Screwed the Undeclared War Against the Middle Class by Thom Hartmann Read Free Book Online Page B

no reasons in the cons' worldview for government service other than self-enrichment.
    The cons say they want smaller government—small enough to "drown in a bathtub"—but what they mean is that they want to provide government services only to business on the theory that what is good for business will eventually trickle down far enough to be good for the rest of us. And they admit that they expect to benefit very nicely themselves from aiding their superrich pals.
    The cons don't really care about the "free" market. They care about taking care of their own. In fact, the cons are more than willing to toss their smaller-is-better mantra right out the window and grow government if it increases their profits and helps them stay in power.
     
G OVERNMENT FOR M Y S IDE AND N OT FOR Y OURS
     
    The cons aren't stupid. They know that government makes a real difference in people's lives. Look at the difference in the response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 versus Hurricane Charley, which hit Jeb Bush's state a year earlier, just months before the 2004 elections.
    Damage estimates from Katrina are well over $100 billion, with more than $34 billion in insured losses, according to the National Climatic Update Center. 5 This is four times more than the combined damage done by Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne in Florida last year, which came to almost $21 billion combined. 6
    We still don't know how many people died from Katrina, and we may never know. More than 1,300 bodies have been found, but more than two thousand people are considered "missing persons," who may have died in the hurricane and whose bodies may never be found. 7 By contrast Hurricane Charley caused the deaths of only eleven people.
    But with Hurricane Charley, in Jeb Bush's red state, in the year of a presidential election, the response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was considerably different thanfor blue-state Louisiana a year later. The day before Hurricane Charley hit, FEMA had mobilized 100 trucks of water, 900,000 Meals Ready to Eat (MREs), more than 7,000 cases of food, and tens of thousands of tarps. Disaster medical assistance teams, urban search-and-rescue teams, and FEMA officials were already in place; and 4,100 troops were called up and waiting to aid flood victims and assist in the distribution of supplies. In short, the government did exactly what it was supposed to do. The federal government was mailing checks to hurricane victims within a week of Charley's passing—including "victims" as far as 500 miles from the damage area. 8
    But when Katrina hit—with no election looming and with death stalking a Democratic state with a Democratic governor unrelated to the president—the Reagan philosophy held ascendant. George W. Bush's call to Americans in response to Hurricane Katrina? "Send cash to the Red Cross." While people were drowning, Bush traveled to Arizona to cut a birthday cake with John McCain and play golf; he then went to California, where he played guitar with a country singer at a fundraiser. It wasn't until three of his top aides drew straws to determine who would give him the bad news that people were dying—four days after the hurricane struck—that he saw a three-hour video they compiled of news reports over the past week and realized he needed to go into quick-PR mode and fly to Louisiana.
    Vice President Dick Cheney stayed on vacation in Wyoming while thousands died in New Orleans; his former (and perhaps future) company, Halliburton, was busy, however, obtaining a multimillion-dollar contract to profit from Hurricane Katrina's cleanup.
    Instead of preparing in advance, FEMA head Michael Brown waited until five hours after Katrina made landfall to finally ask his boss, Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, for authorization for a thousand FEMA staff, active and reserves, to go into the flooded areas—and then suggested theybe given two days to respond. 9 Chertoff, in turn,