How can this be?

A wounded warrior is just that-- a wounded warrior, someone who has placed everything dear to them on the line to protect our country.

So how can THIS happen?

Or THIS?

Outrageous. Please pray for Dragonlady and her husband.

Encouraging kids to fight in school, parts 1 and 2

Our latest Educational Numbskull Award goes to the nutcases running this place:

AUSTIN, Texas – Nine employees are under investigation over allegations of new fights among mentally disabled residents of the troubled Corpus Christi State School, a state lawmaker said Saturday night.

State Rep. Abel Herrero said the workers are on leave while officials look into complaints that the staff members did nothing to intervene in the fights involving residents Wednesday and Thursday.

The new allegations follow six staffers being charged earlier this month with injury to a disabled person over separate fights allegedly organized for the staff's entertainment. Videos of those fights were found on a cell phone.

"Appalling," said Herrero, a Corpus Christi-area Democrat. "Completely unacceptable. It's important that the state exhaust every resource to once and for all ensure the safety and well-being of our state's most vulnerable population." Herrero had few details involving the new incidents but said one of them involved accusations against six staff members and the other involved three workers. At least one of the incidents was reported in a phone call to state investigators. The workers were accused of having been nearby when fights occurred but not intervening.

Jay Kimbrough, chief of staff for Gov. Rick Perry's office, told the Corpus Christi Caller-Times that the recent incidents don't include allegations that fights were encouraged by employees.

On Friday, video of the earlier fights were shown at a Corpus Christi bond hearing for a former employee accused of staging the bouts. State officials, local police and the FBI are investigating the allegations of staged fights.

The videos from Timothy Dixon's cell phone included two residents repeatedly punching each other while staff members cheered. The residents tried to choke each other before one threw the other to the floor. An employee then kicked the resident on the floor. Dixon, 30, is among six facing charges of injury to a disabled person.

Four of the six current and former employees have been arrested. Two others were believed to have moved out of state before the investigation, police said. Herrero said Friday that at least two staff members were being investigated over the new fight allegations.

There's so much to be disgusted over, but looming largest to me is this one: Who hired people who think that encouraging mentally disabled people to fight is a form of entertainment? Any time the decision is made that someone, no matter how morally bankrupt they are, is better than no one, then the person doing the hiring needs to take a vacation or find a new line of work.

But wait! There's more from the Lone Star State! Pay special attentian to the boldfaced sentences I have included:

DALLAS – The Dallas school system was rocked by allegations Thursday that staff members at an inner-city high school made students settle their differences by fighting bare-knuckle brawls inside a steel cage. The principal and other employees at South Oak Cliff High knew about the cage fights and allowed the practice to continue, according to a 2008 report by school system investigators.

"More than anything, I'm in shock and disbelief — shocked that this could ever occur and shocked that it would be condoned by a professional administrator," said Jerome Garza, a member of the Dallas school board. The report, first obtained by The Dallas Morning News, describes two instances of fighting in an equipment cage in a boys' locker room between 2003 and 2005. It was not clear from the report whether there were other fights.

Superintendent Michael Hinojosa told the newspaper that there were "some things that happened inside of a cage" and called the fights "unacceptable."

No criminal charges were ever filed, and there was no mention in the report of whether anyone required medical attention or whether any employees were disciplined. A district spokesman would not comment. The allegations came to light during a grade-fixing investigation that eventually cost the high school its 2005 and 2006 state basketball titles. School officials were suspected of altering students' grades so that they could remain eligible to play for South Oak Cliff, a perennial basketball powerhouse in one of the poorer sections of the city.

The newspaper reported Thursday that Angela Williamson, a parent, said she was ignored when she attempted to bring the matter to the attention of district administrators after her son, Cortland, told her that students stood around clapping and screaming while watching a fight he participated in. He and another student fought for five to ten minutes in the cage in 2004. She said the students acted as if they were in an arena.

Williamson said she took her son out of the school and moved to another district shortly after he came home with a swollen hand. "I said enough is enough, and we just left," she said. "This was the norm. My son said this is what they do — let them fight in 'the cage.'"

She said she met with a football coach who had encouraged the fights.

"He told me this is how they settled disputes in his day," she said.

In an interview with the Morning News, Donald Moten, who retired as principal last year, denied any fights were held.
"That's barbaric. You can't do that at a high school. You can't do that anywhere," Moten said. "Ain't nothing to comment on. It never did happen. I never put a stop to anything because it never happened." In the report, a teacher was quoted as saying Moten told security personnel to put two fighting students "in the cage and let `em duke it out."

