Bushwacked yet again

For all those who say Bush didn't give us a gift that keeps on giving, in other words a crappy situation that will take many more years to fix, haven't been paying attention to anything.

FEMA

That wonderful agency that's supposed to look out for us in the event of floods, tornadoes and hurricanes is slow to respond to a flood that occurred in June of 2008. A year and a half later the people of southern Indiana are still waiting for help. In all fairness Indiana is a red state so you'd think that as a parting gift Bush would have funded FEMA. But that would not be the case. Houses in the flood planes are governed by state and local plans and are funded with the help of FEMA. A few of the homes have been bought out and occupants have moved to safer ground but many more are left to fend for themselves only hoping that FEMA will get to them.

But this is only one of the legacies that George W. left us. Now many would have you believe that this falls squarely on Obama's shoulders but you'd be wrong. When Obama took office this nation was loosing 700,000 jobs per month. We had some 1.3 trillion dollars in spending that was unpaid for. Two of the three major car companies were bankrupt. And we were in the middle of two wars one of which was unnecessary. This was all on the surface though. What you didn't see were all the programs that had their funding cut. While the boy king did start the Department of Homeland Security one of the largest agencies in U.S. history it turned out to be one of the biggest money wasters in U.S. history as well. Funds were going to cities that had no use for chemical protective suits or high tech communications gear. All the while New York City still has no integrated communications system. Then there was the expenditures for some fancy furniture and artwork for DHS offices.
The departments Bush cut included the FDA, Interior Department, CDC, EPA as well as the Justice and Treasury Departments. He neatly undid Clinton's act that would have put 100,000 police officers on the street. If you look at the federal budget back in the Bush years you'd be amazed at how much was cut. There was the unfunded mandates that started with Reagan and peaked with Bush and his 'No child left behind' which was costly to school districts across the land. It required performance tests for students. Funny how one of the Bush clan just happened to be in the educational testing business that went from a couple of million to over a billion dollars.
So is it any wonder we have refineries blowing up, coal mine explosions, oil rigs fires and massive spills and an infrastructure that will not last much longer? There was a time when we didn't have to worry about getting food poisoning or if our water was safe to drink. Obama is doing what he can but when the other side of the aisle either blocks or votes against everything he's proposed to fix our nations' problems it's no wonder things are going slowly. What people forget is that Obama admitted that it would take quite some time to fix the mess, at least two terms in office maybe longer. If the republicans had their way there would be no Social Security (they think it's a government hand out). Medicare would be privatized so that the insurance companies could make yet more money and deny expensive coverage to those who could least afford it. There would no longer be public schools if they had their way and only a fraction could afford the price with profits before product making it unaffordable. Even now they wanted to dump teachers when they voted against funding.

To be Bushwacked we need to remember their mantra "I've got mine the hell with you you're on your own".


This is a fish kill at the mouth of the Mississippi another reminder of what Bush has left behind.

Fish kills are fairly common along the Gulf Coast, particularly during the summer in the area near the mouth of the Mississippi, the site of this kill. The area is rife with dead zones -- stretches where sudden oxygen depletion can cause widespread death. But those kills tend to be limited to a single species of fish, rather than the broad sort of die-off involved in this kill.