Our Own Tough Times: New Orleans

Although it's unlikely you heard about it (since it's no longer "fashionable" to cover New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there was a big demonstration in NOLA over last weekend because these folks are so damned far from being able to call tbeir beloved city worthy of habitation... at least, worthy of habitation outside big and wealthy neighborhoods and major concerns moving in to grab cheapened land.

Let me share a horrific statistic: NOLA was pledged something like $830 million by various countries to provide aid. To date, the Bush Administration's federal government has released no more than $40 million of this to NOLA. We know they have far more sitting there, and other countries keep asking Washington when they can send their money so it can be used.

(facetious mode on) I'm certain keeping the majority low income, people "of color" population from the funds they need, especially in light of a Democratic mayor and a Democratic woman governor, plays no role whatsover.

And if you believe the last paragraph, I've got some lovely "real estate" in the Ninth Ward to show you.

Newt Gingrich Pulls Traditional GOP Trick: Blame The Poor Victims For What Was Perpetrated Upon Them

Yes, boys and girls, the failure of New Orleans to thrive after the federal government failed so horrifically following Hurricane Katrina is NOT FEMA's wrong, not the Bush Administration's fault and not because, as we have since learned from former FEMA director Michael "You're doing a heluva job, Brownie) Brown, the Bushies decided to "sacrifice" New Orleans to make it look bad for NOLA's Democratic mayor and Louisiana's woman Dem governor. Former Speaker of the House (and always current adulterer and scumbag) Newt Gingrich places ALL the blame squarely on the shoulders of poor black Ninth Ward residents whom, he says, failed as citizens.

From Our Future:

There's more to say about Newt Gingrich (who looks more like a presidential candidate after today) but let me call attention to this from his grand finale address to CPAC:

He blamed the residents of New Orleans' 9th Ward for a "failure of citizenship," by being "so uneducated and so unprepared, they literally couldn't get out of the way of a hurricane."
And he called for a "deep investigation" into this "failure of citizenship."

Here's the full quote:

How can you have the mess we have in New Orleans, and not have had deep investigations of the federal government, the state government, the city government, and the failure of citizenship in the Ninth Ward, where 22,000 people were so uneducated and so unprepared, they literally couldn't get out of the way of a hurricane.

To listen to the audio, click here.

And Newt wants to be president?

Hey, if the GOP nominates him, they may need more than just "fixed" electronic voting machines to do it.

Paul Krugman: "Valor and Squalor"

In his Times column today, Dr. Krugman turns his ink-loaded scalpel toward the Bush-worsened debacle surrounding care for our wounded troops at Walter Reed and other military hospitals. Read it all here or be satisfied with my thick sniplet:

When Salon, the online magazine, reported on mistreatment of veterans at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center two years ago, officials simply denied that there were any problems. And they initially tried to brush off last month’s exposé in The Washington Post.

But this time, with President Bush’s approval at 29 percent, Democrats in control of Congress, and Donald Rumsfeld no longer defense secretary — Robert Gates, his successor, appears genuinely distressed at the situation — the whitewash didn’t stick.

Yet even now it’s not clear whether the public will be told the full story, which is that the horrors of Walter Reed’s outpatient unit are no aberration. For all its cries of “support the troops,” the Bush administration has treated veterans’ medical care the same way it treats everything else: nickel-and-diming the needy, protecting the incompetent and privatizing everything it can.

What makes this a particular shame is that in the Clinton years, veterans’ health care — like the Federal Emergency Management Agency — became a shining example of how good leadership can revitalize a troubled government program. By the early years of this decade the Veterans Health Administration was, by many measures, providing the highest-quality health care in America. (It probably still is: Walter Reed is a military facility, not run by the V.H.A.)

But as with FEMA, the Bush administration has done all it can to undermine that achievement. And the Walter Reed scandal is another Hurricane Katrina: the moment when the administration’s misgovernment became obvious to everyone.

The problem starts with money. The administration uses carefully cooked numbers to pretend that it has been generous to veterans, but the historical data contained in its own budget for fiscal 2008 tell the true story. The quagmire in Iraq has vastly increased the demands on the Veterans Administration, yet since 2001 federal outlays for veterans’ medical care have actually lagged behind overall national health spending.

To save money, the administration has been charging veterans for many formerly free services. For example, in 2005 Salon reported that some Walter Reed patients were forced to pay hundreds of dollars each month for their meals.

More important, the administration has broken longstanding promises of lifetime health care to those who defend our nation. Two months before the invasion of Iraq the V.H.A., which previously offered care to all veterans, introduced severe new restrictions on who is entitled to enroll in its health care system. As the agency’s Web site helpfully explains, veterans whose income exceeds as little as $27,790 a year, and who lack “special eligibilities such as a compensable service connected condition or recent combat service,” will be turned away.

Rozius has the rest.