Grover Norquist

Mere days after I discussed the breaking of a levee in Iowa being another example of deliberate Republican neglect of our national infrastructure (the same kind of neglect that led to the flooding of New Orleans after Katrina), Wisconsin gets hit by the same kind of neglect. An embankment holding back a man-made lake in Wisconsin has broken, flooding yet another Midwest town: (from Salon.com)

The swollen Kickapoo River engulfed nearly the entire town Monday morning, forcing about 150 people to evacuate. By evening, the village was a grid of canals with cars submerged up to their windows and parking lots looking like lakes, just as it was in August...

An engineer assessment team from the Wisconsin National Guard was headed to Lake Delton on Tuesday to determine what would be needed to begin repairs on an embankment along the man-made lake that gave way, releasing a powerful current.

The 267-acre lake emptied into the nearby Wisconsin River on Monday, washing out part of a highway, sweeping away three homes and tearing apart two others...

I have already discussed at some length the dismal and DELIBERATE Republican failures to maintain America's infrastructure. The Republican Party has a stated policy of "Drowning American in a Bathtub," essentially reducing government to nothing. This is how Republican guru Grover Norquist put it:

"Cutting the government in half in one generation is both an ambitious and reasonable goal," Norquist stated in May 2000. "If we work hard we will accomplish this and more by 2025. Then the conservative movement can set a new goal. I have a recommendation: To cut government in half again by 2050"

We saw the direct and tragic result of that Republican "Drown America" policy in Louisiana and Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina, in closed and collapsed bridges in Minnesota, and now...floods in Iowa this month (June 7th).

Although I have done versions of this before, this was inspired by a Daily Kos Diary:

This is what happened Monday, Aug. 29, 2005...the day Katrina hit, John McCain's 69th birthday...the day America realized that Republicans don't give a shit about Americans.

Hurricane Katrina:

I remember the radar images from the weather channel the night before landfall. I remember distincly watching it and thinking, "My god...that's going to be bad." I also remember thinking that the government had better be ready to get people out and to deal with the situation.

I was right...it was going to be really, really bad. I mean THIS bad:

While Mississippi and Louisiana were getting slammed by Hurricane Katrina and Americans were dying, THIS is what Bush and McCain were doing:

From CurrentTV comes this amazing footage from WITHIN Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans:

The Republican party is killing Americans. And I don't just mean our soldiers in their useless war in Iraq. I mean regular American civilians, and the killing of Americans, though unintended, is a direct result of Republican policy. Let me say that again. A direct, if unintended, result of Republican domestic policy is the needless death of American citizens.

Grover Norquist, one of the darlings of the extreme rightwing, Gingrich/Bush/McCain branch of the Republican party, once said, "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." This statement has been the basis of Republican policy. Norquist went into more detail:

"Cutting the government in half in one generation is both an ambitious and reasonable goal," Norquist stated in May 2000. "If we work hard we will accomplish this and more by 2025. Then the conservative movement can set a new goal. I have a recommendation: To cut government in half again by 2050"

What are the consequences of this extreme right-wing "Drown Government in a Bathtub" doctrine? You drown AMERICA along with it.

We started to see dramatic consequences of this irresponsible doctrine when Katrina hit. The government had been warned what would happen to those levees, but government had been drowned in Gingrich's bathtub, so while Bush and McCain were partying down...

Republican corruption is becoming so blatant that even Congressional Republicans are deciding not to block an investigation of it. Jack Abramoff may be in jail, but the Republican scandals surrounding his empire of sleaze continue to grow.

From Salon.com:

Senate Questions Nonprofits' Tax Status

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By JOHN HEILPRIN Associated Press Writer

October 12,2006 | WASHINGTON -- Five nonprofit groups, including one of President Bush's biggest supporters, may have broken tax laws and put their tax-exempt status at risk by helping convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a Senate Finance Committee report concludes.

The 600-page report issued Thursday was prepared by the committee's Democratic staff. Majority Republicans, however, had agreed to its release and joined with Democrats in issuing subpoenas for documents and e-mails cited in the report.

It has become HIGHLY unusual for the Republicans to allow this kind of honest investigation of corruption. They have generally used their domination of both houses of Congress to block all Congressional investigation of Republicans. And, more often than not, they have covered up for their cronies like they did for six years after finding out about Foley's solicitation of sex from minors. So this is a real change for Republicans and shows that even they can't stop the public from knowning what is going on within their own ranks.