[Mb-civic] Rotten Fruit of the 'Reagan Revolution'

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0906-23.htm

Published on Tuesday, September 6, 2005 by Robert Scheer
Rotten Fruit of the 'Reagan Revolution'
by Robert Scheer
 

WHAT THE WORLD has witnessed this past week is an image of 
poverty and social disarray that tears away the affluent mask of the 
United States.

Instead of the much-celebrated American can-do machine that 
promises to bring freedom and prosperity to less fortunate people 
abroad, we have seen a callous official incompetence that puts even 
Third World rulers to shame. The well-reported litany of mistakes by 
the Bush administration in failing to prevent and respond to Katrina's 
destruction grew longer with each hour's grim revelation from the 
streets of an apocalyptic New Orleans.

Yet the problem is much deeper. For half a century, free-market 
purists have to great effect denigrated the essential role that modern 
government performs as some terrible liberal plot. Thus, the 
symbolism of New Orleans' flooding is tragically apt: Franklin 
Roosevelt's New Deal and Louisiana Gov. Huey Long's ambitious 
populist reforms in the 1930s eased Louisiana out of feudalism and 
toward modernity; the Reagan Revolution and the callousness of both 
Bush administrations have sent them back toward the abyss.

Now we have a president who wastes tax revenues in Iraq instead of 
protecting us at home. Levee improvements were deferred in recent 
years even after congressional approval, reportedly prompting EPA 
staffers to dub flooded New Orleans "Lake George."

None of this is an oversight, or simple incompetence. It is the result of 
a campaign by most Republicans and too many Democrats to 
systematically vilify the role of government in American life. 
Manipulative politicians have convinced lower- and middle-class whites 
that their own economic pains were caused by "quasi-socialist" 
government policies that aid only poor brown and black people — even 
as corporate profits and CEO salaries soared.

For decades we have seen social services that benefit everyone — 
education, community policing, public health, environmental 
protections and infrastructure repair, emergency services — in steady, 
steep decline in the face of tax cuts and rising military spending. But it 
is a false savings; it will certainly cost exponentially more to save New 
Orleans than it would have to protect it in the first place.

And, although the wealthy can soften the blow of this national decline 
by sending their kids to private school, building walls around their 
communities and checking into distant hotels in the face of 
approaching calamities, others, like the 150,000 people living below 
the poverty line in the Katrina damage area — one-third of whom are 
elderly — are left exposed.

Watching on television the stark vulnerability of a permanent 
underclass of African Americans living in New Orleans ghettos is 
terrifying. It should be remembered, however, that even when 
hurricanes are not threatening their lives and sanity, they live in rotting 
housing complexes, attend embarrassingly ill-equipped public schools 
and, lacking adequate police protection, are frequently terrorized by 
unemployed, uneducated young men.

In fact, rather than an anomaly, the public suffering of these desperate 
Americans is a symbol for a nation that is becoming progressively 
poorer under the leadership of the party of Big Business. As Katrina 
was making its devastating landfall, the U.S. Census Bureau released 
new figures that show that since 1999, the income of the poorest fifth 
of Americans has dropped 8.7% in inflation-adjusted dollars. Last year 
alone, 1.1 million were added to the 36 million already on the poverty 
rolls.

For those who have trouble with statistics, here's the shorthand: The 
rich have been getting richer and the poor have been getting, in the 
ripe populist language of Louisiana's legendary Long, the shaft.

These are people who have long since been abandoned to their fate. 
Despite the deep religiosity of the Gulf States and the United States in 
general, it is the gods of greed that seem to rule. Case in point: The 
crucial New Orleans marshland that absorbs excess water during 
storms has been greatly denuded by rampant commercial 
development allowed by a deregulation-crazy culture that favors a 
quick buck over long-term community benefits.

Given all this, it is no surprise that leaders, from the White House on 
down, haven't done right by the people of New Orleans and the rest of 
the region, before and after what insurance companies insultingly call 
an "act of God."

Fact is, most of them, and especially our president, just don't care 
about the people who can't afford to attend political fundraisers or pay 
for high-priced lobbyists. No, these folks are supposed to be cruising 
on the rising tide of a booming, unregulated economy that "floats all 
boats."

They were left floating all right.

Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Time



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