The Myth Of The Compassionate Conservative

Bush lifts wage rules for Katrina
President signs executive order allowing contractors to pay below prevailing wage in affected areas.
September 9, 2005: 11:43 AM EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush issued an executive order Thursday allowing federal contractors rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to pay below the prevailing wage.

Yes, because all those people trying to rebuild their lives as well as their cities needed so much help staying destitute.

The myth of the compassionate conservative is clearly just that - a myth. This Is Not Over puts it beautifully in the essay Here's What Gets Me:

My problem with Bush -- and here, I do indeed address Bush individually, as a guy -- is that during the time that the crisis was developing, from Monday to Friday, he never seemed to experience any actual sense of urgency as a result of the simple fact that people were, minute by minute and hour by hour, dying.

It's so true. I expect my President to give a fuck what happens to Americans. But apparently Bush has a conservation of compassion confused with a compassionate conservatism. His problem is, at its root, a failure of empathy.

Bush (and his cronies) cannot really fathom poverty. If they could understand what it means not to have savings, not to be able to have savings, would he really be trying to "reform" Social Security? If they could understand what it means to work a minimum-wage job, would he really have authorized this wage reduction in the areas where good jobs are most needed? If he really knew that there were have-nots in America, and what they live with, could he possibly have blithely instituted a tax cut that favors the rich and is beggaring social programs for those most in need?

Ignorance is no excuse, particularly not wilful ignorance. But it's clear that the man just doesn't get it. I mean, I'm not poor, and never have been. But that's what empathy is for - to let you feel sympathetic to things that you don't personally experience, to help you understand people who are not Just Like You, to help you realize that there but for the grace of God go we all.

Kirsten Anderberg has an interesting look at past disasters and the effort to create aid separations between the "old poor" and the "new poor" - it's not Katrina-specific, but very relevant. Even in disaster, we differentiate between "hads" and "had-nots" - not accounting for the idea of scarcity in valuing losses.

And as for being poor, I've seen some very moving and thoughtful testaments to what it really means over the past week or so. Required reading: John Scalzi's Being Poor Is... (with some excellent follow-up in the comments), Cadhla's Money for floods: poverty, humanity, and the social contract, and an essay, What is Poverty?, written by Jo Goodwin Parker in 1971. I wish I could sit that awful man in the White House down and make him read all of these. I hope he chokes on his fucking silver spoon.

ETA: A friend linked me to this excellent paper, Losing Ground: Lessons from the Repeal of Nine "Little Davis-Bacon" Acts, out of the University of Utah's econ department. Read the summary, if not the whole thing, to see the actual effects of repealing the prevailing wage. Unsurprisingly, it hurts everyone...except the contractor. And who is the contractor hired for rebuilding in affected areas? Why, I believe it's Halliburton. Funny, that. Only really, really, not.