pop-culture for the people

This day makes me proud.  Thank you America.

As I write this, it has been almost two weeks since Hurricane Katrina, a category four hurricane, blasted its way through New Orleans and the Mississippi gulf region.  If you listen carefully, thouth, you can still hear lots of hot air being blown around.  You can also see the recovery effort underway; not by the National Guard in Louisiana, but by President Bush’s public relations machine.

I’m not a comedian so I can’t produce a biting satiric commentary on the debacle.  If you want to see that, go watch The Daily Show - they’re doing a fine job.  But I still feel the need to say something, anything, about what’s going on in this country right now.  I remember reading an article in one of last year’s National Geographic magazines, explaining in eerie detail what would ultimately transpire in New Orleans two weeks ago.  They said the levees would break.  Check.  They said massive flooding would engulf the city.  Check.  They said that thousands upon thousands of people would be trapped in their homes, on their rooftops, waiting to be rescued.  Check.

What the article didn’t predict was our response after the storm passed, and that’s because human nature is far more illogical than mother nature.  Who would have known that our nation’s leader, instead of calling upon our resources to rush to the scene and rescue the endangered, would remain on vacation, go to birthday parties, and play the guitar, while an American city filled with water like a soup bowl?  Who would have known that FEMA’s director, a former president of an Arabian horse club, would not fill out the paperwork to send troops to New Orleans until well after the storm hit, and would schedule those troops to arrive four days too late?  Who would have known that the chief of Homeland Security would claim that news anchors’ reports from New Orleans’ Convention Center, where thousands of refugees were left without food or water for days, were just rumors and anecdotes? 

Just who the hell is in charge here?  The unsettling answer is, apparently, no one.  While no one in the administration wants to play the “blame game” right now (and as Jon Stewart said the other night, the people who don’t want to play the blame game are always the ones to blame), there is plenty of it to go around.  Why not start with the top: Mr. Bush.  Once Dubya realized there might be something going on (through the help of his advisors, no doubt), he thought that a sightseeing trip over the burning, drowning city of NOLA would be enough to quell the anger over his inaction.  In Washington, he gave a speech that sounded like a sixth grader giving a book report, filled with meaningless statistics about millions of water bottles, thousands of MREs, a few Snickers bars.  When THAT wasn’t enough, they finally decided to cart Dubya down to “Ground Zero,” which ended up being a hangar in which helicopters and troops who should have been saving people were diverted to become a nice backdrop for the big guy’s photo op.  And what did the big guy have to say?  “Brownie, you’re doin’ a heck of a job.”  Gad, I love my eloquent president.

“Brownie,” of course, is Michael Brown, the director of FEMA, the organization that is charged with protecting us from disasters such as…hurricanes.  Just make sure that you’re not in a hurry.  As I mentioned, Brownie’s prior emergency experience involved making sure the manure was shoveled off the Arabian horse stage as quickly as possible, so obviously he had the credentials to protect a sinking city from a cat 4 storm.  He signed paperwork late; he said that the Convention Center tragedy would not be resolved until he knew it was “factually happening,” even though live pictures were on the news for the past two days; he blamed the disaster on those stubborn people without cars who just wouldn’t leave the city before the storm.  Whatever was happening, it obviously wasn’t HIS fault.  Thankfully, it no longer will be: earlier today he was “reassigned” from the Katrina rescue effort.  Just reassigned; Bush doesn’t fire people.

This will probably mean that Michael Chertoff, director of Homeland Security, is also safe in his job.  Homeland Security has swallowed FEMA into its bureaucratic belly, so even though they may not have gotten to the refugees in New Orleans quickly enough, they most assuredly have all kinds of paperwork filled out in quadruplicate explaining why.  During that awful week after the storm, Chertoff also claimed that the Convention Center problem couldn’t be confirmed, so we were all left to wonder why Harry Connick, Jr. was able to reach the people there, but not the military.

Why?  Why?  That’s the question that scares the hell out of this administration right now, and their only hope is that we get tired of asking.  They will stall as long as they can, because they know the answer.  It wasn’t the local officials’ fault that the president didn’t take this seriously.  It wasn’t Mayor Nagin’s fault that soldiers turned back people from the Convention Center at gunpoint when they tried to cross the bridge to the dry, affluent white neighborhood where there was possible food and water.  And it certainly wasn’t the fault of the people of New Orleans, who were born too poor to escape, too fucking poor to even be visible.

Finally, the ultimate mistake.  This president was elected upon the premise, the PROMISE, that America would be safer under this administration’s watch.  Dick Cheney said, during the debates, that he would keep you safe; the other guy might let you die.  Homeland Security was supposed to mean something, it was supposed to make a difference.  Instead it has become another Orwellian lie, like the Clear Skies Act.  The administration has failed in the one thing they said repeatedly they could do right: save us from danger.  How safe do you feel now?

More quotes from our clueless leaders in the past weeks:

“From the rubbles of Trent Lott’s house - the guy lost his whole house - there’s going to be a fantastic house.  And I look forward to sitting on the porch.”  GWB, connecting with the common man.

“We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.” - Rep. Baker of Baton Rouge (R)

“I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.” - GWB

“And so many of the people in the (Astrodome) arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (she chuckled)—this is working very well for them.” - Barbara Bush

“I AM pleased with the federal government’s response…this is not a time for complaining…I am really shocked at the comments that are coming.” - Trent Lott

“The federal government did not even know about the convention center people until today.” - Michael Brown of FEMA, on THURSDAY. 

In the most recent election, the most populous state in the union, with the most electoral votes (55), comprising 20% of the total needed to be elected, was completely ignored by both candidates.  Why?  Because we were a sure thing for the Democratic party.  And sure enough, we delivered over 6 million votes (54% of the total) to John Kerry.  What state am I talking about?  You guessed it; that crazy, left-wing, hippy commune of no-good Hollywood actors and has-beens—California.

