A triumvirate of Republican power brokers may give Mississippi first dibs in the post-Hurricane Katrina grab for federal disaster funds even though the federal government focused its initial response to the storm on New Orleans.
The state's senior senator, Thad Cochran, is the new chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, the panel charged with determining how much and where the recovery money will be spent.
Its junior senator's home - a place where GOP leaders from across the county once bantered about politics from rocking chairs on a porch overlooking the Gulf of Mexico - was flattened by Katrina.
"There's nothing there now," Sen. Trent Lott said of his historic Pascagoula house, which had been 12 feet above sea level. "I found my refrigerator, from my kitchen. It went down the street two blocks, turned left and went into a neighbor's yard."
Add Gov. Haley Barbour, a former Republican National Committee chairman, and Mississippi packs more political muscle than the other storm-ravaged states of Louisiana and Alabama.
...
Over the telephone, Lott spoke of the storm as a "great equalizer."
There is a real challenge, deciding who gets aid first, and how much. And New Orleans has grabbed the spotlight because it is the largest metropolitan area hit by Katrina, and because so many were stranded there by the flooding. Slidell, Louisiana is gone; but who mentions it? Gulfport and Biloxi, likewise. This is not, and should not be, a competition for "worst-affected" or "most suffering."
But the winners are at war with the losers, and the fix is in. Just as it is important for the people of New Orleans to be involved in rebuilding their city, it is important that pork-barrel politics play as little a role as possible, here.
For it to play no role at all is, of course, impossible. But this is what we should mean by "not politicizing" this disaster.
No comments:
Post a Comment