Don't Just Follow the Money; Run Against It!

The Washington Post reports that a West Virginia Democratic member of the U.S. House is under scrutiny because of apparent links between federal projects and non-profits that he has ties with.

Congressman William Jefferson of New Orleans is also under investigation for linking assistance to an information technology company to financial gifts to his wife and children.

The fact of the matter is that the relentless pressure to raise money for campaigns is at the heart of the corruption that is killing our political institutions, particularly the House of Representatives, where members must run every two years.

Whoever the Democrat who runs against Charles Boustany turns out to be (yes, there will be a Democratic opponent for the PAC Man) needs to make money a central issue in the campaign.

Boustany is a Congressman, but he is not our congressman. Instead, he's the congressman for the hundreds of political action committees that have contributed millions of dollars to his two congressional campaigns.

The fact is, money talks to Boustany. Look no further than the money Tom DeLay gave his campaign and the votes Boustany took on his first day in office to help DeLay by changing the rules under which the House Ethics Committee operated. Boustany voted to protect DeLay from the embarrassment of further Ethics Committee investigations.

No one from the 7th District had an interest in protecting DeLay. In fact, voters in the 7th District had every reason to believe that Boustany would stand by the posture he assumed in his 2004 campaign advertising, where he said he would not be part of the old, corrupt politics of the past.

No, instead, Charles Boustany leapt in with both feet in the new corruption of the present, backing the principle of party over people, of K Street over citizens, of the soft "one dollar, one vote" corruption that has come to define the Republican majority in the House.

In order to highlight the corrupting influence of PAC money in campaigns, the Democratic candidate for the 7th District seat should begin the campaign by refusing to accept PAC contributions. Yes, it will make it harder for the Democrat to raise the kind of money that Boustany has raised and will continue to raise. But, if money is, indeed, the problem that could actually work to sharply and clearly define Boustany's ties to the corrupt order in Washington.

It will also provide an opportunity to engage in truly grassroots campaigning and fund-raising by Democrats in the 7th District -- not just pay it lip service.

Corruption is the defining issue of the 2006 congressional campaign season. The public record is replete with examples linking contributions to congressional favors.

The message for 7th District Democrats is this: Don't just follow the money; run against it!

Every. Call. You. Make.

So much for the Fourth Amendment.

USAToday reports that the National Security Agency has created a database of just about every phone call made in this country since 9/11/01. Only Qwest has refused to turn over records.

Every. Call. You. Make.

The NSA has a record of it. They're running it through computers.

They know where you live.

Where your bill goes. How it gets paid.

Who you call. How long you talk with them. How often you call.

This is not a limited surveillance program.

This is not a Constitutional government.

Where is the Congressional oversight?

Where are the checks and balances?

Where are your rights as citizens?

What about this?

Sports Columnist: Post-Katrina New Orleans "a national disgrace"

The quality of the writing is what generally separates Sports Illustrated from other sports publications. Peter King writes a column called "Monday Morning QB" (quarter back). It usually appears on Mondays and Tuesdays.

Today's column proved that King is no ordinary sports columnist.

Here's a bit:

I know you come to this column to read about football, sports and other things. I'll get to the regular Tuesday fare, your e-mails, in a few paragraphs. First, there's something a little more significant to discuss.

I sense that we in this country have Katrina fatigue. The New York Times reported as much recently, saying that people in some of the areas that welcomed Katrina evacuees last September are sick of hearing about the hurricane, the flooding and the aftermath.

Well, my wife and I were in a car last Wednesday that toured the hardest-hit area of New Orleans, the Lower Ninth Ward. We worked a day at a nearby Habitat for Humanity site on Thursday, and we toured the Biloxi/Gulfport/Long Beach/Pass Christian gulf shore area last Friday. And let me just say this: I can absolutely guarantee you that if you'd been in the car with us, no matter how much you'd been hit over the head with the effects of this disaster, you would not have Katrina fatigue.

What I saw was a national disgrace. An inexcusable, irresponsible, borderline criminal national disgrace. I am ashamed of this country for the inaction I saw everywhere.

