I think President Bush made a great speech today. He not only took responsibility for some of the errors the Federal government made in responding to Katrina, especially in the New Orleans area. He also let the American public know what the Federal government was doing to help the Gulf Coast recover and some of his ideas for what he would like to see Congress do to help the Gulf Coast get back on its feet and thrive again. The country needed to know those things in order to regain some of its lost confidence in the government’s response to major disasters and I think he did a good job of communicating them. He also acknowledged the past prejudices that helped create the disparities that contributed to the helplessness of many in the Gulf region and emphasized working together to overcome these attitudes and get the Gulf region back on its feet. I think his speech was just what the doctor ordered for the country right now.

Some of the issues he didn’t cover were areas he probably truly doesn’t see as issues. There were three of these, which I think, if left unidentified, may thwart us from preventing similar crises in the future.

One issue which has disturbed me since I found out about it is the pitifully unqualified background of Bush-appointed Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Director Michael Brown and most of the other top people at the agency. Despite round the clock TV footage showing thousands of poor and black Americans stranded for days in New Orleans without food, water, or medical attention while lines of buses remained stationary outside the city, Brown said he did not know about the 20,000 evacuees at the convention center in New Orleans until 24 hours later.

In light of the terrorist attacks of September 11 and continued threats of large-scale terror attacks, FEMA is a critically important government agency. Yet Bush appointed a man with essentially no disaster response experience or training to head up the agency. Brown’s pinnacle of responsibility prior to being appointed to head up FEMA was as a manager of an association for owners of Arabian horses. In addition, five of the eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials had virtually no experience in handling disasters before Bush appointed them . This, combined with a dramatic decline in seasoned crisis managers at the agency have put America at serious risk.

This is all part of a broader pattern of the Republican administration’s valuing narrow ideology over relevant experience. All administrations, including the Clinton, Bush Sr. and Reagan administrations, do make a certain number politically oriented appointments. But these other administrations’ blatant political appointments were usually at lower levels, with the upper level political appointments reserved for those of similar ideology with at least some defensible relevant experience. I think the primary underlying cause of this particularly grotesque abuse of political appointments is Bush’s unusually narrow and ill-informed ideology, compared with previous administrations.

My concern is that this administration will not learn this lesson because it would require too fundamental a reevaluation of its basic methods of operation.

The second issue that I find especially disturbing is the way the Republican administration is throwing money at the Katrina recovery effort: The Republican-dominated Congress has decided to spend $62 billion in less than a week on this recovery. I know that saying this makes me an easy target as a Scrooge. I also know that this is going to be a major reconstruction effort that will cost billions in the long run. But let’s look at how this has unfolded up to this point and put this in context.

Slightly more than one million people have been at least temporarily displaced by Katrina. This means that $62 billion works out to about $55,000 per evacuee. For a family of four evacuees, this works out to about $220,000. This is generous indeed on the part of a Republican administration that tried to cut funding by 40% for public television news and educational programs like Sesame Street just to save $200 million for what they claimed were purely budgetary concerns. This is especially generous when you consider that this $55,000 per person is in addition to all insurance claims. In addition to normal government unemployment insurance. In addition to regular welfare and other government programs that would normally assist those in need. In addition to assistance rendered by the Red Cross and other charitable and disaster relief organizations. Ultimately this generosity is on the part of you and me, the taxpayers. Now the critical question: Where is this money going?

Here’s the part that really troubles me about all this taxpayer generosity. I predicted and in fact now see some very familiar faces  at the feeding trough. Many of the companies already profiting from the relief effort have ties to Joe Allbaugh, former Federal Emergency Management Agency director and Bush's chief of staff when he was governor of Texas, as well as my favorite war profiteer, Halliburton , Vice President Dick Cheney's former employer, a company that, according to defense department policies, should not even be eligible to bid on defense contracts because of evidence of past overcharging and fraudulent practices with government contracts (even before Cheney was Vice President).

One of the companies competing for a share of the cleanup business is MLU Services, is represented in Washington by Diane Allbaugh, Allbaugh's wife. Company President Marcia Ulm, Billy Ulm and William Ulm Sr. have given more than $160,000 to Republican candidates and committees in the 2004 and 2006 contribution cycles. The Allbaughs' lobbying firm also represents Shaw Environmental Group, which has been awarded a major housing contract.

