[Vision2020] Local Accountability: New Orleans? Iraq?

[Tbertruss at aol.com]

All:

We have heard Bush supporters touting the virtues of personal and local 
accountability for the Hurricane Katrina disaster, deflecting responsibility away 
from the US federal government both for not improving the flood control systems 
around New Orleans, and for the lack of quick response to those suffering.  
No doubt there is truth that accountability for the lack of planning for the 
disaster and the slow response to the needy extends from each unique individual 
to city, county, state and federal personnel and institutions.

However, if personal and local accountability is the approach to government 
and society touted by republican conservatives, and we should therefore not 
expect that our federal government be critically relied upon for preparations and 
planning for a rapid and extensive response to major disasters, what is the 
logic behind trying to rebuild entire nations around the globe with the 
resources of this same federal government we should not be so dependent upon?

We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq, some of it to 
reconstruct their infrastructure, while a tiny fraction of this amount of money ($14 
billion was an estimate given by one source) allocated to improve the flood 
control systems around New Orleans could have averted the worst of Katrina's 
wrath, a project a private company would certainly not undertake for profit, 
involving an amount of money very difficult for local and Louisiana State 
institutions to finance.

Many US citizens are now questioning the wisdom of spending 100s of billions 
of dollars on foreign soil to improve other nation's infrastructure, 
ostensibly to keep the US safe from "terror," while we have neglected critical US 
infrastructure, such as the New Orleans's flood control system, leading to a deadly 
national disaster that was well known could result from a major hurricane 
hitting New Orleans.

Let's let the Iraq people solve their own society's problems, and not rely on 
the inefficient and wasteful US federal government to solve their problems 
for them, right?  This is the logic conservative republicans are applying to US 
citizens, is it not?

This appears to be a sensible conservative approach, unlike the nonsense 
coming from conservative republicans squandering US taxpayers money in foolish 
schemes of foreign nation building managed by the same federal government the 
same conservative republican's insist is inefficient and wasteful in response to 
requests that federal public taxpayers money be spent on critical 
infrastructure improvements inside the USA, such as the New Orleans's flood control 
systems.


Ted Moffett 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20050910/6b64fdbf/attachment.htm