I cannot believe the United States has sunk this low

To the Editor: The government's response (or, if you will, lack thereof) to the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina last week is final proof — as if any were needed — that the ill-conceived, disastrous experiment of trying to decrease the size of the federal government has been, to put it politely, a dismal failure. In the first two days of the catastrophe it seemed that no one on any level, federal or state, knew what was going on, let alone what to do. That should have come as a surprise to no one. It certainly didn't to me. If by now you are not aware of the fact that George W. Bush and the dirty old dingbats that comprise his administration are the most inept, corrupt, despicable cabal to ever occupy the Oval Office, you haven't been paying attention. This is what happens when you naively hand your government over to people who don't believe in government. Generally speaking, it's not a particularly nifty idea. For 25 years we've had to listen to these fools howling about "big government." Remember Ronald Reagan's first inaugural address? "Government isn't the answer to the problem; government is the problem." Reagan was wrong. Then again, Reagan was usually wrong — but he looked so good on television, didn't he? At a point in our history, when our population is on the verge of exceeding a quarter of a billion people, talking about, even hinting at a desire to shrink the size of the federal government is not only bad public policy, it's insane! Big government? It's a big country. Think about it. Michael Brown is a guy who was forced to resign from his previous job of managing Arabian horses. The fact that someone with his credentials could have been appointed to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency post 9/11 shows just how cynical the Bush crowd is with regard to their stewardship of this nation. It also shows how much they care. Compassionate conservativism? Please. In the meantime, America is reaping the whirlwind of an immoral, illegal war in Iraq. (Yes folks, the president of the United States is a war criminal. You don't believe it? Go to the Geneva Conventions and look up the legal definition of that term.) Two thousand American kids and scores of thousands of Iraqi men, women, and little children have been murdered — for what? All of this on top of an obscene tax cut that benefits the richest 2 percent that is plundering our national treasure. As a Nobel Prize-winning economist recently observed, "Bush's economic policy isn't a plan, it's a looting." Compassionate conservatism, indeed. Fifty years from now, the president of the United States, whoever he or she may be — who in all likelihood hasn't even been born yet — will still on a daily basis be dealing with the damage that a corrupt, hideous, half-witted frat boy named George W. Bush did to his country so many years before. I cannot believe that the United States has sunk this low. I just can't believe it. Tom Degan Goshen