Levees Not War

From 2001 to 2005, the Bush administration’s budget allocations for New Orleans area hurricane protection averaged one-fifth of the amount requested by Louisiana officials. In the 2005 budget, Louisiana requested about $26 million; even after the hurricane season of 2004—one of the worst in decades—the Bush White House offered only about $4 million, an amount that the U.S. spends about every 20 minutes in Iraq. (Current U.S. expenditures in Iraq now run at approximately $10 million per hour, roughly $12 billion per month.)

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Just supposing our national government were ever to be infiltrated, somehow occupied by invisible agents of a foreign power (without the public quite realizing it)—If this happened and then the public somehow became aware that the government had fallen into the hands of men loyal to an alien power, then would the people yank the usurpers out of office at once?

For what people—what free and rational people whose votes and taxes empower the government—would willingly entrust the powers of public spending, taxation, foreign relations, and war powers to officials loyal to a foreign power? . . . or to any authority acting without attention to or concern for the public well-being?

Would that government be called a representative democracy?

. . . no place in America is safe. Hurricane tidal surges of 10 feet or more could swamp Houston, Charleston, Long Island . . . A tornado in Brooklyn (really), earthquakes not limited to California, an interstate bridge collapsing at rush hour into the Mississippi in Minneapolis (it didn’t take an earthquake) . . . Where will the federal government be when you’re down and out? Northeastern energy grid blackouts, hijacked planes . . . These are matters of survival that concern us all equally, regardless of residence or party affiliation. Without care and maintenance, things fall apart. Without funding, without investment, things fall apart. And the longer our so-called leaders shy away from climate change, the higher the temperature, and so with the sea level.

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