September 9, 2005
From the desk of Jane Galt:I know I'm going overboard, but
The smug tone of this post really chaps my ass--not least because it's wrong about so many things other than its fundamental misunderstanding of American geography.
For example, this passage:
The abundance � of food, cars, roads, tv stations, just about everything a European could imagine, and then some � is probably unprecedented historically, and limited geographically to America. Growing up comfortably middle class in Ireland in the early 1980s, I found it almost unbelievable that T.V. Americans seemed to drink orange joice every day when we had it just for Christmas, went shopping just for fun and could afford to keep their enormous fridges constantly full. (T.V. Americans were forever hanging up the phone without saying goodbye, slamming car doors, and divorcing each other at the drop of a hat, but that�s another day�s incredulity.)In my own fuzzy-logic way, I�d presumed that the cheapness of every day goods in the US was mostly because of the flexibility of the economy, i.e. the ability of employers to pay low wages, fire at will, offer few benefits, and generally pass on costs like environmental protection or maternity benefits. A few weeks in California cured me. Sure, labour �flexibility� helps. But the cheap price of petrol is more important than I�d ever imagined. As newspapers and coffee breaks filled with doomsday scenarios of paying $6 dollars a gallon for gas, I sat down one day and did the sums.
That�s what we pay in Ireland. Today. Most of the extra cost goes in taxes, and the cost of that affects every imagineable part of life. Paying more for oil makes everything more expensive � getting food to the shops, from there home, cooking it, and cleaning up afterwards. It means more people rely on public transport, creating a policy feedback loop of greater government spending and making more citizens using shared resources every day of their lives. It means we don�t run central heating or (if we had ever needed it) air conditioning all or most the time, and probably just put on another jumper when it�s cold. It means we advertise cars based on their fuel consumption and we don�t have �all you can eat� restaurant buffets. Teenagers don�t have their own jobs and cars, and rely on their parents, the bus or shanks mare to get around. They get it off in parks instead of cars. Not that many people drive to the gym. Until recently, not many people needed to go to the gym either.
Others on CT understand far better than I do the economic significance of America�s globally unique strategy of running a vast economy on cheap, cheap oil. And yet others can discuss how this dependence makes America less and less secure. (And how Amerca�s efforts to secure its own oil supply has made the world less and less secure for the rest of us.) It�s been a simple but revealing insight for me; the myth that America�s economic engine purrs along fuelled by of the virtues of its rather brutal labour market is only partly true. US work places may be dominated by the masochistic ideology of living to work, but the secret of success is simple. America lives or dies on cheap oil.
Yes, more Americans have cars than peoeple abroad. But the idea that Ireland's poverty in the 1980s was a result of expensive oil, rather than a thousand years of colonial dependance, its economic dependance on its former colonial master during the period when said empire had entered a period of rapid economic senescence, a debilitating regulatory and taxation scheme, and the resulting outmigration of many of its best and brightest . . . well, words fail me. Before committing to this position, Maria should have stopped and asked herself how, if cheap oil is the sine qua non of purchasing power, Ireland's GDP has gotten so close to America's on a PPP (purchasing power parity) basis while still producing gas prices high enough to cram the entire population into gas-sipping econoboxes. (I say this as someone who loved the little Renault Megane she drove around Ireland for a week--and whee! wasn't it fun to teach myself to drive manual in a country that is roughly 100% hills.) She might also have noted that the number of passenger cars per capita in Ireland was 217 in 1980, 227 in 1990, and 342 in 1999, which would seem to link ownership of passenger cars to per-capita GDP much more strongly than to the price of gas. This makes sense; while gas is indeed pricey in Ireland, the car we rented went five days of heavy driving on a single tank of gas.
In one way, we are much less vulnerable to high oil prices than Europe, because when oil prices get high, a lot of our oil gets cost-effective to extract, giving a boost to part of our economy, and reducing the volume (though not necessarily the dollar value) of our imports from abroad. When high oil prices hit Ireland, on the other hand, the only option they have is to go out looking for peat to burn.
Nor did we ever really have orange juice every day because we have cheap oil; orange juice was a daily treat for at least middle-class Americans before WWII. We have orange juice every day because we have orange trees in our country, a transportation network that can deliver it without crossing an ocean, and a population rich enough to buy it. The Irish population, on the other hand, didn't have those thinks, so they had milk instead.