He ends the column with these paragraphs:

I'm a sportswriter. It's not my job to figure how to fix what ails the Gulf Coast. But the leaders of this society are responsible. And they're not doing their jobs. I could ignore everything I saw and go back to my nice New Jersey cocoon, forgetting I saw it. And I know you don't read me to hear my worldviews. But I couldn't sleep at night if I didn't say something.

On Saturday, at the Saints' headquarters for the draft, I watched the day unfold with a friend of the team, New Orleans businessman and president Michael Whelan. I told him what I'd seen, and asked him what he thought.

"We spend all this money on the war in Iraq and we can't take care of our own cities?" he said. "You get out of downtown, and it's like a war zone in a lot of neighborhoods still. The government has been a huge letdown. I've heard billions of dollars are going to be sent here. Where are they? Nothing is taking place. I certainly think that now it's back-page news; the government is sweeping it under the rug.''

The failure King describes are the failures of leadership at the federal level. The levees were a federal project. They failed. New Orleans flooded. It wasn't the hurricane that devastated New Orleans, it was the floods.

One party runs the Congress and the White House. They and their party are failing New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. They are also failing southwest Louisiana and southeast Texas in the wake of Rita.

One point that King misses is this: While what happened in the 9th Ward is awful, it is no worse than what happened in Lake View and Lake Terrace in New Orleans. Those were middle and upper middle class neighborhoods off Canal Boulevard and Pontchartrain Boulevard, near where the levee on the 17th Street Canal failed.

Driving through those once vibrant neighborhoods is eerie. Houses marked with waterlines eight to ten feet above the ground sit vacant. Some with holes punched through the roof where the people who lived their broke out of their attacks in order to escape the rising waters.

These homes were occupied by successful families. The people who lived there had white collar jobs. They contributed to their neighborhoods, to their city.

Eight months later, most have not come back either. New Orleans will not be the same if the 9th Ward does not come back. But, it will not survive if those Lake neighborhoods don't recover.

Meanwhile, in Washington, the Republican President and the Republican Congress continue to make the perfect the enemy of the good.

Peter King is absolutely right. It IS a national disgrace!

The only thing more disgraceful is the failure of the Republicans in the Louisiana congressional delegation to convince their leaders to respond to this tragedy with the resources promised. But, then, holding people accountable is not the Republican way in this century.

Bush channels Tom Petty: "It's Good to Be King"

George W. Bush is ripping at the Constitutional fiber of this country in ways not seen in the history of the Republic.

Think that's a stretch? Think again.

The Boston Globe reported this on Sunday:

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional.

Anyone with even a limited knowledge of the U.S. Constitution know that it relies on a system of checks and balances among the three branches of federal government (the legislative, executive and judiciary) in order to work. Bush is, in effect, saying that as president he has the right to act in all three capacities thereby eliminating the concept of checks and balances and, therefore, the core of the Constitution itself.

Here's more:

For the first five years of Bush's presidency, his legal claims attracted little attention in Congress or the media. Then, twice in recent months, Bush drew scrutiny after challenging new laws: a torture ban and a requirement that he give detailed reports to Congress about how he is using the Patriot Act.

Bush administration spokesmen declined to make White House or Justice Department attorneys available to discuss any of Bush's challenges to the laws he has signed.

Instead, they referred a Globe reporter to their response to questions about Bush's position that he could ignore provisions of the Patriot Act. They said at the time that Bush was following a practice that has ''been used for several administrations" and that ''the president will faithfully execute the law in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution."

But the words ''in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution" are the catch, legal scholars say, because Bush is according himself the ultimate interpretation of the Constitution. And he is quietly exercising that authority to a degree that is unprecedented in US history.

Here's the game Bush is playing:

Bush is the first president in modern history who has never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments. Instead, he has signed every bill that reached his desk, often inviting the legislation's sponsors to signing ceremonies at which he lavishes praise upon their work.

