This past week Louisianians learned the name of a new congressman, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R), Colorado. Tancredo, a Republican presidential candidate (who knew?), broke the placid waters of the Labor day weekend news cycle with a series of vicious comments about the state of Louisiana. Tancredo, it seems, does not feel Louisiana deserves federal aid for its recovery from Hurricane Katrina. It is "time the taxpayer gravy train left the New Orleans station," Tancredo told the press August 31. “The amount of money that has been wasted on these so-called ‘recovery’ efforts has been mind-boggling. Enough is enough."
Tancredo feels that it is time for the federal government to turn the recovery over to local government. “At some point, state and local officials and individuals have got to step up to the plate and take some initiative,” he said. “The mentality that people can wait around indefinitely for the federal taxpayer to solve all their worldly problems has got to come to an end.” According to Tancredo, about $1 billion had been wasted in fraud and abuse in the recovery effort.
Upon hearing this, my first question was, Who the hell is Tom Tancredo? With a little searching, I found that Tancredo is indeed a presidential "hopeful," if someone who finished fourth in the Iowa straw poll after the three top candidates sat it out can say he has hope. Tancredo, dubbed "Mr. Bigotry" and rated the 6th worst congressman in America by Rolling Stone magazine in 2006, also made news a month ago when he told a crowd in Osceola, Iowa that he would bomb the Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina in retaliation for a terrorist attack on the United States. (Lest anyone think this was a slip of the tongue, he said the same thing in Florida in 2005.)
He is also on record insinuating that illegal immigrants are terrorists. The day after the bomb-Mecca remark, he told another Iowa crowd: "You have to ask yourselves, why would anybody pay $25,000 to $50,000 to be smuggled into the United States? It's not to work over here at the Quick Stop or the 7-11. If you pay $50,000 to be smuggled into the United States or somebody is paying that for you, it's probably for some other purpose, not to just get a job that no American will take."
Reviewing his web site, I found his "On the Issues" page, which lists his political positions, presumably in their order of importance. These are, in descending order: immigration reform, abortion, income tax reform, judicial nominations, something called "Fast Track Authority" (which turns out to be an attack on NAFTA and CAFTA), and, oh, yes, he almost forgot -- Iraq. Right after Iraq comes Social Security reform, a rehash of President Bush's failed attempt to privatize Social Security. (I didn't think a politician alive was still pushing that corpse. He is worried about $1 billion in waste in Louisiana but wants to hand over a multi-trillion dollar Social Security trust to the honest folks of Wall Street.)
In summary, we are dealing with, near as I can tell, a bona fide lunatic. And while there is no reason to pay attention to the appeals of a lunatic, because he is a publicly elected official and a presidential candidate, there is a need to examine his logic. Most lunatics follow some kind of logic, and the only way to diffuse lunatic thinking is to understand it.
Tancredo's logic derives from the politics of hate, and is the ultraconcentrate of the long-employed Republican strategy of divisive politics. You can follow the common theme: Tarenco the immigrant-hater, the Islam holy site razer, the Katrina-baiter. He builds his political base by bashing unpopular or vulnerable groups. He writes off the voters he alienates, seeking instead to consolidate his base at their expense. He is like a schoolyard bully, befriending those who laugh as he humiliates his enemies.
We're rather used to this political type in our part of the country. Back in the old days, we called them Segregationists. A Segregationist, after all, is a politician who wants nothing to do with black people at any time except during election season, when they serve as convenient recipients of invective. Tarenco, in the spirit of classic Segregationism, cares nothing for Louisiana except that spreading anti-Louisiana prejudice locks in a couple of percentage points in the polls.
He gets it wrong, by the way, but this is of no concern to him. He states that local politicians have been stuffing Katrina money into their pockets, but there is no evidence that this is true. To be fair, there has been a rash of public officials indicted for corruption in recent years, including former Governor Edwin Edwards, local judge Ronald Bodenheimer, former Secretary of State Jim Brown, New Orleans School Board member Ellenese Brooks-Sims, New Orleans City Councilman Oliver Thomas, and, most famously, Rep. William "Mr. Freezer" Jefferson. But none of these fallen politicos have been involved in mismanagement of Katrina funds -- they were convicted of crimes that occurred prior to Katrina. To date, no Louisiana politician has been accused of, much less charged with, corruption involving Katrina funds. Not that I don't think eventually some problems will be found, but if you are going to accuse an entire state of being a confederacy of crooks, you could at least come up with a single example.
