

The Guard leadership was derelict in its duty to provide quick, effective -- and, yes, "potentially" brave -- relief to American citizens who were counting on it to do so. That's not what it's for. Heads should roll.


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* See, for starters, two accounts by Denise Moore (I, II) at "Recording Katrina." (Excerpts of Carter's story are also posted there.) See also an earlier post on this blog about a Washington Post article on the Convention Center ordeal, and two others relaying a BBC reporter's impressions (I, II).
posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:15:00 AM -- |    

 
"The wrath of God struck New Orleans, and it spared us"
Mayor Ronnie Harris of Gretna, Louisiana -- may its name live in infamy -- actually spoke with Dr. Rob Loftis, a philosophy professor at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York.

Dr. Loftis maintains the blog "Big Monkey, Helpy Chalk" (his baby girl's description of him, if I understand correctly), and shared the notes of his remarkably illuminating -- and remarkably civil, on his part -- conversation in "skynyrd did what they could do." The mayor is unapologetic and even proud of what he did. Excerpts:

• It was never our intent to call New Orleans and ask "how can I help you."
• And the incident on the bridge, what was it, it was civil disobedience. Where they were, the convention center was as safe as safe can be…except for the criminals. And I’m not saying they were all looters.
• I see from these emails people are saying lives were lost because of what we did. That’s bullshit. No one died on that bridge. If people died it was because of the city of New Orleans.
• No one died in my community.
• Not a life was lost on the bridge. And the officer who fired the one shot was Black. And that shotgun blast set them straight. You do whatever is necessary to get these criminals in line. And they aren’t all criminals.
• The wrath of God struck New Orleans, and it spared us.

Loftis concludes, "I can see quite clearly where he is coming from: He thinks he did the right thing, because he protected his people. His problem is that he has too small a view of who his people are."

And/or too small a view of what his responsibilities and duties are. If I have nothing to share, I suppose I could claim to be protecting my family if I were to wave desperate survivors of some catastrophe away from my doorstep. But I can't claim that lets me keep those survivors from escaping that catastrophe on my street -- and forcing them, at gunpoint, back into the danger zone they're trying to escape.

Loftis notes that Harris said "they aren't all criminals" frequently during the conversation. Commenter 'bellatrys' notes that Harris is almost certainly mistaken about "one shot" by a black officer, according to eyewitness accounts she transcribed.* And his talk of God's wrath striking New Orleans and sparing Gretna is especially contemptible and -- dare I say it -- unChristian.

Via Lindsay Beyerstein ("Majikthise"), who is fast moving up my list of most admired bloggers for her writing from the disaster areas. Along with Mr. Loftis.


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*Bellatrys transcribed Lorrie Beth Slonsky's and Denise Bradshaw's account of the Gretna story, as told to "This American Life" at her blog "Nothing New Under The Sun." You can link to her transcript, the audio clip, and other segments of the broadcast "After the flood" via "Recording Katrina." I think Mayor Harris would benefit from a recording of that TAL program.
NOTE: "unchristian" Leviticus 19:33-34 verse citation via Patrick Nielsen Hayden. See also Matthew 25: 31-46, quoted in full by Teresa Nielsen Hayden. Note in both cases the absence of "void when darker skinned people across the river are involved."
posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:30:00 PM -- |    

 
German election campaign very close
The German election today will likely be very close. Recent polls slightly favor a center-right CDU/CSU/FDP coalition over a theoretical SPD/Green/"Left Alliance [Linksbuendnis] coalition by 49.5 to 48 percent; the governing SPD/Green coalition commands only an estimated 39.5 percent of the vote.*

German president Koehler dissolved the German Bundestag in August at Chancellor Schroeder's request. The decision was controversial -- Chancellor Schroeder's tactic met with strong opposition within his own party before it largely supported the paradoxical no-confidence vote.

The decision has seemed a strange one. Schroeder's SPD party struggled, while a new "Linksbuendnis" ("alliance of the left") surged to as high as 12% in polls this summer. Led by former SPD leader Oskar LaFontaine and East German PDS leader Gregor Gysi, the group benefits from left wing disenchantment with the "HARTZ IV" benefits cuts that tightened rules for drawing unemployment. The PDS, hitherto a purely East German party with roots in the old Communist Party there, has made gains in West Germany as high unemployment continues.

However, the Linksbuendnis has fallen back to 8.5% in the latest surveys (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 9/16). Also, voters seem to prefer Schroeder over right wing CDU/CSU party chief Angelika Merkel (53 to 40 percent, ZDF German TV, 9/9), which could be an important factor in the final moments of a close election.

Josef Joffe wrote that a combination of arithmetic and the desire by almost all major parties to "freeze out" the Linksbuendnis may pave the way to a "great coalition" electoral result. In this scenario, the two largest parties (the SPD and the CDU/CSU) would join together in governing the country, leaving smaller parties like the Greens, the FDP (centrist/free market), and the "Linksbuendnis" out in the cold. But that would still leave them in the Bundestag -- all three parties appear likely to clear the 5% threshold for participation in the federal legislature.

