"Starve the Beast" in New Orleans

I posted this on Yahoo's Ann Coulter discussion board, so conservatives could see it.

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For those of you unfamiliar with the phrase, "starve the beast," this explains it.

From Daily Kos:

Tragedy has a way of revealing character. The constant drumbeat of death from the war in Iraq, and now the cascading nightmare that is the Gulf Coast flood has peeled away the veneer and we can see the GOP leadership and the larger conservative movement for what it is: a sham. They have nothing. They offer nothing. They come to destroy, not to build. They have no vision for a greater public good because, for them, the very notion of a public good is anathema.

Make no mistake: as we watch our fellow citizens drown, starve, and die in the street in New Orleans, its not incompetence or lack of planning that is killing them. It is willful neglect. It is the direct result of reducing the government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." This is what "starving the beast" looks like.

For some 30 years the Republican party has packaged humanity's darkest and most craven weaknesses and pawned them off as its greatest virtues. Well, the reckoning is here and the conservatives are found wanting. When the chips are down we are a nation that cares for our citizens and we expect our government to be strong enough, capable enough, and compassionate enough to do the same.

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Rest in peace, Grand Old Party. America can no longer afford the drag that your self-delusions and cheap justifications put on our spirit. For those who are willing to turn back from pandering to the lowest common denominator and who choose to join us lifting up the better angels of our nature, we offer the hand of friendship. For the the rest: may the God whose name you have scandalized and used as cover for your lack of humanity have mercy on your degenerate souls.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/2/20401/46134

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The American people (and everybody else for that matter) aren't saints, which is why systems like communism don't work.

But neither are we the greedy, prejudiced, cruel, ignorant trolls the right is trying to convince us to be--and if you think that's extreme just listen to the excrement coming out of Rush Limbaugh's mouth about the hurricane survivors.

We have an obligation to our fellow citizens and it is not the same as saying we should make the rich live in cardboard boxes to say that they need to give back in taxes their fair share. At the very time we are struggling to respond to this hurricane, the Bush people are pushing to make repeal of the estate tax permanent--a tax that still let you keep most of the estate.

We have been a better country, and we can be again.