The report said a hall monitor, Gary King, told investigators he witnessed the head of campus security and an assistant basketball coach place two students in the cage to fight. Another hall monitor, Reno Savala, told investigators he came upon two students fighting in the cage "bare-fisted with no head or eye protection." Savala said the assistant coach was watching the fight and broke it up when Savala told him to.

"It was gladiator-style entertainment for the staff," Frank Hammond, a fired counselor who has filed a whistle-blower lawsuit against the district, told the newspaper. "They were taking these boys downstairs to fight. And it was sanctioned by the principal and security." Hammond did not actually witness any of the fights, according to the report.

Garza, the school board member, said the board should look into whether criminal charges should be filed. Dallas police said they have no record of any investigation by the department. The district attorney's office would not comment.

The allegations come about 10 days after law enforcement authorities reported that careworkers at a Corpus Christi institution forced mentally disabled residents to fight each other and recorded the brawls for their entertainment.

Now look, "back in my day," kids did fight each other on occasion, but rarely were the fights at school and rarely did anything worse than a bloody nose occur. Then, the fight was over when it was over, and other people didn't jump in. It still didn't make it right-- but I am never going to apologize for punching the neighborhood bully after he tried to hurt my baby brother --repeatedly. Of course, we ended up as friends, eventually. And yes, I have to admit that there have been a few students that have passed through my classroom in which I knew that if he had had an "attitude adjustment" from a peer at an early enough juncture in his life, he would have probably been much less of a scaly little reptile.

But back then, parents would have never dreamed of suing over every little gust of wind that blows. Back then, kids did not bring weapons to school, except for the pocket knives we all carried as tools, but you certainly didn't use those as weapons.

Now? Now kids bring guns and knives to school in kindergarten. Now, there is no such thing as a common fistfight. Now, parents will sue over minor disagreements among kids. Now, kids react violently to being looked at wrong.

I think it's time for Coach "Back in My Day" to retire-- voluntarily, or better, forcibly. But being that he's a coach of a winning team in a part of the country where high school sports are taken WAAAYYYY too seriously, I doubt that will happen.

Incredible lack of judgment, part II

EWWWWWWWWW.

"SEATTLE — Washington state law does not bar teachers from having consensual sex with 18-year-old students, an appeals court ruled Tuesday in dismissing a case against a former high school choir teacher.

The teacher, Matthew Hirschfelder, was charged with first-degree sexual misconduct with a minor for allegedly having sex with a Hoquiam High School senior in 2006. He challenged a judge's refusal to dismiss his case, arguing the student wasn't a minor because she was 18.

Hirschfelder, who was 33 at the time, also denies any sexual relationship occurred.

A three-judge panel of the Washington Court of Appeals unanimously agreed that the case should be dismissed. While the law was written vaguely, a review of legislative history shows that lawmakers only intended to criminalize contact between teachers and 16- or 17-year-old students — not those over 18, the court said.

"The name of the statute is 'sexual misconduct with a minor,'" said Hirschfelder's attorney, Rob Hill, stressing that the state recognizes that an 18-year-old is no longer a minor.

The state's code of professional conduct for teachers still prohibits any sexual advance toward or contact with pupils, whatever their age, and teachers can be fired for it. Sexual contact with students younger than 16 is considered child rape or molestation; the age of consent in Washington is 16.

Hirschfelder has not been able to work as a teacher since late 2006, when he was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation by the school board. He was arrested and charged in spring 2007, after a former choir student told police she had a monthslong affair with him that began shortly before she graduated.

His case did not go to trial because it was stayed pending the appeals court ruling, Hill said. He has been tuning pianos to make ends meet.

Grays Harbor County Prosecutor Stew Menefee did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press, but he told The Daily World newspaper of Aberdeen that he would consider appealing to the state Supreme Court.

Some state legislators are set on changing the law. On Monday, six state representatives introduced legislation that would make it a crime punishable by a mandatory minimum of five years in prison for a teacher to have sex with a student up to age 21, as long as the teacher is five years older than the student and at the same school.

Rep. Larry Haler, R-Richland, the main sponsor of the bill, said he offered it at the request of the Richland School District, after a judge dropped a sexual misconduct charge against a Richland High School teacher because the teacher's alleged victim was 18.