Then, after the media and the lawmakers have left the White House, Bush quietly files ''signing statements" -- official documents in which a president lays out his legal interpretation of a bill for the federal bureaucracy to follow when implementing the new law. The statements are recorded in the federal register.

In his signing statements, Bush has repeatedly asserted that the Constitution gives him the right to ignore numerous sections of the bills -- sometimes including provisions that were the subject of negotiations with Congress in order to get lawmakers to pass the bill. He has appended such statements to more than one of every 10 bills he has signed.

''He agrees to a compromise with members of Congress, and all of them are there for a public bill-signing ceremony, but then he takes back those compromises -- and more often than not, without the Congress or the press or the public knowing what has happened," said Christopher Kelley, a Miami University of Ohio political science professor who studies executive power.

Defying Congress:

On at least four occasions while Bush has been president, Congress has passed laws forbidding US troops from engaging in combat in Colombia, where the US military is advising the government in its struggle against narcotics-funded Marxist rebels.

After signing each bill, Bush declared in his signing statement that he did not have to obey any of the Colombia restrictions because he is commander in chief.

Bush has also said he can bypass laws requiring him to tell Congress before diverting money from an authorized program in order to start a secret operation, such as the ''black sites" where suspected terrorists are secretly imprisoned.

Congress has also twice passed laws forbidding the military from using intelligence that was not ''lawfully collected," including any information on Americans that was gathered in violation of the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches.

Congress first passed this provision in August 2004, when Bush's warrantless domestic spying program was still a secret, and passed it again after the program's existence was disclosed in December 2005.

On both occasions, Bush declared in signing statements that only he, as commander in chief, could decide whether such intelligence can be used by the military.

In October 2004, five months after the Abu Ghraib torture scandal in Iraq came to light, Congress passed a series of new rules and regulations for military prisons. Bush signed the provisions into law, then said he could ignore them all. One provision made clear that military lawyers can give their commanders independent advice on such issues as what would constitute torture. But Bush declared that military lawyers could not contradict his administration's lawyers.

Other provisions required the Pentagon to retrain military prison guards on the requirements for humane treatment of detainees under the Geneva Conventions, to perform background checks on civilian contractors in Iraq, and to ban such contractors from performing ''security, intelligence, law enforcement, and criminal justice functions." Bush reserved the right to ignore any of the requirements.

The new law also created the position of inspector general for Iraq. But Bush wrote in his signing statement that the inspector ''shall refrain" from investigating any intelligence or national security matter, or any crime the Pentagon says it prefers to investigate for itself.

Bush had placed similar limits on an inspector general position created by Congress in November 2003 for the initial stage of the US occupation of Iraq. The earlier law also empowered the inspector to notify Congress if a US official refused to cooperate. Bush said the inspector could not give any information to Congress without permission from the administration.

Lest there be any doubt what we're talking about here, consider the words that follow:

David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive-power issues, said Bush has cast a cloud over ''the whole idea that there is a rule of law," because no one can be certain of which laws Bush thinks are valid and which he thinks he can ignore.

''Where you have a president who is willing to declare vast quantities of the legislation that is passed during his term unconstitutional, it implies that he also thinks a very significant amount of the other laws that were already on the books before he became president are also unconstitutional," Golove said.

Undermining the rule of law.

The President of the United States is ignoring Congress, the Supreme Court (read the article) and existing legislation based on what HE thinks the Constitution and laws of the country mean.

Like a drunk, Bush's power grab could not be succeeding without the consent of a co-dependent partner, in this case the Republican-controlled Congress which has, in fact, actively helped conceal Bush's activities from the American public (you remember us, don't you? It's our consent to be governed that is the source from which all political power is supposed to flow).

The fate of the Republic hinges on removing Republicans from majority status in the Congress this year!

Crap Editorial in Today's Advertiser

In today's Advertiser they chose to run an Guest Editorial on Minimum and Livable Wage. This column's author is Earl Hargroder and it seems he has been "drinking the Kool Aid" of Fox News.