I will take a liberty here and say that, despite the history of corruption in Louisiana, it is unlikely that many politicians will be caught stealing Katrina funds. Federal funding has been notoriously gift-wrapped in red tape, and local officials have complained loudly and regularly that they cannot get the money promised to them. Every dime given out is subject to scrupulous review, and Louisiana has had to meet accounting standards exceeding those required of New York after 9/11. The pressure is so great that few politicians would dare touch Katrina money. Yes there has been some corruption, but most of it has been either federal, in the form of FEMA no-bid contracts awarded to people with federal connections, or contractor fraud, which victimizes local citizens and the state as much as it does the federal taxpayer.
The government has audited every penny given to the Gulf Coast since Katrina. If Louisiana politicians are stealing it, let's hear about it. A little proof would be quite nice.
Tarenco's own numbers damn his anemic thinking. He charges that $1 billion was misspent, which is a lot of money, but this is out of a total outlay of $114 billion. In other words, by Tancredo's own account, more than 99% of Katrina dollars have been properly spent. A 1% rate of "misspending" -- which is not synonymous with corruption, by the way -- hardly qualifies as a "gravy train,"and I am sure beats the hell out of the federal record in Iraq. Unless, of course, you are a bigoted Republican presidential candidate, in which case it is not really the 1% improperly spent that is the problem, it is the 99% that may possibly, somehow, have helped someone with brown skin.
Louisiana has 9 electoral votes, and Mississippi 6. In Tancredo's deluded mind -- he thinks he will one day be president, so he is deluded, QED -- those electoral votes are worth jeopardizing for the chance to lock in the angry white man vote in Iowa and New Hampshire. It is a calculation that shows up in the thinking of many political people. Sacrifice the good graces of one population to gain another, as long as it gets you re-elected.
Here on the Gulf Coast, we know we are collectively a small voice. We can't swing a national election, and won't likely make the difference in the congressional balance. We depend on people on the national level to remember us because it is the right thing to do, because our recovery process is only beginning. It will take a sustained effort to see it through, and we do not have the brute political strength to ensure that we will not be forgotten.
Tancredo is not smart enough to come up with creative approaches to make sure federal funds in Louisiana are well spent. Instead, he is content simply to cut funding off. This is another weapon in the Neo-Segregationist arsenal -- the argument of economic efficiency, which states that the government bears no responsibility for the problems of people who cannot pay their own way.
The argument of economic efficiency has replaced the pseudo-Darwinist argument of the survival of the fittest as the ready excuse for conservative cruelty. Survival of the fittest, while logically a viable argument, has the drawback of being overtly cruel, just as nature itself can be a merciless killer of the weak. Economic efficiency recasts this cruel doctrine, but makes no change to the final outcome. Instead of arguing that the weak must die by natural law, economic efficiency argues that free markets are incapable of rescuing groups that are not economically viable because the expense would destabilize the market itself. It costs too much to save the Gulf Coast, and if we try we will weaken the U.S. economy. On this basis, the arguments that New Orleans is too poor, that its government is too corrupt, that keeping the flood waters out is too expensive all gain traction.
Though it may make a certain logical sense, the efficiency argument is a slap in the face to anyone who believes in altruism. Human beings should not, and do not, make all choices based on economic logic. A simple example from my own professional experience: My medical practice obeys what insurance people call the 80/20 rule -- that is, 20% of patients soak up 80% of the costs. The average patient is well and only requires minimal medical care, while a small percentage of very sick ones demand constant attention and energy. This sick minority is not economically productive. Most are elderly or disabled and do not work. Our country pays untold billions to care for such patients, and does so not because the patients are worth the money, but because they are people and deserve to be treated with dignity.
I do not mind treating patients who are not economically productive, even at considerable expense. I consider it he price we pay for being human. We think of humans as beautiful and dignified even when they are not economically viable, and we care for them for precisely this reason. The day I am told that I should stop caring for people who cannot pay their own way is the day I stop practicing medicine.
It should not be necessary, in a nation as decent and humanitarian as America claims to be, to have to justify over and over again that more than a million souls deserve better than to be called a gravy train station. We are not a bunch of crooks, and we are not out to rip off the rest of the country by funneling tax dollars into a network of bars and brothels. Much as we help sick people to live on because they want to live, dunderheads like Tancredo might consider helping a sick city live on because it wants to. It is not as if New Orleans cannot be economically viable. New Orleans only needs sufficient national commitment to convince business investors that the city has a future.
