ROBERT SCHEER
The real costs of a culture of greed
Robert Scheer
September 6, 2005
WHAT THE WORLD has witnessed this past week is an image of poverty and
social disarray that tears away the affluent mask of the United States.
Instead of the much-celebrated American can-do machine that promises to
bring freedom and prosperity to less fortunate people abroad, we have
seen a callous official incompetence that puts even Third World rulers
to shame. The well-reported litany of mistakes by the Bush
administration in failing to prevent and respond to Katrina's
destruction grew longer with each hour's grim revelation from the
streets of an apocalyptic New Orleans.
Yet the problem is
much deeper. For half a century, free-market purists have to great
effect denigrated the essential role that modern government performs as
some terrible liberal plot. Thus, the symbolism of New Orleans'
flooding is tragically apt: Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Louisiana
Gov. Huey Long's ambitious populist reforms in the 1930s eased
Louisiana out of feudalism and toward modernity; the Reagan Revolution
and the callousness of both Bush administrations have sent them back
toward the abyss.
Now we have a president who wastes tax
revenues in Iraq instead of protecting us at home. Levee improvements
were deferred in recent years even after congressional approval,
reportedly prompting EPA staffers to dub flooded New Orleans "Lake
George."
None of this is an oversight, or simple incompetence.
It is the result of a campaign by most Republicans and too many
Democrats to systematically vilify the role of government in American
life. Manipulative politicians have convinced lower- and middle-class
whites that their own economic pains were caused by "quasi-socialist"
government policies that aid only poor brown and black people — even as
corporate profits and CEO salaries soared.
For decades we have
seen social services that benefit everyone — education, community
policing, public health, environmental protections and infrastructure
repair, emergency services — in steady, steep decline in the face of
tax cuts and rising military spending. But it is a false savings; it
will certainly cost exponentially more to save New Orleans than it
would have to protect it in the first place.
And, although the
wealthy can soften the blow of this national decline by sending their
kids to private school, building walls around their communities and
checking into distant hotels in the face of approaching calamities,
others, like the 150,000 people living below the poverty line in the
Katrina damage area — one-third of whom are elderly — are left exposed.
Watching on television the stark vulnerability of a permanent
underclass of African Americans living in New Orleans ghettos is
terrifying. It should be remembered, however, that even when hurricanes
are not threatening their lives and sanity, they live in rotting
housing complexes, attend embarrassingly ill-equipped public schools
and, lacking adequate police protection, are frequently terrorized by
unemployed, uneducated young men.
In fact, rather than an
anomaly, the public suffering of these desperate Americans is a symbol
for a nation that is becoming progressively poorer under the leadership
of the party of Big Business. As Katrina was making its devastating
landfall, the U.S. Census Bureau released new figures that show that
since 1999, the income of the poorest fifth of Americans has dropped
8.7% in inflation-adjusted dollars. Last year alone, 1.1 million were
added to the 36 million already on the poverty rolls.
For
those who have trouble with statistics, here's the shorthand: The rich
have been getting richer and the poor have been getting, in the ripe
populist language of Louisiana's legendary Long, the shaft.
These are people who have long since been abandoned to their fate.
Despite the deep religiosity of the Gulf States and the United States
in general, it is the gods of greed that seem to rule. Case in point:
The crucial New Orleans marshland that absorbs excess water during
storms has been greatly denuded by rampant commercial development
allowed by a deregulation-crazy culture that favors a quick buck over
long-term community benefits.
Given all this, it is no surprise
that leaders, from the White House on down, haven't done right by the
people of New Orleans and the rest of the region, before and after what
insurance companies insultingly call an "act of God."
Fact
is, most of them, and especially our president, just don't care about
the people who can't afford to attend political fundraisers or pay for
high-priced lobbyists. No, these folks are supposed to be cruising on
the rising tide of a booming, unregulated economy that "floats all
boats."
They were left floating all right.
|