US ruling elite rejects policy shift to confront disaster

[Karmadillo]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/hurr-s07.shtml

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Addressing the needs created by this natural disaster—which was immensely compounded by the utter failure of the government to prepare for or alleviate it— would require the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars for the construction of low-cost housing, the creation of decent jobs, the organization of social services and the rebuilding and reinforcement of the region’s flood control system.

The financial oligarchy that rules America has no intention of mounting such an effort. Its spokesmen increasingly suggest that much of the city be simply bulldozed and its residents—particularly the city’s predominantly poor and black population—be scattered to the winds.

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Finally, the editorial advised the administration reject any criticism of tax cuts and budget reductions that transfer funds from social services—and flood control—into the personal portfolios of the American plutocracy.

“Economic leadership also means instructing Americans on the link between tax cutting and the economic vitality needed to fund both Katrina relief and the war on terror,” the Journal stated. It added, “Republicans have been far too defensive on tax cuts, and Katrina is an opening to explain their necessity and to push for making them permanent.”

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The Bushs’ personal indifference to the enormous suffering is a reflection of a general outlook of the American ruling class as a whole. Over a period of decades, both Democratic and Republican administrations have gutted every program established since the New Deal of the 1930s to improve social conditions and protect the most vulnerable sections of the population from destitution.

The money slashed from social programs as well as the real wages of the vast majority of the working population has been transferred to the financial oligarchy, which has enjoyed a historically unprecedented accumulation of personal wealth. The result is a society in which the gulf between wealth and poverty has never been so extreme and in which the events unfolding in New Orleans might as well be happening on another planet as far as this ruling stratum is concerned.

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