pinions of buddy don: drownd it in the bathtub

lack as not ye dun herd bout that publican name of grover norquist n how he wonts to to git gummint so small he could drownd it in a bathtub. hes rite proud of the idee:

“My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

mayhap he dont know it yet, but katrina dun give im a big a nuff of a bathtub sos we could all git a look at whut happens when ye drownd yer gummint. it dont perpare. it barely reacks. it aint effectiv.

its drownded.

the baby in this bathwater is a'gone be the ongoin publican assault on gummint, witch thats thar agenda:

• permanent repeal of the estate tax
• an extension of deep cuts to capital gains and dividend taxes
• the first entitlement spending cuts in nearly a decade
• the advent of private investment accounts for Social Security.

point is, that agenda is eggspozed as totally out of touch with current reality:

• enormus budget deficits:
  • in fedrull spendin (bush has dun grew the gummint to be drownded fastern inny presdint since lbj)
  • in forn trade (them chinese folks is walmartin us!)
• a war we dont know how to end thats costin us a forchun:
  • in soljers
  • in nashunull treasure
  • in our standin in the worl
  • in our abilty to git osama bin laden
  • in our abilty to win them harts n minds we need to win ifn we hope to change thangs in the middle east
• poverty on the rise with all them poor people (A Nation's Castaways) thats been left behind suddenly eggspozed fer all to see
• wages fer 80% of folks stagnunt
• eggsplodin health care cost
• deterioratin infrastruckchur ... n
• a furst reesponts system that aint even close to reddy fer sumthin uneggspeckted on a counta how piss poor the reesponts wuz when thay wuz days of warnin!

mayhap ye thank i am contradicktin myself when i say them publicans grew the gummint -- witch they are on track to git the recurd fer growin it fastern inny addministrayshun in histry -- yet they gut it to whar it could be dronwded in the bathtub katrina made out of new awlins. but they dun it. drownded it.

as ye know, even a giant kin drownd in a few inches of water, speshly ifn hes dun been knockd down.

ye kin git whut ye need to proove that in this here articull name of Storm Exposed Disarray at the Top. it splains jes how the publican agenda disabulld the gummint to whar it could be drownded by katrina. n they dun it lack they been a'doin everthang in the past four years -- usin 9/11:

After Hurricane Hugo hit in 1989 and Hurricane Andrew in 1992, federal response was panned, and FEMA was due for an overhaul. It got it in 1993, when Clinton brought in James Lee Witt, a veteran emergency manager and political ally, to take over, granted the agency Cabinet-level status and gave it a highly visible role it had not previously had. Its response to crises such as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing received high marks, though some Republicans complained that it was used as a pot of money doled out to bolster Clinton's political standing.

But after 9/11, FEMA lost out in the massive bureaucratic shuffle.

Not only did its Cabinet status disappear, but it became one of 22 government agencies to be consolidated into Homeland Security. For a time, recalled Ervin, even its name was slated to vanish and become simply the directorate of emergency preparedness and response until then-DHS Secretary Tom Ridge relented.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers from hurricane-prone states fought a rear-guard action against FEMA's absorption. "What we were afraid of, and what is coming to pass, is that FEMA has basically been destroyed as a coherent, fast-on-its-feet, independent agency," said Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.). In creating DHS, "people were thinking about the possibility of terrorism," said Walter Gillis Peacock, director of the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center at Texas A&M University. "They weren't thinking about the reality of a hurricane."

in effeck, they changed the focus frum natcherull disasters to plannin fer terrst attacks, developin 12 of 15 disaster scenarios on terrst attacks, tutherns bein on pandemick flu, major earthquake or hurricane, witch i reckun they dint have much time fer them last three:

By this year, almost three of every four grant dollars appropriated to DHS for first responders went to programs explicitly focused on terrorism, the Government Accountability Office noted in a July report. Out of $3.4 billion in proposed spending for homeland security preparedness grants in the upcoming fiscal year, GAO found, $2.6 billion would be on terrorism-focused programs. At the same time, the budget for much of what remained of FEMA has been cut every year; for the current fiscal year, funding for the core FEMA functions went down to $444 million from $664 million.

New leaders such as Allbaugh were critical of FEMA's natural disaster focus and lectured senior managers about the need to adjust to the post-9/11 fear of terrorism. So did his friend Michael D. Brown, a lawyer with no previous disaster management experience whom Allbaugh brought in as his deputy and who now has the top FEMA post. "Allbaugh's quote was 'You don't get it,' " recalled the senior FEMA official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "If you brought up natural disasters, you were accused of being a pre-9/11 thinker." The result, the official said, was that "FEMA was being taxed by the department, having money and slots taken. Because we didn't conform with the mission of the agency."

"I'm guilty of saying, 'you don't get it,' " Allbaugh said. "Absolutely." The former FEMA chief said he had encountered bureaucratic resistance to thinking about a "monumental" disaster, such as Katrina or 9/11, rather than the more standard diet of "tornadoes and rising waters."

But experts in emergency response inside and outside the government sounded warnings about the changes at FEMA. Peacock said FEMA's traditional emphasis on emergency response "all went up in smoke" after 9/11, creating a "blind spot" as a result of a "police-action, militaristic view" of homeland security. When it came to natural disasters, "It was not only forgetting about it, it was not funding it."

one of the ways folks in charge at fema has been trine to git offn the hook on not bein reddy is claimin they dint have no idee twood be so bad, witch even the presdint sed nobidy had ever magined the levees mite brake. problem is, wuz widely knowd how bad twood be:

But other officials said they warned well before Monday about what could happen. For years, said another senior FEMA official, he had sat at meetings where plans were discussed to send evacuees to the Superdome. "We used to stare at each other and say, 'This is the plan? Are you really using the Superdome?' People used to say, what if there is water around it? They didn't have an alternative," he recalled.

In the run-up to the current crisis, Allbaugh said he knew "for a fact" that officials at FEMA and other federal agencies had requested that New Orleans issue a mandatory evacuation order earlier than Sunday morning.

But DHS did not ask the U.S. military to assist in pre-hurricane evacuation efforts, despite well-known estimates that a major hurricane would cause levees in New Orleans to fail. In an interview, the general charged with operations for the military's Northern Command said such a request to help with the evacuation "did not come our way."

"At the point that we were all watching the evacuation and the clogged Interstate 10 going to the west on Sunday, we were watching the storm very carefully," Maj. Gen. Richard Rowe said. "At that time, it was a Category 5 storm and we knew that it would be among the worst storms to ever hit the United States. . . . I knew there was an excellent chance of flooding."

even them publican masters of spin caint spin thisn away. they caint spin away the fack that we wuznt reddy. they caint swift-boat slime a nuff folks to git em all to shut up. not this time. jes lack they caint spin them good people left behind down in new awlins, them folks that waited peacefull as could be in agony fer five long days, waitin fer releef in the hot sun of new awlins -- they caint spin them folks into looters nor scary rioters nor folks that deeserved whut they gut fer not gittin (Living Paycheck to Paycheck Made Leaving Impossible) out. ye caint spin it on a counta taint true n everbidy gut plenty of time to see it with thar own eyes. rite thar on the tv.

fack is, this time tiz so cumpellin a situwayshun that yer jurnlists has dun quit playin bof sides now. yer jurnlists have dun started uncuverin the truth in sted of cuverin spin.

that means folks is gittin a chants to see whut gummint wood look lack, drownded in a bathtub.

taint purty. taint rite.

most of all, taint American to be trine to drownd the gummint on a counta, in case ye dun fergut, our gummint is:

• of the people
• by the people
• for the people

the people. american citizens. lack them folks down in new awlins.