Die Zeit's Corinne Emundts, on the other hand, pointed out in August that while SPD party leaders Schroeder and Muenter have ruled out their own participation in a coalition with the "Linksbuendnis," that doesn't mean their party is bound to that pledge.

If Angela Merkel does assume the chancellorship, you'll find a fine bio of her by Jane Kramer in the September 19 New Yorker: "The Rise of Angela Merkel." The upshot is perhaps what one might expect: Merkel comes off as patiently ambitious and politically vague, without nostalgia for her former country of East Germany, and with an ability to seize the moment -- such as when a graft/campaign contribution scandal engulfed her mentor Helmut Kohl in the 1990s. Unfortunately, the article does not appear to be online.

There's also at least one story of her gift for repartee. In a meeting with an Iranian diplomat, the Iranian gave a long and well argued account of why his country was entitled to pursue nuclear energy research, concluding "Why don't you trust us?" Instead of answering, Merkel asked for his opinion on Israel/Palestinian relations. Kramer writes: "When he told her, she said sweetly, 'Now you can understand why we're skeptical.'"

Still, I think Americans shouldn't expect a noticeable lurch to the right in German foreign policy if Merkel assumes power. Kramer notes that Merkel was the chief German negotiator of the Kyoto Treaty. And as far as I can tell, she does not appear inclined to undo Schroeder's and (Foreign Secretary) Fischer's popular foreign policy of near complete noninvolvement in Iraq.


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* Poll results all via SPIEGEL "Election Barometer."

UPDATE, 9/20: Neither major pre-election coalition achieved a majority, a result which may mean neither Schroeder nor Merkel will be the next chancellor. SPIEGEL reports that the final percentages for parties clearing the 5% threshold were CDU/CSU 35.2%, SPD 34.3%, Linksbuendnis 8.7%, FDP 9.8%, Greens 7.1%. Netzeitung reports that a variety of possible coalitions are being ruled out: (1) the FDP has ruled out a coalition with the SPD/Green coalition; (2) the SPD is open to any coalition except with the Linksbuendnis (3) the CDU/CSU rules out a "great coalition" with the SPD if Schroeder is at the helm; (3) the Greens say they won't be part of a CDU/CSU/FDP government (the so-called Jamaica option because of the colors traditionally used as proxies for the parties are those of the Jamaican flag) if Merkel is the chancellor.

Obviously something's got to give, and I'm guessing it will be the current nominal head of the winning coalition. I'm most surprised about (2); take Schroeder out of the equation, and you've got a government with a slim majority that has shifted to the left -- maybe not what policy wonks and economists would like, but arguably the result best reflecting German opinion. Tough for him, but those are the breaks. Alternatively I wonder who the Greens would suggest instead of Merkel, but that may be moot; she's been resoundingly re-elected as head of the CDU/CSU delegation to the Bundestag.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:30:00 PM -- |    

 
Moral hazard writ large
Off and on throughout the Katrina catastrophe, there have been voices raised about the 'moral hazard' of people building homes and lives in flood and storm prone areas, supposedly secure in the knowledge that the federal government will just make them whole once the storm has passed.

But there's another kind of moral hazard. Specifically, we have a president who:

• appears to have listed the wrong parishes in a state of emergency declaration before Katrina hit
• dithered after Katrina hit
• appointed an incompetent resume-padder to head FEMA -- a position involving the physical safety and security of American citizens -- despite FBI research turning up a superior who said "you're surely kidding" when informed of the appointment
  
• appointed another man with little to no relevant experience to be said resume-padder's boss (... after nearly appointing yet another man who turned out to be a corrupt, mobbed up buffoon)
  
• presided over an administration that arguably spent as much time blaming state and local officials and creating photo ops for the press in the first days of the crisis as on anything constructive
  

Now this man, his chief henchman, and assorted minions want to be in charge of the largest reconstruction effort since the Civil War, one they threaten to turn into a laboratory for renewed variations on the themes "drowning government in the bathtub," trickle down economics and wage busting, cronyism, environmental degradation, and the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of affected residents. What's more, they want even greater federal authority and powers in emergencies, when they've conclusively proven they don't have the brains to use what they have, or the heart to exercise leadership to save lives -- instead of pipelines.

Isn't there an even greater moral hazard at work here? At this rate, every screwed up catastrophe is simply an opportunity: to play social Tinkertoys amid the havoc, to shell out billions of dollars to political buddies, to find the next "big thing" for a bored frat boy to be presidential about.

I'm all for looking back in anger at the details of the Katrina disgrace. But looking forward, there's just as great a need to stop these ... traitors, these impeachworthy traitors, from now actually profiting from their willful fecklessness. Or they'll do it again. And again. And again.


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NOTES: "dithered after" -- Kevin Drum; "you're surely kidding" -- Mark A.R. Kleiman; "looking back" -- Stygius; "pipelines" -- Josh Marshall, "no relevant experience" -- Carpetbagger Report.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:08:00 AM -- |