Most of you are too young to remember what progressive political life was like in 2005... We were just coming out from under the rock of the 2004 elections where we got basted. We just could not imagine that the country we called the United States of America would put in two oil men in charge of a war for oil... yet kick out a war hero in Georgia because he was not "patriotic" enough? What was wrong with the rest of our citizens we felt...
Sound familiar?
There was literally no traction. We had barely stopped the privatization of Social Security, similar to how Obamacare just made it past the closing doors this Spring. We begin wondering if perhaps we were on the wrong side of history, after all the House, Senate, and Executive were all Republican. It was impossible to even get a hearing in either chamber on anything that did not paint Republicans in “a great light”. It was beginning to look like we were going the way of the communists...Maybe private enterprise could do things cheaper and better than government agencies...
Then came Katrina... and "smaller government" suddenly was overwhelmed by a giant need,.. a need only a huge Treasury could fulfill... And just like that, we were back in business.... We took back both chambers of Congress in 2006...
Point is: Katrina did far more to create Democratic upcoming votes than anything progressives said or did up till then... And is wasn't the individual stories of incompetence that did it. It was the larger general acknowledgement that small government does not work well in the United States of America and bigger government does.
Once again, Mother Earth is providing us the opportunity to show why big government is very necessary to the American People. And big government is... we all know that. We really do need a vast treasury who can draw from half the wealth in the USA, and which has the resources allowing us to spend more, not less in devastating emergencies.
From every Republican failure that will occur, should come from progressives a solution that ultimately derives from taxing the wealthy more. For having that money in place is one of the necessary tools that help Americans when they need it most.