The American Dream

The American dream is not for the common man. Ask the common people in New Orleans and all along the Gulf.

The 21st Century American dream is for the wealthy in their stately mansions and their multi-thousand dollar shoes and their Hummers and their executive compensations and their connections to cronies who prowl the halls of power looking for plum appointments and for agencies to eviscerate.

The American dream is for the liars, the drunken coke-heads, the soldier-sons of the rich and powerful who go AWOL with no consequences. The dream is for incompetents and crooks who run corporations and government agencies to advance their private agendas and expand their wallets or those of their friends while the corporations and agencies collapse or wither on the vine.

The American dream is for robber barons reborn,
For feudal lords returning,
For those who seek to erase everything we've accomplished in the last one hundred years.

This is were we are left -- back where we started a century ago:

Power for the wealthy,
Helplessness for the poor, and
Silence from everyone else.

But now it is time to call and end to the silence,

Because the lies must come to an end;
The incompetence must come to an end;
And we must rebuild in the void an image of America that not so long ago was something more than just empty words.

9:45:46 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []  

On Competence

What was the plan? Show us what your plan was. Lay it out on the table where we can see it in black and white. Don't talk about it. Don't wave your hands in generalities. Show us the plans that you made.

Who did you plan with? Tell us who you talked to when you put your plan together. Don't give us names of offices and bureaucracies. Show us the names, give us the dates when the conversations took place.

What have you done? Don't talk in self-congratulatory platitudes. Don't tell us we all have to stick together. Just give us your list of accomplishments -- of steps that were laid out in the plans, of steps you discussed in your joint conversations with others, and of steps that you took on the ground

• before Katrina made landfall,
• while the storm was battering the city, and
• as the true disaster unfolded and since.

No plan? No preparations? Nothing done right even as bodies were floating in the streets and gangs were marauding and people were crazed with hunger and thirst and desperation?

I think it is time for you to go.

Next time, try hamburgers.

12:58:31 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []  

The Good Guys

Smoke rises in the distance. The levies are breached. Water flows into the city. There is no water to drink. No food to eat.

The dead float in the water, and the sick die in the streets. Thousands are alone. In the wreckage. In the mayhem. In the heat. In despair.

So where are the good guys in white hats? Where are the helicopters and the national guard? Where are the blue tarps? Where is the state? Where is FEMA? Isn't this when the good guys come to the rescue and the happy music plays?

No. This is the 21st century. The music isn't happy, and there is no need for good guys anymore.

1:08:09 AM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []