Paul Krugman on the Ideological Blinders of the Bush Administration

Why would the Bush administration break FEMA? Paul Krugman proposes an answer:

Killed by Contempt - New York Times: Each day since Katrina brings more evidence of the lethal ineptitude of federal officials. I'm not letting state and local officials off the hook, but federal officials had access to resources that could have made all the difference, but were never mobilized.

Here's one of many examples: The Chicago Tribune reports that the U.S.S. Bataan, equipped with six operating rooms, hundreds of hospital beds and the ability to produce 100,000 gallons of fresh water a day, has been sitting off the Gulf Coast since last Monday - without patients.

Experts say that the first 72 hours after a natural disaster are the crucial window during which prompt action can save many lives. Yet action after Katrina was anything but prompt. Newsweek reports that a "strange paralysis" set in among Bush administration officials, who debated lines of authority while thousands died....

But the federal government's lethal ineptitude wasn't just a consequence of Mr. Bush's personal inadequacy; it was a consequence of ideological hostility to the very idea of using government to serve the public good. For 25 years the right has been denigrating the public sector, telling us that government is always the problem, not the solution. Why should we be surprised that when we needed a government solution, it wasn't forthcoming?... Which brings us to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In my last column, I asked whether the Bush administration had destroyed FEMA's effectiveness. Now we know the answer.

Several recent news analyses on FEMA's sorry state have attributed the agency's decline to its inclusion in the Department of Homeland Security, whose prime concern is terrorism, not natural disasters. But that supposed change in focus misses a crucial part of the story.... [T]he undermining of FEMA began as soon as President Bush took office. Instead of choosing a professional with expertise in responses to disaster to head the agency, Mr. Bush appointed Joseph Allbaugh, a close political confidant. Mr. Allbaugh quickly began trying to scale back some of FEMA's preparedness programs.... [W]hen Mr. Allbaugh left, Mr. Brown became the agency's director. The raw cronyism of that appointment showed the contempt the administration felt for the agency; one can only imagine the effects on staff morale.

That contempt, as I've said, reflects a general hostility to the role of government as a force for good. And Americans living along the Gulf Coast have now reaped the consequences of that hostility...

I think he's right: if we elect people who don't think a functioning government is very important, we shouldn't be surprised when it turns out we don't have a functioning government.

Comments

[Mark]

Another recent example: Rick "Sanctum" Santorum wanting to slap down the National Weather Service for being too useful.

[Rob]

I think there is another factor dealing with FEMA that is not getting enough play. On the far right, and here we are talking about one world government/antichrist in our midsts types, FEMA was cast as the way in which the government would establish martial law and take away your guns/force abortions/install atheism in every home,etc. So there was a part of Bush's base that was openly hostile to FEMA and would cheer as the agency was rolled back.

[BC]

It's the easiest thing in the world to underfund a government agency, thereby rendering it impotent or highly inefficient, then to cite its inefficiency as grounds to reduce funding further or eliminate it altogether. Child's play, really. It takes real skill, however, to do that to the entire federal government. But the Bush people are approaching that level.

[alan]

I have yet to see the Republican party pay any sort of political price for any of this. The experts predict that the Republicans will still hold on to their majorites in the House and Senate in 2006, and of course that means that any meaningful investigation of Bush will never be done.

Even if the Democrats do gain a majority somewhere, they will probably play along and not be agressive in an effort not to appear "partisan." I just don't know what to have hope in anymore.

[christo]

But they're not reducing funding to the govt as a whole. They just passed the highway bill on steroids funding flower pots and an Alaskan bridge to an island populated by 25,000 penguins. Let's stop the starve the beast meme. Maybe that will kick in later but at present there have been lots and lots of dollars for boffos.

[bcinaz]

But don't discount the effects cronyism can have on the function of government. We have heard tell that in some areas, the state had taken action and FEMA actively interfered to prevent the delivery of water, the collection of fuel and the efficacy of communications. Since Louisiana Emergency officials aren't holding daily CYA briefings, we have yet to hear their side of the story.

The sheer size and scope of DHS doesn't fit with small government ideology. Destroying government through incompetence does.

[wishful]

Christo, I agree wholheartedly. One small alternate viewpoint--maybe their definition of the "beast" that they are starving is the social safety net, not the fed gov't in general. That's what you're saying I think, but the evil is more apparent if we call a spade a spade. They think of the non-wealthy and non-well-connected (us) as beasts, only worthy of starving. Literally. See NOLA. FEMA ACTIVELY turned away food, water and medical supplies away, and people (us) died for lack of a glass of water. Welcome to our brave new world, unless we take back our democracy.

