Saturday, Sept. 17, I stopped at the River City Diner at 1712 E. Main St. I had woken up on the wrong side of bed. I’ve been feeling this way for while now, and this was just another one of those days when I felt so overwhelmingly depressed that the thought of even making coffee for myself was too much of a chore.
The zenith of my depression occurred amidst the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina, and I’ve been slouching under the weight of helpless outrage toward the Bush administration’s recurrent failure to demonstrate any semblance of common decency.
Yes, Barbara, I’m sure sleeping in a cot surrounded by thousands of other people who’ve lost what little they had is just about as good as it gets. |
A large banner stretched across the window of the restaurant announcing that, on this day, the entire wait staff at the River City Diner was donating half of their tips to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
My waitress was Theresa Brizendine, a working mother of a young girl. She welcomed me with hot, fresh coffee, and when I asked her about the fundraiser that day, her eyes glistened with bittersweet warmth.
“Oh, it’s been so wonderful,” she told me. “People have been so generous that I’ve been on and off crying all morning.”
Sipping my coffee, I followed her as she made her rounds around the diner. I caught sight of one older woman dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt handing a wad of bills to Theresa, and Theresa’s tears began to flow again.
The people in the diner seemed ordinary – that is to say, they were like me. They were dressed unassumingly – not a designer label or manicured finger in sight. No Mercedes or BMWs were parked outside the restaurant. Waiters and waitresses earn $2.13 per hour. They literally live on the tips they make. Yet Theresa and her co-workers and every other customer in the restaurant were here to share what they had with those less well-off than themselves.
Contrast this to the Bush administration, fiddling while Rome burned and selling the spoils at bargain discounts to their Republican friends in the aftermath.
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld attended a San Diego Padres baseball game after the levees breached in New Orleans. The day after that, “W” headed back to Crawford on Air Force One for his final night of vacation. In the following two days – with tens of thousands of people stranded without adequate shelter, food, water, or medical supplies – Condoleezza Rice took in a Broadway show, saw the U.S. Open and spent several thousand dollars on shoes at Ferragamo on 5th Avenue in New York.
By Sept. 5 – eight days after Katrina’s landfall – the Washington Post reported that during the fallout Cheney had allegedly been busy house hunting, reportedly making an offer on a $2.9 million mansion in St. Michaels, Maryland, on the inlet of the Chesapeake Bay. On this same day, Barbara Bush commented while touring the hurricane relief centers in Houston, “So many of the people in the arena here are underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.” Yes, Barbara, I’m sure sleeping in a cot surrounded by thousands of other people who’ve lost what little they had to begin with is just about as good as it gets.
According to the Census Bureau, poverty in this country has increased for the fourth year in a row, leaving 37 million Americans – 13% of the population – living below the official poverty line. These Americans make less than $9,570 per year individually and less than $19,350 for a family of four. By comparison, the Kaiser Family Foundation recently reported that health insurance premiums for a family of four now average $10,880 per year – more than half the equivalent poverty line income. And even as our economy expanded last year, a million more Americans lost their employer-sponsored health coverage.
Despite the ever-shrinking affluence and security of ordinary Americans, so far the American people have donated $808 million for the victims of Katrina. Let’s contrast this with corporate donations, which so far are pegged at $409 million. Hey, you’re not supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth, but let’s put this into perspective: Coca-Cola’s advertising budget in 1998 alone was $1.6 billion, and $9 billion is still missing and unaccounted for in Iraq.
In his Sept. 15 speech, Bush cited the poverty that became so visible in Katrina’s aftermath and made various obligated promises to address it. “In the work of rebuilding,” he said, “as many jobs as possible should go to men and women who lived in the affected areas.”
What “W” failed to mention, however, was that while lucrative government contracts were being awarded to party loyalists like Halliburton and Bechtel to rebuild blighted areas – (yes, the same Bechtel that took over a Bolivian city’s water system and made it illegal for impoverished residents to collect rainwater without paying for it) – he also signed an executive order suspending the Davis-Bacon law in these areas, allowing his contractor friends to pay workers less than the prevailing wage.
George has also made a point to reassure us that taxes will not be raised to pay for the reconstruction of New Orleans – the funds will come instead from budget cuts. And right on cue, the GOP announced they will proceed with their plans to cut Medicaid, food stamps and other programs for the poor.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is compassionate conservatism: the oxymoron of the century. And before you diehard subscribers to this fallacy flood my e-mail inbox with hate mail, take a moment to ask your heroes in the current administration if they’d be willing to donate half their wages, if only for a day.
April Kung may be reached at aprilekung@yahoo.com