Pillaging, looting - these guys are pros

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Monday, September 19, 2005 12:08 AM

Pillaging, looting - these guys are pros

 

 

 

 

Pillaging, looting - these guys are pros

 

http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-oppay174431691sep18,0,7518509,print.co\

lumn?coll=ny-rightrail-columnist

 

 

 

 

September 18, 2005

 

Now comes the real looting!

 

The $200 billion that President George W. Bush has earmarked for

rebuilding the Gulf of Mexico region is chum for the big-ticket, GOP

contributors. It will bring in the Great White contract-seeking sharks

from Maine all the way to Iraq.

 

Compared to this impending Category 5 feeding frenzy, the hurricane

looting that so transfixed media cameras was barely a summer breeze.

Fox News, for example, spared no cameras in videotaping the looting.

The poor of New Orleans were caught wet-handed in the muddy

floodwaters of Katrina scavenging for food and drink, and yes, the

criminal element were photographed floating off with pilfered weapons

and appliances.

 

It did not matter to Fox that there were no clerks handy when the

displaced flood victims broke through the store doors for succor

certain to be written off as insurance losses.

 

There's no excuse, of course, for hoodlums yielding to the temptations

of thievery. But then, such calamities sometimes bring out the worst

instincts in the most solid of citizens. New Orleans policemen, for

example, were reportedly observed removing plasma televisions from

vacated stores.

 

Such sightings recall accounts of several members of the

super-impeccable New York City police and fire departments looting

expensive jewelry and even jeans from lower Manhattan stores after the

Sept. 11 terror attack on the World Trade Center.

 

Such pilferage in New Orleans, as terrible as Fox News made it out to

be, will pale in insignificance compared to what's in store when the

Bush administration lets the contracts to the GOP contributors to

rebuild the Crescent City and the gulf states. Such looting on the

grand scale will likely prove too sophisticated for U.S. media

analysts, who gag on a gnat and swallow an elephant.

 

What should not be lost here is that this gargantuan expenditure of

$200 billion plays squarely into the hands of the macroeconomic

policymakers of the Bush administration.

 

Stealing chapter and verse from Reagonomics, the Bush budgetmeisters

insist on tax cuts for the wealthy without curtailing federal

spending. In Reagan's case, as blueprinted by David Stockman, the

money was lavishly spent on exotic cold-war military hardware such as

the " Star Wars " Strategic Defense Initiative. The Bush administration

has emptied the federal strongbox by leading the nation into a

needless quagmire of a war in Iraq.

 

President Bush's emptying of the national purse has been nothing short

of breathtaking.

 

Inheriting a national surplus of $232 billion from the Clinton

administration in 2000, Bush has run up an extraordinary deficit of

some $7.95 trillion. Were this debt spread equally to every man, woman

and child citizen of the U.S., each of us would owe $26,797.

 

Does this bother the president? Not in the least. Bush's plan for

rebuilding the gulf states was cavalierly revealed to the American

people Thursday night without actually mentioning the cost.

 

Some of the money, Bush emphasized, will finance a Workers Recovery

Account of up to $5,000 that evacuees could draw on for job training

and child care. Very nice. Other funds would allow for low-income

citizens to build homes through a lottery system, and for states that

took in displaced residents to be reimbursed. However, the lion's

share of the federal money will be used to cover " the great majority

of the cost " of repairing the damaged infrastructure in the gulf

region of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.

 

As the president pronounced his massive federal rebuilding plan, the

cash registers could be heard ringing in the plaza of the French

Quarter where Karl Rove had so meticulously posed Bush in shirtsleeves

before the statue of the seventh president of the republic, Andrew

Jackson. Interestingly, this macho, slave-owning major general who

never attended college was famous for building a strong federal

government that the current GOP decries as anathema.

 

Still, the Bush administration is well on its way to weakening the

government so dramatically that its successor will be hard- pressed to

reverse the trend. This tilt toward federal bankruptcy, as with

Reagan, will cripple the prospects for future social programs.

 

For now, the Bush administration will enable the oil companies to

continue their looting, the rich to retain their fabulous tax breaks,

and the mega- builders, such as Halliburton, to lap up the no-bid

contracts and spiral up the cost overruns. This looting will never

make it onto Fox TV, or much of the rest of the media for that matter.

 

God, what a country!

 

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