Karl Rove has been put in charge of the reconstruction effort for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Karl Rove operates everything as political patronage. This from Josh Marshall.
Graft and corruption can be expected to run amok. As soon as Democrats regain one of the houses of the Legislature we need to plan on an investigation of profiteering. Then we will need to expand the federal prison system a bit.
Of course, the White House doesn’t understand what the project is, what is needed to accomplish it, or what government really needs to do. Karl Rove is an election strategist, for Christ’s sake, not a bureaucrat! Here is Josh Marshall’s comment on the idiocy of placing Rove in charge. (He is more polite about it than I am.) This is a key quote:
Then there’s the president’s great line from the speech: “It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces.”
No, it’s not. Actually, every actual fact that’s surfaced in the last two weeks points to just the opposite conclusion. There was no lack of federal authority to handle the situation. There was faulty organization, poor coordination and incompetence.
Show me the instance where the federal government was prevented from doing anything that needed to be done because it lacked the requisite authority.
When you want to see pure stupidity in action, ask a conservative Republican to set up a government project.
They will not have a clue what to do or how to do it, and they won’t have the curiosity to find out.
That’s three disasters to hit the Gulf Coast and New Orleans. First Katrina, then the incompetence of the FEMA response, and now the third will be the “reconstruction effort” (read that as “institutionalized graft”) run by Karl Rove.
Since Rove will now be too busy to tell Bush what to do, Cheney will now have sole responsibility for looking after him. This story would be a sick joke if it wasn’t true.
It just keeps getting better every day folks. Can Bush do this? Wasn’t it proof enough how unqualified most of his “appointees” are? Rove in charge of all that money? That’s like leaving a 15 year old alone in a whore house with a wad of money. Anyone ever find out where that 9 billion disappeared to in Iraq? Has anyone ever been made accountable for that money? How much will go missing here?
Of course not. That simply “proves” the conservative catechism that government is incompetent and can’t do anything. A secondary belief is that anyone can do the work government does, so you don’t need any special training. It is something all citizens should take time out for and perform. A codicil to this is that business leaders who have proven that they can make money will be better government employees, of course. They already know how to accomplish a task.
Conservatives interpret everything through the conservative catechism. Facts come in, fit a belief or they are ignored, then those that fit are applied to the belief they fit. The catechism is the filter.
There is no analysis. Just a filter.
These people believe what authorities tell them, not what they analyze for themselves. Analysis is really hard work, and the results are never absolute. The teachings of an authority is absolute, based on trust and faith. If you can’t handle uncertainty, then you find a good authority and avoid doing analysis.
This one is the “fact” that government is incompetent. “Government is not the solution, it is the problem.” This was statement of that great authority, Ronald Reagan, and we all know how perfect he was.
Obviously, government is the problem, not the appointees. Anyone can do the jobs in government. How can they be “unqualified” for Government, for Christ’s sake?