On behalf of the state of Louisiana, I would like to make a request of lame-duck Democrat Gov. Kathleen Blanco: give us an early Christmas present and just go away quietly.
We’re tired of your inane, even mendacious, attempts to explain away your failed governorship. You blame your inadequate response to the hurricane disasters of 2005 on Republican-instigated “partisanship,” yet your own words and e-mail messages show you were the one interjecting partisanship from the very beginning into your actions which detracted from your ability to pursue better policy. In fact, despite having gone through simulated and real disasters, you still didn’t know simple intergovernmental procedures to have gotten aid faster, and you deliberately delayed to try to get partisan advantage.
You also blame partisanship on the much slower pace of recovery in Louisiana than Mississippi when in fact it was your own dithering that hampered the receipt of federal recovery dollars into the state. Then your people disregarded federal rules in the distribution of that money which tied it up bureaucratically and bankrupted the program.
It’s also annoying to hear you take credit for anything remotely resembling improved economic growth in the state. You promoted higher taxes that would detract from such growth and, let’s face it, the state is doing fiscally well only because of the tens of billion of dollars pumped into it for recovery funds from which the state takes a cut and because many of the former residents displaced by the storms financially took much more from the state than they contributed. Basically, you are taking credit for the weather; your recipe for economic success through inducing a natural disaster I don’t think is one we want to emulate.
Now you’re poking your nose into the appointments of your successor who you knew you could not defeat, criticizing the actions of one before he’s even taken the job. Are you that desperate to make yourself appear relevant, which you have not been for about five months now?
Constitutionally, we have to keep you around for almost a month. In the meantime, please just stop the attempts at historical revisionism and at achieving relevancy and leave us in peace to get on with the business that you couldn’t perform during the four years in office the state’s electorate foolishly gave you.
Thanks, Prof! The insipid cow grows more disgusting by the fday...
ReplyDeleteProf for govenor! Or maybe not.
ReplyDeleteJeff: What is with the shallow, hysterical rant? Why do you feel it necessary to fly off the handle anytime anyone suggests the truth, which is that the White House saw Katrina as a political maneuver from the get-go without any consideration for the actual situation on the ground? That they let Blanco hang herself on this is really wihtout a doubt. That they let a horse show judge worry more about how he looked on camera than the people at the covention center, is without a doubt. That they went into a full court press to make it look like Blanco had not declared a state of emergency on the Friday before Katrina, is beyond doubt. She is not rewriting history, you are. You do not explain what her "dithering" is and why it has netted us less aid than Mississippi with its Republican governor got.
ReplyDeleteYour screed is nothing more than a knee jerk response, based on no facts and full of a continued fear that people realize that the Bush White House and the GOP are not above the type of pitiful political opportunism that you feel so obliged to decry.
Kneejerk indeed... Give that jerk the knee right in her ample rear and send her back to the bayou. The people of this state voiced their opinion and it doesn't jive with yours. No one other than a DNC Kool-aid drinker would stick their head out from under a rock and claim Blanco is anything other than a abject failure as a leader. To appear on national TV crying and offering no leadership other than to ask people to pray sealed her fate and inscribed her legacy as another 'good ol boy' Louisiana politician who took more than she gave...
ReplyDeleteIf all you can find to talk about is Blanco, then you're the one that is desperate to make yourself appear relevant. I guess you'll be talking about Blanco the way Rush Limbaugh still talks about Bill Clinton.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to shill for the Republican party, you need some new material.
All of your salivating about the coming of our new philosopher king has me wondering whether you've studied he records of the other so-called "reform" governors.
Look to the East! Is that a new star?
Reason he really has to keep talking about Blanco is to distract everyone from the fact that Jindal just hired a general counsel who intends to keep shoveling in legal fees from indian tribes and the city of Pineville among others. We all bit. But there are plenty of questions that a lot of so-called reform minded writers are trying to ignore.
ReplyDeleteI agree she has failed this state miserably. I can think of only one worst than she was. Praise the Lord she will be gone.
ReplyDeleteShe & Nagin didn't know their rear from a hole in the ground when Katrina hit. Like typicaly democrats lets wait on the Federal Govertment to take care and get things going
I agree with anonymous. It's the democratic mentality to wait for someone else to bail them out of even the worst of times, and lo and behold there's our government doing it.
ReplyDeleteWhat became of the BILLIONs of taxpayers dollars that were sent here for rebuilding? The citizens of new orleans sure haven't seen any of it.
Blanco is an embarassment to this great state, buy an icon to the democratic party. Cry foul at every opportunity, then take the money and run.
We're no longer concerned about the money, we just want her to RUN...
Good riddance to a clueless POS.
>You do not explain what her "dithering" is and why it has netted us less aid than Mississippi with its Republican governor got. Your screed is nothing more than a knee jerk response, based on no facts ...
ReplyDeleteIt obvious you didn't click on any of the links in the post. All the facts are there, that's what the links are for. Closing your eyes and repeating that they aren't doesn't make them go away.
>If all you can find to talk about is Blanco ...
You obviously missed the point of this post: despite the facts and the lack of any point to her reciting the same old tired spiel, she's still doing it less than a month before she's out of office. In my passion for the search for the truth, I object highly when somebody so blatantly tries to say it isn't so and I will correct those who attempt this when necessary. Because if we don't remind people, they forget and voters make the same mistakes.
Interesting Clinton reference, because that is happening as well with the distaff side ... how many people really do remember Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate, secretive and failed socialized health care plans, etc. ...?
Blanco finds few defenders among liberals/progressives or anyone else these days. It is hard for me to see how history will cast her as anything but a failure. She surely dithered--you got that right.
ReplyDeleteBut she is not the epitome of liberalism, populism, progressivism, or whatever you call people that disagree with your brand of conservatism.
But golly! Were you equally as unhappy when the distaff side was running for governor and Mike Foster, the outgoing governor, made a comment about how her husband would be running LA?
Your passionate search for the truth is a bit one-eyed.
The collectivism espoused by liberals/conservatives/Democrats or whatever you call us does work well in many instances. It doesn't work well in others. But your analysis always opts for the individualist alternative.
I get it. Anything that government does to interfere in any way in the marketplace is bad. For example, you can't seem to embrace the fact that government action to reduce our reliance on foreign oil could be a good thing. Instead of advocating effective intervention in your 18 Dec. post, you decry government intervention into the economy.
True, this intervention is a bad idea (drove up food prices, too), but using this half-baked idea to supposedly prove "the folly of government intervention into the economy" is over the top.
Do you feel the same way about the entire farm bill, which pays subsidies to a lot of Republicans and megacorporations in big agriculture? A protective tariff that is the only reason for a US sugar industry? Now there's government intervention into the economy with gusto!
I have scanned the majority of your posts, so don't call me out for not reading them. Show me where I am wrong.
Hey, it's a free country. All of that bias is your right, but I find it very odd for an academic.
My passion for finding the truth runs high also. Strong biases do not further that cause.
>The collectivism espoused by liberals/conservatives/Democrats or whatever you call us does work well in many instances.
ReplyDeleteThere's almost no instance in which free markets would not produce a superior outcome compared to government intervention. The only real exceptions are in matters of public safety which would call for a "nightwatchman state," and for provision of services for those who by bad fortune cannot, temporarily or permanently, take care of themselves. You claim to have read a number of my posts and therefore already know the answers to the questions you posed about corporate welfare, subsidies, etc.
Decades of study have led me to the above conclusion. Just because one can theoretically and empirically provide for support of a worldview in a manner more persuasively than can be done for any alternatives I suppose still makes it "biased," but at least it's a bias in favor of the truth behind the human condition.