Tuesday, September 06, 2005
George Bush's Lethal Hostility to Big Government
Paul Krugman offers the least plausible explanation I've seen so far for the federal government's slow response to Hurricane Katrina...
Don't Let Paul Krugman Win This Debate
Paul Krugman says the last week's tragedy was caused by people who don't believe in government....
...Krugman's making two false assumptions, here. The first is that the ruling GOP doesn't believe in government. In Iraq, this administration believes it can build a liberal soceity from scratch. It believes government can save marriages, convert convicts to Christianity, eradicate the drug supply, save public schools through nationalized testing, stop unwed sex by teaching abstinence, and solve the problem of high drug prices by forcing the rest of the country to pay for the medication of elderly people. That's an off-the-top-of-my-head list. This is an administration that has added an entire cabinet department to the federal rolls (also the largest bureaucracy in the history of U.S. government), spent money at record levels, expanded the regulatory state, and -- at the same time -- has been the most secretive administration in American history. If Krugman believes these to be signs of an administration, political party, and philosophy with "contempt" for government, I'd hate to see what "faith in government" looks like.
Krugman's second false assumption is more egregious. And that is that cronyism is somehow limited to the right, or to limited-government types. Please. The bigger the government, the more corrupt the government. I'll make no attempt to defend the appointment of Michael Brown. Nor will I attempt to absolve the Bush administration of charges of cronyism. They're as guilty as every previous administration. But they are as guilty as every previous administration. Cronyism isn't symptomatic of those of us who distrust government, cronyism is endemic to government. Corruption and backscratching are part and parcel of government. They are the very nature of government. They are one of many reasons why those of us who hold contempt for government -- well -- hold contempt for government.
Here's a question for Krugman: The Army Corps of Engineers set out on the task of shoring up those levees on the outskirts of New Orleans in the 1960s. The federal government had taken responsibility for the system in the 1920s. Forty years later, after both parties have held both the White House and the Congress, that task was never completed. Despite, repeated warnings, we finally paid the price for massive government incompetence.
So what if government had never gotten involved? Does anyone think that if corporations with assets to protect in Southern Louisiana weren't protected by federalized flood insurance, and if the federal government hadn't assumed responsibility to keep Lake Ponchartrain at bay, it would have taken forty years to fix those levees? Anyone else suspect the levees would never have fallen into disrepair in the first place? My guess is that anyone with business in the area would have invested to protect his investment. There may still have been damage. But not wholesale devastation....
...This is important. We lost the debate after 9/11. Massive government failure inexplicably led to a massive expansion of the government. One result of that expansion -- puting FEMA under the bureaucratic nightmare auspices of DHS -- likely contributed to the futility we've seen over the last week. A government-planned Brasilia-like New New Orleans would be an atrocity. The Paul Krugmans -- or the Jonathan Alters -- simply can't win this debate.