There is another interesting and related aspect of all of this and the apparent generosity of the Republican administration. Because it can be hard to estimate how much time it will take to clean up and haul away debris, the FEMA uses a process in which it pays for the hours involved in a cleanup through a pre-arranged contractor, rather than attempting to find the lowest bidder. Remember how compassionately President Bush waived the Davis-Bacon Act prevailing wage rules on all federal construction in the hurricane region? Since FEMA pays the company whatever hourly rates are agreed upon, the companies and those who own them will benefit from this. The desperate workers who these companies employ (many of them no doubt the very people displaced by Katrina), the ones who are actually doing the hard and hazardous work of cleaning up sometimes toxic waste, they will make whatever hourly wage these companies decide to pay

Though these cleanup contracts are amazingly lucrative, it is only the beginning of a massive federal spending program unprecedented not only in its size but the speed in which the money is being spent.

The third issue that troubles me is that, while Bush and others at the Federal level have been forced to admit that the Federal response was inadequate, they have notably omitted discussing the Bush administration’s part in dramatically underfunding the projects that had been scheduled to help prevent this catastrophe from taking on the massive scale it has. Bush and others have expressed dismay and surprise that the levees overflowed when Katrina hit, despite the fact that this exact scenario has been predicted for years . Just last year, this potential scenario was all over the news when another large hurricaneappeared to be headed New Orleans’s way. Folks, this was not a matter of if, but a matter of when, and the experts in levee construction and emergency management knew it. Furthermore, it was broadcasted on the news repeatedly last year. Apparently Bush’s appointed director of FEMA did not watch those broadcasts. Why should he if his job depended on personal ties and political contributions, as opposed to expertise and competence?  And which Republican appointee will see to it that this kind of thing doesn't happen again?

I think that taxpayer money would be better spent on preventative measures making sure that this doesn’t happen again and developing an effective and coordinated response to major emergencies (whether natural disasters or terrorist attacks) that actually works. With four years to accomplish this since the September 11 attacks, you’d think this would’ve already been done. After all, it took less time than that for America to defeat Japan and Germany in World War II. Apparently this administration has other priorities.

Showdown

Democrats could learn a thing or two from Republicans.

For one thing, Republicans are highly skilled at framing public debate in simple, straightforward terms. The recent filibuster showdown is a good example. President Bush, Bill Frist and other conservative Senate Republicans have stayed on the message “nominees deserve an up-or-down vote,” which frames the issue in simple, black-and-white terms. The Democrats’ message seems to be all over the place. On minute they are referencing 200 year old Senate traditions, the next they are referring to minority party rights, and then they paint the specter of unchecked Republican power in the House, the Senate, as well as the Executive and judiciary branches.

The problem with the Democrats is not that they are wrong. I’ve actually done quite a bit of fact-checking and everything they have said that I have heard is actually factual. The problem is that they don’t understand how to frame the issue. While their case is more subtle, the truth is that most Americans (59% according to a Time magazine poll) agree that the Senate Republicans should not change the rules on filibusters. This number is significantly higher for those who are following the issue closely, which probably says something. However, according to a Gallup poll, only 35% of Americans are actually following the filibuster very closely or somewhat closely, which is quite low for an issue with such significant long-term ramifications. Here are the Gallup numbers for their survey conducted April 29-May 1, 2005, according to how closely respondents said they were watching the issue:

Attitude Toward Keeping the Filibuster Rule As-Is
by How Closely Respondent Follow Filibuster News

Following news of filibuster...	Favor	Oppose	Don't Know/ Refused
Very closely	62%	37%	1%
Somewhat closely	59%	37%	4%
Not too closely/not closely at all	48%	41%	11%

What these numbers show is that about two-thirds more of those who are following the issue closely favor keeping the filibuster rule intact as oppose doing so.

