Tim Johnson's Partisan Cover Up Of The Katrina Response
Tim Johnson voted today for the Orwellianly-named "bipartisan" commission to investigate the response to Hurricane Katrina.
If this proposed commission were really "bipartisan", why would the proposal have been rammed through by Republicans on a strict party-line vote? Because the Republican idea of bipartisan is that Republicans be the majority of the commissioner and, thus, control the commission's actions and its subpoena power, and that the commission be made up of members of Congress, who have an obvious conflict to the extent Congress's actions may be subject to question. The Democrats, in contrast, have proposed a genuinely bipartisan and independent commission, like the 9/11 commission (which had 5 Republicans and 5 Democrats).
With 54% of Americans disapproving of Bush's handling of the Katrina disaster, 63% believing the Administration lacks a clear plan for dealing with the hurricane situation, and only 17% believing Bush himself is completely blameless for the problems with the federal response to the hurricane, it's pretty obvious why Republicans would want Republicans to control the investigation. But it's equally obvious why 70% of Americans want a genuinely independent investigation -- especially because of the obvious relevance of what went wrong in Louisiana to what might happen if we face another terrorist attack.
Tim Johnson likes to portray himself as above partisanship. Sadly, today, he voted in lockstep for a partisan cover-up of what went wrong with the response to Katrina.
If this proposed commission were really "bipartisan", why would the proposal have been rammed through by Republicans on a strict party-line vote? Because the Republican idea of bipartisan is that Republicans be the majority of the commissioner and, thus, control the commission's actions and its subpoena power, and that the commission be made up of members of Congress, who have an obvious conflict to the extent Congress's actions may be subject to question. The Democrats, in contrast, have proposed a genuinely bipartisan and independent commission, like the 9/11 commission (which had 5 Republicans and 5 Democrats).
With 54% of Americans disapproving of Bush's handling of the Katrina disaster, 63% believing the Administration lacks a clear plan for dealing with the hurricane situation, and only 17% believing Bush himself is completely blameless for the problems with the federal response to the hurricane, it's pretty obvious why Republicans would want Republicans to control the investigation. But it's equally obvious why 70% of Americans want a genuinely independent investigation -- especially because of the obvious relevance of what went wrong in Louisiana to what might happen if we face another terrorist attack.
Tim Johnson likes to portray himself as above partisanship. Sadly, today, he voted in lockstep for a partisan cover-up of what went wrong with the response to Katrina.
posted by Michael | 12:44 PM
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