So, other than making movies (which are all moving to Canada anyway), why should anyone else in the US care about California, right?  Well, it’s simple really.  Consider the economy.  In 2001, California was responsible for 13.4% of the US GDP; the closest runners-up were New York at 8.2% and Texas at 7.5%.  It comes out to 1.3 TRILLION dollars. Just from California.  I’ve always heard that CA is the 7th largest economy in the world, so I decided to try to find out if that is true.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any concise data on the rankings of the GDPs of the world’s nations.  However, there are many tables devoted to the wealth of nations per capita.  So I took the 2001 GSP of CA and divided by the 2000 population (there was no 2001 data) and I came up with a startling figure.  Now, I know there is a difference in the way GDP and GSP are calculated, involving military expenditures, etc., but I think this works for illustration.  Per capita, from the 2000 and 2001 figures, CA comes in at about $39,000.  Using the 2002 world figures, that puts us 3rd in GDP per capita, and AHEAD of the United States as a whole (which would then be 5th, with CA inserted).  There’s also that tiny little issue of TAXES.  I believe the figure is: CA gets $0.75 back for every dollar it pays to the Feds in taxes.  So we’re supporting the rest of the country, despite the fact that those dollars are desperately needed here.

So, with such a large population, and such a large economy, why are we being ignored?  In 2001, Dubya refused to intervene in the electricity “shortage,” probably because it was manufactured by a close friend of his.  It took him days to declare the 2003 firestorms in SoCal a disaster area, when he declares Florida a disaster area whenever there is a burp in the weather.  There have been reports that FEMA has a history of overpaying in Florida.  When a levy broke up here in the delta last June, it took a MONTH for the feds to decide it was a disaster area, and even then they restricted it so that the federal money only helps the state with clean-up and no low-cost loans are available to the farmers who lost millions of dollars in crops, houses, and equipment.  The crop was so new at the time, that the farmers had not even insured it yet.  That levy broke in June, it is now December and they are still pumping water out.  So, even before the election, Dubya has had a policy of ignoring California.

So, where am I going with this, right?  California secession baby!  Other than the issues I have outlined above, the following are some reasons why CA may want to consider seceding if the courts don’t go our way.

The fight over marijuana:
In 1996 Prop 215 passed by a 56% margin, legalizing medical marijuana in California.  Now the first cases are hitting the courts, with the first Supreme Court ruling due by the summer.  Now what is happening is the “pot stores” that have popped up around California are being raided by the DEA.  These are essentially pharmacies that only sell marijuana.  They are legal under California law, have business permits, only sell to people with a valid prescription, and grow their own plants (thus are not transporting it across state lines).  They are now being targeted, I believe, because they are so visible.  The feds are trying to make a point in California, and it is starting to piss us off.

The fight over the environment:
California is exempt from the Clean Air Act because we had our own clean air laws in place before the federal standard was enacted in 1965.  This means we get to set our own emission standards, and we pay for it with more expensive gas and cars.  Now, California has decided to also set its own standards for minimum miles-per-gallon (mpg) and carbon dioxide emissions of the fleet of cars sold in California starting in 2009.  Now, the automotive industry is suing in federal court, saying we don’t have the right to set minimum mpg requirements, and that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant and therefore cannot be regulated.

California is very proud of its coastline, and the state has been fighting the feds for years over offshore drilling.  We decided years ago to limit offshore drilling, stop new leases, and not allow unused leases to be renewed.  The Bush administration does not like this, and would prefer to start new drilling off the shore of California over the objections of the state.  This despite the fact that Dubya helped his brother’s reelection by buying back unused leases in Florida to prevent new drilling.  So far the courts have ruled in California’s favor by blocking the new leases until their impact can be evaluated.  Lease owners are also suing California over regulations regarding what can and cannot be dumped from existing oil platforms into the waters off our coasts.

The fight over abortion:
Roe v. Wade said the constitution guarantees a right to privacy and that in the 1st trimester an abortion is a medical decision between a woman and her doctor.  The 2nd and 3rd trimesters are allowed to be regulated, as long as exceptions are allowed for the health of the woman.  This court decision does not specifically allow abortions, or say that we have a constitutional right to an abortion.  If it is struck down, it also does not specifically prohibit abortion, but it would make it much easier for the federal government to enact laws that prohibit abortion.  Enter California law.  Governor Davis signed into law a constitutional amendment that protects the right to privacy.  California also has laws that make abortion legal.  If Roe v. Wade is struck down, abortion rights will not be affected until a federal law is enacted to prohibit it.  Then we’re stuck with the same problem that is currently happening with marijuana.

There is also a new fight in the states rights saga.  The new federal spending law stipulates that federal funding will be cut to any state that tries to enforce state laws that protect rights to abortion.  For example, California requires all hospitals to provide abortions when the mother’s life is in danger.  In some states, Catholic hospitals will not perform an abortion while the fetus is still alive even if it would stop a woman from bleeding to death during a complication in the pregnancy.  The new federal spending law will cut off funds to states that try to penalize a facility for not following the state laws.  The California attorney general is taking this to court.

The real kicker, of course, is that the Bush administration is Republican.  Republicans are supposed to be for small federal government and states rights.  Democrats are the ones that are supposed to enact all these far-reaching laws that make all the states act the same.  However, someone needs to tell this to the current regime, because I have a feeling that when push comes to shove, they’re going to be heavily in favor of federal government regulation.  So what’s my answer?  When you have an administration that so eagerly ignores the will of such a powerful state, it may be time to say “See ya!”

—hathyr