[anne]

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG97/fsa/gallery.html

Here are Walker Evan's Depression images of the poor white South. This is what the New Deal legacy, a federal legacy, was meant to change.

Richard Niebuhr, my dear teacher, always told us Agee and Evans had written one of the finest works of the century in "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men." We might revisit this work to remember and understand what was before and what was after.

[Bruce Webb]

Alan, it seems you are giving up a little early in the game here. In exactly what way would Republicans have "paid a price" since Wednesday when the wheels started coming off? And the "experts" you cite are the same yo-yo's that explained the last thing you wanted to do was oppose "a popular war-time President".

Doom and Gloomers have been impeding progress from Day One. Some people got to work opposing this Administration when Bush's numbers were sitting at 92. Some of us were unhappy when we couldn't quite pull out the election but understood we had carved 41 points off Bush approval and vowed to just keep plugging away.

And some people just whined and bitched and Beinarted the whole way along. There is an old saying "Lead, follow or get out of the way". I don't expect Doomers to be leaders, they are pretty useless as followers, the alternative is obvious.

http://www.pollkatz.homestead.com/files/pollkatzmainGRAPHICS_8911_image001.gif

(My God, I hadn't seen that ARG number, and Zogby and CBS/NYT are not far behind. The graph has been pretty much flat for a whole year and I was thinking Bush had tested the bottom. But it seems that the graph is taking shape once again. The key will be if Republicans can just let go of Bush like they let go of Nixon, sacrificing the leader for the sake of the Party.)

[STS]

It isn't so much that FEMA has been "destroyed", but rather that it did not take the threat to NO seriously.
Back in 2004, when Florida was getting beaten up by hurricanes, FEMA was much more proactive. Of course by end of the hurricane season -- just before the election -- even the Bush anti-effective-gov't crowd were ready to focus on getting emergency supplies pre-positioned.

It's all about values -- specifically who and what you value.

[Davis X. Machina]

I've found that the service, and the food, in a restaurant, either Chinese or Italian, goes to hell if the place is mobbed (or triad-ed) up.

Taking care of your own is nice, and a craftsman's pride is nice, in these cases there are other priorities.

[Brian]

I'm going to go two ways here. The first is to say that even those who are against many forms of government spending and intervention are for some form of assistance for emergency services. Unlike many of us, however, they believe that such services should be performed by the private sector, with the government only paying the bills, more or less. There are plenty of libertarians and other far right wingers who would probably support this. My guess is, Bush fits into this category. But then I'd like to say that there's another group of people: individuals who, because of incompetence, malice, or something else, didn't fund things properly. Sadly, Bush falls into this group, too.

It's more that there was no way that the functions could have been performed at all, let alone by private services. And that, in my mind, is the real crime.

[alan]

Bruce, thanks for that.

I have that graph up on my wall of my office, right next to the 8x11 GWB portrait, and the "purple map" of the last election. All next to my "Presidential Aviator" action figure doll still in its box display.

Fact is, the graphs prove that there is somewhere between 35-40% of the U.S. who will vote Republican no matter what -- Katrina included. So what if the approval ratings are down. If an election was held today in Texas or Florida, Republicans win while Democrats fret and dither and desparately avoid "being partisan" when they are portrayed that way anyway.

I'm not giving up, I'm just saying that something has to drastically change before this deadly lock is broken. And if something has horrific as Katrina doesn't do it, I don't know what will.

[anon]

Remember how the President and Congress while in recess all flew back to DC in one day to pass legislative measures in Terri Schiavo's case. Now, look at how the President and Congress taking their time in dealing with a national disaster where thousands of lives might have been lost and million more disrupted for some time to come. Talk about priority. Talk about "compassionate conservatism", i.e "Sorry, you're on your own."

[AWC]

Just remember John DiIulio's 2002 comments. He claimed that the Mayberry Machiavellis-- i.e. sharp, but basically uneducated, political advisors like Rove-- ran everything in the Bush administration. Moreover, he stated that these leaders had open contempt for the idea of policy. They derided DiIulio's attempts to construct a working faith-based initiative, seeing the program as nothing more than PR at best and patronage at worst.

And then finally remember this: DiIulio was not especially concerned about Rovism's effects on faith-based programs themselves. He worried about its impact on younger appointees in all areas of government, who would see Rove's cynicism as cool, savvy, and winning. DiIulio was prescient; we now have a government that is demoralized, in the true sense of that word. And we can also see the terrible consequences of that attitude.

[KevinNYC]

Karl Rove and Jeb and George Bush understand using FEMA for political purposes before an election. I think we know that. But long-time FEMA professionals are livid at what they have to done to an effective agency. They have been talking to reporters and posting all over the web. Also does it appear to anyone else that George Bush is just tired of governing? He still wants to push his agenda through, but the rest of it, forget it.

