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Jewish World Review Sept. 21, 2005 / 17 Elul, 5765 Dammable pork By John Stossel
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
When your TV column is titled "Give Me a Break," it's hard to
know where to begin after Katrina.
First I thought I'd say, "give me a break" to the looters. Then
to Louisiana's governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, since National Guard
troops were available, but she wouldn't let them help. Then came the
Internet scams. Some people who thought they gave for hurricane relief
actually gave money to crooks in Brazil.
The government's responsibility, though, dwarfs anything done by
criminals. To start, the federal government invited disaster by offering
cheap insurance. That encourages people to build on the coasts. I'm
embarrassed to admit I once built a house on a beach in Westhampton, N.Y.,
because government insurance guaranteed I couldn't lose. When a storm washed
my house away, government paid me for my loss. It would have covered me
again and again had I rebuilt. (I sold the land.) Government insurance is
truly an insane policy.
Then came the bureaucratic obstacles. While New Orleans
hospitals had no electricity, the U.S.S. Bataan sat just off the coast,
equipped with six unused operating rooms and hundreds of hospital beds. Its
commander said she could do nothing because she hadn't received a signed
authorization. It's reasonable to worry about getting the armed forces
involved in law enforcement, but where's the threat to the Constitution if,
in the middle of a disaster, a Navy doctor saves your life?
In other cases, private enterprise tried to help, but government
got in the way. Wal-Mart offered truckloads of water, but was turned away by
federal bureaucrats.
Dr. Jeffrey Guy, a Nashville trauma surgeon, recruited 400
doctors, nurses and first responders to help the people in New Orleans. Then
FEMA gave them something to do: fill out 60-page applications that demanded
photographs and tax forms.
Guy received an e-mail from an emergency room doctor in
Mississippi who needed bandages, splints and medicine, and coloring books
for children. Guy had them — he'd been collecting corporate donations —
but FEMA said they needed two state permits to transport these items from
Tennessee to Mississippi. The supplies were only sent when two guys showed
up with a church van and volunteered to take them — as rogue responders
without FEMA's permission.
The deadliest government mistake was made by Congress. The Army
Corps of Engineers had said it wanted $27 million to strengthen the levees
protecting New Orleans. Congress said no, though our
can't-spend-your-money-fast-enough representatives did appropriate more than
that for an indoor rain forest in Iowa.
Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, blamed the president.
"The president could have funded it," she said.
Someday, she should read the Constitution. Only Congress can
appropriate federal money.
Former Louisiana senator John Breaux also told me the state
never got what it asked for. "I'm part of the effort to try and get more
money, and many times we were not successful," he complained.
But, surprise! It turns out Louisiana got lots of money for
Corps of Engineers projects — hundreds of millions of dollars more than any
other state. Congress just spent it on pork projects instead of on the
levees.
I confronted Breaux about his own state's pork, such as
subsidies for ship builders and the sugar industry.
"I object to you using words like squander and pork," he said.
"What is pork in one part of the country is an essential project in another
part."
It's a reason Americans shouldn't filter so much money through
Washington. Louisianans don't need Iowa rain forests, and Iowans don't need
levees in Louisiana. Maybe the people who want to live in New Orleans should
have to pay (through private enterprise or local taxes) the special costs of
its exposed location — or live elsewhere. If all local projects, essential
and whimsical, were paid for with local taxes, competition among states and
cities would force them to become more efficient.
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© 2005, by JFS Productions, Inc. Distributed by Creators Syndicate, Inc. |
Mitch Albom | ||||||||||||