Here are my thoughts on his piece:

I see, it's not that people are not getting paid a LIVING WAGE, it is the perception that they are not getting paid a LIVING WAGE! People are not POOR - It's that they perceive themselves as POOR - What crap!

I especially like how he goes through expenses and states which are "TOO MUCH" he would actually have people jump on the bandwagon to tell people that their expenses and choices are wrong... - "who needs to eat three times a day, one can get by with two meals" doesn't seem to be far off from his thought process.

Unbelievable... The auto industry has made it's own bed, now they must lie in it. If they would have supported Single Payer Healthcare system a decade ago they wouldn't be in the bind they are today. Also if they would have spent the time on R&D a decade ago we would be driving the cars from the future today as well! Imagine a company that invested in this a decade ago and now offered vehicles that could get 60-90 miles per gallon... Those would be the cars FLYING out of the dealerships... Instead as most businesses do these days - they look for the quick buck, not the long term.

Prime examples here locally - BELL SOUTH - in 10 years time there won't be the need for "LOCAL PHONE COMPANIES" - one pipe will service all communication needs and unless and until Bell South addresses this they will be out of business. Their merger with AT&T seems wise as at least AT&T is looking towards the future... But the blow back on these companies for their unfair tactics in the marketplace - trying to legislate their reason for being will ultimately be their undoing.

This ultimately does tie into undocumented workers as well. The corporate addiction to these individuals is vast, and these companies are not paying them even minimum wage in many situations, thus corporations can continue to take advantage of these individuals all the while wages are depressed.

The frustrating thing to hear is "Americans won't do this work...." However they never seem to finish this sentence... The facts are "American's won't do this work, for that wage."

Fate of the Republic Hinges on Defeat of Republicans

Three opinion pieces in newspapers over the weekend illustrate the threat to America's Constitutional order and the republic itself that the administration of George W. Bush poses.

The first was by Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired Army Colonel and the former chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell. Writing in the Baltimore Sun, Wilkerson says that the current President Bush threatens America's greatness due to his radicalism:

As Alexis de Tocqueville once said: "America is great because she is good. If America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."

In January 2001, with the inauguration of George W. Bush as president, America set on a path to cease being good; America became a revolutionary nation, a radical republic. If our country continues on this path, it will cease to be great - as happened to all great powers before it, without exception.

From the Kyoto accords to the International Criminal Court, from torture and cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners to rendition of innocent civilians, from illegal domestic surveillance to lies about leaking, from energy ineptitude to denial of global warming, from cherry-picking intelligence to appointing a martinet and a tyrant to run the Defense Department, the Bush administration, in the name of fighting terrorism, has put America on the radical path to ruin.

Unprecedented interpretations of the Constitution that holds the president as commander in chief to be all-powerful and without checks and balances marks the hubris and unparalleled radicalism of this administration.

Moreover, fiscal profligacy of an order never seen before has brought America trade deficits that boggle the mind and a federal deficit that, when stripped of the gimmickry used to make it appear more tolerable, will leave every child and grandchild in this nation a debt that will weigh upon their generations like a ball and chain around every neck. Imagine owing $150,000 from the cradle. That is radical irresponsibility.

Wilkerson rightly holds the Republican controlled Congress as complicit in the transformation:

A somnolent Congress assisted - a Congress that, as Democratic Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia said as the Senate failed to debate in the run-up to the Iraq war, was "ominously, ominously, dreadfully silent."

Wilkerson holds out hope that Congress will change:

Congress can awaken and discover that the Constitution is correct, that Congress is in fact a separate and equal branch of government. The American people will find a way to deal with the remainder of the radicals, whether at the ballot box, in the courts or in the Senate.

This Republican controlled Congress has, time and again, shirked its Constitutional responsibility to act as a co-equal branch of our government and has, time and again, either remained silent or rubber-stamped Bush administration adventurism.

The next crisis is being (in a favorite verb of Edwin Edwards) "confected" in the White House, this time centered on Iran.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter and certainly no dove, writes in the Sunday Los Angeles Times that the new run up to war against Iran is a near carbon copy of the run up to the war in Iraq.