"This is a real concern of mine, and with the court decision today, that just strengthens this bill," Haler said. "We need to protect our students as long as they're in our public schools, irrespective of age."
"

I understand the reason why this law doesn't apply. I do. But it needs to be clear that teachers should not EVER be allowed to "date" students, even if they're twenty-one (and we've got two of those around this year, and they better stay the hell away from my daughter, much less me). But I am confused by the provision in the proposed replacement law about the teacher being five years older than the student. So are they saying it would be okay if the teacher were, say 22 and the student were 18? Why would that be okay?

Of course, I didn't date high school boys when I WAS in high school, so perhaps my knee-jerk antipathy started then. But-- really. Yuck.

Now THAT'S Good Teachin'!

Wow. Teachers at this school are SO good that they can get a kid to pass even when he's not there:

A public school student in St. Louis got mixed marks in a third-quarter progress report recently, receiving credit for being in class 58 times and getting two B’s and one C to go along with four F’s.

There was just one problem: The entire time, the unidentified student was enrolled in a school in Oklahoma, attending classes hundreds of miles from St. Louis.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported yesterday that teachers at Gateway High School never noticed the student wasn’t in class during the first two months of this year. One teacher marked the student tardy for class on a day the student wasn’t there.

Senior district officials were unaware of the phantom student until the Post-Dispatch provided a copy of an e-mail the school’s vice principal sent to Gateway staff chastising them for failing to notice the student’s absence.

The student withdrew from the St. Louis Public Schools on Dec. 19, 2007. After confirming the authenticity of the e-mail, officials sought to downplay the incident.

"We’re not happy about this, but it’s fixed," district spokeswoman Deborah Sistrunk said.

Sistrunk said she could not explain how a student no longer enrolled at the school could earn grades and be counted as present in classes. "We don’t know how it happened," she said.

The St. Louis public school system has been in disarray in recent years, struggling amid constant turnover in senior leadership. The State Board of Education stripped the district of accreditation in March, citing a long history of poor academic performance, low graduation rates and financial problems.

A special advisory board took control in June. Board President Rick Sullivan said he wants to learn more about the student getting grades when he or she was not at school.

"While I’m confident this is an isolated incident, we are going to look into it with the goal of eliminating something like this happening in the future," Sullivan said.

Former elected School Board President Veronica O’Brien said the Gateway lapse was another example of a city school inflating attendance in a quiet effort to increase state funding. State education allocations are tied to attendance.

"This kind of stuff goes on all the time," O’Brien said.

Attendance at Gateway and other city middle and high schools is recorded on a computer program at the beginning of each class period. Teachers note if a student is present, absent, tardy or absent for a specific reason.

The former board president saying that "this kind of stuff happens all the time," is really rich. This didn't happen just since the state took over. I know there are many dedicated professionals in that school district. But someone has got to get control of that place-- preferably, someone who knows something about education. The district is currently searching for yet another superintendent, and I wonder if they've had any offers-- given that the special advisory board has let it be known that the new superintendent will be a mere cog in their dream machine, which is interesting in that none of the people on the special advisory board seem to have any experience with public education, much less urban public education.

Sad. Oh, and it's fraudulent too.

An unsavory discovery at Hallmark Meat Company

The scandal from the lack of inspectors in meatpacking plants continues to spread, as it was revealed this week that some of the tainted product made it into the school lunch program:

More than a third of the 143 million pounds of California beef recalled last week went to school lunch programs, with at least 20 million pounds consumed, officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Thursday.

About 50 million pounds of the meat went to schools, said Eric Steiner, deputy administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service's special nutrition programs.

Of that amount, about 20 million pounds have been eaten, 15 million pounds are on hold at storage facilities and 15 million pounds are still being traced, he said.

Officials said, however, that they still weren't able to provide the names of all the places the meat wound up.

"Sitting here today, I cannot tell you how many locations the product has gone to," said Dr. Kenneth Peterson, of the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service. "Our focus is identifying the locations and making sure the product is under control."

The USDA shut down Chino-based Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. and issued the nation's largest beef recall after the Humane Society of the United States released undercover video of workers kicking and shoving sick and crippled cows and forcing them to stand with electric prods, forklifts and water hoses.

The plant produces about a fifth of all the meat in the federal school lunch programs, said Bill Sessions, associate deputy administrator for livestock and seed Programs with USDA's agriculture marketing service.

