> Yoshie
> > Most Black votes in the South don't count in the
> > presidential
> > election, so Democratic Party operatives don't
> > bother to spend money
> > to mobilize them either.
>
> It is not simply the victims of the disaster itself who are likely
> to be mobilized.
When your votes don't matter (and you don't make yourself heard by other means), you don't get money for disaster relief.
Compare Louisiana with Florida: "Possibly the most egregious of these largely under-reported fiascos was the revelation that FEMA made 31 million dollars in questionable payments to residents of Florida's Miami-Dade County for damage from Hurricane Frances in September 2004, even though the storm caused only minimal damage in that area" (William Fisher, "Did FEMA Buy 'Votes' for Bush?" <http:// www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=30234>, 12 Sep. 2005).
That's why many Blacks -- even liberal Democratic Blacks like Lani Guinier (cf. <http://www.fairvote.org/reports/1993/hertzberg.html>) and Jesse Jackson, Jr. (cf. <http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/ il02_jackson/nr041008JacksonIntroducesIRV.html>) -- are in favor of proportional representation, instant runoff votes, etc. that the most powerful in the Democratic Party oppose. Blacks need them more than whites do.
Many made much of the $71 million cut in hurricane protection this year, but, according to Alfred C. Naomi, a senior project manager of the Army Corps of Engineers, it would have taken "$2.5 billion to build a Category 5 protection system" ("Intricate Flood Protection Long a Focus of Dispute," <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/national/ nationalspecial/01levee.html>, 1 Sep. 2005), and neither party was talking about spending that kind of money on it. Mind you, not because they didn't have the money. Look at the $286.4-billion highway bill. If Blacks in New Orleans were left abandoned when the hurricane hit them, that is because they had been long abandoned by both the political parties.
>> If anyone thinks that Democrats manage hurricanes better than
>> Republicans, remember how FDR treated the Bonus Army veterans in
>> 1935: <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/
>> ErnestHemingwayWhoMurderedtheVets.pdf>.
>
> This is going back too far to have any meaning at all.
You have to go all the way back to the 30s to find a Democratic President worth mentioning.
> Much better to take a serious look at the ways in which this
> disaster would have/would not have been different had it been on
> Kerry's watch.
<blockquote>"If Sen. John Kerry is seriously considering running for president again in 2008, he needs to look at the latest Zogby poll. Though President Bush's approval rate is the lowest of his presidency -- and he would lose in a hypothetical match up against any past president of the last 30 years -- Bush would still beat Kerry, 48% to 47%."
<http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/09/10/ bush_would_still_beat_kerry.html></blockquote>
The less said about Kerry, the better for Democrats and all to their left.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org> * Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/mahmoud- ahmadinejads-face.html>; <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/chvez- congratulates-ahmadinejad.html>; <http://montages.blogspot.com/ 2005/06/iranian-working-class-rejects.html>