Editorials

Thursday’s New York Times editorial started out “George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday…” Well, he’s already topped himself. On Thursday morning he told ABC News, as quoted online by the BBC, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did appreciate a serious storm but these levees got breached and as a result much of New Orleans is flooded ….” Yes, Mr. President, many people did anticipate the breach of the levees, but you and your advisers chose to ignore them. Thursday’s papers were already full of the accounting of how the current administration has chosen to ignore the facts on the ground. Molly Ivins in her syndicated column did a tidy roundup of all the ways that budget essential to protecting New Orleans from the inevitable and anticipated breach of the levees was diverted by the Bush administration into the war in Iraq and other follies.  

Finger-pointing when disaster strikes is sometimes considered to be in bad taste. Some prefer to consider the devastation which has accompanied Hurricane Katrina as “an act of God.” The godly should be the first to object to this, since much of the suffering is caused by the action, or failure to act, of humans who should know better.  

Here we are, once again, experiencing what we’ve come to call a Cassandra Moment. Things happen, bad things that many of us have long predicted, and the fools who are running the country act surprised. The failure of Iraq’s constitutional process is another example. Why in the world would anyone think that three or more tribes which have been at odds for centuries could agree on how to govern a devastated area with just a few months’ deliberation?  

Government as we knew it seems to have disintegrated on every level. Arnold Schwarzenegger is clearly unable to govern the state of California, again not surprising to many of us. When the inevitable natural disaster strikes here, and it will, probably in the form of an earthquake, the Bushes and the Schwarzeneggers, having pilfered the federal and state treasuries for tax cuts for the already wealthy, will act surprised once more that they can’t deal with the emergency.  

At least there’s always some good news about how ordinary citizens have managed to take care of themselves when the government let them down. Here’s one story from Marge Taylor, 78, a retired Contra Costa County deputy. She’s one of the Richmond area’s lively community of former Louisianans who moved to the East Bay in the mid-’40s, part of the great defense plant migration. She told us that Tuesday she cried all day, after hearing from her New Orleans sister Hildred Williams, 75, that her nephew Charles had missed the family’s evacuation. Their home was in one of the lowest lying parishes in the city, so they assumed the worst when they didn’t hear from him.  

Yesterday, thank goodness, they did. It turns out that, despite being in poor health, he’d gotten himself and his dog Rex on some kind of raft, and had paddled their way out to where a kind stranger in a truck picked them up. They made it last night to their old home town of San Gabriel, La., where cousins had laid by enough food to feed the extended family for a while. “It was kind of like a family reunion—they even had a little barbecue yesterday,” Marge told me. She said she told her nephew Charles “you caused me to cry so many tears—I’ll never have to cry again.” And the house, it turns out, can be fixed. 

The family of longtime Point Richmond blues singer Barbara Rhodes, in Gulfport, Mississippi, wasn’t quite so lucky. Her sister Teresa, who also lived in the Point for a while, reports that their home was completely demolished, though the family members had been evacuated to safety. Barbara and Point Richmond fans are busy organizing a benefit fundraising concert. 

Many people do manage to take care of themselves, their families and even strangers, in some fashion-- the human species is remarkably resilient. But many more aren’t going to be so lucky this time. It’s tragic to think that many of the deaths and much of the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina could have been prevented if the federal government hadn’t cut the funds for levee maintenance. When the Big One hits around here, will we have learned enough from this experience to have adequate disaster relief in place, or have funds been cut too much in that area too? That’s the kind of question people all over the U.S. should be asking right now.  

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