The Louisiana Shakedown

Dragoon68 · Sep 26, 2005

Extract from Nealz Nuze on 26 Sep 2005:
THE LOUISIANA SHAKEDOWN

After being hit by 2 hurricanes in the last month, the state of Louisiana is looking to cash in. Big. The winner? The politicians of Louisiana, of course. They can use the newly borrowed billions of taxpayer dollars to buy more votes and win more elections. This is known far and wide as "bringing home the bacon."

The loser, of course, is you and me. And our children. And our children's children. The reason is simple. The billions of dollars being spent on "hurricane relief" is being borrowed. Folks, the federal government is broke. Has been for a long time. Any additional money spent has to be borrowed. Interest on that money will have to be paid. Since the borrowed money will be added to the nation's tab (known as the national debt, currently almost $8 trillion,) it is unlikely to ever be repaid.

Which makes it all the more outrageous when Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu made her $250 billion request for Hurricane Katrina disaster relief. That's one quarter of a trillion dollars. What is some of the money for? Included in the request is the following:

--$40 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers. Sounds like a good idea, right? Who could be against the Army Corps of Engineers? But wait.....$40 billion is 10 times the Corps' budget for the entire country, and 16 times what they requested for New Orleans. They haven't even asked for the money. No problem...Senator Landrieu and Senator Vitter know best!

--Not to be outdone, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco has asked for $31 billion for her state's infrastructure. That's right...you, the federal taxpayer, are going to be expected to pay for the infrastructure of Louisiana. What a deal!

The strategy here is simple: ask for so much money, knowing you won't get it, so that it will be "cut" and then you get what you really want. The big loser here: the American taxpayer.

Will the media call them on it? Of course not.
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Procuring all this money from tax payers nation wide will set a new trend in the on going "benefits for votes" schemes by which the federal government is demanded to be 100% responsible to make all persons - and states - "whole" from any loss in addition to being responsible for prevention and response.

Dragoon68 · Sep 26, 2005

Comments by John Stossel:
The government's responsibility...dwarfs anything done by criminals [after Katrina]. To start, the federal government invited disaster by offering cheap insurance. That encourages people to build on the coasts. I'm embarrassed to admit I once built a house on a beach in Westhampton, N.Y., because government insurance guaranteed I couldn't lose. When a storm washed my house away, government paid me for my loss. It would have covered me again and again had I rebuilt. (I sold the land.) Government insurance is truly an insane policy. Then came the bureaucratic obstacles. While New Orleans hospitals had no electricity, the U.S.S. Bataan sat just off the coast, equipped with six unused operating rooms and hundreds of hospital beds. Its commander said she could do nothing because she hadn't received a signed authorization. It's reasonable to worry about getting the armed forces involved in law enforcement, but where's the threat to the Constitution if, in the middle of a disaster, a Navy doctor saves your life? In other cases, private enterprise tried to help, but government got in the way. Wal-Mart offered truckloads of water, but was turned away by federal bureaucrats... The deadliest government mistake was made by Congress. The Army Corps of Engineers had said it wanted $27 million to strengthen the levees protecting New Orleans. Congress said no, though our can't-spend-your-money-fast-enough representatives did appropriate more than that for an indoor rain forest in Iowa. Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, blamed the president. 'The president could have funded it,' she said. Someday, she should read the Constitution. Only Congress can appropriate federal money... Americans shouldn't filter so much money through Washington. Louisianans don't need Iowa rain forests, and Iowans don't need levees in Louisiana. Maybe the people who want to live in New Orleans should have to pay (through private enterprise or local taxes) the special costs of its exposed location—or live elsewhere. If all local projects, essential and whimsical, were paid for with local taxes, competition among states and cities would force them to become more efficient.
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Dragoon68 · Sep 29, 2005

McCain Economy Bloc

Extract from Townhall Article of 29 Sep 2005:
The Senate was up to its old tricks Monday evening. It prepared to pass, without debate and under a procedure requiring unanimous consent, a federal infusion of $9 billion into state Medicaid programs under the pretext of Katrina relief. The bill, drafted in secret under bipartisan auspices, was stopped cold when Republican Sen. John Ensign voiced his objection.

The bill's Democratic sponsors railed in outrage against Ensign, a 47-year-old first-termer from Las Vegas, Nev., who usually keeps a low profile. But he was not acting alone. Ensign belongs to, and, indeed, originated, a small group of Republicans who intend to stand guard on the Senate floor against such raids on the Treasury as Monday night's failure. The group includes Sen. John McCain, who long has tried to wean Republicans from ever greater federal spending but attracted little support from GOP colleagues until recently. ...
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There's opporutnity galore in the name of disaster relief!

