Katrina: What Bush Begat

Mourners embrace today at the repaired levee wall in the Lower Ninth Ward. (Click on images for larger versions.)

“There will be a momentum, momentum will be gathered,” the president said. “Houses will begat jobs, jobs will begat houses.”

-- George W. Bush, speaking in Gulfport, MS, 8.28.06, one year after Hurricane Katrina

Yeah, and extremist conservative ideology begat purposeful neglect of the federal government's core responsibilities, cold-blooded budget cuts to levee and wetland renewal projects and the willful destruction of FEMA's ability to meet the demands of its mission. All courtesy of George Bush and his crusading right-wing Republicans, who set out to defund and destroy the federal government and its most vital agencies that serve the common good.

Pull yourselves up by your bootstraps people, say the corporatists at the American Enterprise Institute and other bastions of the pay-no-taxes crowd, government solutions are passe. Government is the problem, not the solution. And the brutal behavior of Bush's feds on the Gulf Coast is all about that self-fulfilling prophesy. This was no mistake. This was a result of core conservative policies.

When you think about Katrina's victims today, on the first anniversary of the tragedy, think of George one year ago today, playing air guitar at a photo-op, stopping off to present to birthday cake to John McCain and staring blankly out of that airplane window at the destruction far away. Katrina was primarily a man-made disaster in the New Orleans area.

The brunt of the hurricane made landfall East of NOLA. What hit New Orleans was the result of a government's refusal to fund state of the art levee construction, the catastrophic design failures of the Army Corps of Engineers and the refusal of George to put the federal government into high gear for relief efforts. We need accountability, not another "compassionate" photo-op of the man who can't see anything real outside his narcissistic bubble. The places that bore so much suffering a year ago and that are still witness to tragedy and lies today are sacred lands, being trod once more by one not worthy to put a foot on the ground. Go begat yourself, George.

The Times-Picayune at NOLA.com covers the story from many angles, with print and multimedia.