The Gospel According to Governor Smug

I went to Tunica, MS, this week for the Third Annual Meeting of the Delta Regional Authority. I had attended a meeting of theirs (held in conjunction with the Southern Technology Council) in January '06 in Jackson, MS. At that meeting, sewerage backed into the hotel, the Health Department shut down the kitchen between breakfast and lunch and Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi addressed the gathering.

He was back on the agenda in Tunica and, in talking about the new Toyota plant his state just won (in the Tupelo area), Barbour blamed New Orleans' response to Katrina (at least as compared to Mississippi's) with helping the state win the manufacturing plant.

Barbour told the 250 or so people gathered for the DRA luncheon that Mississippi had borne the brunt of a great natural disaster, but "the people on the coast did not complain, did not seek to blame anyone; they just picked themselves up and went to work helping each other."

Barbour said that he'd heard people wonder why the media wasn't covering the Mississippi coast as it was New Orleans. He gave this explanation: "The media does not cover the story of a plane landing safely on time." He added that the media were attracted to New Orleans because of the slow recovery there.

Barbour said his wife had been down to the coast "on about 50 of the first 90 days after the storm hit, serving as my eyes and ears." Apparently, only photo ops with the President could draw the Governor down there.

The Governor's smug attitude about Mississippi's recovery versus that in New Orleans conveniently (for him) overlooks several relevant facts that he may or may not know.

First, the disaster in New Orleans was turned into a catastrophe through the combined actions and inactions of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the people who built the defective levees that failed the city) and FEMA was was infested by the kind of rank cronyism that has come to be recognized as the hallmark of the Bush administration.

Second, for almost 60 days after Katrina hit, water that entered the city through those breached levees stood in the streets of New Orleans (about as many days that Barbour could get his wife to go to Gulf Coast, only consecutively).

Third, Louisiana's recovery effort was being deliberately sabotaged because of the fact that we have a Democratic governor (that fact was revealed in emails between the White House and FEMA and in testimony by former FEMA head Michael Brown). This is a particularly relevant fact in the wake off the revelations about the partisan nature in which the Justice Department has been run. Add to that the fact that Barbour is a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and the whiff of crony-driven favoritism enters into gagging range.

Pete Johnson, federal co-chair of the DRA, called Barbour "the best governor this state has ever had." If so, no wonder Mississippi is such a mess.

This is a governor who has twice vetoed legislation over the past two years that would have raised the tax on cigarattes while eliminating in whole or in part the sales tax on food in a state that ranks among the poorest in the country. Did I mention that Barbour was a lobbyist for the tobacco industry between the time he ran the RNC and the time he was elected governor of Mississippi. One has to ask if he's still being paid by them or has been promised a job by them once he leaves office to veto legislation that is so clearly in the interests of a large segment of his state's population.

So, this smug defender of corporate interests at the expense of the health of the people he allegedly serves thinks Toyota is going to his state because the people on the Gulf Coast didn't complain after Katrina. Well, perhaps if the Governor would have gone down there, he'd have heard the outrage about the insurance companies not paying on losses. Imagine how mad they'd have been and how loudly they would have complained if the federal government in the form of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had failed them like they failed New Orleans.

No doubt if Barbour would have been around during the flood of 1927 he'd have 'tutt-tutted' the folks in his state who lost property, prosperity and lives when the Corps' levees failed on the Mississippi. Governor Barbour's attitude exemplifies the arrogance of ignorance that typifies so much of the conventional wisdom about New Orleans and Katrina. He's got his story and he's sticking to it, let the facts be damned.

Ironically, Barbour's comments preceded an address by Tom Piazza, author of the book "Why New Orleans Matters." Tellingly, Barbour did not stay to hear Piazza's speech.