The Buie Knife

Hurricane Katrina Aftermath Likely to Become Political Disaster for Bush

With officials declaring the devastation of the U.S. gulf coast from Hurricane Katrina "our tsunami," comparing it to Pompeii and Hiroshima, estimates of casualties in the hundreds if not thousands, and predictions that it will take YEARS to fully recover, my guess is that the political pressure on President Bush to pull troops and resources from Iraq, and send them to Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama will become powerful. Already there are complaints that he has acted too slowly to leave his vacation and send in the military.

"Analysts now estimate the damage at more than $25 billion, making it the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history, with an additional $4 to $10 billion in uninsured losses topping the bill." (Gil Kaufman, MTV News)

Certainly, after the October elections and adoption of a Constitution in Iraq, the symbolism of Americans sending $100 billion a year or more to rebuild Iraq while citizens on the Gulf coast tread water, perhaps literally; with dramatically rising gas prices hurting family pocketbooks and fueling inflation, will become powerful. It could fuel a political hurricane at mid-term election time in 2006. A majority of Americans, 53 percent, currently disapprove of President Bush's performance in office, while 45 percent approve. Forty percent wanted to withdraw troops from Iraq before the hurricane hit. That number is sure to increase. This natural disaster may turn into a political disaster for President Bush. The American people will be far less inclined to support the expenditure of American lives and resources to provide long-term stability for what looks like an Islamic republic in Iraq. Americans are likely to ask, with a growing sense of outrage: "We went to Iraq, for what exactly?"

Here's what the Associated Press reports:

Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey said the president should have had troops and supplies on the ground Monday. "President Bush's wake-up call came awfully late," he said....Trichia Key, 60, of Batesville, Miss., who has taken in family from hard-hit Biloxi, Miss., says: "If we didn't have all our National Guard troops in Iraq, we could probably do a lot more."

Editor and Publisher reports that the disaster could be blamed directly on budget cuts made necessary by the war in Iraq. The report is mostly a spin-off from the blog of the Philadelphia Daily News' Will Bunch:

"After 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward the Southeastern Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project dropped to a trickle," . "The (Army Corps of Engineers) never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars."

"In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness."MORE

Maryland and North Carolina Political Parties: A Study in Contrasts

To those political partisans who curse all "Democrats" or all "Republicans" -- and there seem to be an awful lot of partisans on the Internet, who equate voting enthusiastically for one of the parties with sin -- they don't seem to consider the political differences between the parties on the state level.

Since I just moved from Maryland to North Carolina, I'm especially cognizant of political differences between the two states. The Democratic Party in Maryland has taken a major position diametrically opposed to the position of the Democratic Party in North Carolina. Same with the Republicans.

In Maryland, Democrats in the state legislature overwhelmingly opposed slot-machine gambling, which was pushed by Republican Governor Robert Ehrlich as a way to finance public education. (Maryland already has a lottery.) Republicans in the legislature complain that the Democrats are a moralistic bunch who want to take all the fun out of life, who prefer hiking taxes to collecting revenue from a little gambling. Maryland Democrats earlier slapped high taxes on the sin of tobacco to fund education. Ehrlich is determined to eventually win the fight in Maryland.

In sharp contrast, it's the North Carolina Republicans who have the reputation for moral Puritanism. in the state legislature, they were near universally opposed to a state lottery. Democratic partisans speculated that the state GOP was controlled by conservative Christians opposed to the "sin" of gambling. The apparently more fun-loving North Carolina Democrats, led by Governor Mike Easley, strongly supported the lottery, giving the same reasoning as Republican governor Ehlrich of Maryland -- it's a good way to finance public education.

But in North Carolina, a handful of Democratic liberals, who no doubt grew up somewhere in grim Yankee territory, worried about the impact of a state lottery on poor families. They held firm against the state lottery. So you had an unusual coalition of conservative and liberal churchgoers, who made NC only one of nine states without a lottery.

Ironically, liberal Democrats in Maryland make the same arguments against slots that conservative Republicans made in North Carolina to oppose the lottery. They both claim to be concerned about the impact on the poor.

In North Carolina, on August 30, 2005, the logjam over the lottery finally broke. Two Republican senators failed to show up when the roll was called -- one was home sick, and the other was on his honeymoon, though later reports in The News and Observer suggest that because they didn't pair their votes, they were essentially, secretly, cowardly, reversing their position. The State Senate voted, 24-24, and Democratic Lt. Governor Beverly Perdue broke the tie, making North Carolina the last state among its neighbors to adopt a lottery.  Some 34% of the revenue from the lottery will be used for public schools.

