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Economics and Race in New Orleans Evacuation Effort

Ross Kaminsky - 9/11/2005

Speaking to the National Baptist Convention in Miami yesterday, Howard Dean not only implicitly calls President Bush and the administration racists, but also uses the tragedy to push for a larger welfare state and higher taxes. The quote that all the media outlets are picking up is: "the ugly truth that skin color, age and economics played a significant role in who survived and who did not." In a way there is some truth to his words, but not in the way he means them. It's true that economics played a role in the sense that it was much more difficult for the very poor to leave. It also appears that a large percentage of the people who refused to leave were poor. Of course, it's also more difficult for the old and sick to participate in an emergency evacuation. As far as race is concerned, there is correlation here, but not causation. In other words, it's a fact that a higher percentage of the poor are not white. And it's a fact that a high percentage of those who did not or could not leave New Orleans were poor. But this does not mean that they did not or could not leave because they were not white.

Dean, like most Democrats, misses the point on poverty when he says: "We have simply swept it under the rug." To the contrary, we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions, on anti-poverty programs inplemented in the New Deal and the Great Society as well as the thousands of other welfare/transfer programs implemented on a continuous basis at the Federal, state and local levels for the past 60 years.

Far from sweeping poverty under the rug, we have attacked it full-on, but have used inappropriate weapons. Simply redistributing money, as Dean wants to do more of, does nothing to change the underlying behaviors that are the cause of structural poverty.

Dean's calls to end tax cuts and for a bigger welfare state is like prescribing more of a medicine that has been proven no better than a placebo ... and maybe worse because it keeps the patient from looking for an effective treatment.

So, according to the Miami Herald, Dean "suggested that GOP priorities have made a bad situation worse", a claim which is outrageous but not more outrageous than most of the inane rantings Dean is known for.

Dean's attack makes sense from a political point of view. There's no doubt that people are unhappy with the government response to the Katrina disaster. It's not particularly relevant that the displeasure with state and local officials seems greater than the anger at the federal government. The fact that people are unhappy with the government in general gives Dean room to go after Bush and Republicans at the Federal level.

This is not just about taxes and spending; it's about elections. Pastor Stephen Thurston, President of the Convention, pulled back the curtain when he spoke about increasing voter registration efforts.

From the Herald: "There were enough African Americans who were registered to vote and who did not vote, to make a difference in the last election," Thurston said.

While I support maximal voter participation, I support it with the supposition that people vote based on an understanding of the issue. Rather, I don't suppose that people do understand much because most people don't - I simply wish that people with no knowledge or rational opinion would stay away from the ballot box.

Luckily, many of them do. Not because they realize they shouldn't vote without a clue, but because they don't care enough to get a clue or vote. I don't think this dynamic will change much, particularly so far from a Presidential election. So Dean and friends will sputter and moan but will probably have little effect in their fund raising or voter registration efforts.

That said, we should worry a lot about the Republicans' weak knees in the House and especially in the Senate. That's the place where, if Republicans don't stand up for economic principles which are more important than ever, we could see serious damage done to the economic underpinnings of the country as well as to the cause of liberty.