The anti-David Brooks article

If, like me, you read David Brooks latest editorial and wonder what planet he woke up in and what he had been drinking last night [“A Bushian Laboratory”, September 18, 2005)] The Prudent Bear has a much better evaluation of the Bush administration.

For all of the talk of the President’s radical foreign policy, an even more remarkable metamorphosis has taken place domestically: The Republican Party has come full circle from, "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem" to an acceptance of the primacy of government responsibility for all things. The man elected ostensibly to curb the excesses of the “spendthrift Democrats” has presided over an expansion the likes of which put FDR and LBJ to shame. According to the Heritage Foundation (not exactly a liberal propagandist), the rebuilding effort in New Orleans follows a 33 percent expansion of the federal government since 2001, a period that saw:

• The 2001 No Child Behind Act, the most expensive education bill in American history, which led to a 100 percent increase in education spending;
• The 2002 Farm Security and Rural Investment Act, the most expensive farm bill in American history;
• The 2003 Medicare Modernization Act, the most expensive Great Society expansion in history;
• A war in and the rebuilding of Iraq that, while justified, could cost between $300 and $600 billion, in total;
• International spending leap 94 percent;
• Housing and Commerce spending surge 86 percent;
  Community and regional development spending jump 71 percent;
  Health research spending increase 61 percent;
• Veterans’ spending increase 51 percent; and
• The number of annual pork projects leap from 6,000 to 14,000.

This from a Federal government, which has hitherto shown a singular inability to conduct an evacuation and relief effort properly, but is now expected to lead the way in reconstructing New Orleans, a city in which the school system is virtually bankrupt and racked by corruption (the U.S. Education Department reported in February that $70-million in federal funds for low-income students had been misspent or could not be accounted for), presumably to be part-administered by a mayor whose stunning failure to mobilize resources to evacuate car-less residents and hospital patients - despite warning signals from the city’s botched response to the threat of Hurricane Ivan in September 2004 – demonstrates that ineptitude extends to all levels of government.

There is a lot more so go read it.