New Orleans and the Death of the Common Good

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Thu, 01 Sep 2005 22:04:42 -0400

[GranniesAgainstGeorge] New Orleans and the Death of the Common Good

 

 

 

September 1, 2005

 

The Perfect Storm

New Orleans and the Death of the Common Good

By CHRIS FLOYD

 

" The river rose all day,

The river rose all night.

Some people got lost in the flood,

Some people got away all right.

The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemine:

Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline.

 

" Louisiana, Louisiana,

They're trying to wash us away,

They're trying to wash us away. "

 

-- Randy Newman, Louisiana 1927

 

The destruction of New Orleans represents a confluence of many of the most

pernicious trends in American politics and culture: poverty, racism, militarism,

elitist greed, environmental abuse, public corruption and the decay of democracy

at every level.

 

Much of this is embodied in the odd phrasing that even the most circumspect

mainstream media sources have been using to describe the hardest-hit victims of

the storm and its devastating aftermath: " those who chose to stay behind. "

Instantly, the situation has been framed with language to flatter the prejudices

of the comfortable and deny the reality of the most vulnerable.

 

It is obvious that the vast majority of those who failed to evacuate are poor:

they had nowhere else to go, no way to get there, no means to sustain themselves

and their families on strange ground. While there were certainly people who

stayed behind by choice, most stayed behind because they had no choice. They

were trapped by their poverty ­ and many have paid the price with their lives.

 

Yet across the media spectrum, the faint hint of disapproval drips from the

affluent observers, the clear implication that the victims were just too lazy

and shiftless to get out of harm's way. There is simply no understanding ­ not

even an attempt at understanding ­ the destitution, the isolation, the

immobility of the poor and the sick and the broken among us.

 

This is from the " respectable " media; the great right-wing echo chamber was even

less restrained, of course, leaping straight into giddy convulsions of racism at

the first reports of looting in the devastated city. In the pinched-gonad

squeals of Rush Limbaugh and his fellow hatemongers, the hard-right media

immediately conjured up images of wild-eyed darkies rampaging through the

streets in an orgy of violence and thievery.

 

Not that the mainstreamers ignored the racist angle. There was the already

infamous juxtaposition of captions for wire service photos, where depictions of

essentially the same scene ­ desperate people wading through flood waters,

clutching plastic bags full of groceries ­ were given markedly different spins.

In one picture, a white couple are described as struggling along after finding

bread and soda at a grocery store. But beneath an almost identical photo of a

young black man with a bag of groceries, we are told that a " looter " wades

through the streets after robbing a grocery store. In the photo I saw, this evil

miscreant also had a ­ gasp! ­ pack of diapers under his arm.

 

Almost all of the early " looting " was like this: desperate people ­ of all

colors ­ stranded by the floodwaters broke into abandoned stores and carried off

food, clean water, medicine, clothes. Perhaps they should have left a check on

the counter, but then again ­ what exactly was going to happen to all those

perishables and consumer goods, sitting around in fetid, diseased water for

weeks on end? (The mayor now says it could be up to 16 weeks before people can

return to their homes and businesses.) Obviously, most if not all of it would

have been thrown away or written off in any case. Later, of course, there was

more organized looting by criminal gangs, the type of lawless element ­ of every

hue, in every society ­ whose chief victims are, of course, the poor and

vulnerable. These criminal operations were quickly conflated with the earlier

pilferage to paint a single seamless picture of the American media's favorite

horror story: Black Folk Gone Wild.

 

But here again another question was left unasked: Where were the resources ­ the

money, manpower, materiel, transport ­ that could have removed all those forced

to stay behind, and given them someplace safe and sustaining to take shelter?

Where, indeed, were the resources that could have bolstered the city's defenses

and shored up its levees? Where were the National Guard troops that could have

secured the streets and directed survivors to food and aid? Where were the

public resources ­ the physical manifestation of the citizenry's commitment to

the common good ­ that could have greatly mitigated the brutal effects of this

natural disaster?

 

" President Coolidge came down here in a railroad train,

With a little fat man with a notebook in his hand.

The president say, " Little fat man, isn't it a shame

What the river has done to this poor cracker's land? "

 

Well, we all know what happened to those vital resources. They had been cut

back, stripped down, gutted, pilfered ­ looted ­ to pay for a war of aggression,

to pay for a tax cut for the wealthiest, safest, most protected Americans, to

gorge the coffers of a small number of private and corporate fortunes, while

letting the public sector ­ the common good ­ wither and die on the vine. These

were all specific actions of the Bush Administration ­ including the devastating

budget cuts on projects specifically designed to bolster New Orleans' defenses

against a catastrophic hurricane. Bush even cut money for strengthening the very

levees that broke and delivered the deathblow to the city. All this, in the face

of specific warnings of what would happen if these measures were neglected: the

city would go down " under 20 feet of water, " one expert predicted just a few

weeks ago.

