FROM: Toby Chaudhuri, Campaign for America's Future Communications Director
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SUBJECT: Katrina Storm Warning
On the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, people in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are struggling to rebuild their lives after one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history. Disaster often strikes suddenly and with too little warning. Communities mobilize to save lives and limit the damage. They then look to the federal government to join with state and local authorities to help in the rescue and the recovery. We join together in assisting those who were hit because we are part of one country. This is a measure of our patriotism, our sense that we are all in this together.
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In New Orleans, the federal government -- too often aided and abetted by state and local incompetence -- has failed. With an appalled country watching, it failed callously in the rescue of those displaced. And in the past 2 years, it has failed the survivors. This failure is not an accident. It is a choice. It is a reflection of the conservative policies and perspectives that scorn government, outsource government responsibility to the private sector, perpetuate cronyism over professionalism and sacrifice the fate of American citizens for political gains. In New Orleans, the French Quarter thrives, but the Bottoms lies in ruins. The federal government is now furthering the urban removal that Katrina's fury began.
THE POLITICAL STORM
With the country appalled at the Bush administration's callous incompetence in the rescue of Katrina's survivors, the president belatedly traveled to New Orleans to stage a dramatic press conference where he promised that New Orleans would be rebuilt, and that the nation would begin to address the urban misery that the storm had exposed. That promise has been broken. Once more conservative policies and perspectives have failed Americans. Instead of a coherent rebuilding process, we have witnessed:
-- CRONYISM: Rather than rely on trained experts, President Bush called on political loyalists to respond. Longtime political strategist Karl Rove was appointed to head the reconstruction. Bush-Cheney campaign manager Joe Allbaugh was Bush's first FEMA director and Michael Brown was selected to fill his spot, from the International Arabian Horse Association. Other senior FEMA officials included Patrick Rhode, Brooks Altshuler and Scott Morris who all worked for the Bush-Cheney campaign.
-- CORRUPTION: Gov. Haley Barbour, R-Miss., a former Washington lobbyist and RNC chairman and long-time Bush ally, was caught handing out one of the biggest Miss.-based federal contracts for recovery efforts to a Republican activist who is married to his nephew. In the aftermath of Katrina, the Department of Homeland Security awarded 3,400 contracts worth $5.3 billion, with no competitive bidding and no local preferences.
-- CYNICISM: With Louisiana's Democratic gubernatorial and senate seats endangered now, it may be no surprise that every decision was influenced by political consequences in Rove's eyes. Louisiana has been a swing state for some time and Democratic victories were based on the ability to mobilize the black community in New Orleans. One question is whether the administration ever intended to allow the poor that had been dispersed around the country to come back. The population of New Orleans has declined by more than 289,000 residents, according to Census figures, and 500,000 survivors are still scattered across the country with no plans to bring them home. Experts in the area estimate that the congressional advantage for Republicans will be 5 to 1 by 2012.
A FLOOD OF FAILURES
Seventeen days after Hurricane Ka
