Stossel and Williams: Katrina and pork

[KBCraig]

Two separate posts, just to keep it readable.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/walterwilliams/ww20050921.shtml

Is it permissible?
Walter E. Williams
September 21, 2005

Last week, President Bush promised the nation that the federal government will pay for most of the costs of repairing hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, adding, "There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans, and this great city will rise again." There's no question that New Orleans and her sister Gulf Coast cities have been struck with a major disaster, but should our constitution become a part of the disaster? You say, "What do you mean, Williams?" Let's look at it.

In February 1887, President Grover Cleveland, upon vetoing a bill appropriating money to aid drought-stricken farmers in Texas, said, "I find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and the duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit."

President Cleveland added, "The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood."

President Cleveland vetoed hundreds of congressional spending measures during his two-term presidency, often saying, "I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution." But Cleveland wasn't the only president who failed to see charity as a function of the federal government. In 1854, after vetoing a popular appropriation to assist the mentally ill, President Franklin Pierce said, "I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity." To approve such spending, argued Pierce, "would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded."

In 1796, Rep. William Giles of Virginia condemned a relief measure for fire victims, saying that Congress didn't have a right to "attend to what generosity and humanity require, but to what the Constitution and their duty require." A couple of years earlier, James Madison, the father of our constitution, irate over a $15,000 congressional appropriation to assist some French refugees, said, "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."

Here's my question: Were the nation's founders, and some of their successors, callous and indifferent to human tragedy? Or, were they stupid and couldn't find the passages in the Constitution that authorized spending "on the objects of benevolence"?

Some people might say, "Aha! They forgot about the Constitution's general welfare clause!" Here's what James Madison said: "With respect to the two words 'general welfare,' I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators."

Thomas Jefferson explained, "Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated." In 1828, South Carolina Sen. William Drayton said, "If Congress can determine what constitutes the general welfare and can appropriate money for its advancement, where is the limitation to carrying into execution whatever can be effected by money?"

Don't get me wrong about this. I'm not being too critical of President Bush or any other politician. There's such a broad ignorance or contempt for constitutional principles among the American people that any politician who bore truth faith and allegiance to the Constitution would commit political suicide.

[KBCraig]

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/js20050921.shtml

Dammable pork
John Stossel

September 21, 2005

When your TV column is titled "Give Me a Break," it's hard to know where to begin after Katrina.

First I thought I'd say, "give me a break" to the looters. Then to Louisiana's governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, since National Guard troops were available, but she wouldn't let them help. Then came the Internet scams. Some people who thought they gave for hurricane relief actually gave money to crooks in Brazil.

The government's responsibility, though, dwarfs anything done by criminals. To start, the federal government invited disaster by offering cheap insurance. That encourages people to build on the coasts. I'm embarrassed to admit I once built a house on a beach in Westhampton, N.Y., because government insurance guaranteed I couldn't lose. When a storm washed my house away, government paid me for my loss. It would have covered me again and again had I rebuilt. (I sold the land.) Government insurance is truly an insane policy.

Then came the bureaucratic obstacles. While New Orleans hospitals had no electricity, the U.S.S. Bataan sat just off the coast, equipped with six unused operating rooms and hundreds of hospital beds. Its commander said she could do nothing because she hadn't received a signed authorization. It's reasonable to worry about getting the armed forces involved in law enforcement, but where's the threat to the Constitution if, in the middle of a disaster, a Navy doctor saves your life?

In other cases, private enterprise tried to help, but government got in the way. Wal-Mart offered truckloads of water, but was turned away by federal bureaucrats.

Dr. Jeffrey Guy, a Nashville trauma surgeon, recruited 400 doctors, nurses and first responders to help the people in New Orleans. Then FEMA gave them something to do: fill out 60-page applications that demanded photographs and tax forms.

Guy received an e-mail from an emergency room doctor in Mississippi who needed bandages, splints and medicine, and coloring books for children. Guy had them -- he'd been collecting corporate donations -- but FEMA said they needed two state permits to transport these items from Tennessee to Mississippi. The supplies were only sent when two guys showed up with a church van and volunteered to take them -- as rogue responders without FEMA's permission.

The deadliest government mistake was made by Congress. The Army Corps of Engineers had said it wanted $27 million to strengthen the levees protecting New Orleans. Congress said no, though our can't-spend-your-money-fast-enough representatives did appropriate more than that for an indoor rain forest in Iowa.

Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, blamed the president. "The president could have funded it," she said.

Someday, she should read the Constitution. Only Congress can appropriate federal money.

Former Louisiana senator John Breaux also told me the state never got what it asked for. "I'm part of the effort to try and get more money, and many times we were not successful," he complained.

But, surprise! It turns out Louisiana got lots of money for Corps of Engineers projects -- hundreds of millions of dollars more than any other state. Congress just spent it on pork projects instead of on the levees.

I confronted Breaux about his own state's pork, such as subsidies for ship builders and the sugar industry.

"I object to you using words like squander and pork," he said. "What is pork in one part of the country is an essential project in another part."

It's a reason Americans shouldn't filter so much money through Washington. Louisianans don't need Iowa rain forests, and Iowans don't need levees in Louisiana. Maybe the people who want to live in New Orleans should have to pay (through private enterprise or local taxes) the special costs of its exposed location -- or live elsewhere. If all local projects, essential and whimsical, were paid for with local taxes, competition among states and cities would force them to become more efficient.

[Russell Kanning]

great articles .... this is why they get the big bucks

[Russell Kanning]

I got this from a relative in ND:


For those of you who are not aware, North Dakota, southwestern Montana and Northern Wyoming got hit with their first blizzard of the season a couple of weeks ago ....

This text is from County Emergency Manager out in the western part of North Dakota State after the storm.

WEATHER BULLETIN

Up here in the Northern Plains we just recovered from a Historic event --- may I even say a "Weather Event" of "Biblical Proportions" --- with a historic blizzard  of up to 24" inches of snow  and winds to 50 MPH that broke trees in half, stranded hundreds of motorists in lethal snow banks, closed all roads, isolated scores of communities and cut power to 10's of thousands.


George Bush did not come....
FEMA staged nothing....
No one howled for the government... No one even uttered an expletive on TV...
Nobody demanded $2,000 debit cards.....
No one asked for a FEMA Trailer House...
No news anchors moved in.

We just melted snow for water, sent out caravans to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars, fired up wood stoves, broke out coal oil lanterns or Aladdin lamps and put on an extra layer of clothes

Even though a  Category "5" blizzard of this scale has never fallen this early...we know it can happen and how to deal with it ourselves.

Everybody is fine.
Living in North Dakota - Montana - or Wyoming you learn to 'pony up', take care of yourself and your
family ... along with your neighbors.

As you open your pockets for yet another natural disaster, keep these facts in mind:

Marsha J. Evans, President and CEO of the  American Red Cross... salary for year ending 06/30/03  was $651,957 plus expenses.

Brian Gallagher, President of the United Way receives a  $375,000 base salary, plus numerous expense benefits.

The Salvation Army's Commissioner Todd Bassett receives a salary of only $13,000 per year (plus housing) for managing this $2 billion dollar organization.