Tube City Almanac

September 13, 2005

Let Them Drink Tea

Category: default || By jt3y

I've decided I'm going to start publishing the Almanac on Tuesdays and Fridays, at least for the foreseeable future. I don't have time right now to keep updating it daily, but I want to retain some semblance of a regular schedule.

Yes, I know. Try to control your grief.

So, welcome to today's Almanac, in which ... I reprint letters from readers! Yes, having cut back to twice a week publication ... I'm using the opportunity to not write anything! What a work ethic!

Anyway, Alert Reader Dave writes:

Jason, thank you for publishing the Tube City Almanac. It is interesting that you have also taken a shot at President Bush. My goodness! Let's also blame the President for untrained potty babies. Friends in the flood plain of WPA tell me how little response they have received from local politicians from last year's tragic event. Someone said that you have not learned from 150 years of recorded local politics. New Orleans has been one of the most politically corrupt cities in the nation with a crime rate to match. Many of the evacuees say they will never return. Isn't that what the people in the Mon Valley say as they pack up to leave in huge numbers? How can anyone blame President Bush without blaming the local and state politicians in Louisiana?


Well, Dave, thanks for writing. As I pointed out to someone in the comments a few days ago, I am not blaming the President for the hurricane. I am blaming him for diverting federal money from the Army Corps of Engineers to pay for his splendid little war in Iraq. I blame him for gutting the Federal Emergency Management Agency because the deep neo-conservative "thinkers" (and I use that word loosely) with which he has surrounded himself don't like it for ideological reasons. I blame him for spending two days piddling around on vacation after the levees broke in New Orleans. I blame him for making utterly clueless and despicable comments once he did decide to come out of his hole and greet the sunlight.

I didn't much like Bill Clinton, and like most Americans, I think, I was very willing to give this President a chance. But he has blown every opportunity he's had, and his sloppy response to the latest crisis is the last straw for me and many others. (The latest polls have his approval rating under 40 percent, and his disapproval rating over 50 percent.)

And since I brought up Clinton, it's instructive to look at how the federal government responded to hurricanes during both Slick Willie's administration and that of Bush the Elder:

Clinton made disaster declarations even before the hurricane hit. And oh yes, he did something else: He cancelled pleasing vacation plans so he could be at his desk when the hurricane hit. Last week, of course, Bush 43 still lounged in Crawford as Katrina bore down on the U.S. coast; on Day 2, he flew off to make a speech in San Diego even after New Orleans’ levees had breached. (The levees gave way on Monday; Bush flew to San Diego on Tuesday.) No, our cursory review doesn’t make us experts in federal reaction time. But we thought we saw a difference in the way these presidents acted.


(Tube City hard hat tip: The Daily Howler.)

The hurricane was an act of God. The failure of the federal government to be prepared was an act of President Bush and his lap-dog, rubber-stamp Congress. And yes, there's plenty of fingers to be pointed at the local yokels in New Orleans and the state of Louisiana, but the governor of Louisiana doesn't control the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The mayor of New Orleans doesn't control FEMA. And neither of them have the resources and equipment that can be brought to bear on disaster relief that the federal government has historically had ... but either doesn't have since President Bush took office, or was unwilling to use.

Keith Olbermann said it much more eloquently last week in an editorial on MSNBC:

All that was needed was just a quick "I'm not satisfied with my government's response." Instead of hiding behind phrases like "no one could have foreseen," had he only remembered Winston Churchill's quote from the 1930's. "The responsibility," of government, Churchill told the British Parliament, "for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence." In forgetting that, the current administration did not merely damage itself — it damaged our confidence in our ability to rely on whoever is in the White House.


Here's what the Manchester, N.H., Union Leader --- traditionally one of the most conservative newspapers in the United States --- editorialized:

A better leader would have flown straight to the disaster zone and announced the immediate mobilization of every available resource to rescue the stranded, find and bury the dead, and keep the survivors fed, clothed, sheltered and free of disease.


The cool, confident, intuitive leadership Bush exhibited in his first term, particularly in the months following September 11, 2001, has vanished. In its place is a diffident detachment unsuitable for the leader of a nation facing war, natural disaster, and economic uncertainty.


(Hard hat tip, Olbermann.)