Well I can tell you that some of that beef made it here to the Land Between the Coasts, and several area school districts had their names splashed all over the news for having received some of the recalled beef. Some of these districts are very large, and some are from very wealthy areas.

Interestingly, the school district in which I teach ALSO received some of the tainted product, but somehow we managed to keep our name out of the media. Seriously, you've gotta admire the job our PR folks do-- somebody there HAS to have sold their soul to the devil or something, because the media never hears anything about anything negative about our district. I make this point not to cast aspersions upon the Powers That Be, but to simply say to those of us who are parents: Just because you haven't heard that your district was affected by this story, doesn't mean that it wasn't. At least our school district disclosed it to parents in a letter. Other districts certainly aren't as accountable. So, if I were you, I would contact my school district to find out what had happened in your situation. Food poisoning in small children is very dangerous, and this should serve as a wake-up call.

Oh, and if you go back and read the rest of the article, you will see that an employee caught on film abusing the downer cattle has turned himself in to police. Let's hope that the accountability doesn't stop with employees but goes up to the management and ownership of Hallmark Meat Company.

And the next time you hear someone rail against taxes, think about what it would be worth to you if the government actually could afford to put inspectors into these plants more than once in a blue moon. Another thing that would be nice would be if our government would make this a priority, too, but that's just wishful thinking....

Justifying Murder as "Going to War"

Tragedy struck tiny Kirkwood, Missouri yet again this last week:

Some left flowers, balloons and memorials on the steps of City Hall. Others gathered at a prayer vigil where a bell tolled six times as mourners clutched white candles. Residents of this St. Louis suburb struggled to heal as they tried to make sense of a shooting spree at a City Council meeting that left five people dead and the mayor fighting for his life.

"This is such an incredible shock to all of us. It's a tragedy of untold magnitude," Deputy Mayor Tim Griffin said at a news conference Friday. "The business of the city will continue and we will recover, but we will never be the same."

Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton had a long history of fighting with city officials over a litany of code violations, fines and citations. Police searched his house Thursday night after the rampage and removed placards containing protest slogans that Thornton often carried to City Hall, his brother said.

St. Louis County Police spokeswoman Tracy Panus said authorities were still trying to piece together the details of the attack.

Over the years, Thornton racked up thousands of dollars in parking tickets and citations. The asphalt company owner raged at council meetings that he was being persecuted, mocking city officials as "jackasses" and accusing them of having a racist "plantation mentality."

His outbursts got him arrested twice on disorderly conduct charges, and he filed a free speech lawsuit against Kirkwood, but lost the case last month.

On Thursday night, he left his home and headed to one more City Council meeting, carrying a loaded gun. On his bed back home, his younger brother Arthur said he found a note that read: "The truth will come out in the end."

Before he was shot to death by police, Thornton, 52, killed two policemen, Tom Ballman and William Biggs; council members Michael H.T. Lynch and Connie Karr; and Director of Public Works Kenneth Yost.

Mayor Mike Swoboda was hospitalized in critical condition with gunshot wounds, and a newspaper reporter covering the meeting, Todd Smith of Suburban Journals, was in satisfactory condition.

Thornton's dispute with City Hall had been escalating since the late 1990s, when he "was promised" a large amount of construction work on a development near his home, said Arthur Thornton, 42. The vast majority of work went to other contractors, he said.

"They just gave him what I'd call the scraps," Arthur Thornton said.

Standing in front of City Hall, another brother, Gerald Thornton added: "They denied all rights to the access of protection and he took it upon himself to go to war and end the issue."

Thornton's first shooting victim was Biggs, who was on duty outside City Hall, then walked into the council chambers carrying one of the slain officer's pistols to continue the rampage.

After the Pledge of Allegiance was recited at the start of the meeting, Thornton then squeezed off shot after shot. At one point, he yelled "Shoot the mayor!" before he was shot to death by police.

"We crawled under the chairs and just laid there," reporter Janet McNichols, who was covering the meeting for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, said in a video interview on the newspaper's Web site. "We heard Cookie shooting, and then we heard some shouting, and the police, the Kirkwood police, had heard what was going on, and they ran in, and they shot him."

The shooting brought a violent end to a feud that had gone back years.

Thornton had developed an especially tense relationship with Yost, Arthur Thornton said. Yost would often complain that Thornton was parking his commercial vehicles in residential neighborhoods. Some were parked in Thornton's driveway, some in a lot across the street.

