Seeking to Place Blame, While Covering Failure

For John, BLUF:  Mr Michael Goldman's column in the Sunday Sun is always entertaining.  Not always accurate.

In the Sunday Edition of The [Lowell] Sun is an opinion piece by Mr Michael Goldman, of Goldman Associates, in Boston.♠  The title is "Help yourself to 50 states loosely aligned or 1 union".  It is a collection of straw men.

The trust of the argument is that the evil Republicans are preventing us from helping the poor folks devastated by Hurricane SANDY.  This is the hurricane that was worse than KATRINA, but which FEMA and others responded to much better than those terrible people under President George W Bush.  I am waiting for actual history studies before I accept that.

In the mean time, the problem is the Republicans didn't want to vote approval to a pork laden bill.  I know.  That was tacky of them.

In setting the stage for his contrast between the bad old days of every state for itself and the wonder of the FDR Revolution, Mr Goldman mentions the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, and a 1998 book about it, Rising Tide"  The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America.  Mr Goldman excoriates former Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge.

The most interesting part of this extraordinary book was the reaction of the national government in 1927 to the regional economic holocaust wrought by the unexpected breakdown of the river's levee system, which was created and managed by the National Core of Engineers.

I want to take this in three parts, in that, first the Secretary of Commerce was out leading the rescue effort, and based in part on his efforts, won the US Presidency.♥

Secondly, while some 246 people died and $400 million in damage was done, "holocaust" seems a little over the top.

Thirdly, can I get a fix on the "National Core of Engineers"?  Do you think he might mean the "Army Corps of Engineers"?

We don't leave individual states behind.  There is always creative tension in how we understand the role of the States and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, but we do, as a nation, tend to pull together.  Mr Goldman should do better that this piece.

And, besides, I think Mr Goldman should explain how this fits into the Budget passed by Mr Harry Reid's US Senate.♦

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Nice looking web site.
♥  He could have gotten a dig in at Mr Hoover for making promises to Blacks that he later reneged on, resulting in Blacks shifting their vote to Mr Roosevelt in 1932.  Mr Hoover knew better, but he failed Blacks, himself and his Party.
♦  They are going to try to pass one this year, aren't they, after several years of failure?