Sunday, May 30, 2010

Obama's Katrina?

Let us count the ways in which I disagree:
1. Anything Karl Rove says should be immediately debunked. Period. Give me another source for your analogy.
2. This is a man-made, corporate made, disaster and is in no way a natural disaster such as hurricane Katrina.
3. If Obama had as head of the coast guard or head of minerals management, a person whose only experience was as the former owner of a casino... then maybe there would be an analogy to draw. IF the head of minerals management had failed to curb corrupt policies in the bureau, this is not the same as just not answering your Blackberry when the call regarding a disaster came in.
4. If Bush were president right now, the price of gas would have gone up "due to the disaster" to $5 a gallon. Like when he was in office and not before any significant Republican race.
5. Um, during Katrina people were dying of dehydration, violence from poor shelter organization and hunger. Not to mention water-bourne illnesses.
6. One of the only similarities I can conclude is that both disasters were preventable and both were predicted. However the reasons they were not prevented are entirely different. The flooding that destroyed mostly a highly impoverished area occurred because improvements to levees and flood controls were ignored for decades. Improvements that had been requested were continuously ignored by successive federal administrations. They were expensive fixes and these were poor people. The safety issues on the oil rig seem to have been identified and minerals management did nothing about them. Powerful lobbies and bribes were behind this. Even though BP is the third largest oil company in the world, they got away with this. This is about corporate greed. While we will fire the head of an agency, we won't let a corrupt corporation fail.
7. The only other analogy I can draw has nothing to do with who's president. Both are examples of our willingness to ignore the obvious. If you build below sea-level and you live by the sea, expect to be flooded at some point no matter what your efforts are. It's like building near a volcano. If you drill off-shore, there will be oil spills that impact nearby land. We are human, our best efforts at preventing these problems (without corruption) will fail at some point. Now we just have to decide if we are prepared to deal with the results. Let's focus on that instead of whining about "was my president unfairly blamed.

The conclusion I think we can all agree on is that it does nothing towards solving what created either of the disaster conditions in either situation to simply point the finger at one individual. The problem lies in an unwillingness on our part to break apart these situations and truly hold those individuals responsible accountable. We are also unwilling to change the very circumstances which exacerbated both situations. We are unwilling to either not build on flood plains or to improve the safety conditions around them, especially if we are not the ones living in the flood plains and those who are are poor. We are unwilling to deal with corrupt local politicians. We are unwilling to restrict the lobbying abilities of major multinational corporations and to examine a future without oil. We are unwilling to pay the price for oil that it truly costs when environmental damages from drilling are factored in. It is much easier to point the finger at one individual. This is how democracies die if you ask me. The laziness of the average voter to actively participate. If the president of the U.S. were able to unilaterally solve both of these issues, they would be overstepping their role and doing away with our system of checks and balances. It is going to take far more than one vote for one person to create change and to keep democracy alive.

No comments:

Post a Comment