On October 11, 2004, The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a story by Paul Nussbaum entitled “Direct Hurricane Hit Could Drown City of New Orleans, Experts Say.” It warned that “more than 25,000 people could die, emergency officials predict. That would make it the deadliest disaster in U.S. history.” The story quoted Terry C. Tuller, city director of emergency preparedness: “It’s only a matter of time. The thing that keeps me awake at night is the 100,000 people who couldn’t leave.”
But policy makers in the White House and the Congress were not moved by these ominous predictions; the warnings did not deter them from further cutting non-military public spending in order to pay for the escalating military spending and for the additional tax cuts for the wealthy. “The Bush administration’s response to these frightening forecasts was to rebuff Louisiana’s urgent requests for more flood protection: the crucial Coast 2050 Project to revive protective wetlands, the culmination of a decade of research and negotiation, was shelved and levee appropriations, including the completion of defenses around Lake Pontchartrain, were repeatedly slashed.”[3]
More than precious dollars were diverted to Iraq. In addition, much of the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard personnel were also tied to the war: “Some 6,000 National Guard personnel in Louisiana and Mississippi who would be available to help deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina are in Iraq,” Pete Yost of AP reported on August 29. “The war has forced the Guard into becoming an operational force, far from its historic role as a strategic reserve primarily available to governors for disasters and other duties in their home states.”[3]
Not only did the Bush administration and its corporate allies in the Congress not finance urgent requests for the repair of the deteriorating public infrastructure, but at times the administration even punished dedicated civil servants who insisted on the necessity of such repairs. For example, Mike Parker, the former head of the Army Corps of Engineers, “was forced to resign in 2002 over budget disagreements with the White House.” Parker drew media attention (and the White House's ire) in 2002 by telling the Senate Budget Committee that a White House proposal to cut just over $2 billion from the Corps' $6 billion budget request would have a "negative impact" on the national interest. After Parker's Capitol Hill appearance, Mitch Daniels (former director of the Office of Management and Budget, which sets the administration's annual budget goals), wrote an angry memo to President Bush, writing that Parker's testimony "reads badly . . . on the printed page," and that "Parker. . . [was] distancing [himself] actively from the administration." Parker “was forced to resign shortly thereafter.”[4]
The amount of investment that could reinforce the New Orleans levee system and save the city from death and destruction pales by the magnitude of the loss in terms of lives and property. For example, Alfred Naomi, The New Orleans project manager for the Army Corps of Engineers, who had drawn up plans for protecting New Orleans from a Category 5 storm, pointed out soon after Katrina hit: “It would take $2.5 billion to build a Category 5 protection system, and [now] we’re talking about tens of billions in losses, all that lost productivity, and so many lost lives and injuries and personal trauma you’ll never get over.”[4]
Champions of war and militarism tend to justify their capricious escalation of wars of choice on the grounds of “national security.” Yet, by hollowing out national treasury in favor of military spending at the expense of non-military public spending, they have created enormous economic insecurity and social vulnerability in the face of natural disasters, as painfully experienced by the victims of Hurricane Katrina. They have also created more political insecurity, both at home (by creating an atmosphere of fear and anxiety akin to an emergency or national security state) and abroad (by creating more opposition to the imperial policies of the United States and, therefore, adding to the ranks of Al-Qaedeh, for example).
The fundamental moral of Katrina disaster is unmistakable: contrary to the dogma of neoliberalism and/or supply-side economics, governments bear vital responsibilities. These include provision of essential services and critical public goods that individuals and the private sector would not provide. They also include the building of a robust public infrastructure that is necessary for a vibrant economy and a civilized society.
These responsibilities sometimes mean setting standards and instituting regulations in order to protect citizens against both natural disasters and failures of a market economy (such as making buildings earthquake proof, or having basic housing codes, or requiring factories and cars to limit pollution). Perhaps most importantly, government responsibilities include investment in vital public capital formation, both physical capital (such as roads, bridges, dams, levees, and public transit) and soft, social, or human capital such as health and education).
Myopic supply-side calculations, prompted by powerful special interests, tend to view these expenditures as redundant overheads that need to be curtailed as much as possible. Sensible, judicious or responsible governments, however, would view such expenditures as vital investments in the long-term economic vitality and social prosperity that would
more than offset the short-term costs of those investments.
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REFERENCES
[1] Matthew Rothschild, “Katrina Compounded.” The Progressive (September 1, 2005).
[2] George Lakoff, “The Post-Katrina Era.” AlterNet.org (September 6, 2005).
[3] Mike Davis, “Catastrophic Economics: The Predators of New Orleans.” Le Monde Diplomatique (October 2005).
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