I've found that the service, and the food, in a restaurant, either Chinese or Italian, goes to hell if the place is mobbed (or triad-ed) up.
I just had the best gelato of my life at a cafe that if you Google the name a crime news website comes up first.

[Cal]

He is right. He has been right about the Bush Administration since he published Fuzzy Math.

But this terrible tragedy allows the Democrats to finally put whole Bush/Rove agenda into black and white, which will be easily understood by the electorate at large.

For six and a half years the Democrats have given Bush a free pass, because he is seemingly likeable. This is no longer about whether he has a nice smile and can make up funny nicknames. This is about whether he is a competent manager and leader and whether the Republicans care about delivering basic services to the country in times of crisis. The record is clear that Bush is a dreadful manager, an uncaring leader and the Republicans do not give a rat's ass about providing services to ALL Americans.

Now is the time to filibuster both Roberts and the next nominee until they answer ALL questions put to them and ALL documents are released about them. The only reason the Democrats need to articulate: Katrina. We cannot trust Bush with anything. Nothing. We trusted him with national security and when a memo crosses his desk that says: Osama plans to attack within the United States, his administration did nothing. When he told us he would hunt Osama to the ends of the Earth, the lied and was already planning a war against Saddam. He said there was enough money for a tax cut and a balanced budget and a safe secure Social Securty system, but Bush's administration has ruined this country's finances. He speaks of morality, but cannot justify why Bill Gates needs an extra $100 million a year, when soldiers and their families have their benefits cut, "because there is not enough money." The list is endless and because it is endless and excrutiatingly nuanced and detailed, the American electorate is overwhelmed to make sense of it.

But now the Democrats simply have to point to the aftermath of Katrina and say: when the nation trusts Bush and Republicans to take care of us, this is the result. We cannot trust them for anything now. Nothing.

Impeach Bush. If not, then filibuster his nominees for the Supreme Court. Also, demand inquiries now. No free passes. Poor African American mothers displaced by Katrina do not have the resources or political savvy of the Mom's who forced the 9/11 hearings. Bush ran roughshod over them. The poor folk in N.O. and Mississippi stand no chance.

If the Democrats stand for anything they have to stand for these people in their time of most dire need. The Democrats must plant their feet in the ground, grow spines and unleash a hurricane of righteous indignation against Bush and his administration because of the Federal Government's failure to provide basic emergency and humanitarian services in response to Katrina. Bush gets no cooperation from the Democrats until a full inquiry is made.

The only thing they have to say on all those bullshit television news shows is simply: Bush cannot be trusted to protect all Americans. His nominees cannot be trusted to protect all Americans. His policies cannot be trusted to make the lives of all Americans better.

The only question is whether the Democrats have any fight in them.

[ken melvin]

Action based on opinions is easy, decision making gets hard when there's thinking required.

[lfs]

Cal;

My sentiment exactly. Right on.

[ogmb]

"if we elect people who don't think a functioning government is very important"

The Bush Cronies don't think it's not very important, they think a functioning government needs to be actively destroyed as it stands in the way of their goals.

[Ari]

Paul Krugman:

"Here's one of many examples: The Chicago Tribune reports that the U.S.S. Bataan, equipped with six operating rooms, hundreds of hospital beds and the ability to produce 100,000 gallons of fresh water a day, has been sitting off the Gulf Coast since last Monday - without patients."

Evidently the report by the Chicago Tribune, and this statement are sadly correct. We did not prepare and we responded to the tragedy poorly. These are Paul Krugman's points and they are all to correct.

[dogfacegeorge]

Roland Patrick, AKA Patrick Sullivan:

PK said that the Bataan had no patients. Your CNN story does not, in any way, contradict PK's assertion. Do you have any reason whatsoever to disbelieve what the Chicago Tribune reported?

[dogfacegeorge]

Here's Sean Kelly, Pentagon spokesman:

"Northcom started planning before the storm even hit....We had the USS Bataan sailing almost behind the hurricane so once the hurricane made landfall, its search and rescue helicopters could be available almost immediately So, we had things ready.

"The only caveat is: we have to wait until the president authorizes us to do so. The laws of the United States say that the military can't just act in this fashion; we have to wait for the president to give us permission."

What do you think, Roland Patrick Sullivan? Shouldn't you apologize to PK?

[Jonathan W. King]

alan writes:
>
> The experts predict that the Republicans will still hold on to their majorites in the
> House and Senate in 2006, and of course that means that any meaningful
> investigation of Bush will never be done.