Charles Thornton received roughly 150 tickets over the years, and would often complain about the treatment at City Council meetings. He called the fines against him a "slave tax," according to accounts of the meetings in the town's paper, The Webster-Kirkwood Times.

He was cuffed and dragged from council chambers, and the council considered banning him permanently after that meeting. Ultimately, the group decided that while his behavior was disruptive, he had a right to be there.

In a federal lawsuit stemming from his arrests for disorderly conduct during two meetings just weeks apart, Thornton insisted that Kirkwood officials violated his constitutional rights to free speech by barring him from speaking at the meetings.

But a judge in St. Louis tossed out the lawsuit Jan. 28, writing that "any restrictions on Thornton's speech were reasonable, viewpoint neutral, and served important governmental interests."

I am sure the murderer felt abused by the system. I am sure he was angry. But none of it justifies killing people. Period.

We live in a society in which any words or actions that seem to contradict our image of our self-worth provoke violent or even deadly reactions. We must find our ethical center again. We could start by decrying immoral actions done in our name.

And by the way, the murderer's brother Gerald Thornton himself has killed someone in a fit of anger and served time in prison.

Once again, the marionette dances as the strings are pulled.

Who didn't see THIS one coming? The only surprise is that it wasn't a full pardon.

Yet.

But hey, there's still until January 20, 2009 at 11:59 am!

And by the way, (although a novel argument from people who like to trot out "strict constructionism" as a rationale when it suits them) I actually AGREE that Cheney is not a member of the executive branch, and I think we need to be clear about this from now on. There are FOUR branches of government in this administration:

The Legislative....

The Judicial....

The Executive....





















And the Imperial.

Andrew Speaker: I don't want to. I don't care. I'm smarter than you. You can't make me.

And speaking of lawyers, here is an outstanding example of the type of behavior that we all see on a daily basis. Andrew Speaker is the first person to be forcibly quarantined by the federal government since 1963, and it looks like he deserves it. Please note the differences in the way this story has been played in the last few days and today. From the Kansas City Star. Note his comments that I have placed in boldface, which appeared in the news yesterday:

The case of a jet-setting tuberculosis patient might soon shift from the hospital wards to the courts. The patient, Andrew Speaker, an Atlanta personal injury attorney, could sue the federal government for being quarantined on the basis of federal regulations that some scholars see as unconstitutional.

Or Speaker could be sued by fellow airline passengers, especially if any caught the disease from him - which some legal scholars say is much more likely.

"He may be personally liable if someone contracts TB" from being near him on his recent flights to and from Europe, said Peter Jacobson, a University of Michigan professor of public health law. "I can see a jury coming down very hard on someone like that who willfully ignored advice not to travel."

Speaker flew to Europe for his wedding and honeymoon after being advised by health officials not to make the trip because he had TB. Then, while he was in Rome, U.S. health officials told him to stay put because further tests showed he had an even more dangerous, drug-resistant type of TB than previously thought.

The 31-year-old newlywed disregarded those instructions, taking commercial jets to Prague and then Montreal in an attempt to sneak back into the United States.

In an interview earlier this week with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Speaker said he declined to report to Italian health officials because he believed the only lifesaving care for his condition was available in the U.S.

"I'm a very well-educated, successful, intelligent person," he told the newspaper. "This is insane to me that I have an armed guard outside my door when I've cooperated with everything other than the whole solitary-confinement-in-Italy thing."

Yeah, and the not-leaving-the-country thing, and the not-flying thing, and the pulling-your-narcissistic-head-out-of-your-arse thing. Except for that.

Now today, we hear that his new father-in-law WORKS for the CDC specializing in infectious diseases including TB. Dad-in-law is stating that he never encouraged his new son-in-law to fly. And Mr. Speaker, Esquire, after careful lawyerly consideration, is now saying he's sorry for scaring everyone on his flights, and besides, nobody REALLY REALLY REALLY told him he couldn't jet off to Europe:

An Atlanta attorney quarantined with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis apologized to his fellow plane passengers in an interview aired Friday, and said he was told he wasn't contagious or a threat to anyone.

"I feel awful," Andrew Speaker said, speaking through a mask with ABC's "Good Morning America" at his hospital room in Denver. "I've lived in this state of constant fear and anxiety and exhaustion for a week now, and to think that someone else is now feeling that, I wouldn't want anyone to feel that way.

