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September 08, 2005 08:00 AM UTC

America Has Lost a Battle to a Lake

  • 11 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

Our old buddy Herb Rubenstein has prepared an editorial on the response to Hurricane Katrina that his campaign asked us to post, and since Herb has provided us all with a good deal of political entertainment, we thought we’d oblige. Click below to read the editorial, which does include the sentence, “America has lost a battle to a lake.”

We should also point out the signature on the e-mail:

Submitted by:

Peter A. T. Searle
Director of Web Intelligence Services
Herb Rubenstein for Congress


Those who favor tax cuts and spending cuts in government have caused our nation to lose the Battle of New Orleans. We knew what was needed to shore up the levees and save thousands of lives, prevent misery for hundreds of thousands, including my relatives, and prevent the billions of dollars in devastation that have occurred because our federal government and the government of Louisiana did not have the resources to invest to shore up the levees.

Those who stand for responsible government know that it is not responsible for government to lack the proper funding and resources to fix our crumbling infrastructure, fix our schools, and have reserves for future disasters. Today our citizens and politicians must stand for responsible, effective and efficient government. We must never waste a dollar, but we must never allow tax cutting and government gutting elements of society to destroy government’s ability to meet our legitimate public needs with their mantra “no new taxes.” We must take action against limited government budgets that are the cause of our bridges crumbling, our schools failing, our housing stock for the poor being depleted, our children not being immunized, our working people not having adequate health care coverage, and our unsafe roads that kill thousands of people per year.

We need a 50-year master plan to fix our nation’s infrastructure and to tax our most affluent citizens appropriately to pay for it. And, we need to tell people who are not in favor of a tax increase to rebuild New Orleans and fix the schools and infrastructure of our nation, that they wrong – morally wrong, fiscally wrong and are Un-American. Americans sacrifice for the greater good.

It is time for this country to come under new management. This new
management will demand that government spend our money wisely, and that it never has too few resources to save our people and our cities.

The people who want government to do so little that our people die in
sewage-filled streets must be educated and convinced they are wrong. The conservative movement, the limited government movement, is what has now strangled our government, helped leave infrastructure projects go begging for money for decades, and now has caused many our of people to die or become refugees in their own country. We owe them an apology and a promise of, “Never again.”

Losing the Battle of New Orleans is a defining moment for the United States. Cutting government funding produced this disaster. Not one person, Bush, not one agency, FEMA, and not one storm, Katrina, caused this disaster. This is the result of a culture that spends lavishly on government perks and pet projects, while ignoring high priority domestic needs.

Now, America has lost a battle to a lake. In the future, we again need to be a nation of conviction and courage. We must pledge that we will not lose a student to a bad school. We will not lose a life to a bad road or a bad bridge. We will not lose a family or community in America to bad housing. We will not lose our right to clean air and water to lax environmental enforcement. We will not lose our sick because they cannot afford health insurance.

For years now there has been a campaign against taxes claiming that lower taxes “creates jobs” and “prosperity.” I helped the Carter Administration create 750,000 public service jobs and the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act did create jobs and prosperity and got people back on their feet. Tell the people in New Orleans how cutting taxes helped them, brought them jobs and prosperity. Cutting taxes and keeping our nation from building a sound levee and flood control system brought them disaster, death, destruction and devastation. Now Americans must sacrifice to rebuild New Orleans and our Nation. And we need to tell the truth that cutting taxes does not create jobs and prosperity.

The fight is joined. I am proud to be a fighter for responsible government. For government to be responsible we need to collect adequate taxes and wisely spend public resources. We need substantial changes on both fronts.

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11 thoughts on “America Has Lost a Battle to a Lake”

  2. A 50 year plan? Is he a democrat or comunist? Not enough money being spent? My paycheck begs to differ. Look at any government budget at any level and you show me where the lack of funds are? We have spent our way into this mess. Blaming this event on a lack of funding is pure lunacy. This must be the Peter that is always spewing this crap on every topic. You need a new tune this one is flat!!

  4. I wouldn’t assume that the same fellow that sent Herb’s letter, is “Peter.”  This website can and does allow anyone to assume anyones name. 

    Who is this Herb guy anyway?

    GOOD LUCK to those REPUBLICANS in 2006 and in 2008 !!!  WOW … the repukes are going to lose badly … becasue of a God sent hurricane!  Yipppeeee !!!

    YES ON C and D by the way …. 🙂

  5. Run Herb Run!  Charletons UNITE!  Join the fight!  Hey everyone–Herb is going to save us all! 

    Herb, you’ve convinced me.  Prior to reading your oh so thought out doctrine, I too was all for a corrupt, inept, and wasteful government, chock full of pet projects. 

    Most of us (save a few like you) are at least semi rational here Herb.  Slanted and skiewed yes, but rational.  In defense of my sometimes in agreement lib Phoenix friend, I’d suggest you join the left party.  go check out leftparty.org Herb, you’ll see your future there.

  6. Policy Wonk –
    The boring facts first. Wonk is a disparaging term for a studious or hard-working person. It is first recorded, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, in an article in Sports Illustrated in December 1962, though Fred Shapiro of Yale Law School has turned up an example from Time in 1954. It gained a wider exposure, for example, through being used in Erich Segal?s Love Story of 1970: ?Who could Jenny be talking to that was worth appropriating moments set aside for a date with me? Some musical wonk??.

    The clue to its origin may be in that article in Sports Illustrated, in which it is explained that in Harvard slang there was a tripartite classification of students into wonks, preppies, and jocks. It seems that all three terms were around in the 1950s (jock possibly even earlier) and that they have moved into mainstream use in the decades since. The word was presumably taken to Washington by Harvard graduates and formed the basis for the modern term policy wonk, which?as you say?is where most of us encounter it. There it acquired the meaning of ?a policy expert, especially one who takes an obsessive interest in minor details of policy?, with a disparaging implication of someone immersed in detail and out of touch with the real world.

    Now to the 64-dollar question: where did the word come from? This is where we step on to shaky ground. Some have suggested that it may be know written backwards or an acronym for WithOut Normal Knowledge. More seriously, others find an origin in the British word wonky, meaning something or someone unsteady or unsound; even if a connection is found, which seems unlikely, it just takes the problem back a few decades, since we don?t know where wonky comes from either. A source in wank, for masturbation, has also been suggested. A popular derivation links it with Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, but though Roald Dahl?s original story Charlie and the Chocolate Factory dates from 1964, the name Wonka was really only popularised by the film; and wonk, as we?ve seen, is anyway older than either.

    Others suggest links with various other known senses of wonk: as 1920s slang for a useless naval cadet or midshipman; as the name for a Chinese dog; a disparaging Australian aboriginal word for a white man (much like the black American honky, with which it is not connected); or 1940s Australian slang for an effeminate or homosexual man (also known in that period as a gussie or a spurge). None of these have solid evidence in their favour, and only the naval slang sounds even moderately plausible. We really don?t know.

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