But that's quibbling. The main thing I wanted to say is that while there is deadweight loss to the economy from taxing fuel (indeed, the deadweight loss is what the fuel tax is pretty much designed to produce), it is not equal to the entire value of the tax. Much of the fuel tax revenues can be used to offset other taxes, which boosts consumer income. There is a resulting shift in behaviour (people drive smaller cars), but not necessarily a big shift in purchasing power. Orange juice was a luxury item mainly because Ireland was very poor, not because fuel taxes made it too expensive to transport.
A more reasonable reading of history would suggest that government policy decisions after the British pulled out kept Ireland poor despite a very high investment in human capital, and that when those decisions were reversed (in the 1980s in Britain, and in the 1990's in Ireland), the Anglo-Irish economy boomed. Since those policy changes made the Irish and British economies more like the American one, it would seem to me that the "Myth" she claims to have abandoned was in fact more true than the one that she has installed in its place.
Then there's this:
And then you see what�s happening in New Orleans. Where a natural disaster has shone the light on what�s ugly and usually hidden in American life; the inherent and unconsidered racism, the casual brutality, the values that prize property above people. You see people being blamed for being poor. You see black people penned in like animals and made to live in their own filth. You see in America people dying of thirst. Of thirst. You see people pushed beyond civility, beyond reason, beyond any imaginable breaking point, to be met with gun fire and the self-serving response �there, do you see how these people really are? It�s the war of all against all down there.� You wonder what the Christian right might have to say, and fear it�s not �whatever you do to the least of my brothers, you do to me�, but rather; �devil take the hindmost�. Which he clearly did.There is a war of all against all in America. But it�s not limited to Mississippi and Louisianna. The myths that have held the poor in check are now exposed. The callous disregard of this administration for the poorest and weakest Americans is now on display for the world to see.
In some ways, we�re not surprised to see this selfishness and wickedness exposed. After all, what did you think has been going on in Iraq for the past couple of years? Or what do any of us think is going on in Niger, in Sudan, or in any of the nameless places of boundless human suffering that we just aren�t interested in hearing about? The main difference in NOLA is that it�s harder to control the reporters, and the people suffering speak English and they expect to be heard.
This is one of those jaw-dropping, cheek-slapping, "did they really say that?" statements that make me wonder if I'm living on the same planet as the people whose blogs I read. Comparing New Orleans to Darfur? Why not the Gulag? Or the Holocaust?
I am second to none in my horror of what happened in Katrina, and I too was shocked that such a thing could happen in America. But to compare inept emergency management to a deliberate campaign of raping and killing members of an ethnic minority reveals a moral imagination so beggared as to be useless. And to imply that it happened because George Bush hates black people and cares more about Wal-Mart's stock of televisions than he does about the occupants of the 9th Ward is simply grotesque. There have been colossal screw-ups from the level of the police department all the way up to the head of the Department of Homeland Security, and some of those are Bush's fault for appointing the people he did. But to suggest that this is part of some sort of campaign against the poor, organized or otherwise, is ridiculous. The worst you can say about George Bush's poverty policy is that it is unambitious; despite liberal rhetoric, he done very little at all in the realm of poverty policy, for good or ill.
Many, perhaps even most, of those who died or were stranded amidst the floodwaters suffered because they were poor. But their poverty interacted with the disaster in a complicated, nuanced kind of way--the sort of way that we're constantly being told that left-wing intellectuals are better at understanding than those redneck slobs on the right--not in a simple, "the government doesn't care what happens to the poorer and darker skinned" sort of way. Despite what you may believe about us, when Americans hear that there are thousands and thousands of dead bodies trapped in the attics where they drowned, Americans care enough to scare the bejeesus out of our elected officials, even if the skin on those bodies happens to have more melanin than average.
The (black) mayor of New Orleans did not botch the evacuation plans because he just didn't care whether folks in the 9th ward drowned, nor did the governor of Louisiana and the Feds waste time on a jurisdictional pissing match because they figured that rescuing poor people just wasn't that important. No one was worried about the looters because Americans "prize property above people"; they were worried about the looting because the looters had started to do things like steal hospital generators that were powering the area's sole satellite uplink. If you canvassed the entire country, you would find precious few who think that goods from Target, or even a private home, are more worth protecting than human lives.
