Why Isn’t Eleanor Clift Writing For The New York Times?
That’s what I want to know; she’d fit right in with the MoDo/Krugman/Herbert/Rich crowd. Clift’s latest has this for a teaser:
If there’s an upside to Katrina, it’s that the Republican agenda of tax cuts, Social Security privatization and slashing government programs is over.
Oh, joy, what an upside…so we’ll continue to head towards a disaster far greater than Katrina in our entitlement programs, and pay higher taxes to boot…man, I feel better already!
Of course, Clift offers no proof, as we’ve come to expect from progressives; she doesn’t even bother to make a real argument. Just more wishful thinking run amuck…here’s the problem with people like Clift: progressives want to hang anything on Bush, so they bash the federal government’s response to Katrina…and their conclusion is that we will want more of that federal government that they just said failed so badly. Come again?
The progressive response would be that I don’t understand, FEMA was headed by a Bush political hack, ergo it’s not the same. Bull…anyone who knows anything about government agencies knows that they are damn near immovable…the same career civil servants stay in charge, I mean really in charge, operationally in charge, no matter what figurehead is at the top of the org chart. If the feds failed during Katrina, then the lesson that we REALLY need to take, if we strip away the partisanship, is this: too many chiefs and not enough braves will kill you every time – unfortunately, quite literally in this case.
There are too many holes in this argument to let it pass…
1) I’m not sure that Katrina will lead to the end of Bush’s tax cuts, but at minimum it looks like it will put a stop on the continued repeal of the estate tax. Floyd Norris’s column in the New York Times today shows how the repeal benefits roughly 550 families at a cost in billions (and the net tax rate of these estates would be 17% if the repeal were nullified).
The current budget deficit is roughly $400 billion per year. The cost of Katrina has been estimated at upwards of $100 billion. I think it is shameful that Bush’s spending (see below) and tax cuts have led us from the surplus of the Clinton presidency to deficits of this magnitude. The cost of Katrina has to come from somewhere — since Bush is unwilling to rescind tax cuts, presumably he intends to sell another $100 billion to Asian central banks. Continuing tax cuts which benefit so few at such a great cost at a time like this is (to steal a quote) an absurdity too gross to be insisted upon.
2) Social Security privatization was DOA before Katrina, so I don’t see her point here. Regarding spending: the lead editorial of the current issue of the Economist notes that discretionary spending has risen more quickly under Bush than any president since LBJ. (It further notes that much of this spending has gone to the Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska and similar boondoggles). So here I believe she is wrong too.
The issue is what will happen when the huge budget deficits caused by Bush’s tax cuts and reckless government spending become more than foreign central banks are willing to support. (My personal belief is that at some point there will be a huge crash of the dollar and a resulting economic collapse — and I am betting my own money on this probability by buying non-US sovereign debt, which I believe the be the safest investment for the future). Katrina will exacerbate this problem — the question is whether Bush will address the problem with a sounder tax and spending policy, or whether he will continue his practice of racking up a huge government debt to avoid the unpopular but necessary combination of tax increases and reduced discretionary spending.
3) “Progressives want to hang anything on Bush, so they bash the federal government’s response to Katrina…and their conclusion is that we will want more of that federal government that they just said failed so badly.” Well, no. Progressives (and not a few conservatives) bash the federal government’s response because it was inept and incompetent, not because the government isn’t big enough. Bush aggregated 19 government agencies into the Department of Homeland Security, whose main energies (according to the Economist editorial) are devoted to “perpetual reorganization.” One would have hoped that with four years since 9/11 and untold billions spent, that there would be a coherent federal plan to respond to a natural or terrorist disaster. One would think that resources would have been devoted to developing a communications system, planning for mass evacuations, having stockpiles of essential supplies, etc. But then one would be wrong.
4) I believe that the assertion that Brown might have been a Bush appointee but the lower levels of management are career bureaucrats is factually incorrect — my source is a New York Times article (yesterday?) which gave the bios of the top five or six people at FEMA. They are all Bush appointees. However, this misses the point. To quote the Economist: the responsibility for responding to a catastrophe lies squarely with the federal government. It is Bush’s team which runs the government and he is accountable for its results. You can try to excuse the feeble federal response to Katrina by saying that local government was also incompetent, but that misses the point. In 2004, Bush and Cheney ran on the platform that they were the ones who could protect us — the inability to mount an effective response to Katrina showed the emptiness of that promise.
Two other points:
1) The fact that Brown is a political appointee does not indicate that he is necessarily wrong for the job. Clinton’s FEMA head was also a political appointee, but he had experience in the field — he was in charge of emergency management for Arkansas. The appointee issue is a smokescreen: Bush is responsible for the performance of those he appoints, regardless of whether they are political hacks or not.