Enough of Tancredo and his hateful, self-serving threats. Anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-New Orleans -- and hurling invectives like an old Segregationist. If he wants to really attract attention he should go to a nursing home and verbally abuse Alzheimer's patients for wasting taxpayer money. After all, an elderly patient with Alzheimer's is less likely to contribute to society than New Orleans.
If Tancredo's comments were motivated by pure logic and not by prejudice, this would be the logical extension of his argument.
Tancredo feels that it is time for the federal government to turn the recovery over to local government. “At some point, state and local officials and individuals have got to step up to the plate and take some initiative,” he said. “The mentality that people can wait around indefinitely for the federal taxpayer to solve all their worldly problems has got to come to an end.” According to Tancredo, about $1 billion had been wasted in fraud and abuse in the recovery effort.
Upon hearing this, my first question was, Who the hell is Tom Tancredo? With a little searching, I found that Tancredo is indeed a presidential "hopeful," if someone who finished fourth in the Iowa straw poll after the three top candidates sat it out can say he has hope. Tancredo, dubbed "Mr. Bigotry" and rated the 6th worst congressman in America by Rolling Stone magazine in 2006, also made news a month ago when he told a crowd in Osceola, Iowa that he would bomb the Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina in retaliation for a terrorist attack on the United States. (Lest anyone think this was a slip of the tongue, he said the same thing in Florida in 2005.)
He is also on record insinuating that illegal immigrants are terrorists. The day after the bomb-Mecca remark, he told another Iowa crowd: "You have to ask yourselves, why would anybody pay $25,000 to $50,000 to be smuggled into the United States? It's not to work over here at the Quick Stop or the 7-11. If you pay $50,000 to be smuggled into the United States or somebody is paying that for you, it's probably for some other purpose, not to just get a job that no American will take."
Reviewing his web site, I found his "On the Issues" page, which lists his political positions, presumably in their order of importance. These are, in descending order: immigration reform, abortion, income tax reform, judicial nominations, something called "Fast Track Authority" (which turns out to be an attack on NAFTA and CAFTA), and, oh, yes, he almost forgot -- Iraq. Right after Iraq comes Social Security reform, a rehash of President Bush's failed attempt to privatize Social Security. (I didn't think a politician alive was still pushing that corpse. He is worried about $1 billion in waste in Louisiana but wants to hand over a multi-trillion dollar Social Security trust to the honest folks of Wall Street.)
In summary, we are dealing with, near as I can tell, a bona fide lunatic. And while there is no reason to pay attention to the appeals of a lunatic, because he is a publicly elected official and a presidential candidate, there is a need to examine his logic. Most lunatics follow some kind of logic, and the only way to diffuse lunatic thinking is to understand it.
Tancredo's logic derives from the politics of hate, and is the ultraconcentrate of the long-employed Republican strategy of divisive politics. You can follow the common theme: Tarenco the immigrant-hater, the Islam holy site razer, the Katrina-baiter. He builds his political base by bashing unpopular or vulnerable groups. He writes off the voters he alienates, seeking instead to consolidate his base at their expense. He is like a schoolyard bully, befriending those who laugh as he humiliates his enemies.
We're rather used to this political type in our part of the country. Back in the old days, we called them Segregationists. A Segregationist, after all, is a politician who wants nothing to do with black people at any time except during election season, when they serve as convenient recipients of invective. Tarenco, in the spirit of classic Segregationism, cares nothing for Louisiana except that spreading anti-Louisiana prejudice locks in a couple of percentage points in the polls.
He gets it wrong, by the way, but this is of no concern to him. He states that local politicians have been stuffing Katrina money into their pockets, but there is no evidence that this is true. To be fair, there has been a rash of public officials indicted for corruption in recent years, including former Governor Edwin Edwards, local judge Ronald Bodenheimer, former Secretary of State Jim Brown, New Orleans School Board member Ellenese Brooks-Sims, New Orleans City Councilman Oliver Thomas, and, most famously, Rep. William "Mr. Freezer" Jefferson. But none of these fallen politicos have been involved in mismanagement of Katrina funds -- they were convicted of crimes that occurred prior to Katrina. To date, no Louisiana politician has been accused of, much less charged with, corruption involving Katrina funds. Not that I don't think eventually some problems will be found, but if you are going to accuse an entire state of being a confederacy of crooks, you could at least come up with a single example.
I will take a liberty here and say that, despite the history of corruption in Louisiana, it is unlikely that many politicians will be caught stealing Katrina funds. Federal funding has been notoriously gift-wrapped in red tape, and local officials have complained loudly and regularly that they cannot get the money promised to them. Every dime given out is subject to scrupulous review, and Louisiana has had to meet accounting standards exceeding those required of New York after 9/11. The pressure is so great that few politicians would dare touch Katrina money. Yes there has been some corruption, but most of it has been either federal, in the form of FEMA no-bid contracts awarded to people with federal connections, or contractor fraud, which victimizes local citizens and the state as much as it does the federal taxpayer.