Whatever the Bush administration should have done with the levees with the benefit of perfect hindsight, my understanding of the system is that even had Bush entered office day one with strengthening the levees his highest priority, the vagaries of engineering and modern bureaucratic controls means that they wouldn't have even broken ground on the improvements yet. Moreover, it is simply ludicrous to say that Bush's decisions about Army Corps of Engineers funding were made with regard to the income or race of the people who lived in New Orleans. Once again, this is a big country; we don't just have the one city. If Bush, the HHS secretary, or the head of FEMA, even knew that the topology of New Orleans put the poor at greatest risk I would be mightily surprised, as my acquaintances who lived in New Orleans for extended periods of time did not realize that until the flood came. The people who should have known that--Lousiana's (Democratic) congressional delegation--probably didn't think about it either, at least if their decision to grab money from levee improvements for pork-barrel projects can be understood.
And to make gratuitous cracks at the Christian right, when so many of their churches have been the first in line to shelter refugees despite the fact that we all know they hate black people, is just gross ignorance. A few conservatives may have said "There, do you see how these people behave?", but many more of them have opened their wallets and their homes to strangers in need of shelter. That one could even imply such a thing, when the previous record for charity giving before Katrina was held by Americans pouring out donations for the brown-skinned victims of the pacific tsunami . . . well, I'm too much of a lady to respond.
I don't know what sort of poor decision-making process led New Orlean's mayor to draw up an evacuation plan that acknowleged that 100,000 people would fail to evacuate, and leave it at that. But I can be pretty certain that it was a run-of-the-mill decision error of the sort that even the enlightened citizens of Europe might make, such as improperly assessing the risk of a low-probability event, and not a callous calculation that the lives of the poor were irrelevant. Smug Europeans would be well to investigate this possibility, for it is all too easy to look at disasters elsewhere and sigh gratefully that it can't happen here, only to find much too late that it can and did.
Posted by Jane Galt at September 9, 2005 1:18 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linkshe might also have noted that the number of passenger cars per capita in Ireland was 217 in 1980, 227 in 1990, and 342 in 1999
Good God. Where do they park them all?
"The smug tone..."
That is the core of the problem, the blue-nosed maiden aunt moral superiority of this worldview. There was a time when the Irish had raised sanctimonious masochism to a high art - anyone who grew up in America around Irish Catholicism knows what I mean. The poverty may be waning but the moral one-up-manship is harder to let go.
Reading British blogs has opened my eyes to the depth of ignorance about America in Britain and by extention, in the rest of Europe. Quite typically people don't understand the scale of the place and its variety of climate and the comparative harshenss of the environment, don't understand the political system, especially federalism, don't understand the demographics and racial system, in anything but the crudest caricature terms. Then they drape their ignorance in intellectual smugness and trade quips.
Some of this is probably due to honest ideological differences. Europeans have always had a system, whether socialist or feudal, where that is collectivist and statist, and they think that is the civilized way to live. We differ from that, and they find it repellent. Fair enough.
Then there are the effects of superficiality and laziness. I truly think Europeans often see white faces and think they are just looking in the mirror.
"Smug Europeans would be well to investigate this possibility, for it is all too easy to look at disasters elsewhere and sigh gratefully that it can't happen here, only to find much too late that it can and did."
Such as the recent summer heatwave, killing 15,000 elderly French people.
Both tragedies break my heart. The government is here to save you, indeed.
Smugness I can abide. But what the CT post betrays is contempt and ill will.
The real reason why americans have OJ so often is the reason why the Irish have Irish chedder so often. They make it there. I sure wish that I could eat more Irish chedder, but at $10/lb, that's too rich for my blood.
Ah, those wealthy celts, living it up with their smashing cheese, beer, potatoes, and so forth. Gads, they must be bleeding rich to enjoy such delicacies . . .
Very thoughtful post, Jane! especially the part about "poverty interacted with the disaster in a complex, nuanced kind of way--the sort of way that we're constantly being told that left-wing intellectuals are better at understanding than those redneck slobs on the right." I hear that sort of attitude all the time around my department, and it's strange how most of those with that attitude don't really seem to demonstrate a deeper understanding of the world than "Conservatives = bad!"
Jim, good post also. Really rings true to me, based on some personal experiences.
Great blog. I'll add it to my regular reading list.