IRAN'S ANNOUNCEMENT that it has enriched a minute amount of uranium has unleashed urgent calls for a preventive U.S. airstrike from the same sources that earlier urged war on Iraq. If there is another terrorist attack in the United States, you can bet your bottom dollar that there also will be immediate charges that Iran was responsible in order to generate public hysteria in favor of military action.

Brzezinski then gives what he calls four compelling reasons against such an attack on Iran. They are:

First, in the absence of an imminent threat (and the Iranians are at least several years away from having a nuclear arsenal), the attack would be a unilateral act of war. If undertaken without a formal congressional declaration of war, an attack would be unconstitutional and merit the impeachment of the president. Similarly, if undertaken without the sanction of the United Nations Security Council, either alone by the United States or in complicity with Israel, it would stamp the perpetrator(s) as an international outlaw(s).

Second, likely Iranian reactions would significantly compound ongoing U.S. difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan, perhaps precipitate new violence by Hezbollah in Lebanon and possibly elsewhere, and in all probability bog down the United States in regional violence for a decade or more. Iran is a country of about 70 million people, and a conflict with it would make the misadventure in Iraq look trivial.

Third, oil prices would climb steeply, especially if the Iranians were to cut their production or seek to disrupt the flow of oil from the nearby Saudi oil fields. The world economy would be severely affected, and the United States would be blamed for it. Note that oil prices have already shot above $70 per barrel, in part because of fears of a U.S.-Iran clash.

Finally, the United States, in the wake of the attack, would become an even more likely target of terrorism while reinforcing global suspicions that U.S. support for Israel is in itself a major cause of the rise of Islamic terrorism. The United States would become more isolated and thus more vulnerable while prospects for an eventual regional accommodation between Israel and its neighbors would be ever more remote.

In short, an attack on Iran would be an act of political folly, setting in motion a progressive upheaval in world affairs. With the U.S. increasingly the object of widespread hostility, the era of American preponderance could even come to a premature end. Although the United States is clearly dominant in the world at the moment, it has neither the power nor the domestic inclination to impose and then to sustain its will in the face of protracted and costly resistance. That certainly is the lesson taught by its experiences in Vietnam and Iraq.

An impeachable offense that would make America an outlaw nation. Well, that would certainly be enough to give pause to most rational thinkers, but our president and his administration have repeatedly demonstrated that thinking things through is not their long suit.

Brzezinski nicely lays out the problem in the process of suggesting a solution:

It is therefore high time for the administration to sober up and think strategically, with a historic perspective and the U.S. national interest primarily in mind. It's time to cool the rhetoric. The United States should not be guided by emotions or a sense of a religiously inspired mission.

He wraps up with these words:

For now, our choice is either to be stampeded into a reckless adventure profoundly damaging to long-term U.S. national interests or to become serious about giving negotiations with Iran a genuine chance. The mullahs were on the skids several years ago but were given a new burst of life by the intensifying confrontation with the United States. Our strategic goal, pursued by real negotiations and not by posturing, should be to separate Iranian nationalism from religious fundamentalism.

Treating Iran with respect and within a historical perspective would help to advance that objective. American policy should not be swayed by the current contrived atmosphere of urgency ominously reminiscent of what preceded the misguided intervention in Iraq.

Historian and former advisor to President Kennedy, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., writes in Monday's Washington Post, that signs are pointing to Bush launching a third war (Afghanistan, Iraq and possibly Iran) in his final 1,000 days in office:

But as of this week, a thousand days remain of President Bush's last term -- days filled with ominous preparations for and dark rumors of a preventive war against Iran.

He notes that another president argued against this kind of war:

The issue of preventive war as a presidential prerogative is hardly new. In February 1848 Rep. Abraham Lincoln explained his opposition to the Mexican War: "Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose -- and you allow him to make war at pleasure [emphasis added]. . . . If, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us'; but he will say to you, 'Be silent; I see it, if you don't.' "

Schlesinger lays out the danger:

There stretch ahead for Bush a thousand days of his own. He might use them to start the third Bush war: the Afghan war (justified), the Iraq war (based on fantasy, deception and self-deception), the Iran war (also fantasy, deception and self-deception). There is no more dangerous thing for a democracy than a foreign policy based on presidential preventive war.