Uh..who are these experts? Did they predict this before $3 per gallon gas and the latest events in the Gulf? Meanwhile, I think you might be interested in the latest numbers from pollingreport.com:

http://www.pollingreport.com/2006.htm

All of these were before Katrina, and none of them that I see really favor the GOP. *IF* Bush is carrying a substantially sub-50% approval rating into the 2006 election, I feel that the GOP will be crushed like bugs in more places than you might expect. Winning an election is never a given, but to think the GOP is not in a vulnerable position right now is pretty surprising.

[J Thomas]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/08/30/katrina.recovery/

This CNN artucle is fascinating. It says that FEMA had 5 medical teams at the new orleans superdome. It doesn't say the Bataan had any patients but it does say they were flying search missions right after the hurricane.

I wonder how much it was true, and how much it came from somebody reporting the *plans* as if they had happened.

Also it was interesting to look at the numbers on refugees. FEMA was ready to handle tens of thousands of refugees, and the red cross already had over 75,000. It sounds so impressive, but compare that to the number from new orleans alone....

[J Thomas]

Roland Patrick, if you are actually Patrick Sullivan I don't know why decent people try to reply to you.

But if you're someone else, have you neard which day the Bataan got permission to help? From what's been posted here so far, that isn't clear.

[Bruce Webb]

"It was one of the first resources to be used for rescuing people. It delivered water and medicines ashore, and is now being used as a floating warehouse off the coast of Mississippi."

Six operating rooms, 100,000 gallons of water production a day and the highest and best use of the Bataain is "a floating warehouse"? Christ Almighty this is the Bush Administration's first line of apologists? Saddam has a better defense team than Roland aka Partrick is putting up here.

The Bush Administration is essentially saying they never got their Hall Pass from the Vice Prinicipal and so were left squirming in their chair. They did so want to go. So much they can't tell you. They didn't want to to be sitting there in a puddle but Mean Ms Blanco just didn't let them go. So there.

[Uncle Jeffy]

Dogfacegeorge - you mean Roland Patrick is actually Patrick Sullivan? Patrick "Back from the Grave and Ready to Party!" Sullivan. Well, I'll be darned...

Anyway, Patrick, the reason why U.S. military forces didn't enter the NO rescue effort immediately should be pretty obvious to anyone with an understanding of the chain of command. Barring a breakdown in communications attributable to enemy attack, U.S. forces have NEVER been allowed to engage in actions on U.S. soil without Presidential authorization. Which brings us back to the key question, U.S.S. Bataan or any other force element: where was the authorization? Where was the President?

[oddnut]

Didn't FEMA get high marks last year for their response to the FOUR Florida hurricanes?

Maybe the problem isn't FEMA. Maybe it's N.O.? Not the people, but the geography. Maybe inaccessibility is the real problem?

You didn't need the National Guard in N.O., you didn't need police. You needed the Marines. That's pretty obvious from the way things are in Mississippi. If access is blocked by debris, bring in a bulldozer. If a communications tower is down, erect a new one. Law and order and communications have been acceptible in Miss.

But in N.O. bulldozers, Hummers and cop cars don't provide access. You need amphibious vehicles, and portable communications systems. And there are only two "agencies" that have that -- the Marines and the Navy. But the president can't simply order in the active military. Our country doesn't allow the military to operate that way. In nearly every other circumstance, that's a good thing. But in this instance, it's too bad.

The Navy and the Marines have all the tools needed to operate in an area like N.O. Neither FEMA nor the National Guard have those capabilities and no one has ever contemplated giving them those capabilities.

Maybe when this is all analyzed, people will realize that the rest of America needs to give FEMA enough money to operate in territory that's under sea level.

[philip]

Didn't FEMA get high marks last year for their response to the FOUR Florida hurricanes?

Maybe the problem isn't FEMA. Maybe it's N.O.? Not the people, but the geography. Maybe inaccessibility is the real problem?

Or

Maybe the problem is their not in a swing state during an election cycle? Maybe their problem is they aren't lucky enough to have a governor with the last name Bush?

[Dubblblind]

"The Bush Cronies...think a functioning government needs to be actively destroyed as it stands in the way of their goals."

I love the irony of having as elected officials those who seek government positions for the purpose of destroying government. But it's even worse than that, they are creating a *corrupt* government that furthers their goals at the expense of the well being of the general populace.

[J Thomas]

The LA national guard had a lot of amphibious vehicles. But half their equipment and a third of their men were in iraq.

And you know, if the President had sent in the Marines to rescue old ladies and such, if they'd delivered water to the people who had none -- I really believe the country would have forgiven him.

I strongly doubt he'd get impeached for it.

This other way, though....

[liberal]

russ wrote, "So just how connected to reality can Delong be if he thinks Krugman has anything useful let alone factual to say?"

Content-free ad hominem remark noted.