2) I think much of the fault of the poor response by the Department of Homeland Security lies with Bush’s appointment of Tom Ridge to lead the agency for three years. Like Jay Garner, Ridge was a poor choice to take on the responsibility of an exceedingly difficult job. Both Garner and Ridge were apparently chosen because Bush felt comfortable with them — certainly nothing in their backgrounds would seem to qualify them for these roles. These were the people Bush chose to execute his policies — yet neither developed the sort of organization which could tackle the enormous problems they were faced with, and (in my opinion) the results were equally catastrophic.
No matter what the situation or who is at fault, liberals will gleefully find a way to blame President Bush. They will quote liberal news articles that have little if any facts to base their comments on or leave out major facts. What about the Times call against more money to improve the levies in New Orleans? What about the 8 years that Clinton knew that the levies needed to be repaired and did not do anything about it. Must be how we got our surplus under his “administration”. I do not agree that it is the federal government’s responsiblity to protect individual states. It was the mayor of New Orleans and his administration that was responsible for having an adequate emergency plan for his people and carrying it out and he didn’t. It was the Governor of that state that was responsible for helping the mayor to fullfill his responsiblity to do what was necessary to implement the emergency safety plan and she didn’t. But apparently that’s okay because they are democrates. Our federal government is responsible for our nation as a whole first and foremost and the state and city government for thier states and cities. That is what my state and local tax dollars pay for and the federal money sent to the state and local government. I agree that there is plenty of blame to go around with all levels of government in this disaster, and in fact in some of the individual people themselves, so how about some responsible reporting and fact finding that covers it all, not just the political agenda that is being called news reporting. What a lousy example of responsiblity and accountability once again being role modeled for our children.
Kim, thanks, always nice to see a new face (so to speak). peter, thorough as always…believe it or not, I agree with large chunks of what you say, but some of it I dispute. Even if the top five or six FEMA guys are political hacks, believe me, you have to dig deeper than that to find the guys that do the work. The larger issue, though, is the size of government thing. You’re far more articulate and intelligent than your average progressive, so I think you give them too much credit. The government is their best friend; it provides the safety net, the entitlements, the regulations, all the big brother feel good stuff that conservatives like me are suspicious of; I look at government not as my best friend, but as a somewhat recalcitrant employee that bears watching before it makes off with all the expensive printer cartridges…
Which governemnt programs has President Bush slashed? Now Eleanor might be able to name one or two programs after some thought, but really has total spending by the federal Goverment gone up or down? Medicare expansion alone has added 100 of billions of dollars to the federal budget and then there is the latest Transportation bill to consider.
Fred-
Don’t be silly. He’s a Republican. Ergo, he’s slashing all good and decent programs. Sheesh.
Also, since a Republican is President — we’re in the middle of a recession, unemployment is way up (if it’s not, then it must be because so many people have given up), any jobs that have been created must be dead-end minimum wage jobs, and also there are homeless people again.
Get with the program. It’s not like you have to actually look at economic statistics or budget numbers to know the right answer.
Peter-
You wrote: “Continuing tax cuts which benefit so few at such a great cost at a time like this is (to steal a quote) an absurdity too gross to be insisted upon.”
You’ve got an absurd switching of active and passive here. The sixty or seventy percent of your salary that the government doesn’t take is not a “benefit” given to you at the “cost” of the state. And the double and triple negatives get a bit convoluted.
Properly phrased, what you mean is: “Reinstating the estate tax is a moral imperative because it would take so much money from so few people.”
Absurd indeed.
Why don’t we just confiscate all of George Soros’s assets — continuing to not seize all his assets benefits just one man, at an enormous (opportunity) cost to the U.S. Treasury — absurd!
Clint, you may be on to something with that George Soros thing…
To Kim:
1) I’m not gleeful. Disgusted, maybe, but definitely not gleeful.
2) Re the Times: I’m not familiar with what they said, so I can’t respond.
3) My post was about the response to Katrina, and not the levees, but since you bring it up: The Economist (hardly a liberal magazine) reports in the current issue: “The funding for New Orleans’s levees, which has fallen by nearly half in the last four years, started dropping in 2001.” That statement is either true or false. If it is true, then I think that is pretty dispositive. If it is false, then I would be eager to learn why it is wrong.
4) There are lots of voices on the left which have noted that the city and state governments also failed (The New York Times among them). Louisiana politics has been corrupt and rotten since at least Huey Long. I expected something better from the federal government.
To Mark:
1) I don’t think that government is notably different from private enterprise insofar as the senior management of an organization makes the key decisions and is reponsible for their outcome. Whether the FEMA employees who are actually on the ground giving out water bottles (or whatever) are doing their job properly is hard to tell — as far as I know, they are. Since senior management is responsible for making strategies, allocating resources, etc., I think they can fairly held responsible for the entire organization.