"I don't expect those people to ever forgive me. I just hope they understand that I truly never meant them any harm."

Speaker, 31, said he, his doctors and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention all knew he had TB before he flew to Europe for his wedding and honeymoon last month. But he said he was told that he wasn't contagious or a danger to anyone. Officials said they would rather he didn't fly but didn't forbid it, he said.

His father, also a lawyer, taped that meeting, he said.

"My father said, 'OK, now are you saying, prefer not to go on the trip because he's a risk to anybody, or are you simply saying that to cover yourself?' And they said, we have to tell you that to cover ourself, but he's not a risk."

Speaker, his new wife and her 8-year-old daughter were already in Europe when the CDC contacted him and told him to turn himself in immediately at a clinic there and not take another commercial flight.

Speaker said he felt as if the CDC had suddenly "abandoned him." He said he believed if he didn't get to the specialized clinic in Denver, he would die.

"Before I left, I knew that it was made clear to me, that in order to fight this, I had one shot, and that was going to be in Denver," he said. If doctors in Europe tried to treat him and it went wrong, he said, "it's very real that I could have died there."

Even though U.S. officials had put Speaker on a warning list, he caught a flight to Montreal and then drove across the U.S. border on May 24 at Champlain, N.Y. A border inspector who checked him disregarded a computer warning to stop Speaker, officials said Thursday.

The unidentified inspector later said the infected man seemed perfectly healthy and that he thought the warning was merely "discretionary," officials briefed on the case told The Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is still under investigation.

The inspector ran Speaker's passport through a computer, and a warning — including instructions to hold the traveler, don a protective mask in dealing with him, and telephone health authorities — popped up, officials said. About a minute later, Speaker was instead cleared to continue on his journey, according to officials familiar with the records. The inspector has since been removed from border duty.

Colleen Kelley, president of the union that represents customs and border agents, declined to comment on the specifics of the case, but said "public health issues were not receiving adequate attention and training" within the agency.

The next day, Speaker became the first infected person to be quarantined by the U.S. government since 1963.

He was flown by medical transport Thursday to National Jewish Medical and Research Center, where doctors put him in an isolation room where he will be treated with oral and intravenous antibiotics.

Wow. Poor him. Victimized by the CDC. "Abandoned" is a good word, too, very laden with emotional meaning. Like a big-eyed little puppy painted on velvet. A puppy that can give you a debilitating and potentially fatal disease as you breathe recycled air in a big metal tube with him for eight hours.

Who are these people who disregard any concern for anyone else but themselves? Where is a feeling of obligation to the community? And where can we find some border agents who can actually take warnings seriously? I for one certainly feel more safe now that that one agent has been removed from duty. I'm sure that'll solve the problem.

Friendly fire and lies

Disgusting.

A Poem for the Victims of Katrina

At the round earth's imagin'd corners
John Donne

At the round earths imagin'd corners, blow
Your trumpets, Angells, and arise, arise
From death, you numberlesse infinities
Of soules, and to your scattered bodies goe,
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
All whom warre, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despaire, law, chance, hath slaine, and you whose eyes,
Shall behold God, and never tast deaths woe.
But let them sleepe, Lord, and mee mourne a space,
For, if above all these, my sinnes abound,
'Tis late to aske abundance of thy grace,
When wee are there; here on this lowly ground,
Teach mee how to repent; for that's as good
As if thou hadst seal'd my pardon, with thy blood.

Answers about New Orleans

Well, I post a thought, and a few minutes later I find out that I'm not crazy paranoid. Here follows a gem from my personal goddess of reason, Molly Ivins at Working for Change:

New Orleans: It's about us
Molly Ivins - Creators Syndicate

09.01.05 - AUSTIN, Texas -- Like many of you who love New Orleans, I find myself taking short mental walks there today, turning a familiar corner, glimpsing a favorite scene, square or vista. And worrying about the beloved friends and the city, and how they are now.

To use a fine Southern word, it's tacky to start playing the blame game before the dead are even counted. It is not too soon, however, to make a point that needs to be hammered home again and again, and that is that government policies have real consequences in people's lives.

This is not "just politics" or blaming for political advantage. This is about the real consequences of what governments do and do not do about their responsibilities. And about who winds up paying the price for those policies.