2 things:
1 - While the 'cheap oil is the main cause of American wealth' is simplistic, the main core of it is not necessarily wrong. I would make the argument that the main source of American wealth is not it's brand of free-market capitalism, but rather, it's natural resources, both mineral and agricultural. Or to put it another way, geography rather than ideology has had greater influence on our standard of living.
(This point is made by Galt herself when she brings up our cheap orange juice and our oil reserves.)
I don't think that this argument can be easily dismissed. Who's to say that under Swedish socialism, the US standard of living wouldn't be just as high as it is today due to our vast wealth of natural resources and our lack of hostile neighbors willing to invade?
So while you may dislike the tone of the argument put forth in this article you rebut, the argument itself may have some merit.
2 - The 'blame can be shared by all--local, state, and federal' argument is just as simplistic as the 'cheap oil' argument above. For the last 5 years, local and state resources have had to take on greater and greater burdens that were once undertaken by the federal government. That leaves far less for the development and expansion of state and local disaster plans. Second, the major disaster threats--the Big One in California, dirty bomb in New York, and the Big Blow in New Orleans--are so vast in effect and scope that no state or local government would have the resources to be prepared for it or to be the point person in charge. It's precisely because these types of things are so big (as is war, international trade, etc.) that we need a Federal government. Finally, the current crop of legislators and the administration not only not care about federal policy and its effects domestically, they actively dislike it. To this day, I don't understand why people want to elect politicians who hate government to run government. It's like asking Lenin to be CEO of General Electric.
So, I think that lumping in the mayor of a city the size of El Paso, TX and the Governor of the sixth poorest state in the Union in with a Federal Government who's spent more time trying to place blame than rescue citizens is a little disingenous.
If blame is to be spread for the NO disaster, I'd say 90% federal, 8% state, and 2% city. Not only is the Federal more important morally (since they had the greatest means and the authority to do the most about it), it's also more important pragmatically. The Governor of Lousiana and the Mayor of New Orleans are probably going to have very little to do with the next big disaster that happens to the US, but--perhaps unfortunately--FEMA will be there.
Kilroy Was Here
Oh, the Hurricanes under Clinton:
Floyd, Fran, and Opal. All in the top 20 costliest hurricanes to hit the US according to Wikipedia.
KWH
Quite typically people don't understand the scale of the place and its variety of climate and the comparative harshenss of the environment, don't understand the political system, especially federalism, don't understand the demographics and racial system, in anything but the crudest caricature terms. Then they drape their ignorance in intellectual smugness and trade quips.
That's a pithy and dead-on accurate way of describing most of the debates I've had with leftist Europeans. I note that you employed the word 'understand' several times: therein lies the problem. Europeans on average may have a better media infrastructure, and a (necessarily) greater international awareness, but that's knowledge -- understanding only comes by prudent application of knowledge, hence experience.
Kilroy: "I would make the argument that the main source of American wealth is not it's brand of free-market capitalism, but rather, it's natural resources, both mineral and agricultural."
By that logic, Russians should be richer than Americans, because territory they've held since before the USA existed (Siberia) is even richer in natural resources.
Estimated Requirements for assistance under the Stafford Act:
Coordination: $0
Technical and advisory assistance: $0
Debris removal: $0
Emergency protective measures: $ 9,000,000
Individuals and Households Program (IHP): $0
Distribution of emergency supplies: $0
Other (specify): $0
Totals: $ 9,000,000
Grand Total: $ 9,000,000
Kilroy Said:
If blame is to be spread for the NO disaster, I'd say 90% federal, 8% state, and 2% city. Not only is the Federal more important morally (since they had the greatest means and the authority to do the most about it), it's also more important pragmatically.
I agree with Kilroy here, it's the Federal government's job to intervene in state, local and city affairs and build higher levees. What do we need all these silly local politicians for anyway?
Kilroy, you forgot to place blame on the people who elected them as well. Or are they statistically insignificant?
-jayson
Jayson--
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not with the 'what do we need local politicians' line, but I'll try and oblige.
As someone who has experience of local politics, local politicians (your city council, your planning commission, your school board) are primarily there to take care of 2 major pieces of infrastructure--streets,sewars, and water--and standard safety (police and fire). If you look at most cities budgets, you'll see the lion share of the budget go to those 2 functions.
In a larger city, such as NO, or Cleveland, or El Paso, you'll find that the Mayor is also an ambassador to state and federal officials, and to businesses. NO would surely have a Port Commission that would report to the City Council that would be a huge source of revenue and expense.