I have a lot more to say, and like many Americans, I'm still very angry about this. But since this is primarily a Web site about Mon-Yough issues, I have avoided writing about this.

Listening to the news last week, I finally figured out (I think) why the President's responses have been so tone-deaf. He keeps talking the way many wealthy people respond to problems: "We'll spend money," "we'll give you money," "the federal government is going to spend whatever it takes."

The conceit is that money can solve any problem, and that as long as you get your cash at the end, you'll be happy. But the promise of a federal no-interest loan is of no help to someone who's starving, or whose house has washed away, or whose loved one is dead. At that exact moment, they don't necessarily want money ... they want dry clothes and protection from looters, and maybe a sympathetic ear. The President, who ran as a "compassionate conservative," is sorely lacking the first virtue.

The President has always been convinced that you can buy your way out of trouble, because he always has been able to --- whenever one of his businesses failed, his dad's cronies bailed him out. I think that's why so much of the war in Iraq has been subcontracted to private vendors. But some problems can't be "bought off," and Hurricane Katrina is another one of those.

Now, some wealthy people are raised with a sense of "noblesse oblige." Take the Rockefellers and the Roosevelts. That was apparently not instilled in the Bush family. More's the pity, as we're finding out.

...

Whew! All that indignant ranting wears me out. How about something lighter, hmm? Alert Reader Geoff writes:

I wanted to let you know that, in iced tea as in so many things, Western Pennsylvania and Western New York are kissing cousins.


Where I grew up, around Buffalo, a number of dairies marketed iced tea in paper cartons and plastic jugs, along with a variety of colored bug juices. They were pretty common at picnics when I was a kid and later at teenage drinking events. But by the time I worked construction after college, they'd largely been replaced by the little glass bottles of iced tea and buckets of pop. Occasionally someone would pull out a carton of Charlap's or Wendt's iced tea from the front seat of the car, but ever more rarely.


Certainly it is not so ubiquitous as it continues to be around Western PA -- it's something I noticed as soon as I moved to Pittsburgh, and it continues to remind me how many things Buffalo and Pittsburgh have in common.


The Almanac is proud to become Western Pennsylvania's source for iced tea carton information, and I've often felt that Buffalo and Picksberg were so similar that you could take a Picksberger and a Buffalonian (Buffaloite? Buffaloer?), blindfold them, drop them into each other's city, and they wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Even the downtown areas look similar.

Speaking of iced tea, I tried something called diet peach iced tea from (I think) GetGo the other day. Bleah! Run far, far away. I had to drink some cough medicine just to get the taste out of my mouth. Nasty stuff.

...

Finally, Alert Reader Janos sends along several items of interest, clipped from the newsy newsletter of the McKeesport Heritage Center, of which I have been a long-time member:

AUGUST 9, 1929, OPEN STORE TOMORROW: Everything is in readiness for the formal opening of the new Sears, Roebuck and Company retail store at 135 Fifth Avenue ... When the store's personnel was made up over 98 percent of local residents were selected to fill the various positions ... the location was chosen by the company because of its easy accessibility from all parts of the city.


Unless I miss my guess, that store was where the Family Dollar store, facing Lysle Boulevard is now (formerly a Goodyear tire store and Kelly & Cohen).

MAY 12, 1930, MAKING WAY FOR NEW BUILDING IN FIFTH: Blair & Mack today began the work of razing the old building at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Tube Works Street, where the contracting firm will erect for the G.C. Murphy company a modern business house.


That building was long home of G.C. Murphy Co.'s "Number 1 store" on Fifth Avenue, as well as a large banquet room and restaurant upstairs. It's currently a blood bank. (Deposits only, no withdrawals.)

MAY 14, 1930, START WORK ON NEW STORE IN TEN DAYS: Construction of a new two-story building at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Blackberry Street will begin in about ten days, J.G. Esch of the Esch Construction company of Cleveland said. The new building will cost approximately $75,000 and is to be completed by September 1, Mr. Esch said. It will be occupied by the W.T. Grant company and the Kay company.


Now, this one's got me stumped ... unless it's the building that later became Jaison's Department Store (no relation) and is now a bingo hall. Anyone want to correct or illuminate me?

...

Oh, and before I forget ... me alma mater is 3-0 on the football season so far. Hee hee hee! I'm going to enjoy this while it lasts, because it's been a long, long, long time.






