The Difference Is Black and White

If Chimpie needs your vote (and it also doesn't hurt for you to be white) then being in a disaster area doesn't have to be so bad. You see, last year after hurricanes hit Florida before the 2004 election, even though counties like Miami-Dade weren't badly damaged, the assistance in the form of dollars flowed like, well, water over a levee:

Florida did not sustain catastrophic damage, Gair said, and so did not devise a "blanket eligibility" plan.

FEMA acknowledged that in Miami-Dade County and in other areas of the state, however, the agency took the rare step, given the magnitude of the disaster, of awarding $726 in "expedited" housing assistance to people who asked for it, without immediately sending inspectors to verify damage.

Okay, so $726 may not be enough to buy a vote. However, as they say in those abs exerciser videos, "But wait! There's more!"

Other so-called "standard housing assistance," of up to $25,600, he wrote, is "liberally provided without significant scrutiny of the request made during the initial months; scrutiny increases remarkably and the package is far more stringent after an unspecified time."

Standard operating procedure, you might say. Nothing to get suspicious about. Perfectly normal. Oh yeah?

Even state officials were surprised at how quickly money flowed to Florida.

The day after Hurricane Charley hit the west coast, the state's labor chief, Susan Pareigis, asked for a federal grant for unemployment assistance for storm victims.

Four days later, U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao "was down personally" to award the money, Pareigis wrote in an Aug. 24 e-mail to the governor. "Please express our sincere thank you for such an instantaneous response."

So flash forward to September 2, 2005. No election on the horizon. A city is flooded. And this city has a long history as a liberal bastion. And this city has a large black population. And this city also has a 30% poverty rate.

The situation? Babies are dying from dehydration. Diabetics are going into shock and dying. People are being bused from a crumbling Superdome to Houston only to be waved away to some other location. Armed bands are roaming the streets.

Meanwhile, Condi Rice buys $3000 Ferragamo shoes and has an agitator physically removed from her presense, Vice President Dick Cheney finally comes off his vacation, and El Presidente Chimpie pretends he's mad about the delays in rescue efforts, although he's just come back from his own vacation a couple of days earlier. Homeland Security Director Michael Cherthoff stood alongside Bush and must have had the sudden realization that he was being painted as one of a series of fall guys for Chimpie. And FEMA head Michael Brown, seems to have mastered the notion of negative capability, claiming simultaneously that, "everything that we had pre-positioned and ready to go became overwhelmed immediately after the storm," and yet "people are getting the help they need."

As I write this, I am being bludgeoned with yet another club of Chimpie's extended recitation of syllogisms and dumb-as-dirt observations about the situation like "in order to make sure there's less violence, we need to get food to people."

Welcome to the Third World in your own backyard.