 

But Bush said there was no money for this kind of folderol anymore. The federal

budget had been busted by his tax cuts and his war. And this was a deliberate

policy: as Bush's mentor Grover Norquist famously put it, the whole Bushist

ethos was to starve the federal government of funds, shrinking it down so " we

can drown it in the bathtub. " As it turned out, the bathtub wasn't quite big

enough -- so they drowned it in the streets of New Orleans instead.

 

But as culpable, criminal and loathsome as the Bush Administration is, it is

only the apotheosis of an overarching trend in American society that has been

gathering force for decades: the destruction of the idea of a common good, a

public sector whose benefits and responsibilities are shared by all, and

directed by the consent of the governed. For more than 30 years, the corporate

Right has waged a relentless and highly focused campaign against the common

good, seeking to atomize individuals into isolated " consumer units " whose

political energies ­ kept deliberately underinformed by the ubiquitous corporate

media ­ can be diverted into emotionalized " hot button " issues (gay marriage,

school prayer, intelligent design, flag burning, welfare queens, drugs, porn,

abortion, teen sex, commie subversion, terrorist threats, etc., etc.) that never

threaten Big Money's bottom line.

 

Again deliberately, with smear, spin and sham, they have sought ­ and succeeded

­ in poisoning the well of the democratic process, turning it into a tabloid

melee where only " character counts " while the rapacious policies of Big Money's

bought-and-sold candidates are completely ignored. As Big Money solidified its

ascendancy over government, pouring billions ­ over and under the table ­ into

campaign coffers, politicians could ignore larger and larger swathes of the

people. If you can't hook yourself up to a well-funded, coffer-filling interest

group, if you can't hire a big-time Beltway player to lobby your cause and get

you " a seat at the table, " then your voice goes unheard, your concerns are

shunted aside. (Apart from a few cynical gestures around election-time, of

course.) The poor, the sick, the weak, the vulnerable have become invisible ­ in

the media, in the corporate boardroom, " at the table " of the power players in

national, state and local governments. The increasingly marginalized and

unstable middle class is also fading from the consciousness of the rulers, whose

servicing of the elite goes more brazen and frantic all the time.

 

When unbridled commercial development of delicately balanced environments like

the Mississippi Delta is bruited " at the table, " whose voice is heard? Not the

poor, who, as we have seen this week, will overwhelmingly bear the brunt of the

overstressed environment. And not the middle class, who might opt for the

security of safer, saner development policies to protect their hard-won homes

and businesses. No, the only voice that matters is that of the developers

themselves, and the elite investors who stand behind them.

 

" Louisiana, Louisiana,

They're trying to wash us away "

 

The destruction of New Orleans was a work of nature ­ but a nature that has been

worked upon by human hands and human policies. As global climate change

continues its deadly symbiosis with unbridled commercial development for elite

profit, we will see more such destruction, far more, on an even more devastating

scale. As the harsh, aggressive militarism and brutal corporate ethos that Bush

has injected into the mainstream of American society continues to spread its

poison, we will see fewer and fewer resources available to nurture the common

good. As the political process becomes more and more corrupt, ever more a

creation of elite puppetmasters and their craven bagmen, we will see the poor

and the weak and even the middle class driven further and further into the low

ground of society, where every passing storm ­ economic, political, natural ­

will threaten their homes, their livelihoods, their very existence.

 

" Louisiana, Louisiana,

They're trying to wash us away

They're trying to wash us away

They're trying to wash us away

They're trying to wash us away "

 

Chris Floyd is a columnist for The Moscow Times and regular contributor to

CounterPunch. A new, upgraded version of his blog, " Empire Burlesque, " can be

found at www.chris-floyd.com.

 

----------------------------

 

 

Hurricane Protection A Low Priority For Bush

 

Below is a history of funding for the Lake Pontchartrain and Vincinity

Hurricane Protection project. (Note: This was the levee system that

broke. Due to lack of funding, major construction stopped in 2004 —

the first such stoppage in 37 years.)

 

2004:

 

Army Corps request: $11 million [Link]

Bush request: $3 million [Link]

Approved by Congress: $5.5 million [Link]

 

2005:

 

Army Corps request: $22.5 million [Link]

Bush request: $3.9 million [Link]

Approved by Congress: $5.7 million [Link]

 

2006:

 

Bush request: $2.9 million [Link]

 

Today, Scott McClellan claimed that " flood control has been a priority

of this administration from day one. " This figures show that the

administration has consistently budgeted far less that the U.S. Army

Corps of Engineers has requested for flood control in Louisiana. And

over the last several years, the gap between what the Corps requested

and what the administration budgeted has increased.

http://thinkprogress.org/