These men are from various points across the political spectrum. There is growing unease about Bush and the disasters his policies have brought upon the country.

The fact remains that there is nothing in the experience or character of the current Republican controlled Congress (House and/or Senate) that demonstrates the capacity or the will to accept the burden of accountability that the Constitution demands it accept.

The ONLY chance for survival that exists for our noble experiment is to wrest control of the House and/or Senate from the hands of the profligate party of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove. That means the fate of the republic depends on our ability to defeat people like Charles Boustany who apparently believe they were elected to Congress as part of some kind of joy ride.

Louisiana Democrats and the DNC: A Bill Has Come Due

Welcome to Louisiana, Democratic National Committee! Thank you for choosing Louisiana in general and New Orleans in particular as the site for one of your 2006 meetings.

We are grateful for the attention.

But, don't think for a minute that just showing up and contributing some bucks to our sales tax coffers in any way approaches settling the debt we are owed by you, the party, and the nation as the place where the resistance to Bush/Cheney emerged, the implosion began and then tipped to the point of creating an imperiled presidency.

Before laying claim to what we're owed, let's establish why we're owed.

In the month between the November 2002 mid-term elections and the December run-off for Mary Landrieu's U.S. Senate seat, the Bush/Cheney administration and their allies, poured tens of millions of dollars into Louisiana seeking to end Senator Landrieu's tenure at one term. But, Louisiana voters cut through the rhetoric and the BS, rallied to Senator Landrieu and, despite being outspent, she was returned to the Senate for a second term.

At that same time, unbeknownst to just about everyone then, Jack Abramoff and his band of happy thieves were planting the political mines across Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi (in the form suitcases of Indian casino cash) that would bring Republicans crashing down. Abramoff, like his buddies Bush and Cheney, apparently figured Louisiana Indians, Republicans and Christians for easy marks. It would all come crashing down within four years, but that would come later. Just remember that it all got started in Louisiana. Welcome to ground zero.

In 2003, again, national Republicans and their allies poured big bucks into Louisiana, trying to retain the governorship for their party. Again, Louisiana voters sniffed through the BS, figured out who was genuine, and elected Democrat Kathleen Babineaux Blanco as their governor.

In 2004, things went crazy.

For the second consecutive election cycle, the Democratic national ticket abandoned Louisiana shortly after the convention, thus leaving the Republican spin machine to fill the vacuum. Let the record also show that when the national ticket and the DNC spend money in Louisiana, Democrats elect presidents. See Bill Clinton 1992 and 1996 for the freshest evidence.

As a result of that vacuum, Louisiana elected our first Republican senator since Reconstruction, we also lost a traditionally Democratic Congressional District (the 7th) and failed to support what could have been a serious challenge to a party-switching traitor in the 5th. Fortunately, Charlie Melancon was just too dogged a campaigner to let any obstacle stand in the way of his election and he captured the 3rd District.

The fact remains that when the 2008 presidential election cycle comes around, it will have been 12 years since the national party ran a campaign in our state. Howard Dean, this statement presumes that you will make good on your pledge that the party will run in all 50 states in 2008.

But, there's one more matter on the why we're owed: the storms of 2005.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita ripped final tatters of competence from the facade of the Bush administration. People around the world were stunned by the images of Americans standing on the roofs of their houses pleading for food and rescue; shocked by the scenes of people dying on the street in front of the New Orleans Convention Center while the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security denied knowing there were any people gather there at all; dumfounded by the incompetence of Bush-appointed head of FEMA Michael Brown and how his scapegoating sought to shield the Bush administration’s record of cronyism.

Two weeks later, Hurricane Rita devastated southwest Louisiana and east Texas, but the horror of the impact of that storm paled in the wake of the federal failures after Katrina. The worst kept secret of 2005 and 2006 is that the federal response to Hurricane Rita has been every bit as incompetent and ineffective as it was for Katrina.

