Quote: magicjay38 said: "Government is not the solution, Government is the problem." President Ronald Reagan campaigning for President in 1980
That is the reason we were not prepared, for the levee breaking, for the flooding and the abandonment of a hundred thousand poor blacks in New Orleans. That central ideology of conservative Republicans was reinforced further when Newt Gingrich took the House in 1994, and then the Senate a few years later. Voting irregularities in Florida brought in George W. Bush as president with less votes than his Democratic opponent which gave the "hate the government" crowd control of all branches of government.
In 2001 when George Bush and the Republican Congress passed the first of the tax breaks for the wealthy, the director of the Corp of Engineers resigned in protest regarding the specific defunding of fixing the leeve's in New Orleans, and a few months later followed the protest resignation of the Director of FEMA for defunding that organization too.
If you watched FOX News, or listened to AM radio, or took notice of what conservatives politicians and pundits were dishing out this week, you could easily see how transparent they were in changing the subject from the abject failure of all levels of government TO the bad, horrid, lawless, looting, shooting, raping, murdering "NIGGERS".
Will they get away with it? They sure were successful earlier in the week. Gosh, everyone I talked to began with saying how awful the looting was. But after five days of literally no response, it finally looks as if the long awaited turnaround back to the middle may be upon us.
Twenty some years ago, I was sitting around my frat house watching the first Superman film on TV. As college students do, we started debating whether Superman was a Democrat or Republican.
The debate ended when, in the midst of the earthquake scene, I announced "Superman is a Republican. If he were a Democrat, he'd think he could stop the earthquake by throwing money at it."
I am reminded of that joke when I read posts like the one above.
One could create an entire thread explaining why all of the above is wrong. In fact, if you look at the "Who's to Blame for Hurricane Katrina" thread, someone did.
However, as has been noted, on that thread and elsewhere, all the government in the country didn't prevent this. In fact, one could argue that big government was the problem, not the solution.
From Louisiana politicians spending their infrastructure money on other projects to a Mayor who didn't bother to effectuate his own, standing, plan to evacuate the people on school buses when he the chance, to a federal goverment that kept volunteer emergency personnel out of the area until they had "sensitivity training," every thing that happened here has tended to reinforce EXACTLY what Reagan meant 25 years ago: that a bloated, entrenched, federal government doesn't solve our problems, no matter how much money you throw at it.
Once again you've changed the subject. What you and your rent-a-friends thought 20 years ago has nothing to do with the topic. What was said on another thread has nothing to do wiith this. I said:
1. The levees were not improved as planned.
2. Said planned improvements were cancelled do to budget cuts mandated by the Republican government.
3. Had the levees not failed the damage to New Orleans would have been greatly reduced.
The actions or corruption were never addressed in my statement. Thanks again G-man for rebutting something I never said in the first place.
Were you a boxer in college? You've got the bob and weave thing down really well. Do you ever sting like a bee?