After streets and safety, you get to schools, redevelopment, economic development, etc. but these tend to be second tier projects.
County (or parish) level officials are usually there to provide the social safety net (at least in my state). 'Public' hospitals are run from the county, the courts and jails are run at the county, the unincorporated areas need their police and streets.
And, there's usually not enough money to do all of these things.
So, on top of these things, to try and also spend the time and money for an effective disaster plan... well that's going to be asking for a tax increase somewhere.
Think about it, I don't believe any city has ever had a mandatory evacuation before. NO was the first. All evacuations before were voluntary. So the mayor was entering into uncharted territory here.
Final point, legally, when President Bush declared NO and federal disaster area, the Feds were in charge. When was that done?
KWH
markm--
Have you looked at Russia's geography lately.
First, as for neighbors who are willing to invade, well France, Germany, China, Japan, etc. America has never been invaded or had the occupations that Russia has. I wonder how America would have done if it was invaded as many times as Russia.
Second, Russia has no warm water ports or major rivers to make it easy to extract their natural resources. Plus it's a lot larger. Getting oil to NY from Oklahoma is a lot easier than getting oil to Moscow from Kamchatka.
Third, Russia is cold cold cold. There certainly no orange trees there. Russia is closer to Canada than to the US.
And finally, despite these disadvantages, once Russia was stopped from being invaded--it had one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Russia went from serfs and cows plowing fields to a modern industrial state in 30 to 40 years. That's an amazing accomplishment. I'm no fan of communism, but let's not being simple-minded about Russia's advances.
KWH
Russia went from serfs and cows plowing fields to a modern industrial state in 30 to 40 years. That's an amazing accomplishment.
And to think, all that rapid industrialization took was being ruled by either the second- or first-worst dictator of all time (I'm not interested in having that debate now) who condemned millions of peasants to starvation by forcibly taking food to the cities and executing anyone who objected. (Yes, I realize I'm simplifying this somewhat.)
It kind of rankles me that some will look back at things that were done in the past and marvel at how we can't do some of that stuff today. The best example I can think of is when people look at the Pyramids and say, "They don't build 'em like they used to. What have we built in the modern era that will last for 3000 years?" The answer is, of course, nothing--since we're not willing to tolerate the combination of brutal government policies and breathtakingly horrendus budgetary outlays that such a project would entail.
(The best commentary I can find on this is here)
(OT: While looking up the URL above at Despair.com I found this new one advertised on the main page. I thought I'd share it. The other two new ones advertised are pretty good, too.)
Kilroy:
The sarcasm was there and, after reading your thoughtful reply, churlish in hindsight. I'll try to be more clear.
I disagree with your levelling of the blame. Possibly due to the last sentence in your reply. I'm very curious about your legal point as I've read nothing similar. One of the better analysis can be found here. We share the same view that the enhancement of the levees should have been a federal issue evidenced by the clear security threat that a weak levee system poses. But, as you point out, the implementation and maintenance of such a project remains a local concern.
As a local concern, Louisiana would need capital to reduce the impact of natural disasters. You mention they should improbably raise taxes, but they can also ask for and receive more federal money for such an endeavor. It turns out that they have and did receive such funding. More so than any other state -- including California. They decided to spend the money elsewhere.
I do like the blame weighting system you've constructed as it shows shades of gray of responsibility rather than the black and white views into which many like to categorize complex issues. My comment regarding the constituency being excluded is my way of giving vent to a clear systemic problem. In the ideal democratic system, we the people have placed these people in power to protect us. Without our votes to elect them into their positions, they wouldn't have the power to fumble on such a colossal scale. I was merely venting as I have no better solution for placement of more qualified individuals.
Lastly, as I reread our posts, possibly we are identifying different areas to which to apply blame. You appear to be targetting how the disaster should have been dealt with while I am using hindsight to address how this [sarcasm]ultra-catastrophe[/sarcasm] could have simply been a catastrophe. Both approaches are necessary, but I think the strategy of prevention is a more fundamental problem than the tactics of recovery.
