Howard Dean on The Situation Room

First, a message courtesy of Phil from Iowa, whose son is attending college in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and has volunteered to help get donations of personal items to the Katrina evacuees in his area.

send small packages of personal items to

AID
c/oJ.S.
L.S.U.
Box 20065
Baton Rogue,70893

label the outside to help with sorting at the distribution center on campus

Please use the US Postal Service as they are coming on campus each day with less than full straight truck and this will direct aid right into a neighborhood where it is needed.

Hundreds of thousands of displaced persons have flooded Baton Rogue.

Once I find out what sort of personal items we're talking about, I will update. Also, if you have any questions about details, I'm sure my answer is "I don't know", but I can pass the questions along to Phil. Now for Howard Dean's interview with Wolf Blitzer on The Situation Room...
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Wolf Blitzer: Many Democrats have been quick to pounce on the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina, with some suggesting relief might have come more quickly if so many victims had not been Black and poor. Democratic party Chairman Howard Dean jumped into that debate earlier this week, urging Americans to face what he called some ugly truth. I spoke with the former Vermont governer just a short while ago.

Let's get to some comments you made Wednesday night. I'm gonna play a sound bite--an excerpt--of what you said and then get your explanation. Listen to this:

Howard (Tape): Survivors are being evacuated, and as order is restored and the water recedes and we sort through the rubble, we must also begin to come to terms with the ugly truth that skin color, age and economics played a significant role in who survived and who did not.

Howard: I meant the same thing that Colin Powell did when he talked about this issue. I like to try to look for some good in every horrible tragedy. This give us an opportunity to look at an issue that's been swept under the rug for the last 20 or 30 years since the civil rights movement And that is that if you are poor, if you are Black, and if you are old, you disproportionately suffered in this disaster. And that means that we need to have a national discussion, which a lot of people have been talking about but nobody's really led us on.

Wolf: Asks if Howard believes there were racist or racial overtones in the response of the federal government to this disaster.

Howard: No, I don't think so. What I do think, however, is that the way our society has worked in the last 20 years--well, actually a lot longer than that--but in the last 20 years when nobody's been talking about it, is in fact that those below the top 20% in America, White, Black, and Brown, have been significantly disadvantaged. The average income in this country went down $1700 since George Bush has been president, for everybody under the top 20%. There is something the matter with a country that doesn't want to talk about what's good for 80% of the people and focusses on what's great for 20% of the people.

Wolf: Some critics of the president, Kanye West the rap artist for example, have accused him of being a racist. I want you to listen to what the First Lady, Laura Bush said last night. Listen to this:

Tape: I think all those remarks were disgusting to be perfectly frank, because of course President Bush cares about everyone in our country and I know that. I mean, I am the person who lives with him. I know what he's like and I know what he thinks and I know how he cares about people." (American Urban Radio Network)

Wolf: Do you agree with the First Lady?

Howard: No. I do not think that this president cares about everybody in America. I'm sure the president's a nice man on a personal level. His policies have been devastating to middle class and poor people in this country--White, Black, and Brown. The people who were affected in this disaster, the people who were holed up in the Astrodome--look at the kinds of things that have been said about them. Look at what the Republican representative from Louisiana said this morning in the Wall Street Journal, that finally God has cleaned up the public housing in New Orleans.

It's not enough to be a nice guy. I'm not disputing the fact that the president's a nice man, and is maybe even compassionate in his personal life. The truth is that Americans have suffered deeply under this presidency--80% of Americans--and that Black people, Hispanic people, poor people, and old people have suffered disproportionately.

Wolf says Howard Dean can't blame the president for what some Republican congressman says.