I've noticed that labor unions are much stronger in Maryland than they are in North Carolina. Unions dominate the Maryland Democratic Party, but are relatively weak in North Carolina. Conservative moralists seem to be much more vocal in the "Bible Belt state" of North Carolina, than in Maryland.

The North Carolina Republican Party still seems to be dominated by church-related organizations of white, conservative Christians, mostly men, and Jesse Helms' Dixiecrats, though they are inevitably fading from the scene. This seems far less true in Maryland, where the foundation of the Republican Party seems to be businessmen and women eager to break what has historically been Democratic one-party rule in Maryland. Maryland has one of the most affluent black populations in the nation, and may represent the Republican Party's best chance to make appeals to middle-class and upper-class blacks.

Maryland Democrats sharply oppose the death penalty and strongly support gun control. North Carolina Democrats rarely object to the death penalty and generally oppose gun control.

Neither party, nationally, has consistently opposed all forms of legalized gambling. Now, there are only eight states without a lottery. The only sure holdout is the overwhelmingly Republican state of Utah. It refuses to flirt, and remains steadfast against all forms of legalized gambling. 

We're Fat and Getting Fatter: 'Supersize Me' Should Be Required Viewing

64.5 percent of Americans are overweight or obese, according to a report by the Trust for America's Health. One out of four Americans is clearly obese. "Supersize Me," Morgan Spurlock's documentary about America's eating habits and his effort to eat nothing but McDonalds for a month, should be required viewing in schools, with PTA and civic group participation. There's a SuperSizeme Me store where educational materials can be ordered.

Another Million Fall Into Poverty, Another 800,000 Lack Health Insurance

The annual U.S. government census report on poverty offers more bad news, for the fourth year in a row. An additional 1.1 million Americans have fallen into poverty, up to 37 million people, or 12.7 percent of the population -- once again, up significantly under George Bush's presidency. Another 800,000 Americans lack health insurance, up to 45.8 million people. The number of uninsured would be a lot worse if Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) hadn't expanded to offset employer-based health insurance coverage. A family of four with two children is considered living in poverty if income is $19,157 or less. A family of two with no children is in poverty if income is $12,649. For a person 65 and over living alone, poverty is defined as $9,060.

Meanwhile, Congress has been dithering on welfare reform, between the "tough-minded" (or hard-hearted), who wish to slash child-case subsidies for the poor, and advocates of child care, such as Senators Olympia Snow (R-Maine), and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who recognize that child care subsides allow poor single mothers to meet their work responsibilities. A moment of truth may soon arrive for Bush's "compassionate conservativism" -- is it for real, or just a slogan and a fraud?

Where will our nation be a year from now, two years or three years from now, in terms of the number of Americans in poverty, and in meeting its responsibilities to the poor? I wager, sadly, that there will be more Americans in poverty, and more Americans lacking health insurance.

Drill Deeper:

• Hope for Reducing Poverty Comes from Coalition of Liberals, Evangelicals »
• An End to Extreme Poverty?
• Poverty Rate Fell 25% Under Clinton »
• 12.5% Live in Poverty, Up Significantly Under Bush
• Poor in Ramshackled Housing Need Help from Government and Volunteers, But Bush Seeks to Reduce Assistance »
• 11.2% of American Households Are "Food Insecure"
• In Defense of Success: Government Really Can Lessen Poverty, By EJ Dionne.
• War on Poverty Has Had Mixed Result -- Some Success, But Too Much Waste, and Expectations Were Too High
• 'When Will the Left Admit that Large, Government-run Welfare Programs Simply Do Not Work?' »
• When Will the Right Acknowledge That Welfare As We Knew It Has Ended?
• Four Entitlements -- Food, Clothing, Shelter, Health Care »
• Who Really Gives a Damn About the Poor?

Blogging on Company Time

General Motors: http://gmblogs.com

Google: http://googleblog.blogspot.com

Boeing: http://www.boeing.com/randy

Adobe: http://blogs.adobe.com

IBM: www.gametomorrow.com/blog

Redhat: http://blogs.redhat.com

(Tip of the hat to Jonathan Cox in The News and Observer for the above list and his interesting article, "To Blog or not to blog: That may soon be up to your boss's rules")

Unofficial Microsoft Blog

Seattle PI Microsoft Watch Blog, with list of Microsoft employees who blog.