Your Comments are Welcome!

Good to see you back, if only for a couple days.

Your summary of Dubya’s inept attempt at what I consider “ethnic cleansing” in the Gulf was on point. The “political capital” card he claimed is over its limit.
Steven Swain (URL) - September 13, 2005



Wow, David’s taking a beating here. While I agree with everything said herein, let’s not overlook Mayor Nagin’s delay of a mandatory evacuation for days and days after a cat 5 warning had been given. After an all-night session with lawyers, deliberating on the city’s potential liability if/when private businesses sued over loss of revenues, he ordered the evacuation to a flood-ridden town.

Oh! And Rick Santorium (sic) is Satan. While Hud and VA have set aside their saleable housing stock to provide temporary housing for the Katrina Survivors, Rick Sanitarium has generously suggested that Western PA open up its doors by allowing the displaced to temporarily house themselves in the plenitude of abandoned, empty homes that dot the greater Pitt landscape.

NOT!!! However, since he thinks the poor are to blame for not getting away from the hurricane’s devastation in a timely fashion (see para.1), I guess his position (or lack thereof) is justifiable…......
heather - September 13, 2005



“Ethnic cleansing” is strong, and I don’t think it’s very apt. I don’t think there was any overt racism in the scattershot response to Hurricane Katrina. Someone (Kanye West?) said that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

I don’t believe that’s true. I don’t think he cares much about black people, or white people, or yellow people, or brown people, or red people, or many other people, other than those who share his world view and donate toward his campaign.

As the Manchester paper editorialized, he has governed with a sort of indifference, and that’s very troubling. But I don’t think it’s genocide.

Let’s not chalk up to conspiracy what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

And no, Mayor Nagin isn’t blameless here. Heather is right that he “lawyered up” when he should have been leading. I have to laugh, however, when Republican commentators point out that “he’s a Democrat.” No, he isn’t. He was a Republican who, in fact, donated to George Bush’s election campaign and has frequently endorsed Republican candidates. He changed his registration to “Democratic” to get elected mayor.

I’m not concerned with party registration at this point. I wouldn’t care if George W. Bush was a Libertarian, a Whig or a member of the No-Nothing Party. I’m an American and he’s my President, and he’s done a bad job handling this crisis, as he’s done with other crises. This one just happens to have been more severe, and a much more obvious public shambles.
Webmaster (URL) - September 14, 2005



I’m aware that “ethnic cleansing” is not exactly a polite way to describe the handling of the Katrina situation, and the blame can easily be spread throughout the state, local and national levels, and also to a relatively ignorant local populace that somehow figured a Category 5 hurricane would only cause a couple of inches of flooding. I agree with you that the President has very little interest in anyone outside his peer group.

But you gotta understand, Jason. When I read the stories and saw the pictures and people who looked and lived just like me previously were being labled ‘refugees,’ and forced into inhuman conditions while our President and FEMA delayed help for whatever reason, I have to say there was some specific rascism involved in the decision making process.

I’m not a race baiter like Kanye West, using his celebrity to point out injustice while contributing to the downfall of black (and other) youth by making us too comfortable with derogatory terms like the N-word and “b*tch” while laughing all the way to the bank.

I’m just a regular dude that has to put up with rascism every day of my life, not because I look for it, but because I was born in this skin, and by nature of this, the rascism finds me. Just based on what I look like, if I suceed at something, I’m “well-spoken” or “a credit to my community.” If I fail at something, people automatially think I’m responsible for my own downfall by smoking weed, chasing white women or betting too much on a basketball scholarship.

Black people will never be completely free of self-blame for life situations, and they aren’t the only victims of racism, and white people shouldn’t bow thir heads in disgust for what their forefathers have wrought.

But anytime I see endless images of black folks stealing sneakers and alleged gunplay that was not substantiated used as official reasons for not helping sooner, while people lying in their own urine and feces at the Superdome, starving and crying, keeping watch to avoid rape, are left to suffer and die like slaves, I can’t read it as anything else other than “ethnic cleansing,” or more eloquently: the wholesale abandonment of a specific group of people for an extended period of time in hopes that enough of them will die so that the govenment won’t have to feed them.

Milosovic would be proud.
Steven Swain (URL) - September 14, 2005



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