Howard: I think there's an indifference in the Republican party towards people who aren't at the very top of the income level. Their whole tax policy has shown that--how about this: Bill Frist, the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, his first thing he wanted to do when he got back after Hurricane Katrina struck, is extend the estate tax exemption. Seven hundred and fifty billion dollars. I think it's time for moral decision making in America. Let's ask the American people, if the Republicans believe there's $750 billion of extra change lying around, do you want that to go to 3000 families who are going to benefit from additional reduction in the estate tax, or shall we invest that in rebuilding, not just New Orleans, not just Mississippi. But school systems in Chicago, jobs for North Dakota and South Dakota. The life of middle class people has suffered enormously in the last five years because there were wrong moral decisions made .

Wolf says Howard has made a very serious charge against the president, that he doesn't care about everyone in this country.

Howard: I believe that's true, 'cause look at his policies. It doesn't matter what they say, it matters what they do. Americans have suffered under this presidency. Eighty percent of them--their income has gone down, on average, $1700.
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I don't think the president personally did a horrible job. The president didn't seem to be informed. I think he had incompetent people working for him. You know, Michael Brown has become a national joke. Apparently according to Time Magazine this morning, he's falsified his credentials to get the job--the president still won't fire him. What is it about this president, who has people like Karl Rove, who gave away the identity of CIA agent in a time of war, who has people like Michael Brown working for him, that he won't fire them. These people ought not be working for anybody, never mind the government of the United States of America.

Wolf: Asks how much responsibility the Democratic Governor of Louisiana and the Democratic mayor of New Orleans should have for what happened to those poor people.

Howard: Wolf, as you know, I was governor for almost 12 years. I think we had seven or nine emergencies during that time--states of emergency--under three presidents. And I can tell you that what you need when there's an emergency is the National Guard. The National Guard was in Iraq.

Wolf interjects that a third of them, from Louisiana, approximately, was in Iraq.

Howard: And the equipment was in Iraq.

Wolf: at least a thousand school buses in New Orleans--why were none of them mobilized?

Howard: You're holding the mayor to a different standard than you're holding FEMA--this is Republican spin machine stuff.

Wolf says there are plenty of screw-ups to go around, both the Republican administration and the elected Democrats.

Howard: Everybody screwed up in terms of getting the prepositioning stuff. *Nobody* did that--not the federal government, not the state government, not the local government. The job of FEMA is to come in after the fact immediately. When you have the head of FEMA talking on national television saying they had no idear people were in the convention center after it had been broadcast on your station 24 hours earlier, that is a problem. When you have people in the emergency management business saying that people are getting two hot meals a day in the Superdome, that is a big problem, because those were *lies*

Wolf: Again, starts harping on other screwups in the days leading up to the hurricane and flooding and hindsight is 20/20 yadda, yadda, yadda

Howard: What I'm saying is that everyone could have done a better job ahead of time including the last 3 or 4 presidents who didn't put money into the levees. After the fact however, it was very clear what everybody's job was, and there was one group of people who didn't do their job.

Wolf: Let's talk a little bit about a comment you made

Quote: In the aftermath of Hurrican Katrina, we have a clear moral responsibility to do a better job of ensuring social and economic justice for every American, and there is still far too much that we don't know about John Roberts' records and beliefs on these critical issues.

You're making a connection between Katrina and the confirmation hearings of John Roberts which begin on Monday and I'm not exactly sure what you're point is.

Howard: My point is that John Roberts has a record. John Roberts appears to be a wonderful, decent family person, but again, we get back to the question of whether you really care and whether you really have compassion. It's not enough to say you care--it's what you've done. John Roberts entire career has been about taking away every protection for young girls and women who want to participate in sports, for African Americans and Hispanics who want the same right to vote as everyone else, for women who believe they should determine what kind of healthcare they have instead of having politicians do it. His entire legal career appears to be about making sure those folks don't have the same rights everybody else does. That's probably not the right thing to do, two weeks after a disaster, where certain members of society clearly did not have the same protections that everybody else did because of their circumstances. Americans are fair people and they want a sense of justice. I know Judge Roberts loves the law--I'm not sure he loves the American people.

Wolf: So should the Senate reject his confirmation?

Howard: Based on what I know now, absolutely yes.