NYT Editorial: Katrina's Assault on Washington

[speedoo]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/03/opinion/03sat1.html

This is must read. It's about the challenge we now face in stopping the RW tax cuts that now more than ever are unaffordable and wrong.

(snip)

One thing is certain: if President Bush and his Republican Congressional leaders want to deal responsibly with a historic disaster of this scale, they must finally try the path of honestly shared national sacrifice. If they respond by passing a few emergency measures and then falling back on their plans to enact more tax cuts, America will have to confront the fact that it is stuck with leaders who neither know, nor care, how to lead.

The pre-Katrina plan for this Congressional season was to enact more upper-bracket tax cuts for the least needy, while cutting into the safety-net programs for sick and impoverished Americans. These are the very entitlement programs most needed by the sudden underclass of hundreds of thousands of hurricane refugees cast adrift like Dustbowl Okies. Will Congress dare to go forward with these retrogressive plans in the face of the suffering from Katrina? Its woeful track record suggests that, shockingly, the answer may be yes.

G.O.P. leaders are set to mandate billions in Medicaid and antipoverty cuts this month, while the Senate is poised to try again to repeal the estate tax, a monumental folly that will deprive the deficit-ridden government of an estimated $750 billion in vital revenue in the first decade. The theory is that over the long run, the missing money will "starve the beast" and force Washington to make huge cuts in federal programs. The public has never bought this, but as long as the economy held up, it was willing to ignore the long-term implications.

(snip)

[flamingyouth]

1. Good editorial

[flamingyouth]

2. dupe post

[The Traveler]

3. New Orleans is what happens

when the beast is starved. At last, the savage vision is revealed. Time now for a rising.

[newswolf56]

4. Horrible thought based on a quote from the editorial:

If the Homeland Security Department was so ill prepared for a natural disaster that everyone knew was coming, how is it equipped to handle other kinds of crises?

Is it possible this new department was unable to act because it is only a sham, a shell, akin to a dummy corporation -- set up to allow the oligarchy to (further) loot the federal treasury?

Indeed the precedent already exists: the Bush Medicare Prescription Drug Lord Benefit, required by law to pay for prescriptions at MAXIMUM retail -- obscene profits for the prescription drug lords' already obscenely fat bank accounts, but no help at all to a vast number of Medicare recipients.

[maddezmom]

5. kick and recommended