Pain at the Gas Pump

Ouch! $100 is what it cost me to fill up rental truck. (Photo taken with camera phone and emailed to blog.)

Hope for Iraqi Stability?

David Brooks of The New York Times writes how the new Iraq Constitution will stabilize the country.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/25/opinion/25brooks.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEd itorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fDavid%20Brooks

Hope so. But will the various factions understand the Constitution enough to fight for it, whereby the insurgents become social pariahs, instead of winning the sympathy of those who resent the U.S. intervention?

What bear watching are the views of Peter Galbraith, an expert on the region, and war critic that Brooks quotes to bolster his hopes for Iraq. Galbraith, speaking in other contexts, is not been nearly so optimistic. Brooks also quotes neo-conservative Reuel Marc Gerecht, a strong supporter of the war. Let's watch how he spins the effort to build a new Iraq.

Reflections on the Local Blogging Phenomenon: NC Bloggers Just Part of State's Tradition of Honoring, Nurturing Writers

It's not really surprising to me that my native state of North Carolina is getting so much national attention as a leader in the blogging trend. The state has always nurtured and honored its homegrown writers. Go into almost any public library or bookstore, and you will find a display of North Carolina writers. The monthly book club in my home town of Wagram, NC, population 500, was named for a local writer, John Charles McNeil. In my observation and experience, this was far less true in Maryland, or suburban DC, where I lived for many years. Nearly all the attention focused on writers of national renown. Writers in the region identified themselves as WASHINGTON writers, not Virginia writers or Maryland writers. Their perspective was national, if not global. I wasn't even aware of a Virginia Writers Group or a Maryland Writers Group. But North Carolina has a large and thriving writers network -- scribes who identify themselves primarily as North Carolina writers. So it isn't surprising that NC blogger groups are more active and may have more participants per capita than just about anywhere else. Blogshares.com reports 461 NC blogs.

I suppose you could call this parochialism -- an interest in what's local and known rather than life on the grander scale. I suspect it ties into the South's long tradition of storytelling. There's a certain charm and community-building aspect to it. 

• the Triangle Bloggers Meetup (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill) boasts 80 members.
• the Piedmont Triad Bloggers Meetup (Greensboro, High Point, Winston Salem) started way back in 2002, has had 10 face-to-face meetings, and boasts 78 members
• the Carolina bloggers webring links 33 members
• the Charlotte Blogger Meetup has 26 members

BlogTogether.org keeps track of NC blogging events.

As of this writing, Meet-up says it  has about 7,000 bloggers who've signed up to meet face to face. Here's the break-out for other blogging Meet-ups:

1. Seattle has 333 Meet-up bloggers.
2. New York has 305 Meetup bloggers.
3. Washington, DC metro area boasts nearly 200 bloggers connected with Meetup.

4. Boston Weblogger Meetup Group: 156 Members

5. Cleveland: 143 Meetup bloggers
6. San Francisco: 142 Meetup bloggers
7. Austin: 86 Meetup bloggers
8. Philadelphia: just over 50 Meetup bloggers.

Let's see if the Blogging Meetup trend grows, or if it's just a fad. My hunch is that local blogging will grow into a media phenomenon when there's some merger with local Yahoo groups, which are a much deeper and more widespread phenomenon, as I report in the online neighborhood section of this weblog. In a town of 20,000, it's not unusual to find 50 Yahoo groups -- neighborhood-based, church-based, civic group-based.

Blogging Goes Local, Where It Has Impact

Millions of bloggers, disconnected from their communities, trying to gain fame from the nation and the world, are fighting against overwhelming odds. Former House Speaker Tip O'Neill said "all politics is local," meaning national political trends tend to bubble up from the grassroots. Activists learn they can have the most political impact getting involved on the local level. Blogging, too, is probably most satisfying as a local phenomenon, where readers and writers share geographical context, can actually meet, and appreciate each others' work as neighbors.

Locally-focused bloggers are starting to make a real impact on journalism. Greensboro, NC, dubbed "Blogsboro" by The Los Angeles Times, boasts dozens of local bloggers and is hosting ConvergeSouth, a regional conference of bloggers, including some national leaders, in October, and seems to be the hub of a media revolution.

"A transformation (is) taking place across the country. Top-down, voice-of-God journalism is being challenged by what is called participatory journalism, or civic or citizen journalism...

I Blogged This Entry Via Cell Phone While Walking the Dog (Photo Taken By Camera Phone, and Transmitted By Phone to Blog, including Audio Clip)

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