One result of more than 1,000 Louisianans being killed by the storms and their floods, tens of thousands having been displaced from their homes, hundred of thousands forced to evacuate the communities which they'd always called home, has been that the Bush administration has lost credibility with all but the most diehard Republican loyalists.

It was too high a price for us to pay, but Louisiana's misfortune has extracted a political price from Bush and Republicans that will haunt them this year and for decades to come.

While his Iraq adventure/war has seriously damaged his presidency, it was the failure of his administration to protect and shelter Americans in their homes, in their cities in the wake of natural disaster that finally undid George W. Bush. That happened here. It happened in our state, in our cities, to our people. It happened to us.

What we're owed.

So, now that you've decided to meet in New Orleans, here's a bill for services rendered over the past four years in the matter of the wrecking of the Bush presidency.

That bill is a commitment from the DNC and its allies and friends to spend not one damned dime less than $2 million in Louisiana in 2006, delivering its national campaign theme in districts across the state and in direct support of Democratic members of Congress and Democrats who are challenging Republican members of Congress.

Start with the Democrats. Charlie Melancon deserves to be re-elected and, though his prospects for re-election look good at this point, we want to ensure that he has the resources he needs to win against all challengers.

Congressman Bill Jefferson's legal challenges are well known. The party needs to work to ensure that this seat remains in Democratic hands.

In District 1, Republican Bobby Jindal is running around the state preparing to run for governor again in 2007. Jindal has deep ties to the conservative movement in the country and to corruption (he has signed more of Grover Norquist's no-tax pledges than he's signed paychecks). When he was DHH Secretary under Republican Governor Mike Foster, his office squelched water tests that showed contamination of drinking water of residents in a trailer park next to a chemical plant across the river from Baton Rouge. And, on his first day as a member of Congress, Jindal voted to scuttle the ethics process in the house in order to protect Tom DeLay. Go after Jindal in 2006 and it will pay dividends in 2007 as well.

In District 5, Rodney Alexander has jumped parties once and (man of principle that he is) will probably try jump again when the Democratic Party returns to majority status in the House later this year. But, the party does not need traitors in its ranks and should not repeat the mistake of 2004; it should put money into a Democratic campaign to defeat Alexander.

In the 4th District, Jim McCrery is up to his armpits in money from Jack Abramoff’s clients. What party loyalty oath will he have to take in order to move up the Republican leadership? This is the year to once and for all link McCrery to the corruption and incompetence of his party. There is a strong military presence in his district, too. Hold McCrery accountable for his support of Bush/Cheney military adventurism.

In the 7th District, Charles Boustany got elected because Democrats tried to defeat him by running a Republican against him. The 7th District is a Democratic district waiting for a Democrat to run for that seat. People will not spontaneously respond to a message that is not articulated. They also will not vote for candidates who they perceive don't have a set of core values. Boustany's core value is political opportunism that was masked by the failure of the party to give voters a choice in 2004. Boustany has been touched by corruption (like fellow freshman Jindal, he voted to gut the Ethics Committee in a vote on his first day in office). He's taken money from other corrupt Republicans and their corruptors. He is an atrocious public speaker, easily rattled. Run a Democrat against him and this seat can be ours again.

All of these Repubican congressmen are susceptible to the kind of national campaign that can not only tip Louisiana, but the majority of the House into the Democratic column.

The reason national participation in these campaigns is so important this year is the economic and financial blows that the storms have delivered to our state and its people. Too many of our voters and our workers are flat on their financial backs trying to recover from the devastating blows those two women delivered.

The financial resources to mount the kinds of campaigns we need are just not available locally.

This money would not just be an attempt to wring victory this year, it is an essential investment that will lay the foundation for victory here in 2008 when we have a senate seat to defend and a president to elect.

As prior elections have shown, every vote does count. Louisiana’s electoral votes should be in the blue column in 2008. The way to get there is by investing in the Democratic message here in 2006.