Those who are following the issue closely probably know more about the history of the Senate Republicans blocking 60 Clinton judiciary nominees. The Senate Republicans accomplished this by refusing to report the nominations out of the Senate Judiciary Committee using only the 10 Republican votes that controlled the committee. This prevented any of these 60 Clinton nominees from getting an up-or-down vote by the Senate. With this background knowledge, the Senate Republicans’ outrage over Democrats using 41 votes to block a mere 10 (out of 217) seems hypocritical and self-serving.

Another, more subtle point is that most of these 60 Clinton nominees were blocked at the end of Clinton’s term, merely to prevent Clinton from filling these vacancies and to give the new President Bush more vacancies to fill as he saw fit. This frames the whole filibuster issue in a new light, as reflected in the poll numbers above.

Of course, television news shows and newspaper articles about the filibuster rarely include this kind of information. It is too detailed and subtle to get the attention (ratings) that drive many editorial decisions. It bothers me that Republicans are able to assume that enough people aren’t paying close attention to see what their true aims are and they seem to be able to get away with it by framing issues in these overly simplistic terms. I find it reassuring that it doesn’t always work.

It may be too soon to see what effect Frist’s contention that the Democrats are blocking the nominees based on their religious faith. Most Americans are not comfortable with politicians playing the religion card. Also, the fact that the vast majority of Bush’s 217 judicial nominees are pro-life (as am I, by the way) and the Democrats did not filibuster the other 207 casts serious doubt on this kind of reasoning. The fact that President Bush and others have distanced themselves from Frist’s statement shows that even they think Frist went too far.

In thinking through the likely Republican and Democratic strategies on this issue, it seemed to me that it would be in the best interest of Frist to keep this issue on the backburner until he could pressure enough moderate Republicans to support the rule change to end the filibuster for judicial nominees. That way, he could get the legislation that he thought was important through the Senate before the Democrats responded to his “nuclear option” and essentially shut down the Senate. The fact that he has played his hand now indicates to me that he realizes time is not on his side. As the filibuster issue stays near the top of the news, more and more people are going to fall into the category of following the issue “very closely” or “somewhat closely”. And, if the early May poll numbers are any indicator, this means he will lose ground with the public and as a result lose the ability to apply pressure to moderate Republicans to change the filibuster rule.

I wonder if this will work on any other issues?

February 1, 2005:

$9 Billion in Pocket Change

I really don’t understand how you just fail to account for $9 billion. Now, I realize that Iraq is a war zone, which substantially complicates things…but $9 BILLION? I’m sorry, but that is a LOT of money! Given this apparent lack of accountability, I think it’s important to put some things in perspective:

So far, the Bush administration has spent more than $150 billion in Iraq over and above the normal operating costs of the U.S. military. That’s $1 million per soldier ABOVE THEIR NORMAL OPERATING COSTS. This works out to about $500,000 per year above and beyond the military’s regular operating costs, such as the salaries of our regular troops. Some of this is undoubtedly to pay for reserves that have been brought into active duty, but reserves in Iraq number only about 30,000, and their salaries are nowhere near $500k per year!

I imagine that some of this $500,000 per soldier (above and beyond their salary) is for things like bullets, fuel, etc., which can get expensive. But $500,000 per soldier? I wonder how much of this is for $50 meals from Dick Cheney’s old company, Halliburton, and other fatty contracts set aside for staunch Bush supporters?

Perhaps a bit of perspective is in order. Here are total expenditures for some major wars the U.S. has fought in the past, ADJUSTED FOR INFLATION (so these are comparable dollars):
World War I (peak of 2,000,000 soldiers in combat):
Total war costs: $613 billion (~$205,000/soldier/year*)

Vietnam War (peak of 536,000 soldiers in combat):
Total war costs: $623 billion (~$236,000/soldier/year*)

Iraq War: (peak of 150,000 soldiers in combat):
Total war costs (so far): ~$150 billion (~$500,000/soldier/year**)

* Based upon year-end troop totals for each year of combat by U.S. forces.
** Excludes routine costs, such as salary, benefits, training, normal fuel consumption, etc.

Keep in mind that these are only military expenditures (i.e., not including the cost of reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, most of the money for which has not been spent). Also keep in mind that most of the time period during which this money was spent was “after major combat operations”, according to President Bush.