2) We probably agree on the big vs. small government thing and whether government is a benevolent parent or an inveterate bumbler. I think the government does some things reasonably well (Social Securuty, the Post Office, the armed forces). It does other things less well (build Bridges to Nowhere). We are likely in agreement on which government functions go on both lists — the goal then is to create a government no larger than it ought to be, and I think that Clinton’s government more or less approximates that ideal.
To Clint:
1) I apologize for my syntax — if you diagrammed my sentence, it probably looks like a pretzel.
2) Properly phrased, what I mean is “Reinstating the estate tax is a fiscal imperative because it would reallocate the tax burden more fairly.”
a) I’m not sure if it is a moral issue (it may well be), but it is certainly a fiscal issue.
b) I believe that it is reasonable to have a progressive tax structure. (I also believe that it is reasonable to have a flat tax structure — I once lived in Hong Kong, which had a 17% flat tax which worked very well. Your income tax form was on a paper the size of a post card).
Tax money has to come from somewhere — I also believe that it is reasonable to tax estates as well as individual and corporate income. If you agree that it is reasonable to have a progressive tax rate which includes an estate tax, then I think that the rates which preceded Bush were acceptable. If you disagree, then you have one of three arguments: a) the tax money should be raised elsewhere (and specify where), b) the government should spend less (and specify where less should be spent), and/or c) the government should continue to borrow money from foreign central banks to finance the deficit. Personally, I’m agnostic on the progressive vs. flat tax debate, but I certainly think that taxing very large estates at a reasonable percentage should be part of the deal.
3) I do think George Soros should have some of his assets confiscated — but when he dies and at the same rate as Bill Gates.
I’ll be happy to respond further but only after untold hours of nine year old soccer games –
Re: Peter’s post (9/10/2005 @ 9:49 AM)
Just a few things:
Check out Mark’s earlier, archived column (if you haven’t already) “Louisiana Pols Brought Home The Bacon, Did Little To Avoid Catastrophe” and the link to WaPo. It’s a primer on how NOT to spend taxpayers’ money on Corp of Engineers projects. And BTW, I’ve seen in print (I can’t remember where; can somebody help me out?) that it was expected that a Category Four or Five hurricane would cause the leevees to overflow, not cause breeches in them. Particulaly in (at least one) that had just been reinforced.
Regarding FEMA’s performance: if Michael D. Brown and the rest of senior managment screwed the pooch so badly, then why aren’t we hearing similiar horror stories out of Mississipi? Gulfport and Biloxi may not have the unique topograpy of New Orleans, but they got hit harder than N.O.
As for tax rates, a no exemptions, flat tax seems the fairest way to go. At least that’s what Jerry Brown thought when he ran for president way back when. (I can’t believe I just agreed with “Governor Moonbeam.”) Full disclosure: I live on approximately $12,000 a year in S.S.D benefits; a national sales tax or V.A.T. quite frankly scares me. I was, however, a proponent of it back when I was still working and it was (I believe) a part of the “Contract With America.”
When I say I was a proponent of “it” ^^ in the last paragraph, I meant a flat income tax. I also forgot to mention that I currently pay no income tax because I don’t have any taxable income.
My guess that we don’t hear similar horror stories from Mississippi is due to the much higher population density of New Orleans as well as the local topography — I have no expertise here, but my assumption would be that it is much easier to evacuate the smaller cities of Biloxi and Gulfport than New Orleans.
Also, no doubt that Louisiana misspent its funds — which makes the case for federal control of disasters a stronger argument –
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Peter-
Almost right. The higher population density makes it easier for the media to find the horrible stories and images.
A friend of mine used to comment on the prevalence of stories of dolphins pushing shipwrecked people to shore: Dolphins probably just like pushing people around at sea. You just never hear stories from the people who are pushed out to sea by the dolphins, and die.
Clint, are you saying more dolphins in the Gulf would have prevented Katrina?
Peter:
How to cut spending? Let me name the agencies. Department of Housing and Urban development, Department of Education, Corps of Engineers, Department of Agriculture. Highways, Bureau of Reclaimation, etc etc. If you look for activities that are conducted by the federal government that do not need to be done or can be privatized you can find many. Check out the Cato Institute.
The minimum role of the federal government is specified in the constitution of the United States. No where in that document does one find references to building housing, running schools, etc etc etc. Yet under the progressives and the democrats the government has under taken many activities which are not constitutionally mandated and which the government does badly.
The goverment suffers from dis-economies of scale. Reducing its size and returning the power to the states would yield a net positive economic value.
[...] Eleanor Clift certainly thinks it did. Jeff Taylor begs to differ, though, and he uses the well-known photograph of the flooded school buses, and the much-discussed boost in gasoline prices, as pertinent examples: We know that New Orleans’ infamous municipal and school buses were left to be destroyed at the very instant they were needed most. Over 400 were left idle when they should have been pulled back to higher ground for use in those tense days after Katrina hit. [...]