El_Guero · Sep 29, 2005

Dragoon

Comments by John Stossel:

Is that 'the' John Stossel?

Dragoon68 · Sep 29, 2005

Gale-Force Exaggeration, Katrina's Other Consequence

Extracts from Townhall Article of 28 Sep 2005:
In the last month or so, we've heard a lot of self-congratulation from the press about what a great job they've been doing. At the high water mark of their rain-soaked Katrina coverage, they started to sound like Stuart Smalley telling the mirror, "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and, doggone it, people like me." Even the normally hilarious and cynical Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" broke character to congratulate the press for its excellent work.

We now know, thanks to valuable post-mortems by the Los Angeles Times and the New Orleans Times-Picayune, that a great deal of the "great reporting" was in fact great rumor mongering. The stories of rape and murder in the Superdome were all unfounded. Six people died in there, tragically. But nobody was murdered. ...

... We weren't helped by the scandalously irresponsible actions of New Orleans' leadership. Mayor Ray Nagin and Chief of Police Eddie Compass - who resigned as this column went to press - circulated rumors to a pliant national media machine uncritically. Compass told Oprah Winfrey of "little babies getting raped" at the Superdome. Ray Nagin complained of the horrors faced by those "in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people." Compass told the press his officers were involved in shootouts inside the stadium, with hundreds of armed gang members. The Times-Picayune found evidence for none of this. ...

... Race is obviously part of the equation, too. "If the dome and Convention Center had harbored large numbers of middle-class white people," Times Picayune editor Jim Amoss said, "it would not have been a fertile ground for this kind of rumor mongering." As with the cannibalism canard, there seemed to be an eagerness on the part of many - on the right and left - to believe the very worst stories possible about poor African-Americans.

And then there's politics. Setting aside the no doubt authentic concerns and outrage of the press, who can deny that there wasn't a certain amount of Schadenfreude at work here? Almost instantly, Katrina was declared George W. Bush's debacle and proof of myriad long-simmering gripes against the president, from his alleged hatred of the poor to his cartoon villainy on global warming. James Wolcott, Vanity Fair's media critic, not only admitted he "roots" for hurricanes, but he was downright giddy that Katrina might erase the effects of 9/11 because the casualty numbers were "threatening the inviolable aura of '3000 dead.' " Let the record show that the 10,000 dead number was just one more irresponsible improvisation from Mayor Nagin. ...

... Let's hope lessons were learned all around.
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Don't forget this lesson the next time there's a crisis and you're making your own decisions off what the news media, or even your friendly public servants, are telling you.

OldRegular · Sep 29, 2005

I have written my two senators and Representative to express my views about waste of taxpayer money. Have you written yours?

Dragoon68 · Sep 29, 2005

Originally posted by OldRegular:
I have written my two senators and Representative to express my views about waste of taxpayer money. Have you written yours?
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No, I haven't written to my representatives about these subjects yet. However, I do let them know how I feel about things fairly often so this subject will soon be covered. We all need to keep the pressure on for what we want our government to do and not do.

Dragoon68 · Oct 6, 2005

Louisiana is asking the federal government to spend $250 billion for Hurricane Katrina relief. Those funds would come from taxes we all would pay at some point even if by the next generation of Americans. If we split this money up evenly among 2.5 million victims that would provide each one with $100,000! If we split if up proportionally to the actual damages incurred they could receive anywhere from $500,000 to $5,000 each! If we qualified the true victims to a fewer and more realistic number some folks could make out real good financially on the deal. That would sure cut out a lot of government handlers! Short of just not funding this through federal money at all it would be the best deal possible for everyone.

StraightAndNarrow · Oct 6, 2005

Well, finally the feds are being stopped from giving out contracts without competitive bidding. One of the biggest beneficiaries had been our old friend Halliburton.

Dragoon68 · Oct 8, 2005

Nagin Rolls Dice On New Orleans

Yep, that's Nagin way he thinks! It means more opportunity for local politicians. All New Orleans needs is more gambling to drag it further down into crime and moral decay.

Who's Cleaning Up New Orleans?

As I've said all along, let the residents come home and put them to work cleaning up the place instead of the tens of thousands of outsiders who were moved in. If it's safe for those who are there it's just as safe for those who are not.

The Louisiana Shakedown

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