-jayson
Kilroy: You've fallen for the Communist's biggest lie: "Russia went from serfs and cows plowing fields to a modern industrial state in 30 to 40 years." (Unless you are referring to the 30 or 40 years between the time the Czars abolished serfdom and the time they were overthrown. Russian industry in 1914-196 was sufficient to, for example, make more military aircraft per year than France. (They were lousy airplanes - but so were most of the French production in those years. The difference was that under Czarist absolutism, there was not much pressure to improve.) By comparison, the USA had no usable military aircraft even on the design boards when we entered the war; our pilots flew French and British fighters into combat. The only useful airplane we produced in any number before the war ended was the Jenny trainer. But we would have made huge fleets of airplanes in 1919...
So it appears that under the last Czar, Russia was an industrial nation comparable to France, embedded in a much larger nation of backwards peasants. The USA wasn't much different - except that our farmers (except some in the South) were not as backward because they were free men in a way no one was under Czar or Commissar, most had been to school because we wanted an electorate that could read and comprehend the news, and if they learned better agricultural techniques and made investments to implement them, the higher profits were theirs to keep.
The Communists made small advances in industrial productivity from there. We made huge ones. The Communists forced people to work in Siberis. We found people who wanted the opportunities that came with working the worst spots in this continent - that includes deserts as well as Alaska...
Kilroy's point about endowments of natural resources is economically illiterate, to put it politely. Look around the globe and you will see a strong negative correlation between natural resources and economic output. That is not happenstance, but a function of the rent-seeking that abundant natural resources engender.
Declaring a state a disaster area does not mean the federal government owns it. Sending federal troops into a state without going through the proper processes--specifically, getting the state's permission--is not disaster relief, it's a coup d'etat. The US is not going to jettison the Constitution because the racist voters of Louisiana elect an inept white hack to its governorship instead of an supremely competent, but dark-skinnned son of Indian immigrants.
If Bush had sent the troops in improperly, he would be subject to, and completely deserving of, impeachment and should be jailed.
As far as natural resources causing wealth, that is a statement of such stupendous ignorance, such a person cannot even be talked with. Unless, of course, my sources are wrong, and Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Israel are impoverished, while Russia, Romania, and Nigeria are booming.
CT is the most overrated blog I know of. Their rep relies on deleting the comments of anyone who disagrees with them that they cannot easily refute. Leave an intelligent, dissenting comment on it, and it will be gone by the next day.
Kilroy, Florida has had mandatory evacuations along its coastlines several times (especially after Hurrican Andrew in 1992). Low lying areas (generally anything between the coast and the intracoastal waterway, along with any barrier islands), are under mandatory evacuation orders. I left Sanibel Island the day before the mandatory evacuation took place in preparation for Hurricane Charley, and approximately 750,000 people in the state of Florida were subject to mandatory evacuation orders during Hurricane Jeanne. A smaller number had been under similar orders for Hurricane Frances, which weakened prior to landfall. In fact, the mandatory evacuation zone in Broward County was made smaller in 2003, cutting 175,000 people from the zone. So, while the mandatory evacuation may have been the first in New Orleans history, it was neither the first nor the largest in US history.
Kilroy: There have been numerous analyses that show how the Soviet system was to blame for the bad economy. You'll find some examples in Thomas Sowell's "Applied Economics" and perhaps you ought to read is preceding book "Basic Economics."
In short: because of central planning, resources were allocated poorly and used wastefully. Producing a given unit of production consumed far more materials and energy, and the quality was defective. Tractors contained far more steel than needed and used too much gasoline. Too much of product A was produced and too little product B. Food rotted before it could get to market. Nobody could be held accountable for quality, so feces-covered bread was simply ground up and baked into the next batch of loaves.
Before the commies took over, Russia was a net exporter of grain. Afterwards, that ceased to be the case.
Socialism is one of the most destructive delusions mankind has invented.
"Final point, legally, when President Bush declared NO a federal disaster area, the Feds were in charge. When was that done?" - KWH
Wrong, wrong, wrong. It doesn't matter when it was done. A declaration of a federal disaster area does not put the feds in charge. What it does is authorize the feds to release money (especially) and other resources for use by state and local authorities to deal with the disaster. The states are still in charge since they alone have sovereignty in their territories. If you don't understand that basic concept of federalism then you should really desist from making comments until you get a better grasp of it. The federal government does not have the legal authority to usurp the power of the states at its own discretion. And no state governor (including Governor Blanco) willingly cedes that power. That's a basic law of American politics.
'You see black people penned in like animals and made to live in their own filth.'
Like at a petting zoo?
Comments are Closed.