The government has audited every penny given to the Gulf Coast since Katrina. If Louisiana politicians are stealing it, let's hear about it. A little proof would be quite nice.
Tarenco's own numbers damn his anemic thinking. He charges that $1 billion was misspent, which is a lot of money, but this is out of a total outlay of $114 billion. In other words, by Tancredo's own account, more than 99% of Katrina dollars have been properly spent. A 1% rate of "misspending" -- which is not synonymous with corruption, by the way -- hardly qualifies as a "gravy train,"and I am sure beats the hell out of the federal record in Iraq. Unless, of course, you are a bigoted Republican presidential candidate, in which case it is not really the 1% improperly spent that is the problem, it is the 99% that may possibly, somehow, have helped someone with brown skin.
Louisiana has 9 electoral votes, and Mississippi 6. In Tancredo's deluded mind -- he thinks he will one day be president, so he is deluded, QED -- those electoral votes are worth jeopardizing for the chance to lock in the angry white man vote in Iowa and New Hampshire. It is a calculation that shows up in the thinking of many political people. Sacrifice the good graces of one population to gain another, as long as it gets you re-elected.
Here on the Gulf Coast, we know we are collectively a small voice. We can't swing a national election, and won't likely make the difference in the congressional balance. We depend on people on the national level to remember us because it is the right thing to do, because our recovery process is only beginning. It will take a sustained effort to see it through, and we do not have the brute political strength to ensure that we will not be forgotten.
Tancredo is not smart enough to come up with creative approaches to make sure federal funds in Louisiana are well spent. Instead, he is content simply to cut funding off. This is another weapon in the Neo-Segregationist arsenal -- the argument of economic efficiency, which states that the government bears no responsibility for the problems of people who cannot pay their own way.
The argument of economic efficiency has replaced the pseudo-Darwinist argument of the survival of the fittest as the ready excuse for conservative cruelty. Survival of the fittest, while logically a viable argument, has the drawback of being overtly cruel, just as nature itself can be a merciless killer of the weak. Economic efficiency recasts this cruel doctrine, but makes no change to the final outcome. Instead of arguing that the weak must die by natural law, economic efficiency argues that free markets are incapable of rescuing groups that are not economically viable because the expense would destabilize the market itself. It costs too much to save the Gulf Coast, and if we try we will weaken the U.S. economy. On this basis, the arguments that New Orleans is too poor, that its government is too corrupt, that keeping the flood waters out is too expensive all gain traction.
Though it may make a certain logical sense, the efficiency argument is a slap in the face to anyone who believes in altruism. Human beings should not, and do not, make all choices based on economic logic. A simple example from my own professional experience: My medical practice obeys what insurance people call the 80/20 rule -- that is, 20% of patients soak up 80% of the costs. The average patient is well and only requires minimal medical care, while a small percentage of very sick ones demand constant attention and energy. This sick minority is not economically productive. Most are elderly or disabled and do not work. Our country pays untold billions to care for such patients, and does so not because the patients are worth the money, but because they are people and deserve to be treated with dignity.
I do not mind treating patients who are not economically productive, even at considerable expense. I consider it he price we pay for being human. We think of humans as beautiful and dignified even when they are not economically viable, and we care for them for precisely this reason. The day I am told that I should stop caring for people who cannot pay their own way is the day I stop practicing medicine.
It should not be necessary, in a nation as decent and humanitarian as America claims to be, to have to justify over and over again that more than a million souls deserve better than to be called a gravy train station. We are not a bunch of crooks, and we are not out to rip off the rest of the country by funneling tax dollars into a network of bars and brothels. Much as we help sick people to live on because they want to live, dunderheads like Tancredo might consider helping a sick city live on because it wants to. It is not as if New Orleans cannot be economically viable. New Orleans only needs sufficient national commitment to convince business investors that the city has a future.
Enough of Tancredo and his hateful, self-serving threats. Anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-New Orleans -- and hurling invectives like an old Segregationist. If he wants to really attract attention he should go to a nursing home and verbally abuse Alzheimer's patients for wasting taxpayer money. After all, an elderly patient with Alzheimer's is less likely to contribute to society than New Orleans.
If Tancredo's comments were motivated by pure logic and not by prejudice, this would be the logical extension of his argument.