This is a column for everyone in the path of Hurricane Katrina who ever said, "I'm sorry, I'm just not interested in politics," or, "There's nothing I can do about it," or, "Eh, they're all crooks anyway."

Nothing to do with me, nothing to do with my life, nothing I can do about any of it. Look around you this morning. I suppose the NRA would argue, "Government policies don't kill people, hurricanes kill people." Actually, hurricanes plus government policies kill people.

One of the main reasons New Orleans is so vulnerable to hurricanes is the gradual disappearance of the wetlands on the Gulf Coast that once stood as a natural buffer between the city and storms coming in from the water. The disappearance of those wetlands does not have the name of a political party or a particular administration attached to it. No one wants to play, "The Democrats did it," or, "It's all Reagan's fault." Many environmentalists will tell you more than a century's interference with the natural flow of the Mississippi is the root cause of the problem, cutting off the movement of alluvial soil to the river's great delta.

But in addition to long-range consequences of long-term policies like letting the Corps of Engineers try to build a better river than God, there are real short-term consequences, as well. It is a fact that the Clinton administration set some tough policies on wetlands, and it is a fact that the Bush administration repealed those policies -- ordering federal agencies to stop protecting as many as 20 million acres of wetlands.

Last year, four environmental groups cooperated on a joint report showing the Bush administration's policies had allowed developers to drain thousands of acres of wetlands.

Does this mean we should blame Bush for the fact that New Orleans is underwater? No, but it means we can blame Bush when a Class 3 or Class 2 hurricane puts New Orleans under. At this point, it is a matter of making a bad situation worse, of failing to observe the First Rule of Holes (when you're in one, stop digging).

Had a storm the size of Katrina just had the grace to hold off for a while, it's quite likely no one would even remember what the Bush administration did two months ago. The national press corps has the attention span of a gnat, and trying to get anyone in Washington to remember longer than a year ago is like asking them what happened in Iznik, Turkey, in A.D. 325.

Just plain political bad luck that, in June, Bush took his little ax and chopped $71.2 million from the budget of the New Orleans Corps of Engineers, a 44 percent reduction. As was reported in New Orleans CityBusiness at the time, that meant "major hurricane and flood projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now."

The commander of the Corps' New Orleans district also immediately instituted a hiring freeze and cancelled the annual Corps picnic.

Our friends at the Center for American Progress note the Office of Technology Assessment used to produce forward-thinking plans such as "Floods: A National Policy Concern" and "A Framework for Flood Hazards Management." Unfortunately, the office was targeted by Newt Gingrich and the Republican right, and gutted years ago.

In fact, there is now a government-wide movement away from basing policy on science, expertise and professionalism, and in favor of choices based on ideology. If you're wondering what the ideological position on flood management might be, look at the pictures of New Orleans -- it seems to consist of gutting the programs that do anything.

Unfortunately, the war in Iraq is directly related to the devastation left by the hurricane. About 35 percent of Louisiana's National Guard is now serving in Iraq, where four out of every 10 soldiers are guardsmen. Recruiting for the Guard is also down significantly because people are afraid of being sent to Iraq if they join, leaving the Guard even more short-handed.

The Louisiana National Guard also notes that dozens of its high-water vehicles, humvees, refuelers and generators have also been sent abroad. (I hate to be picky, but why do they need high-water vehicles in Iraq?)

This, in turn, goes back to the original policy decision to go into Iraq without enough soldiers and the subsequent failure to admit that mistake and to rectify it by instituting a draft.

The levees of New Orleans, two of which are now broken and flooding the city, were also victims of Iraq war spending. Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, said on June 8, 2004, "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq."

This, friends, is why we need to pay attention to government policies, not political personalities, and to know whereon we vote. It is about our lives.

(c) 2005 Creators Syndicate

Where's the National Guard?

Here's an unwelcome thought.

Usually when there's a natural disaster, the National Guard is called out. The news channels keep affirming the fact that there are not enough rescuers, and that there aren't enough police to stop the looting.

Why hasn't the Guard been called out immediately this time, as soon as the scope of the disaster was obvious?

I wonder if the war in Iraq has anything to do with it. And how many policemen, troopers, and EMTs are deployed in the war effort right now instead of being available to help with the crisis in the Gulf-- I mean OUR Gulf, not the Persian Gulf? I fear that a military is already stretched to the breaking point just can't be stretched further in this crisis.

This undeniable problem might be something to consider, especially in light of all the base closings and realignments that have been going on in the last few days.